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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

#71

Post by zetalyrae »

thepasch wrote: post #68
zetalyrae wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Question: who says math cannot result in consciousness? Which math? Why some kinds of information processing and not others? If all information processing leads to consciousness: why does consciousness stop at the boundary of the brain? Why isn't every neuron individually and separately conscious? Why not the two hemispheres of the brain? Why isn't every causally-linked volume of the universe a single mind? > Impli…

> If all information processing leads to consciousness Did you actually read what you just responded to?

Why some kinds of information processing and not others?

As I wrote elsethread: why are some types of information processing "privileged" to create phenomenal experiences, while others run "in the dark"?

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

#72

Post by trane_project »

thepasch wrote: post #57
trane_project wrote: post #40

There is no hard problem of consciousness not because of the baffling arguments against it in this article, but because materialism is not true. This article and the entire description around the hard problem just shows the amount of mental gymnastics needed to deny what is front of everyone in every instant of their lives. Matter and mind are not the same and mind is not produced from matter. That there are correlat…

Explain psychedelics, then? Do psychedelics have access to this supposed "separate layer" that mind exists on over matter? If yes, how? If not, how can something that ostensibly only interacts with the matter have any effect on the mind? Can you explain any of this in a way that doesn't boil down to "it's magic and you just have to believe that it's happening because it is?"

What is there to explain about psychedelics? There is nothing special to them. They affect the bodily aggregates of a being and cause the contents of the experience to change. So does eating a donut. There is no contradiction with what I said because I already conceded that mind and matter are closely interlinked and that changes in the body affect the contents experienced by the mind.

But the "hard" problem of consciousness has nothing to do with the contents of the experience, but with explaining how experiencing of any kind is produced by aggregates that themselves do not have any such experiences. The simple answer is that mind (experience, consciousness, whatever you wanna call it) is not produced by matter and is a completely different realm of reality.

Maybe if science simply assumed that mind and matter are different things instead they would have made some progress. For once, the "hard" problem of consciousness would be revealed to not be problem at all. As for non-scientific proof that you have a mind, you can just observe that for yourself in every instant of your own personal experience. No magic involved. If people want to deny their own minds that is up to them.

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

#73

Post by thepasch »

selcuka wrote: post #65
thepasch wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is a lot of anger to come out of what essentially boils down to "I don't believe/want to believe that complexity can cause subjective experience." And this bit: > I don't believe the "soul" needs to be completely independent from the physical world [...] to believe there is "something else", whether it's related to quantum phenomena or some other "plane" or field we just haven't discovered yet, to believe that c…

> So, what, "complexity isn't a sufficient explanation," and _also_ "it's perfectly reasonable to believe it's the result of processes we don't understand?" Those are not conflicting arguments. The former means that we understand all the processeses, but they are complex, therefore we don't have enough brain/compute power to properly model it. The latter means that we don't understand some of those processes, so we n…

I suppose complexity defines to me as something that's inherently hard to understand. The definition of "complex" is "difficult to understand." The move I don't agree with is proceeding to posit "because we don't understand them yet, there must be something special about them."

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

#75

Post by thepasch »

trane_project wrote: post #72
thepasch wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Explain psychedelics, then? Do psychedelics have access to this supposed "separate layer" that mind exists on over matter? If yes, how? If not, how can something that ostensibly only interacts with the matter have any effect on the mind? Can you explain any of this in a way that doesn't boil down to "it's magic and you just have to believe that it's happening because it is?"

What is there to explain about psychedelics? There is nothing special to them. They affect the bodily aggregates of a being and cause the contents of the experience to change. So does eating a donut. There is no contradiction with what I said because I already conceded that mind and matter are closely interlinked and that changes in the body affect the contents experienced by the mind. But the "hard" problem of consc…

> As for non-scientific proof that you have a mind, you can just observe that for yourself in every instant of your own personal experience.

Two things here:

1) How do you know I have a mind? How do I know you have a mind?

2) What is even your definition of "mind", and why (at least I suspect) is "the ongoing result of information processing facilitated by the complex interlinked network of neurons in the brain" not a satisfactory answer to you?

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

#76

Post by solveiga »

thesmtsolver2 wrote: post #30
solveiga wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think this hard problem has a simple answer that people just don’t like: consciousness is a powerful (and fundamental to our "calculator brain") illusion. And yes, a spreadsheet simulating every neuron in your brain would also simulate it. The fact that it’s difficult to conceptualize doesn’t mean it’s not the answer. Similar to how we struggle to intuit general relativity, or to imagine the pre–Big Bang state of t…

The illusion framing/answer falls apart with some minor prodding. What makes the computation in the brain special from other physical processes to give rise to this illusion? The sewer system in NYC is complex. Does that also have the same illusion? Does the sewer in NYC have consciousness?

