5 ms·

You do have subjective experience, don't you? I mean, you don't just process external stimuli, combine them with an internal state, and generate output signals,

by adwn 10y ago

You do have subjective experience, don't you? I mean, you don't just process external stimuli, combine them with an internal state, and generate output signals, like a program would – you can actually "feel" things and see them with "your inner eye"? I'm not being sarcastic here. Maybe there are people that don't have subjective experience, just like there are people that can hear colors.

naasking 10y ago
> I mean, you don't just process external stimuli, combine them with an internal state, and generate output signals, like a program would – you can actually "feel" things and see them with "your inner eye"? You're assuming the conclusion that consciousness isn't just processing external stimuli with internal state to generate output signals, just a particular form of it.
- adwn 10y ago
  > You're assuming the conclusion that consciousness isn't just processing external stimuli with internal state to generate output signals, just a particular form of it. Yes, that is my assumption, because that is what I observe (only in my own mind, of course – I don't know how to observe it in others). I'm not alone, many (most? all?) people are claiming to observe that.
  - naasking 10y ago
    Except: 1. It isn't a valid observation, because you don't actually observe that consciousness is not part of the process of processing external stimuli. At best, you can observe that consciousness exists. 2. It isn't a valid conclusion even if it were a valid observation. Or do you also conclude that water magically breaks pencils and reconstitutes them when they are removed [1]? [1] http://cdn.c.photoshelter.com/img-get/I0000KUS4vG.ZoqQ/s/860/860/Fphoto-24918908C-2RM.jpg http://cdn.c.photoshelter.com/img-get/I0000KUS4vG.ZoqQ/s/860...
    - aninhumer 10y ago
      I observe that conciousness exists, and I can conceive of no way to logically deduce its occurrence from any physical processes, nor any way to consider them as the same thing. To me, experience itself is fundamentally a separate thing from any process that might cause it to occur, and I don't know how to conceive of it any other way.
      - naasking 10y ago
        > I can conceive of no way to logically deduce its occurrence from any physical processes, nor any way to consider them as the same thing. That you cannot conceive of it does not make it inconceivable. In fact, scientific theories [1] exist to explain exactly the functional purpose of consciousness. [1] http://journal.frontiersin.org/article/10.3389/fpsyg.2015.00500/full http://journal.frontiersin.org/article/10.3389/fpsyg.2015.00...
        aninhumer 10y ago
        >That you cannot conceive of it does not make it inconceivable. True, but I find it sufficiently difficult to conceive of that I'm not convinced anyone else can. If you claim to be able to, can you explain it to me? To me, saying experience "is" brain processing is like saying the image on the screen at a cinema "is" projector operation. One may cause the other, but they're still separate things. > scientific theories [1] exist to explain exactly the functional purpose of consciousness. But that doesn't explain the mechanism for conciousness to occur, it just explains why it might exist.
        naasking 10y ago
        > But that doesn't explain the mechanism for conciousness to occur, it just explains why it might exist. It does explain the mechanism actually. The mind builds representations for predictive purposes, it builds a representation of attention because that increases predictive power in achieving goals, a representation of attention is consciousness. Certainly it's not sufficiently detailed such that you can build one, but that's not really needed to make it conceivable.
Houshalter 10y ago
Neural networks also have "inner eyes". From being able to "dream" images and sequences that haven't appeared in the training data, but look plausible. Or being able to manipulate learned concepts. Like word2vec turns words into vectors that can be combined in complicated ways. E.g. words for colors will be different based on what the colors are associated with (e.g. red is associated with "danger", or green is associated with "nature", etc.) Make this process much more complex, and intelligent, and then ask it what it "feels". It will probably give responses very similar to humans. It "feels" complicated internal experiences that it can't completely explain or understand. It certainly wouldn't feel like it's "just combining stimuli with internal state to get output signals". Being an algorithm doesn't feel like you are an algorithm, from the inside.
- adwn 10y ago
  > It will probably give responses very similar to humans. Being able to mimic a human's behavior is neither a necessary nor a sufficient condition for having subjective experience. > Being an algorithm doesn't feel like you are an algorithm, from the inside. How do you know that? How do you know that an algorithm "feels" anything at all, the way humans do?
  - mh-cx 10y ago
    > Being able to mimic a human's behavior is neither a necessary nor a sufficient condition for having subjective experience. I think that's not the point he tried to make. It's just that it happens that we're human and thus it's easier for us to relate to human-like experiences/feelings. An algorithm is not limited to that. If we accept that our "feeling like something" is just an emergent phenomenon of our complex model of reality I see no logical reason why we shouldn't ascribe any sufficiently complex model of reality an inherent feeling. Due to our limited physical configuration we will never have access to all kinds of feelings. Much like we will never know how it feels like to be a bat.
  - Houshalter 10y ago
    >Being able to mimic a human's behavior is neither a necessary nor a sufficient condition for having subjective experience. I am arguing that it is. Once you move past the "giant lookup table" idea to actual algorithms that explain human behavior. In fact once you find the smallest such algorithm, it must necessarily be an exact simulation of a human brain, and all of our internal experience. >How do you know that an algorithm "feels" anything at all, the way humans do? It must feel exactly the same way humans do if it produces exactly the same output.
eli_gottlieb 10y ago
> You do have subjective experience, don't you? I mean, you don't just process external stimuli, combine them with an internal state, and generate output signals, like a program would – you can actually "feel" things and see them with "your inner eye"? Hold on. Did you just claim that people with aphantasia (ie: possibly an inability to feed causal models from someplace (probably the neocortex? IANANS, just work with some) back to the visual cortex and get the visual cortex's "portrayal" of the conditional simulation embodied in the model) have no subjective experience? What if someone has no "inner eye", but does have "inner ears", an "inner tongue", "inner hands" and all the rest? Or do you group all possible "inner senses" used for imagining "what something is like" into "qualia" without separating them into distinct functionalities that are in bijection with the available physical senses? Because you might have actually said something interesting here!
- adwn 10y ago
  > Did you just claim that people with aphantasia [...] have no subjective experience? I don't think so. I wasn't talking about imagination (as in: thinking of a cube and rotating it in your mind), but rather about experiencing the input from my physical eyes. It's as if there's someone inside my head that experiences and feels what I physically see. Of course, this doesn't help: the homunculus model is thoroughly debunked. [1] > Or do you group all possible "inner senses" used for imagining "what something is like" into "qualia" without separating them into distinct functionalities that are in bijection with the available physical senses? There are qualia like anxiety or restlessness that are not linked to physical senses, so that's a no on the bijection. I have no idea whether those "inner eyes, ears, etc." that link imagination to physical senses are related to qualia – it's so difficult to imagine myself into different minds. Besides, coming up with an objective, clear, non-recursive definition for subjective experience is way above my paygrade. Another random thought that I just had: People with depression sometimes hurt themselves physically, because that's the only way they can still feel something (according to them). Maybe this is related to a dampened subjective experience, which allows only extreme inputs to be experienced? [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homunculus_argument https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homunculus_argument
  - 10y ago
gnaritas 10y ago
> and see them with "your inner eye"? Interesting point, not everyone has an inner eye, see aphantasia.
taneq 10y ago
Isn't 'feeling something with your inner eye' a part of how 'processing external stimuli combined with my internal state' works?

