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What is consciousness? Some new perspectives from our physics project

writings.stephenwolfram.com

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Re: What is consciousness? Some new perspectives from our physics project

#61

Post by Zuider »

neonological wrote: post #44
networkimprov wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The essential feature is subjective experience of sensations, referred to as qualia . I've seen no debate about that. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qualia

The first sentence on that Wikipedia page: "In philosophy and certain models of psychology, qualia (/ˈkwɑːliə/ or /ˈkweɪliə/; singular form: quale) are defined as individual instances of subjective, conscious experience" Shows that qualia is defined in terms of "conscious experience." If qualia is an essential feature of consciousness then the Wikipedia definition is a recursive definition. The definition of the word…

Ostensive definitions can be indistinguishable from tautologies. A definition which ultimately boils down to a formula such as:

"The thing that is indicated when you say 'that thing there!'"

appears linguistically empty, because its meaning is not found in the words, but in something extra-verbal that it is intended to point to.

The problem in the debate surrounding consciousness is that there are two basic positions to hold, which are often talking past each other:

1) Oh yes, I see what is being indicated! There is something to discuss.

2) There is nothing here but a meaningless verbal tangle which will disappear when it is untangled.

This problem is similar to, but more intractable than discussing the color blue with someone who has always been blind. The blind person may never actually experience what it is to see blue, the 'qualium,' but there are physical hooks such as the associated frequency of light, and a tangible consensus amongst those who are not blind as to whether an object can be called blue or not.

The latter is missing from the problem of consciousness, which makes it a far more difficult and fascinating problem.

Re: What is consciousness? Some new perspectives from our physics project

#62

Post by dang »

animanoir wrote: post #15
dang wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I understand, but please let's avoid going to the place that all Wolfram threads go. It's not that it's wrong, necessarily, but it's utterly predictable, and therefore uninteresting, and we're trying for something else here. https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu... https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so... https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html Wolfram articles a…

Hahaha, interesting. Ok, will avoid in new Wolfram threads

Appreciated!

Re: What is consciousness? Some new perspectives from our physics project

#63

Post by randmeerkat »

king_magic wrote: post #19
tyrex2017 wrote: post #5

To add one more critic: A couple minutes into the text, I still didnt read something of substance/consequence. Lots of hand waiving and describing the usual phenomena in other terms. I will follow this thread hoping someone points out that good stuff is coming later in the text, but I doubt it.

> Lots of hand waiving and describing the usual phenomena in other terms. Pretty par for the course when it comes to Stephen Wolfram. I generally find it hard to take him seriously for that very reason.

I thought it was an interesting article, I would be interested if he eventually dives into the math of it though.

Re: What is consciousness? Some new perspectives from our physics project

#64

Post by perryizgr8 »

arnoooooo wrote: post #2

No explanation of consciousness cuts it if it does not address how first person perspective comes about. No computation results in first person perspective.

Computation that results in first person perspective:

    #include 

    int main() {
        std::cout

Re: What is consciousness? Some new perspectives from our physics project

#65

Post by andagainagain »

Consciousness... from a physics perspective. Well that sets off alarms already with the title.

goign through the article, it does get better, but not much. the first step they go through is redefining consciousness. Well, most definitions of consciousness are vague and nearly meaningless, so that would be good news if there's wasn't. But it is... just as vague and meaningless as any other definition, but without the benefit of at least being the same thing other people are talking about.

After that I feel like this gets into my complaints about most philosophy I've read. Complicated ideas based on vague ideas that just sorta ask you to go along and accept it on feel. IMO, I find the whole thing needs some major simplification and/or far more solid premises.

Re: What is consciousness? Some new perspectives from our physics project

#66

Post by pmcarlton »

networkimprov wrote: post #31
neonological wrote: post #13

Careful. "Consciousness" may just be a language issue. It seems like a profound concept but it's really just a word with a very vague and complex definition. If someone tried to formalize "consciousness" it would be a technical book about 1000 pages long or something and all we're doing is debating about what goes in the book. It's very similar to the question what is "life?" I mean we understand that biology is just…

The essential feature is subjective experience of sensations, referred to as qualia . I've seen no debate about that. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qualia

Scroll down to the section "Critics of Qualia", and you will find a lot. I agree with Dennett and others that the concept does not make sense.

