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Consciousness Isn’t a Mystery, It’s Matter

nytimes.com

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Re: Consciousness Isn’t a Mystery, It’s Matter

#81

Post by visarga »

mcguire wrote: post #75

" I find this odd because we know exactly what consciousness is — where by “consciousness” I mean what most people mean in this debate: experience of any kind whatever. It’s the most familiar thing there is, whether it’s experience of emotion, pain, understanding what someone is saying, seeing, hearing, touching, tasting or feeling. It is in fact the only thing in the universe whose ultimate intrinsic nature we can c…

Even though solipsism is considered unfalsifiable, it can't explain why the world is so regular and yet complex, much more complex than human imagination. We can feel the limits of our imagination, but reality is much more complex. So there is the proof that there is an external world. It's not all in our imagination, because our imagination is less complex than the world we experience. If we said that our own imagination created the world, then it must be a Godly power. Basically we attribute divine powers to our own minds, which is absurd.

Re: Consciousness Isn’t a Mystery, It’s Matter

#82

Post by CuriousSkeptic »

whybroke wrote: post #56
empath75 wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Saying that conciousness isn't real because it's an emergent phenomenon of non-conscious processes is like saying that turbulence isn't real, because it's an emergent property of non-fluid particles. I mean sure, at the level of atoms, it's just particles interacting locally, but that doesn't mean that at certain scales, turbulence isn't a better way of looking at their group behavior.

Technically though describing consciousness as emergent property of neural functioning is a conjecture, though a very credible one. Unlike turbulence, I only have one case where I have ever seen this consciousness which I am trying to explain as an epiphenomenon, namely my own. All others consciousness (if they even exist which I can't prove directly) are not remotely observed in the same way, they are self reported…

You have some assumption wrt time in there. To say that your consciousness is continuous relies on you trusting your memory of it being so, which, lacking a time machine, is no more provable or observable than others consciousness.

Removing the continuity assumption, perhaps even time, kind resolves the duplicate question: both copies (if conscious) should have a memory of conscious you and experience their consciousness being a continuation of that, while you, now you, are as removed from those future copies, as you are from me.

One question, that seems tied to consciousness, is what is "now"? Are there objective reasons to believe in the existence of a canonical "now" existing independent of conscious experience? If not then there really is no point in distinguishing either momental or continuous experiences as special in any way. Perhaps consciousness just emerges as an interpretation of a single state connecting past and future by memory and anticipation, it's simply appears continuous like the series of images at the top of the article appears to be.

Re: Consciousness Isn’t a Mystery, It’s Matter

#83

Post by Natsu »

breuleux wrote: post #42
stcredzero wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are problems with our experience of experience. We think consciousness is continuous, but it can be clearly demonstrated that it's fragmentary. Daniel Dennett demonstrates this using alternating images in his TED talks. However, just because our experience of experience doesn't have 100% fidelity, it doesn't follow that our experience doesn't exist. That would be like saying our vision doesn't exist because it…

It means is that our experience isn't what we think it is, but if the discrepancy is large enough, that's more or less the same thing as saying it doesn't exist. Basically, if none of the aspects of consciousness that make it important or special in our eyes turn out to be true, I think that denying its existence is actually a less misleading way to correct the record than trying to completely change our intuitive un…

If our experience itself isn't what we think it is, that would tend to undermine empiricism itself, because we rely on our senses to inform us about the natural world. This includes our sense of whether or not others agree with us, whether they have the same experiences as us, etc.

Re: Consciousness Isn’t a Mystery, It’s Matter

#84

Post by FeepingCreature »

RivieraKid wrote: post #47
breuleux wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wouldn't say that's really a problem, because there's a perfectly fine scientific explanation of why it doesn't (couldn't) "capture" this. The experience of color or taste is triggered when information is fed to the brain through specific pathways. The pathways that are activated when we read about something are different and don't reach the same places, so any information you acquire through reading and cognition…

> the experience of color or taste is triggered when information is fed to the brain through specific pathways The question is why the experience is triggered. Why does moving atoms at specific positions trigger the perception of color or pain? Current physics doesn't have an answer for that, even in theory, assuming we can see exactly what happens in the brain.

Nonetheless, there is no reason to expect a description to be able to trigger the experience even if we knew exactly why it was triggered by sensory input.

Re: Consciousness Isn’t a Mystery, It’s Matter

#85

Post by kefka »

astazangasta wrote: post #69
paulsutter wrote: post #64

Consciousness is a suitcase word, which makes it challenging to debate. From [1]: "In The Emotion Machine, Marvin Minsky discusses suitcase words—words that contain a variety of meanings packed into them, such as conscience, emotions, consciousness, experience, thinking, morality, right, and wrong. "The word ‘consciousness’ is used to describe a wide range of activities, such as “how we reason and make decisions, how…

Every word is a suitcase word.

Precisely.

