The unending quest to explain consciousness • Hacker News Board

Re: The unending quest to explain consciousness

#201

Post by Pete_D » Fri, Dec 06, 2019, 6:24 PM UTC

Tenoke wrote: post #126

corporate_shi11 wrote: post #98

The closest we will ever come to describing consciousness is simply describing the correlates of consciousness. The "ultimate cause" of it will forever be a mystery, behind the veil. Consciousness appears to exist outside of the physical world, in that we can describe a physical process entirely without invoking consciousness. Because of this, consciousness is beyond the scientific method and our fundamental understa…

>Consciousness appears to exist outside of the physical world, in that we can describe a physical process entirely without invoking consciousness. Only in the same ways that e.g. emotions exist 'outside of the physical world' and we are doing some work with those (e.g. we know more about the effects of hormones on them now). I completely disagree that this is unstudiable or 'behind the veil'. We can create beings wit…

I don't think trying to solve it materialistically will work, because the moment we come up with an empirical measurement of consciousness, David Chalmers will crash in through a window and say "ah, now consider a hypothetical class of people for whom this measurement indicates consciousness, but who do not in fact experience qualia - we could call these qualia zombies, or Q-zombies for short."

Maybe the correct response is just to dismiss zombie theories as incoherent. But people are already doing that - I doubt collecting more physical evidence and improving our understanding of cognition will strengthen the case against P-zombies, even though it'd be useful knowledge for other reasons.

Re: The unending quest to explain consciousness

#202

Post by nkrisc » Fri, Dec 06, 2019, 6:25 PM UTC

yohsii wrote: post #197

nkrisc wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How so? Somewhere between conception and birth consciousness arises. Gametes are clearly not conscious as far as we can tell, and yet a baby is. So somewhere in the physical development that happens in between, consciousness arises as a result. The exact point is a topic of much debate. Somewhere between mortal injury and decomposition, consciousness vanishes. Live humans, yet to succumb to a mortal wound, are clearl…

if consciousness was created by physical processes, what created the first consciousness? consciousness has always been and will always be, the physical realm is just a play of form, temporary and changing and your identity on this earth is also a temporary form that ostensibly begins at conception but is actually is process that goes back to the origins of the universe and beyond the physical realm, to a supreme int…

Conjecture and speculation, on your part.

> if consciousness was created by physical processes, what created the first consciousness?

Perhaps a different physical process, since we can see that a physical process is capable of creating consciousness. It seems very plausible that consciousness is simply an emergent property of complex, multi-cellular life. If so, then a better question isn't what created the first consciousness, but what created life? But that's a whole different can of worms. I'm afraid we may not be very special at all, just clusters of animated molecules that last a short while before entropy catches up to us and we revert to dust. But I understand why this scares some and they seek comfort in other explanations.

> supreme intelligence and consciousness that is behind everything

Evidence?

Re: The unending quest to explain consciousness

#203

Post by cr0sh » Fri, Dec 06, 2019, 6:31 PM UTC

erokar wrote: post #112

SmellyGeekBoy wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's also no reason to believe that our own "consciousness" is any more than a significantly advanced algorithm. It's a very human trait to put ourselves on a pedestal.

Please substantiate your claim. You'd need to rely on dualism/metaphysics to support the view that consciousness is just an algorithm. Without some medium to implement it, an algorithm is just an abstract idea. The implementation could in principle be arbitrary. I belive consciousness can be explained within a monist, materialistic worldview. I see it as the result of a biological process, much like digestion. To str…

> I see it as the result of a biological process, much like digestion. To stretch this analogy (perhaps a tad too far): You can simulate digestion on a computer but it will never produce a real shit for you.

While not a simulation, but it is somewhat relevant:

https://wimdelvoye.be/work/cloaca/

Re: The unending quest to explain consciousness

#204

Post by cr0sh » Fri, Dec 06, 2019, 6:47 PM UTC

cygx wrote: post #18

adrianN wrote: post #5

The really hard problem of consciousness is giving a definition that allows me to tell whether a rock is more or less conscious than a person.

I find it reasonable to assume that for thought processes to occur, there must be some processing, so rocks are out. A more interesting example would be, say, trees, which do communicate with each other to some degree. Is that accompanied by some form of awareness? What's the lower bound of complexity at which consciousness kicks in? What about supraorganisms such as insect hives? Human cities? An ecosystem as a whol…

> What's the lower bound of complexity at which consciousness kicks in? What about supraorganisms such as insect hives? Human cities? An ecosystem as a whole?

There's also the question of the nodes and edges of the graph; does the complexity (or processing capability) of these have any effect on the complexity bounds?

That is - compare a neuron as the node (and the dendrites as the "edges") in the larger graph of the neural network that is the human brain. Each node and edge are relatively simple compared to the entire brain.

Now - what happens when that brain becomes the node (via a human) and the edges of the graph of interaction in society becomes the internet (social networking, email, etc)? Both are much more complex than the former - so do we need fewer nodes/edges to "kickstart consciousness"?

The problem of course is how can we (as individual nodes) perceive this consciousness? How could we ever query it? And - if we could query it - and it perceived us querying it - what would it do?

