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How do you know one human did? It is quite possible the concept evolved over a very long time, so no single human came up with the idea.

mikeash 10y ago
I don't think that matters much. The idea that it would evolve over time in a population where nobody experiences consciousness doesn't strike me as remotely probable.
- robbrown451 10y ago
  So, you've convinced yourselves that humans are conscious (whatever that means). The point, though, was how do we tell if something else is. You haven't given us much in order to show one way or another if either an animal or a human-created thing is. So I'm saying the concept is so weakly defined as to be essentially meaningless. Also, you say that because humans have somehow developed the ability to talk about something, it must exist. What exactly have they said? That there is this thing that they can't define objectively but they swear it exists because it seems like it does? And that proves that it exists? Do you not see how circular that is?
  - mikeash 10y ago
    It would be circular if it weren't so intimately connected with the very concept of "seems." How would humans have arrived at the idea of qualia if they didn't experience it? What's your proposed alternate explanation for this?
    - robbrown451 10y ago
      Alternate explanation for the fact that people describe having qualia? I've seen qualia described as "qualities or feelings, like redness or pain, as considered independently of their effects on behavior and from whatever physical circumstances give rise to them." I go into a good bit of detail about how such a thing is unsurprising in this thing I wrote (8 years ago). http://www.karmatics.com/docs/violet.html http://www.karmatics.com/docs/violet.html The thing is, you have this intuitive feeling that something (say, redness) is real. Fine. But the external behavior you are describing as "proof"? I would consider that beyond weak. There is nothing at all surprising about an entity that can communicate, expressing that there is a certain something that it is having trouble communicating directly.
      - mikeash 10y ago
        If I"ve understood you correctly so far, your overall approach to the problem seems to be that if we can't define it in a reasonably rigorous way, then we don't really know what we're referring to, and so it's not real. For example: > I can't help but have a lingering feeling that there must be more to the concept of "subjective experience" than "arbitrary details of the internal implementation of an algorithm that don't affect the results," but alas, I can't come up with words to describe whatever else there might be. I sympathize, but disagree. It's quite clear to me that the sensation of perceiving things, whether it's redness or sweetness or pain, has something about it that is not just arbitrary details of how my brain works. There is a me which is qualitatively different from the rest of the universe in some way. No, I can't really describe it very well, but that doesn't make it any less real. You do have me wondering, though, if maybe not everyone has this. Take aphantasia, for example. Some people can see things in their mind, and some can't. For a long time, neither group realized that the other even existed. Those who could see things just assumed everyone could, and those who couldn't assumed everyone couldn't. Maybe some subset of humanity consists of p-zombies, and they only know of these concepts because they've heard of them from others.
        robbrown451 10y ago
        > If I"ve understood you correctly so far, your overall approach to the problem seems to be that if we can't define it in a reasonably rigorous way, then we don't really know what we're referring to, and so it's not real. I don't think that's exactly what I'm saying. Maybe I am saying that if you can't define it in a reasonably rigorous way, that it doesn't make a lot of sense to claim that it absolutely must exist. There is a difference. Of course this is real to you. But I am saying it is not real from the perspective of science. For instance, it isn't something that can have value that natural selection could have selected for. It is, by nature, subjective. And that basically means "from a particular perspective." If you view it from a different perspective -- for instance, the external objective view that is appropriate in a scientific context -- it disappears.

mikeash 10y ago

I don't think that matters much. The idea that it would evolve over time in a population where nobody experiences consciousness doesn't strike me as remotely probable.

robbrown451 10y ago
So, you've convinced yourselves that humans are conscious (whatever that means). The point, though, was how do we tell if something else is. You haven't given us much in order to show one way or another if either an animal or a human-created thing is. So I'm saying the concept is so weakly defined as to be essentially meaningless. Also, you say that because humans have somehow developed the ability to talk about something, it must exist. What exactly have they said? That there is this thing that they can't define objectively but they swear it exists because it seems like it does? And that proves that it exists? Do you not see how circular that is?
- mikeash 10y ago
  It would be circular if it weren't so intimately connected with the very concept of "seems." How would humans have arrived at the idea of qualia if they didn't experience it? What's your proposed alternate explanation for this?
  - robbrown451 10y ago
    Alternate explanation for the fact that people describe having qualia? I've seen qualia described as "qualities or feelings, like redness or pain, as considered independently of their effects on behavior and from whatever physical circumstances give rise to them." I go into a good bit of detail about how such a thing is unsurprising in this thing I wrote (8 years ago). http://www.karmatics.com/docs/violet.html http://www.karmatics.com/docs/violet.html The thing is, you have this intuitive feeling that something (say, redness) is real. Fine. But the external behavior you are describing as "proof"? I would consider that beyond weak. There is nothing at all surprising about an entity that can communicate, expressing that there is a certain something that it is having trouble communicating directly.
    - mikeash 10y ago
      If I"ve understood you correctly so far, your overall approach to the problem seems to be that if we can't define it in a reasonably rigorous way, then we don't really know what we're referring to, and so it's not real. For example: > I can't help but have a lingering feeling that there must be more to the concept of "subjective experience" than "arbitrary details of the internal implementation of an algorithm that don't affect the results," but alas, I can't come up with words to describe whatever else there might be. I sympathize, but disagree. It's quite clear to me that the sensation of perceiving things, whether it's redness or sweetness or pain, has something about it that is not just arbitrary details of how my brain works. There is a me which is qualitatively different from the rest of the universe in some way. No, I can't really describe it very well, but that doesn't make it any less real. You do have me wondering, though, if maybe not everyone has this. Take aphantasia, for example. Some people can see things in their mind, and some can't. For a long time, neither group realized that the other even existed. Those who could see things just assumed everyone could, and those who couldn't assumed everyone couldn't. Maybe some subset of humanity consists of p-zombies, and they only know of these concepts because they've heard of them from others.
      - robbrown451 10y ago
        > If I"ve understood you correctly so far, your overall approach to the problem seems to be that if we can't define it in a reasonably rigorous way, then we don't really know what we're referring to, and so it's not real. I don't think that's exactly what I'm saying. Maybe I am saying that if you can't define it in a reasonably rigorous way, that it doesn't make a lot of sense to claim that it absolutely must exist. There is a difference. Of course this is real to you. But I am saying it is not real from the perspective of science. For instance, it isn't something that can have value that natural selection could have selected for. It is, by nature, subjective. And that basically means "from a particular perspective." If you view it from a different perspective -- for instance, the external objective view that is appropriate in a scientific context -- it disappears.