by adwn 10y ago

naasking 10y ago

> I mean, you don't just process external stimuli, combine them with an internal state, and generate output signals, like a program would – you can actually "feel" things and see them with "your inner eye"? You're assuming the conclusion that consciousness isn't just processing external stimuli with internal state to generate output signals, just a particular form of it.

adwn 10y ago
> You're assuming the conclusion that consciousness isn't just processing external stimuli with internal state to generate output signals, just a particular form of it. Yes, that is my assumption, because that is what I observe (only in my own mind, of course – I don't know how to observe it in others). I'm not alone, many (most? all?) people are claiming to observe that.
- naasking 10y ago
  Except: 1. It isn't a valid observation, because you don't actually observe that consciousness is not part of the process of processing external stimuli. At best, you can observe that consciousness exists. 2. It isn't a valid conclusion even if it were a valid observation. Or do you also conclude that water magically breaks pencils and reconstitutes them when they are removed [1]? [1] http://cdn.c.photoshelter.com/img-get/I0000KUS4vG.ZoqQ/s/860/860/Fphoto-24918908C-2RM.jpg http://cdn.c.photoshelter.com/img-get/I0000KUS4vG.ZoqQ/s/860...
  - aninhumer 10y ago
    I observe that conciousness exists, and I can conceive of no way to logically deduce its occurrence from any physical processes, nor any way to consider them as the same thing. To me, experience itself is fundamentally a separate thing from any process that might cause it to occur, and I don't know how to conceive of it any other way.
    - naasking 10y ago
      > I can conceive of no way to logically deduce its occurrence from any physical processes, nor any way to consider them as the same thing. That you cannot conceive of it does not make it inconceivable. In fact, scientific theories [1] exist to explain exactly the functional purpose of consciousness. [1] http://journal.frontiersin.org/article/10.3389/fpsyg.2015.00500/full http://journal.frontiersin.org/article/10.3389/fpsyg.2015.00...
      - aninhumer 10y ago
        >That you cannot conceive of it does not make it inconceivable. True, but I find it sufficiently difficult to conceive of that I'm not convinced anyone else can. If you claim to be able to, can you explain it to me? To me, saying experience "is" brain processing is like saying the image on the screen at a cinema "is" projector operation. One may cause the other, but they're still separate things. > scientific theories [1] exist to explain exactly the functional purpose of consciousness. But that doesn't explain the mechanism for conciousness to occur, it just explains why it might exist.
        naasking 10y ago
        > But that doesn't explain the mechanism for conciousness to occur, it just explains why it might exist. It does explain the mechanism actually. The mind builds representations for predictive purposes, it builds a representation of attention because that increases predictive power in achieving goals, a representation of attention is consciousness. Certainly it's not sufficiently detailed such that you can build one, but that's not really needed to make it conceivable.