If for instance - you perceived one or more of your neurons suddenly say "Hey - I'm a neuron - can you talk to me? I want to know what you are thinking? Helloooo?" - what would you do?

Well - more than a few of us would probably head to the doctor in an attempt to either shut that neuron up or remove it or kill it or...you get the idea.

So - if we were to do the same thing...?

Re: The unending quest to explain consciousness

#205

Post by pygy_ » Fri, Dec 06, 2019, 6:59 PM UTC

acqq wrote: post #63

youareostriches wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What makes you believe that your conscious perceptions have any specific (let alone regularizeable) kind of relationship to reality at all? In all likelihood, conscious perceptions are guided entirely by evolution, emphasizing those aspects of reality needed to keep us alive and filtering out those we can safely ignore. https://www.nature.com/articles/544296a?WT.mc_id=FBK_NA_1704...

> conscious perceptions are guided entirely by evolution, emphasizing those aspects of reality needed to keep us alive and filtering out those we can safely ignore. It's also known that it's often enough evolutionary advantageous having the model of the surroundings which is more accurate than that of your competition (There's some paper I've read about that, I just don't have the time to find it now. Maybe somebody…

Re. Flipping images I actually experienced it first hand. I live in continental Europe where cars are driven on the right side of the road.

A few years ago, I spent a week in southwest England, with my car. Upon arrival, driving on the left and passing on the right felt weird, but after a few minutes of practice on the highway, I was starting to get good driving sensations... then the weirdest thing happened: for a brief moment, I experienced the text on road signs and license plates as mirrored. My brain had gone overboard and flipped the whole scene :-). Then It quickly subsided and I went on to discover the fair weather of Cornwall.

Re: The unending quest to explain consciousness

#206

Post by stromgo » Fri, Dec 06, 2019, 7:11 PM UTC

normalnorm wrote: post #186

stromgo wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Consciousness is a computation, and neurons are certainly capable of elementary computation. So the building block has been pointed at (neurons), and its property given (computation). Is the problem that you don't believe that consciousness can emerge from elementary computation, or you believe that it is possible but we have no proof of it?

I have no problem with agreeing that computation can emerge from neurons. For example, one can show how different neural configurations correspond to logic gates, persistent memory (this requires recurrence) and so on. This is precisely what I mean by valid emergentist models. No magic steps, just complexity. The problem is that you start by stating that "consciousness is a computation", but I don't know if this is t…

When you said

> With consciousness, the emergentists are not capable of pointing at the first principle, or building block.

...it sounded like there were no plausible candidates. If computation is a candidate, then it's certainly something they can point at (with the caveat that it's only a candidate and not currently testable). I think if instead you had written something along those lines and avoided the words "not capable of", then hoseja and I wouldn't have reacted.

Re: The unending quest to explain consciousness

#207

Post by adrianN » Fri, Dec 06, 2019, 7:18 PM UTC

carapace wrote: post #169

adrianN wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Out-of-body experiences have failed to provide the person experiencing them with information that they couldn't have obtained while being in their body. That indicates that they're not in fact extrasensory experiences, but something that happens inside the brain.

It really depends on who you ask. There are people who routinely leave their bodies and go about and "obtain information", as you put it. Heck, there were Learning Annex classes on it. YMMV.

I'm pretty sure that proof of extrasensory experience would yield you a nobel prize, but so far all studies of the subject that I'm aware of were either negative or had their methods heavily critized.

Re: The unending quest to explain consciousness

#208

Post by adrianN » Fri, Dec 06, 2019, 7:20 PM UTC

cygx wrote: post #188

ghjyui wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Image recognition needs no storage or retrieval of data: it's a single pass thru a series of matrix multiplications. Yet, image recognition is the very definition of data processing.

How do you propose to perform calculations without data storage (think registers)?

Like this for example https://hackaday.com/2019/07/16/neural-network-in-glass-requ... though I'm not sure that you can really count this as calculation. But I guess that's the point of this discussion.

Re: The unending quest to explain consciousness

#209

Post by Buttons840 » Fri, Dec 06, 2019, 7:22 PM UTC

dwaltrip wrote: post #190

rebuilder wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't see the relevance of solipsism here. I'm taking essentially the opposite position: I am not conscious. You seem to think I am conscious. How can you tell the difference?

If you genuinely don't think you are conscious, then I have nothing to say. If you are making a roundabout point of how we can't know if other people are conscious, then my argument about solipsism stands.

He's saying that personal assertions are not a good basis for believing that a person is concious. He's saying it in a sarcastic way.

Re: The unending quest to explain consciousness

#210

Post by SketchySeaBeast » Fri, Dec 06, 2019, 7:23 PM UTC

yohsii wrote: post #196

toasterlovin wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> consciousness disembodied is still intelligent and aware Consciousness has never been disembodied as far as anybody can demonstrate.

psychedelics and meditation will get you there, just put in the effort to do the self inquiry. with some persistence and courage, you'll experience it first hand.

Even though your brain thought it wasn't, you were still embodied, unless you are telling us you were in fact medically dead and still self aware.

Unless you can actually tell someone what's in the next room without ever physically being there or observing it, you're just imagining things. It would be incredibly easy to test in a double blind manner, so if it was a power that someone could actually manifest it'd be reliably demonstrated by now.