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I don't see how subjective experience, i.e. consciousness, can come about from purely material interactions as currently understood. That means that a Turing Ma

I don't see how subjective experience, i.e. consciousness, can come about from purely material interactions as currently understood. That means that a Turing Machine would be able to produce them, which means that a bunch of monks working with paper and pencil for thousands of years would be able to produce them. There's something fundamental that we don't understand and the scientific community is very opposed to talking about it, dismissing any and all speculation as quackery. This taboo is holding back serious inquiry into the matter.

peteretep 10y ago
> I don't see how Isn't that just The God of The Gaps? I suspect that many intelligent people 500 years ago wouldn't have been able to "see how" a 500 ton metal object could take controlled flight. > That means that a Turing Machine would be able to > produce them Is there any specific reason to think it wouldn't? > the scientific community is very opposed to talking > about it It sounds like you're suggesting there's a super-natural force at play, in which case, the scientific community is entirely justified in being opposed to talking about it.
- marcoperaza 10y ago
  I'm not suggesting anything supernatural. I'm suggesting that there's possibly physical phenomenon that do not fit our current materialist model. Further, my big problem is with people trying to ignore the problem completely by claiming that there is no Hard Problem or even suggesting that consciousness is not real. It's a total head-in-the-sand position to take but it's the dominant stance.
  - Retra 10y ago
    Who is saying consciousness is not real? It just not non-physical and has no single set of hard properties from which to form a definitive boundary for discussion.
  - peteretep 10y ago
    I'm curious at what point you think agency becomes consciousness. Is it self-awareness? Is a dog conscious? A mouse? A snail? An ant? A bacteria? A tree?
    - marcoperaza 10y ago
      It has nothing to do with agency. I'm talking about the phenomenon of subjective experience. The difference between a computer that analyzes camera input and a being that actually sees the world. It would be the difference between you and a philosophical zombie.
      - 0134340 10y ago
        If you aren't that "artificial" intelligence and can't put yourself in that subjective experience, how would you know that the AI's subjective experience differs from yours? Because you're relying on material observance? You realize your conundrum now? You have to rely on the material to gauge the material yet you try to invalidate the material experience using material observations.
      - ajuc 10y ago
        > The difference between a computer that analyzes camera input and a being that actually sees the world. How do you know there is a qualitative difference?
chriswarbo 10y ago
> That means that a Turing Machine would be able to produce them, which means that a bunch of monks working with paper and pencil for thousands of years would be able to produce them. Yes. What's not to see? I think appealing to something other than Turing machines shows a lack of imagination; it takes a lot of thought to even scratch the surface of how profound Turing machines are.
- marcoperaza 10y ago
  Are you really arguing that a scribbling numbers on a piece of paper could give rise to a conscious being?
  - jfoutz 10y ago
    In another comment, you said: > I'm not suggesting anything supernatural. I'm suggesting that there's possibly physical phenomenon that do not fit our current materialist model. Absolutely. Sure, there are of course physical phenomenon that do not fit our current materialist model. Let's say we discover those additional phenomenon. Ultimately, we'd want to build a machine to model that phenomenon. Perhaps encode a model of that phenomenon in software. Once that happens, scribbling numbers on a piece of paper indeed could give rise to a conscious being. If it's some system that can't be covered by scientific understanding, isn't that what supernatural means? It's either some internally consistent (but possibly very complicated) set of rules, or it's supernatural.
    - marcoperaza 10y ago
      No, it could be that the universe actually cannot be modeled computationally, that it exceeds the constraints of a Turing machine. This is an open question.
  - Sacho 10y ago
    I think you're giving a good example of how poorly people visualize and understand infinity. A Turing Machine's capabilities are based on its infinite memory and infinite computation time, yet you imagine it as "a bunch of monks scribbling" and immediately dismiss its capabilities.
physicalist 10y ago
No. The topic has simply been ceded to a subset of philosophers who fill large volumes that still don't manage to say more about this topic than you do. One big problem is that your thought experiments are designed specifically to make the null hypothesis sound silly. That's the same strategy you guys have been uding for thousands of years. Not so long ago people claimed that life couldn't be explained without some special substance.
mcguire 10y ago
You're aware of John Searle's Chinese Room gag?
devishard 10y ago
> I don't see how subjective experience, i.e. consciousness, can come about from purely material interactions as currently understood. That means that a Turing Machine would be able to produce them, which means that a bunch of monks working with paper and pencil for thousands of years would be able to produce them. Not without input data, they couldn't. You can produce a model, but unless you collect data to validate your model against, you're just speculating in a void. > There's something fundamental that we don't understand and the scientific community is very opposed to talking about it, dismissing any and all speculation as quackery. We're talking about it right now, and I haven't heard anyone opposed to talking about it. However, I'll fully dismiss opinions as quackery if they clearly misrepresent the facts, i.e. claims that Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle or Bell's Inequalities prove free will are quackery. This isn't because the ideas are taboo or because I'm opposed to talking about them, it's because they're misrepresentations or misunderstandings of facts which are clearly established. In my experience, when people claim that scientists are opposed to talking about their hypothesis, it's because their hypothesis has been thoroughly and concretely disproven.