Houshalter 10y ago

Neural networks also have "inner eyes". From being able to "dream" images and sequences that haven't appeared in the training data, but look plausible. Or being able to manipulate learned concepts. Like word2vec turns words into vectors that can be combined in complicated ways. E.g. words for colors will be different based on what the colors are associated with (e.g. red is associated with "danger", or green is associated with "nature", etc.) Make this process much more complex, and intelligent, and then ask it what it "feels". It will probably give responses very similar to humans. It "feels" complicated internal experiences that it can't completely explain or understand. It certainly wouldn't feel like it's "just combining stimuli with internal state to get output signals". Being an algorithm doesn't feel like you are an algorithm, from the inside.

adwn 10y ago
> It will probably give responses very similar to humans. Being able to mimic a human's behavior is neither a necessary nor a sufficient condition for having subjective experience. > Being an algorithm doesn't feel like you are an algorithm, from the inside. How do you know that? How do you know that an algorithm "feels" anything at all, the way humans do?
- mh-cx 10y ago
  > Being able to mimic a human's behavior is neither a necessary nor a sufficient condition for having subjective experience. I think that's not the point he tried to make. It's just that it happens that we're human and thus it's easier for us to relate to human-like experiences/feelings. An algorithm is not limited to that. If we accept that our "feeling like something" is just an emergent phenomenon of our complex model of reality I see no logical reason why we shouldn't ascribe any sufficiently complex model of reality an inherent feeling. Due to our limited physical configuration we will never have access to all kinds of feelings. Much like we will never know how it feels like to be a bat.
- Houshalter 10y ago
  >Being able to mimic a human's behavior is neither a necessary nor a sufficient condition for having subjective experience. I am arguing that it is. Once you move past the "giant lookup table" idea to actual algorithms that explain human behavior. In fact once you find the smallest such algorithm, it must necessarily be an exact simulation of a human brain, and all of our internal experience. >How do you know that an algorithm "feels" anything at all, the way humans do? It must feel exactly the same way humans do if it produces exactly the same output.

eli_gottlieb 10y ago

> You do have subjective experience, don't you? I mean, you don't just process external stimuli, combine them with an internal state, and generate output signals, like a program would – you can actually "feel" things and see them with "your inner eye"? Hold on. Did you just claim that people with aphantasia (ie: possibly an inability to feed causal models from someplace (probably the neocortex? IANANS, just work with some) back to the visual cortex and get the visual cortex's "portrayal" of the conditional simulation embodied in the model) have no subjective experience? What if someone has no "inner eye", but does have "inner ears", an "inner tongue", "inner hands" and all the rest? Or do you group all possible "inner senses" used for imagining "what something is like" into "qualia" without separating them into distinct functionalities that are in bijection with the available physical senses? Because you might have actually said something interesting here!

adwn 10y ago
> Did you just claim that people with aphantasia [...] have no subjective experience? I don't think so. I wasn't talking about imagination (as in: thinking of a cube and rotating it in your mind), but rather about experiencing the input from my physical eyes. It's as if there's someone inside my head that experiences and feels what I physically see. Of course, this doesn't help: the homunculus model is thoroughly debunked. [1] > Or do you group all possible "inner senses" used for imagining "what something is like" into "qualia" without separating them into distinct functionalities that are in bijection with the available physical senses? There are qualia like anxiety or restlessness that are not linked to physical senses, so that's a no on the bijection. I have no idea whether those "inner eyes, ears, etc." that link imagination to physical senses are related to qualia – it's so difficult to imagine myself into different minds. Besides, coming up with an objective, clear, non-recursive definition for subjective experience is way above my paygrade. Another random thought that I just had: People with depression sometimes hurt themselves physically, because that's the only way they can still feel something (according to them). Maybe this is related to a dampened subjective experience, which allows only extreme inputs to be experienced? [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homunculus_argument https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homunculus_argument
- 10y ago

gnaritas 10y ago

> and see them with "your inner eye"? Interesting point, not everyone has an inner eye, see aphantasia.

taneq 10y ago

Isn't 'feeling something with your inner eye' a part of how 'processing external stimuli combined with my internal state' works?