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> Sure, it depends on what the word "modeling" means. The way I've always used it, it applies to lots of existing systems, including robots. Are they conscious?

> Sure, it depends on what the word "modeling" means. The way I've always used it, it applies to lots of existing systems, including robots. Are they conscious? Maybe. I don't know. It seems easy to build a very simple system that trivially "models" itself. Does that mean it's conscious? No, it would not be. I think everyone agrees what humans can do is fairly distinct (and many animals, to a much lesser degree). If it wasn't clear, I'm arguing it can be understood as an incredibly sophisticated form of modeling. A toy system can have a model of itself, but it will be a very weak and limited model with essentially no broader context. The models that the human brain constructs are immensely richer, with many orders of magnitude more complexity. I would argue that significant awareness requires this depth and richness. > Take a perception like sound. Instead of discovering a self that hears it, it's more like the sound itself is made of the sheer fact of subjectivity; i.e., "made of" consciousness. We are now getting into territory that feels more difficult to address. I don't know how to meaningfully interpret this claim that sound itself is made of consciousness. Do you mean to say that the phenomenon going on in the human brain is the actually same thing that is occurring in a wave of air molecules? I'd be curious to see what evidence you believe there is for this idea, beyond your personal meditation sessions.

monktastic1 9y ago
So if I understand, this modeling, when it becomes sufficiently complex (in some way), it crosses the threshold to "consciousness." It seems reasonable to me that this might be compatible with our eventual understanding of what I'm here calling the objective fact of consciousness. As for the "made of" stuff, let me try a different tack. Sorry, wall of text coming. For a moment, I want you to be as profoundly skeptical as you can. For example, you cannot be certain that matter, space, etc. exist. This could all be a dream, or illusion, or simulation, etc. But notice that there is something you can be certain of. For example, if you close your eyes and listen to a sound (ideally a continuous one), you can be certain that sound is happening. But of course, we're being skeptical, so we better reduce that to "something is happening." Or if that's not skeptical enough, "it seems like something is happening." Be as skeptical as you can, and notice that there is still "something" that you simply cannot meaningfully doubt. (At this point, sometimes people think "oh, well maybe it's not really happening," and in a certain philosophical sense, that's useful. But no matter how much philosophizing you do, still, there that [something/nothing/whatever-you-feel-like-naming-it] is. I don't know how better to put this.) What is it I'm certain of? It's the happening-ness of it. Put another way, my conscious experience of it. To say "it is happening" is to say "I am conscious of it." Somehow, its very "existence" is inseparable from "my consciousness of it." Two descriptions of the same "sheer subjective fact." In this sense, "sound" refers to a particular modulation of this property called "consciousness," almost as though (get ready for woo!) consciousness were an energetic property that manifests as sight, sound, smells, thoughts, emotions, memories, etc. This property is literally the only thing I've ever encountered. I'm willing to entertain various metaphysical explanations for the patterns it makes (generally known as "physical reality") but those hypothetical constructs are forever secondary for me. I can never know if they really exist, and find myself unable to reduce a certain phenomenon to uncertain phenomena. I realize how nonsensical this sounds. Why couldn't the whole above story be some nonsense my (real, physical) brain is concocting? I don't have a good answer.
- dwaltrip 9y ago
  > For a moment, I want you to be as profoundly skeptical as you can. For example, you cannot be certain that matter, space, etc. exist. This could all be a dream, or illusion, or simulation, etc. Totally with you on this. > What is it I'm certain of? It's the happening-ness of it. Put another way, my conscious experience of it. To say "it is happening" is to say "I am conscious of it." Still with you. Although being skeptical, I would say we should be quite careful in how much we are implying with a phrase like "I am conscious of it". > In this sense, "sound" refers to a particular modulation of this property called "consciousness," almost as though (get ready for woo!) consciousness were an energetic property that manifests as sight, sound, smells, thoughts, emotions, memories, etc. Thanks for the "woo" warning :). This is definitely where you lose me! I can't find any reason to make that jump. I don't see how that conclusion follows, or what reason there is to think that is the case. For me, it is much simpler to assume (with some fundamental caveats) that what we see is what we get, especially if we are able to test it from many different angles and with many different tools of measurement. I understand that these tools are limited, but they can still tell us a great deal. In the domains where science can't make strong statements, I willingly lean back on accumulated human wisdom (but with a skeptical eye). At the end of the day, I try to discard as many unsupported assumptions or beliefs as I can when constructing my worldview , to the best of my ability. > Why couldn't the whole above story be some nonsense my (real, physical) brain is concocting? This is a very good question. Cheers!
  - monktastic1 9y ago
    > Although being skeptical, I would say we should be quite careful in how much we are implying with a phrase like "I am conscious of it". Sure. I'm more or less defining what I mean by "consciousness" in that statement. It is the indisputable fact that (put colloquially) "something seems to be happening." Since we're being skeptical, there's really no phrasing that cannot be disputed, so I can only ask you to do the experiment to see what I might be pointing at. Something definitely seems to be happening, even if in some other sense we might say it is not "actually" happening. I no longer consider it meaningful to "explain" that definite property in terms of fundamentally uncertain metaphysical concepts like time and space, no matter how likely they appear to be. I appreciate that others may differ here. Thanks for the dialogue!
monktastic1 9y ago
Here's another thing to consider. There are states of consciousness that are arbitrarily strange compared to your daily one (e.g., in certain dreams, or during extreme psychedelic experiences, even in deep sleep). It takes some training to be lucidly aware during those, but they lend insight into the irreducible features of consciousness. Whatever they are, they must exist in the intersection (in the set-theoretic sense) of those experiences. The only common feature I can identify can be expressed as something like... the sheer sense of existence. Almost all of my daily life involves some sort of modeling and planning, which I think is why so many models of consciousness take that as a starting point. But I think it's important to incorporate non-ordinary states if we want to capture the entirety of the concept. (I'm not saying that the brain isn't doing some sort of modeling even when I'm in non-ordinary states, including contentless ones, but it fails to capture the interesting aspects of the phenomenon under question.)