Re: What is consciousness? Some new perspectives from our physics project

#67

Post by kiba »

throw_away98321 wrote: post #7

I think of consciousness as a feeling and nothing more. Similar to the feeling of free will, both are an "illusion" and we're not actually aware or free. The universe is made of instructions that everything follows and including us. We believing in awareness is just instructions for how we operate as subsystems of the Universe and like or unlike other subsystems of the universe. I find the idea simpler to grasp if yo…

I don't think free will is an illusion. Rather, I think it's complete nonsense. If we are completely deterministic, then the only way we can operate is deterministic.

Now, if you're talking about agency. That's a bit different.

We believing in awareness

I don't think your answers suffice. Clearly, there's an operational definition of awareness as defined by outside observers. We can test if a person is aware or distinguish colors and even determine if ability to perceive colors remain the same across test subjects but we have no idea on how to access the subjective experience.

Really, I don't think your explanation explains anything.

Re: What is consciousness? Some new perspectives from our physics project

#68

Post by neonological »

Zuider wrote: post #61
neonological wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The first sentence on that Wikipedia page: "In philosophy and certain models of psychology, qualia (/ˈkwɑːliə/ or /ˈkweɪliə/; singular form: quale) are defined as individual instances of subjective, conscious experience" Shows that qualia is defined in terms of "conscious experience." If qualia is an essential feature of consciousness then the Wikipedia definition is a recursive definition. The definition of the word…

Ostensive definitions can be indistinguishable from tautologies. A definition which ultimately boils down to a formula such as: "The thing that is indicated when you say 'that thing there!'" appears linguistically empty, because its meaning is not found in the words, but in something extra-verbal that it is intended to point to. The problem in the debate surrounding consciousness is that there are two basic positions…

>and a tangible consensus amongst those who are not blind as to whether an object can be called blue or not.

>The latter is missing from the problem of consciousness, which makes it a far more difficult and fascinating problem.

You are talking about whether some topic can be observed. The example you cite is observation through sight. A blind person cannot observe color. Observation is the key to gathering evidence. The words an "observation" and a piece of "evidence" refer to the exact same concept. Thus your statement is equivalent to saying Blind men can only gain knowledge about color through evidence and that consciousness lacks any sort of evidence.

Many things in this world lack evidence including Scientology and Creationism. We classify some of these things as absurd. Other things are classified as religion or something that is not absurd.

In my mind the logic is equivalent. The vast number of possibilities of the unknown renders most unobserved theories to be by probability more likely to be absurd. Thus Christianity is just as absurd as Scientology. However extraneous factors influence Christianity to be perceived differently even though logically the foundations come from the same absurd unobservable arguments.

Consciousness I believe is much of the same thing. A linguistic phenomenon lending weight to what is otherwise absurd by default. It is just a complicated category where the capability of being able to have certain thoughts is classified as conscious. Or should I say the ability to be aware of certain things? I'm not sure? Fascinating yes but if you look carefully at what I was actually fascinated about you'll see that I'm just talking about how to define a word. Is "consciousnesses" awareness or thought? A definition of a word is not profound.

The profoundness you feel is again just a linguistic illusion. It's similar to the question: "What does it mean to be American?" American is purely a made up word and basically just a over complicated category with nothing intrinsically interesting about it outside of American culture.

To sum it all up. A recursive definition and lack of evidence renders the whole quest to discover what consciousness is quite uninteresting.

Re: What is consciousness? Some new perspectives from our physics project

#69

Post by neonological »

airhead969 wrote: post #56
neonological wrote: post #13

Careful. "Consciousness" may just be a language issue. It seems like a profound concept but it's really just a word with a very vague and complex definition. If someone tried to formalize "consciousness" it would be a technical book about 1000 pages long or something and all we're doing is debating about what goes in the book. It's very similar to the question what is "life?" I mean we understand that biology is just…

English is an awful for scientific communication due to its inherently complex rules and ambiguous lexicon. It's great for marketing and business though!

I would argue you're talking about "human language" itself as all languages have some word that is similar to consciousness. That being said, I largely agree with your overall point.
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