What makes brain computation special? Nothing. That's my whole point. Does the sewer system in NYC have consciousness? It's impossible to answer, because there's no single accepted definition of consciousness. If something isn't clearly defined, it becomes very hard to meaningfully assess whether it applies or not.

But if we built a Turing complete, sewer-like system that simulated every neuron in a human brain, it will claim that it is real and conscious for sure. There's no paradox at physical level, intuitively conceptualizing it is the "hard" part.

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

#77

Post by selcuka »

thepasch wrote: post #62
selcuka wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I believe your explanation answers the easy question, not the hard one. It explains how organisms evolve to be smarter to survive, but doesn't explain why or how the first person perspective exists. It's actually a different question (sometimes called "the even harder question" or "the vertiginous question"), but if you have ever asked yourself the question of "why am I me and not someone else", the gap in our unders…

This does not seem like a particularly difficult question to answer to me, and I suspect it's because I'm not particularly precious about what it means to "be me." The logical answer is that this spreadsheet, supposing identical mechanical processes - inputs, outputs, stored data - and I would both be convinced that they're "me", and they'd both be correct in that they'd both be something that functions, and therefor…

Note that you said "this spreadsheet and I", meaning that there is something particularly precious about the current "I". You don't think that you'd suddenly become the spreadsheet, "detaching" (can't find a better word) from your existing body. You intrinsicly assume that the spreadhseet would remain a third person from "your" perspective, even though it's a perfect replica.

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

#78

Post by thepasch »

zetalyrae wrote: post #71
thepasch wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If all information processing leads to consciousness Did you actually read what you just responded to?

Why some kinds of information processing and not others? As I wrote elsethread: why are some types of information processing "privileged" to create phenomenal experiences, while others run "in the dark"?

> Why some kinds of information processing and not others?

I have no idea. If that's what the hard problem of consciousness boils down to - we don't know why some complex math produces consciousness and other complex math doesn't - then it boils down to "we haven't found the means to sufficiently analyze the math that does produce it." Which would turn it into... a math problem?

My suspicion is that it has something to do with evolutionary pressure. Consciousness is something that evolves when systems that include their own existence within their data model become much more likely to continue existing versus those that don't. Statistics does the rest.

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

#79

Post by thepasch »

selcuka wrote: post #77
thepasch wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This does not seem like a particularly difficult question to answer to me, and I suspect it's because I'm not particularly precious about what it means to "be me." The logical answer is that this spreadsheet, supposing identical mechanical processes - inputs, outputs, stored data - and I would both be convinced that they're "me", and they'd both be correct in that they'd both be something that functions, and therefor…

Note that you said "this spreadsheet and I", meaning that there is something particularly precious about the current "I". You don't think that you'd suddenly become the spreadsheet, "detaching" (can't find a better word) from your existing body. You intrinsicly assume that the spreadhseet would remain a third person from "your" perspective, even though it's a perfect replica.

I don't follow? I can copy a file and then consider the two files to be separate copies of the same data?

What should I have said instead? "We"? "Him and it"? Self-modeling is part of my experience. I'm sure it'll be part of the spreadsheet's experience as well, if it functions identically to me.

I don't see the gotcha at all?

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

#80

Post by hackinthebochs »

zetalyrae wrote: post #61
hackinthebochs wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Either all the computation happens "in the dark" [...] or, everything is conscious, from brains to slide rules and spreadsheets Why exclude the option that only specific kinds of computations are conscious, e.g. recursive control systems?

For two reasons: 1. This requires explaining why only some kinds of information processing are privileged to be conscious, which seems rather arbitrary. 2. There's the question of levels of abstraction. Which information processor is conscious? The physical CPU, the zeroth VM, the first VM, the second VM, etc. 3. And there's the question of interpretation. What is computation? A CPU is "just" electrons moving about.…

Saying everything is conscious is also dualism. it's saying that every kind of computation (or perhaps every physical substrate) has another dimension of properties that aren't physical/structural and don't interact with the physical/structural world. So it's not an explanatory boon but rather an extravagance.

The 'where is the consciousness' question is interesting but not really a hard problem. The issue can be solved by being clear about what purpose does consciousness serve then locate where that need is realized. Consciousness is about information integration and broad access as a substrate of decision making. Recursive integration identifies the where. But thinking in terms of nested VMs is sort of missing the point. The point is to trace the flow of information and find the points of broad integration. This may involve multiple substrates. Identifying a single thing as being conscious is a mistake. The consciousness is the most narrowly specified causal dynamic that grounds the information integration.

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