Every word has emotional meaning alongside it. It's packed in via various ways: culture, history, happenings, social group. The bad part, is words unintended to carry bad emotional meaning can cause significant problems.

Re: Consciousness Isn’t a Mystery, It’s Matter

#86

Post by _1tem »

VLM wrote: post #73

If consciousness is just a complicated computation, which seems the simplest explanation, then it can be analogous to the attitude toward "old computer science beliefs". As a side issue, someday much like people make furniture using 300 year old technology there will be craftsman making programs using no algorithm discovered (learned? found? created?) post 1970. Its a good thing we invented computers in recorded hist…

The problem with claiming that consciousness is just a complicated computation is not merely that we simply haven't advanced our study enough to understand it. The problem is that what we know so far about the nature of computation seems to directly contradict and falsify the notion that consciousness is just computation. To put it simply: our knowledge of computational complexity, algorithms, and general problem solving shows that our human intelligence performs far more sophisticated operations than are possible given the number of neurons that exist in our brains (unless there are some super-fast algorithms that we haven't discovered yet, which would have massive implications on the P=NP problem, and our understanding of physics).

Related video about why we don't have AI yet: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c3of7xYoMQM

Re: Consciousness Isn’t a Mystery, It’s Matter

#87

Post by davmre »

7373737373 wrote: post #77
davmre wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you read Scott Aaronson's "Why I Am Not An Integrated Information Theorist" ( http://www.scottaaronson.com/blog/?p=1799 )? He commends IIT for making falsifiable predictions, but argues that some of those predictions are, in fact, false.

Yes. In the follow-up linked above he also describes the authors' responses to this. The predictions are not de facto false. He argues that they are intuitively false, which is a matter of personal belief but not empirical research. The same goes for some counterarguments.

What predictions does IIT make that could be 'de facto' falsified in the sense you're imagining?

Re: Consciousness Isn’t a Mystery, It’s Matter

#88

Post by carapace »

This is terrible. Is is even an argument?

I was reading "Hard problem of consciousness" Wikipedia article this morning: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hard_problem_of_consciousness I'm not sure this adds anything to that.

The author seems to want to say that consciousness is primary and that the physical universe, matter, is consciousness somehow, so poof no more mystery.

But this doesn't touch the "hard problem" so who cares?

There is what I like to call the flux: form and movement. I lump together "external" and "internal" experience, including all proprioceptive experience, etc.

Then there is the subjective awareness. It is primary. As the author points out, every other fact we know is contingent upon the fact of subjective awareness. Everything is content to this whatever-it-is observer. This awareness itself seems not to have any qualities or properties whatsoever, making it extremely difficult to talk about (and rendering it forever beyond any scientific treatment!)

Somehow, this awareness is our "self". (It may or may not also be tied into the quantum "Measurement Problem" but that is a whole 'nother story.)

You have a body but you're not your body; you have emotions but you aren't your emotions; you have thoughts but you aren't your thoughts; you are that awareness.

Now, if that awareness created or creates the physical world (as the Bhagavad Gita seems to state) that would be pretty amazing and I'd love to read about it. This article doesn't really expand on that.

Re: Consciousness Isn’t a Mystery, It’s Matter

#89

Post by carapace »

mcguire wrote: post #70
wslh wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think so, consciousness seems from another dimension, you feel that you are present in this world while even if you build the most complex machinery you don't obtain that result. I am obviously just speculating because I don't see an obvious connection between matter and consciousness even if they are linked in some way. The article doesn't give any clarity about this problem stated by Leibniz et al.

" ...I don't see an obvious connection between matter and consciousness even if they are linked in some way. " Dualism has worse problems, though. If there is no connection between consciousness and matter, how do psychoactive substances alter consciousness? How do conscious decisions cause material movements?

Well, that's the problem(s) isn't it? There's obviously some connection, what could it be?

If you're going to take both subjective awareness and physics seriously there's a huge and crucial mystery here!

Q.E.D. (Or running in circles, as you like.)

Re: Consciousness Isn’t a Mystery, It’s Matter

#90

Post by carapace »

callesgg wrote: post #28
0x100000 wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You might be interested in reading Douglas Hofstadter's book I Am A Strange Loop.

Ordered a copy, thank you.

FWIW, this book gave me the idea that consciousness could be some sort of feedback loop involving the whole Universe (including you and me and everybody else) possibly via quantum entanglement. I know that's terribly hand-wavey and soupy, sorry about that, just felt I should mention it.

Related: meditation (at least some kinds) seems to operate by turning the subjective awareness back onto itself, becoming aware of becoming aware of... etc... A little like a camera hooked up to a monitor that it's pointed at, you get an infinite regression.

In the camera-monitor system there is a physical loop of information from the lens-to-screen-to-lens-to...

When you do it with you awareness, there must be something looping somewhere, regardless of the physicality or otherwise of consciousness, eh?

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