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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

#691

Post by pixl97 »

dec0dedab0de wrote: post #687
pixl97 wrote: post #632

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>The point is that all existence is built on top of consciousness. Then if all conscious beings (lets say humans are the only ones for sake of argument) die, then existence ends. Simply put, this does not happen because consciousness occurs in a substrate. Take the thought experiment of the boltzmann brain, it still requires the assembly of probabilistic entropy to occur, it is not nothing.

what if you are the only conscious being?

Then I'm fucking up by not surrounding myself with all the hottest women and wealth.

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

#692

Post by Eisenstein »

funimpoded wrote: post #665
Eisenstein wrote: post #611

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So are saying that if we made a computer out of neurons that it could be capable of consciousness whereas an electronic one could not?

Yes, brains apparently can do consciousness. Can descriptions of brains do consciousness? I don't know why we'd expect that they could. You can describe a fire in all the detail you like, and burn nothing. Can electronic brains be conscious? I dunno. If I had to guess? Sky's-the-limit ignore-all-physical-and-temporal-constraints? Probably. Within the bounds of what humans will ever achieve? Maybe. I doubt they'd look…

A fire is something that happens externally and has observable actions. An internal state is not. Your thoughts may take a physical form but that form cannot be demonstrated. Unless you can show me telekinesis then you have only intuition. Why are you so certain that these intuitions are true?

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

#693

Post by [deleted] »

redwood wrote: post #679
Eisenstein wrote: post #612

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That perspective is 'biological exceptionalism' and requires that there is something specific to biology that allows consciousness while precluding anything not biological. For that to be convincing there must be a mechanism and no one has proposed anything other than a soul for that.

This is where I would say that to defining that mechanism is the hard problem... it's a mischaracterization to call it the easy problem. But it doesn't require a soul

[deleted]

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

#694

Post by funimpoded »

Eisenstein wrote: post #692
funimpoded wrote: post #665

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, brains apparently can do consciousness. Can descriptions of brains do consciousness? I don't know why we'd expect that they could. You can describe a fire in all the detail you like, and burn nothing. Can electronic brains be conscious? I dunno. If I had to guess? Sky's-the-limit ignore-all-physical-and-temporal-constraints? Probably. Within the bounds of what humans will ever achieve? Maybe. I doubt they'd look…

A fire is something that happens externally and has observable actions. An internal state is not. Your thoughts may take a physical form but that form cannot be demonstrated. Unless you can show me telekinesis then you have only intuition. Why are you so certain that these intuitions are true?

Possibly metaphysical naturalism is wrong and supernatural things exist! And maybe thoughts (and/or the experience of consciousness) are among those supernatural things. That could be it. In which case sure, maybe solving math problems can create consciousness (why not?).

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

#695

Post by yourbestcrab »

I enjoyed the article, and I'm actually, surprisingly, fairly convinced by his idea there is something off about things like the imaginary philosophical zombie[1].

I think that the idea of a soul or spirit could be both interesting and also self evident though, so it's odd to read these being thrown out in the same bath water.

I.e if we imagine our simplified brains as points of matter with signals being sent between; then the kind of experience we have as human beings is more about the relationships between the matter. I don't see that as a harmful duality as if it were the case, it would shed light on what we understand and how. We're still physical but exist in "spirit of matter", different but bound. No magic required.

I'd see this as fairly separate from the question of why we witness ourselves, which seems more prone to mental trickery.

Rovelli also has some fun popsci book on how Time might be constructed. Mostly a fun read but the theories, when he gets to them, are an interesting take. Highly recommend.

[1] However if Carlo Rovelli were a philosophical zombie, are these exactly the responses he would give - as it wouldn't "see" the moment of awareness and be confused by implied significance? I think so.

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

#696

Post by fsckboy »

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…

>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)

whether or not matter was continuous and could be divided forever by repeated halving, or if there were "atoms" was a philosophical puzzle more than 2000 years before "we" found the answer. That it was "atoms" was one of the 2000y.o. hypotheses. same with dividing time and distance. It's ridiculous to dispense with good hypotheses.

we know that consciousness exists before any other thing. We don't even know that the so-called physical world actually exists, only that we we consciously think we observe it, but we can wake up believing dreams or psychotic imaginings. How can you enjoy watching The Matrix, and yet walk out so smug about you knowing the answers before they've even been found?

I personally do not believe in the material universe. All of our theories and descriptions and empricism about it proves that it is mathematical only. All that exists can be (and is) explained by math (and perhaps some computer science in the sense that there is state, and math doesn't require state) I call upon rational STEM types to reject the material universe the way you wish to dispense with consciousness. Consciousness, like math, is immaterial, and we have more evidence for immateriality than we do for materiality. When our hypothetical hands touch each other in a handshake, you would even point out that on a quantum level, nothing touches anything.

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

#697

Post by tim333 »

otikik wrote: post #313
david-gpu wrote: post #292

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> At some point, we'll have AGI that pass any test we can think of and we'll still have people arguing that these cannot be conscious. Is there a distinction in your mind between consciousness and intelligence? Is it possible, for example, for a machine to solve complex problems but not be conscious? Or vice versa, can an animal or a person be very unintelligent yet still conscious?

A philosophical zombie [1] is essentially a mobile, autonomous human body devoid of consciousness. Critically, still giving all of the external cues that it has in fact consciousness. It is supposed to prove that physicalism doesn't work. "The sense of consciousness" is used like a "soul, with extra steps". In my humble opinion, which I have no way to prove or disprove, consciousness ("as a soul with extra steps") do…

I know I'm not a philosophical zombie based on

>For example, if a philosophical zombie were poked with a sharp object, it would not feel any pain, but it would react exactly the way any conscious human would.

in the Wikipedia article because I don't get on well with the sharp poking. On the basis of Occam's razor I assume all other humans and higher animals are similar. It would be odd if evolution had made me different from all the others.

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

#698

Post by tim333 »

an0malous wrote: post #387
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…

> 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. This is a great example for a discussion about The Hard Problem. Here is the description from the book of the inner experience of this scanned brain as it gets booted up: > What came next could not, of course, be described…

>There is no test for consciousness

There's the Glasgow Coma Scale "the most widely used tool for measuring comas and decreases in consciousness"

https://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/diagnostics/24848-glas...

I know it's probably not what you're thinking of but does illustrate these things are not totally beyond testing and experimentation.

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

#699

Post by lioeters »

essentia0 wrote: post #383
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…

Do you have a verdict for whether science can ever explain the origin of the universe? I can only doubt it could answer the actual hard problem of consciousness. I find most people, especially on here, to be blindly "science-optimistic"

> origin of the universe?

Creatio ex nihilo.

> consciousness?

Ditto. It's actually the same question.

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

#700

Post by nothinkjustai »

aerodexis wrote: post #525
prmph wrote: post #471

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You are using language invented elsewhere while claiming you can't be sure of its reality. Your senses are the only thing on which this statement rests. Your don't know anything like "language", "invented" etc. All you know is what your mind and your senses tell you. And, yes, engaging with you on this topic, and my argument, is also included in what I refer to as my perception. I have no way to prove that you are…

So it's through the senses that one attains mathematical knowledge?

Is this supposed to be some sort of gotcha?
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