monktastic1 9y ago

So if I understand, this modeling, when it becomes sufficiently complex (in some way), it crosses the threshold to "consciousness." It seems reasonable to me that this might be compatible with our eventual understanding of what I'm here calling the objective fact of consciousness. As for the "made of" stuff, let me try a different tack. Sorry, wall of text coming. For a moment, I want you to be as profoundly skeptical as you can. For example, you cannot be certain that matter, space, etc. exist. This could all be a dream, or illusion, or simulation, etc. But notice that there is something you can be certain of. For example, if you close your eyes and listen to a sound (ideally a continuous one), you can be certain that sound is happening. But of course, we're being skeptical, so we better reduce that to "something is happening." Or if that's not skeptical enough, "it seems like something is happening." Be as skeptical as you can, and notice that there is still "something" that you simply cannot meaningfully doubt. (At this point, sometimes people think "oh, well maybe it's not really happening," and in a certain philosophical sense, that's useful. But no matter how much philosophizing you do, still, there that [something/nothing/whatever-you-feel-like-naming-it] is. I don't know how better to put this.) What is it I'm certain of? It's the happening-ness of it. Put another way, my conscious experience of it. To say "it is happening" is to say "I am conscious of it." Somehow, its very "existence" is inseparable from "my consciousness of it." Two descriptions of the same "sheer subjective fact." In this sense, "sound" refers to a particular modulation of this property called "consciousness," almost as though (get ready for woo!) consciousness were an energetic property that manifests as sight, sound, smells, thoughts, emotions, memories, etc. This property is literally the only thing I've ever encountered. I'm willing to entertain various metaphysical explanations for the patterns it makes (generally known as "physical reality") but those hypothetical constructs are forever secondary for me. I can never know if they really exist, and find myself unable to reduce a certain phenomenon to uncertain phenomena. I realize how nonsensical this sounds. Why couldn't the whole above story be some nonsense my (real, physical) brain is concocting? I don't have a good answer.

dwaltrip 9y ago
> For a moment, I want you to be as profoundly skeptical as you can. For example, you cannot be certain that matter, space, etc. exist. This could all be a dream, or illusion, or simulation, etc. Totally with you on this. > What is it I'm certain of? It's the happening-ness of it. Put another way, my conscious experience of it. To say "it is happening" is to say "I am conscious of it." Still with you. Although being skeptical, I would say we should be quite careful in how much we are implying with a phrase like "I am conscious of it". > In this sense, "sound" refers to a particular modulation of this property called "consciousness," almost as though (get ready for woo!) consciousness were an energetic property that manifests as sight, sound, smells, thoughts, emotions, memories, etc. Thanks for the "woo" warning :). This is definitely where you lose me! I can't find any reason to make that jump. I don't see how that conclusion follows, or what reason there is to think that is the case. For me, it is much simpler to assume (with some fundamental caveats) that what we see is what we get, especially if we are able to test it from many different angles and with many different tools of measurement. I understand that these tools are limited, but they can still tell us a great deal. In the domains where science can't make strong statements, I willingly lean back on accumulated human wisdom (but with a skeptical eye). At the end of the day, I try to discard as many unsupported assumptions or beliefs as I can when constructing my worldview , to the best of my ability. > Why couldn't the whole above story be some nonsense my (real, physical) brain is concocting? This is a very good question. Cheers!
- monktastic1 9y ago
  > Although being skeptical, I would say we should be quite careful in how much we are implying with a phrase like "I am conscious of it". Sure. I'm more or less defining what I mean by "consciousness" in that statement. It is the indisputable fact that (put colloquially) "something seems to be happening." Since we're being skeptical, there's really no phrasing that cannot be disputed, so I can only ask you to do the experiment to see what I might be pointing at. Something definitely seems to be happening, even if in some other sense we might say it is not "actually" happening. I no longer consider it meaningful to "explain" that definite property in terms of fundamentally uncertain metaphysical concepts like time and space, no matter how likely they appear to be. I appreciate that others may differ here. Thanks for the dialogue!

monktastic1 9y ago

Here's another thing to consider. There are states of consciousness that are arbitrarily strange compared to your daily one (e.g., in certain dreams, or during extreme psychedelic experiences, even in deep sleep). It takes some training to be lucidly aware during those, but they lend insight into the irreducible features of consciousness. Whatever they are, they must exist in the intersection (in the set-theoretic sense) of those experiences. The only common feature I can identify can be expressed as something like... the sheer sense of existence. Almost all of my daily life involves some sort of modeling and planning, which I think is why so many models of consciousness take that as a starting point. But I think it's important to incorporate non-ordinary states if we want to capture the entirety of the concept. (I'm not saying that the brain isn't doing some sort of modeling even when I'm in non-ordinary states, including contentless ones, but it fails to capture the interesting aspects of the phenomenon under question.)