peteretep 10y ago

> I don't see how Isn't that just The God of The Gaps? I suspect that many intelligent people 500 years ago wouldn't have been able to "see how" a 500 ton metal object could take controlled flight. > That means that a Turing Machine would be able to > produce them Is there any specific reason to think it wouldn't? > the scientific community is very opposed to talking > about it It sounds like you're suggesting there's a super-natural force at play, in which case, the scientific community is entirely justified in being opposed to talking about it.

marcoperaza 10y ago
I'm not suggesting anything supernatural. I'm suggesting that there's possibly physical phenomenon that do not fit our current materialist model. Further, my big problem is with people trying to ignore the problem completely by claiming that there is no Hard Problem or even suggesting that consciousness is not real. It's a total head-in-the-sand position to take but it's the dominant stance.
- Retra 10y ago
  Who is saying consciousness is not real? It just not non-physical and has no single set of hard properties from which to form a definitive boundary for discussion.
- peteretep 10y ago
  I'm curious at what point you think agency becomes consciousness. Is it self-awareness? Is a dog conscious? A mouse? A snail? An ant? A bacteria? A tree?
  - marcoperaza 10y ago
    It has nothing to do with agency. I'm talking about the phenomenon of subjective experience. The difference between a computer that analyzes camera input and a being that actually sees the world. It would be the difference between you and a philosophical zombie.
    - 0134340 10y ago
      If you aren't that "artificial" intelligence and can't put yourself in that subjective experience, how would you know that the AI's subjective experience differs from yours? Because you're relying on material observance? You realize your conundrum now? You have to rely on the material to gauge the material yet you try to invalidate the material experience using material observations.
    - ajuc 10y ago
      > The difference between a computer that analyzes camera input and a being that actually sees the world. How do you know there is a qualitative difference?

chriswarbo 10y ago

> That means that a Turing Machine would be able to produce them, which means that a bunch of monks working with paper and pencil for thousands of years would be able to produce them. Yes. What's not to see? I think appealing to something other than Turing machines shows a lack of imagination; it takes a lot of thought to even scratch the surface of how profound Turing machines are.

marcoperaza 10y ago
Are you really arguing that a scribbling numbers on a piece of paper could give rise to a conscious being?
- jfoutz 10y ago
  In another comment, you said: > I'm not suggesting anything supernatural. I'm suggesting that there's possibly physical phenomenon that do not fit our current materialist model. Absolutely. Sure, there are of course physical phenomenon that do not fit our current materialist model. Let's say we discover those additional phenomenon. Ultimately, we'd want to build a machine to model that phenomenon. Perhaps encode a model of that phenomenon in software. Once that happens, scribbling numbers on a piece of paper indeed could give rise to a conscious being. If it's some system that can't be covered by scientific understanding, isn't that what supernatural means? It's either some internally consistent (but possibly very complicated) set of rules, or it's supernatural.
  - marcoperaza 10y ago
    No, it could be that the universe actually cannot be modeled computationally, that it exceeds the constraints of a Turing machine. This is an open question.
- Sacho 10y ago
  I think you're giving a good example of how poorly people visualize and understand infinity. A Turing Machine's capabilities are based on its infinite memory and infinite computation time, yet you imagine it as "a bunch of monks scribbling" and immediately dismiss its capabilities.

physicalist 10y ago

No. The topic has simply been ceded to a subset of philosophers who fill large volumes that still don't manage to say more about this topic than you do. One big problem is that your thought experiments are designed specifically to make the null hypothesis sound silly. That's the same strategy you guys have been uding for thousands of years. Not so long ago people claimed that life couldn't be explained without some special substance.

mcguire 10y ago

You're aware of John Searle's Chinese Room gag?

devishard 10y ago

> I don't see how subjective experience, i.e. consciousness, can come about from purely material interactions as currently understood. That means that a Turing Machine would be able to produce them, which means that a bunch of monks working with paper and pencil for thousands of years would be able to produce them. Not without input data, they couldn't. You can produce a model, but unless you collect data to validate your model against, you're just speculating in a void. > There's something fundamental that we don't understand and the scientific community is very opposed to talking about it, dismissing any and all speculation as quackery. We're talking about it right now, and I haven't heard anyone opposed to talking about it. However, I'll fully dismiss opinions as quackery if they clearly misrepresent the facts, i.e. claims that Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle or Bell's Inequalities prove free will are quackery. This isn't because the ideas are taboo or because I'm opposed to talking about them, it's because they're misrepresentations or misunderstandings of facts which are clearly established. In my experience, when people claim that scientists are opposed to talking about their hypothesis, it's because their hypothesis has been thoroughly and concretely disproven.