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It is time to give up the dualism introduced by the debate on consciousness

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Re: It is time to give up the dualism introduced by the debate on consciousness

#241

Post by themgt »

jwilliams wrote: post #111

Rovelli is arguing (I think) that we need to fundamentally view consciousness as a natural phenomenon - albeit one that is extremely complex and poorly understood. So we ditch the philosophical puzzle and focus on the reality we can perceive and reason on. The problem is that consciousness is a philosophical invention (and a slippery one at that). We're in the wrong frame. If you accept consciousness is a thing you e…

The problem is that consciousness is a philosophical invention ... If you accept consciousness is a thing you end up in this weird tautological state

"The Moon" is a philosophical invention, and yet The Moon is a natural phenomenon.

Re: It is time to give up the dualism introduced by the debate on consciousness

#242

Post by card_zero »

jillesvangurp wrote: post #239

Neal Stephenson touches on this topic in several of his novels. Probably the most concrete of this is "Fall; or Dodge in Hell" which involves a simulation of people's scanned brains rediscovering qualia and constructing their own simulated world from scratch. In the book, two of the deceased digital "souls" eventually mate and produce digital offspring and the whole simulation starts consuming more and more resources…

The clinching thing for me is how the AGI is supposed to work. If it's the same as our theory of how we work, then fine, it's one of us. It wouldn't even have to work very well.

Re: It is time to give up the dualism introduced by the debate on consciousness

#243

Post by [deleted] »

energy123 wrote: post #214
bambax wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I never quite understood what we mean by "consciousness" but I find fascinating that most modern philosophers who describe themselves as materialists / non religious can argue in the same sentence that there is something special and extra-natural about the human experience. It's one or the other: either nature is all there is, and therefore, consciousness is a purely natural phenomenon, that we can investigate, and p…

I don't know anyone who supports both ideas at the same time. Are you saying that philosophers do? Most philosophers are materialists or computational functionalists, while being monists. This means they aren't dualists, and it means they do not adopt the supernatural explanation. But they are careful not to rule out dualism. There's this pattern I've observed in discussions about philosophy. First there's a rejectio…

[deleted]

Re: It is time to give up the dualism introduced by the debate on consciousness

#244

Post by prynpo »

dainank wrote: post #237

I believe nature is all there is. If we could replicate a human brain several times, and make each 'human brain' receive the exact same input data (sounds, sights, smells e.t.c.) from the moment they 'exist' until the end of their lifetime, I truly think that each of these brains will make precisely the same decisions (and each of these 'brains' would think they were conscious and in control of their lives). In my ey…

Nature vs. nurture is also a popular debate. This scenario you described, even with nature being all there is, doesn't imply all our actions and thoughts are shaped by our environment.

Re: It is time to give up the dualism introduced by the debate on consciousness

#245

Post by Sankozi »

mangolie wrote: post #155
Sankozi wrote: post #130

The biggest benefit of term "consciousness" is that when I see something like "LLMs are not conscious" I immediately know that the author doesn't know what he is talking about.

In that case the author is simply saying the LLM is a p zombie, why does he not know what he's talking about?

They are saying something similar to "LLM has no soul", depending on context it might something insightful or (in technical/scientific context) they are making fool of themselves.

Re: It is time to give up the dualism introduced by the debate on consciousness

#246

Post by darkwater »

Brian_K_White wrote: post #142
darkwater wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did our ancestors that used the very first tools have consciousness? If they did, was the consciousness what helped them make the tools? Or was something else in their brains that helped in the tool making? IMO consciousness is something that appears when you have enough "brain power" to spare, maybe as some side-effect of some evolutionary trait. I'm no expert and it's a very simplistic explanation, I know, but in g…

There is brain power by the ton all over the place. The answer cannot be based on what a thing can do, but on what a thing chooses to do.

I'm not sure I'm following you, what do you mean? That other animals as well have enough brain power for consciousness?

Re: It is time to give up the dualism introduced by the debate on consciousness

#247

Post by syllogism »

hackinthebochs wrote: post #32

I'm not sure where all this discussion about the hard problem is coming from suddenly, or why people continue to struggle to understand it. It's really very simple. The hard problem identifies the in principle difficulty in explaining phenomenal consciousness, something not definable in terms of structure and function, given only the explanatory resources of structure and function. It's like saying you can't explain…

It comes up because people are mistakenly conflating consciousness with moral personhood.

People want to be talking about whether AI suffers in a morally meaningful way. In non-human animals this debate is often centered around the question of whether the animal has conscious experience, because there's little doubt that much of the emotional and experiential systems are shared.

The analogy goes wrong with AI, where definitions of "consciousness" would seem to apply in the sense that the model clearly has a category for itself in its world model, feeds back on its output, etc. However the analogy between how it works and anything we would recognise as emotion or suffering is extremely strained.

The solution is to just focus on ths question of what we really mean when we think of morally relevant suffering. It's a much clearer question than "consciousness" and it sidesteps the problem.

Re: It is time to give up the dualism introduced by the debate on consciousness

#248

Post by rishi_devan »

dainank wrote: post #237

I believe nature is all there is. If we could replicate a human brain several times, and make each 'human brain' receive the exact same input data (sounds, sights, smells e.t.c.) from the moment they 'exist' until the end of their lifetime, I truly think that each of these brains will make precisely the same decisions (and each of these 'brains' would think they were conscious and in control of their lives). In my ey…

You’re saying it’s all 100% deterministic. But at the quantum level, things are probabilistic. The hundred brains with the same input data might make different decisions like how each ball dropped in the Galton board chooses a different route.

But I agree with your overall premise. It can be all understood scientifically. There is nothing supernatural about things we cannot comprehend.

Re: It is time to give up the dualism introduced by the debate on consciousness

#249

Post by trick-or-treat »

roncesvalles wrote: post #231
H8crilA wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am pretty sure I am not conscious, and this seems to solve the entire problem that other people have.

My pet theory is that I don't think all humans are conscious (in other words, some perfectly cognitively normal-seeming people are just automatons without an inner experience, like plants or LLMs). Mainly motivated by the fact that a lot of people report not having an inner monologue, and other little hints that I've picked up over the years. The "inner experience" might be totally optional to fitness, like green eye…

That's called solipsism. I went through it as a lad, I think it's not uncommon.

Re: It is time to give up the dualism introduced by the debate on consciousness

#250

Post by card_zero »

justonceokay wrote: post #227
daseiner1 wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't what makes the experience of love special the experience of love? a robot can hold hands and kiss and bring flowers home far more efficiently than i can. is that what love is? A robot CAN write a poem about how the redness of a flower reminds them of their mother’s funeral. But the outward signal of grief is not evidence of an internal experience of it.

I’ll bite the bullet: if a robot has a complicated enough internal representation of the world, it may very well develop a concept of love (or “care”, or “noticing”, or “intention”. Love is such a slippery word…) that we would have to trust. Imagine a cat-sitting robot. The robot can differentiate between individual cats. It learns how to play with the cats and feed them in in their preferred way. The cats grow to tr…

How does the robot work? Sound like there's some knowledge accumulated in there, and you'd be being destructive, like burning books, but the robot doesn't create ideas. Qualia, I couldn't comment on. Well, it seems the term refers to private ideas that can't be communicated. So, no.
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