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This only proves that behaving identically to a human is reducible to an algorithm. The actual experience of consciousness is something secondary to behaviour.

This only proves that behaving identically to a human is reducible to an algorithm. The actual experience of consciousness is something secondary to behaviour. It's possible that an algorithm which behaves as a human experiences consciousness identically to a human, as some fundamental property of reality, or it's possible that it does not. We cannot know, because consciousness is not something that we can observe.

fvdessen 8y ago
How is the experience of consciousness secondary to behaviour when the concept of consciousness emerged from and influenced our behaviour ? It seems as strange to me to imagine that we could have two identically behaving beings, one with consciousness, and one without; as imagining that we could have identically behaving beings, one with eyesight and one without.
- majewsky 8y ago
  When I think of my mother (e.g. how she would react when I tell her something), that's basically a simulation of her running in my head. Is this simulation self-aware? If not, then that's one way to imagine two identically behaving beings, one with consciousness (my actual mother) and one without (my brain's simulation of her). (For the sake of argument, I assume that I know my mother so well that her behavior will be indistinguishable for all intents and purposes from my simulation of her in my head.)
  - fvdessen 8y ago
    Or maybe you substitute her consciousness with your own.
  - red75prime 8y ago
    If your model of your mother is aware of her own existence as a model in your brain, wouldn't she beg you to continue modelling her, or mention the fact at least? > I assume that I know my mother so well that her behavior will be indistinguishable for all intents and purposes from my simulation of her in my head. Then you are running perfect simulation of your mother and some parts of her environment (such that she'll not freak out finding herself in nothingness) in your brain, so yes, she'll be conscious.
  - naasking 8y ago
    You're not simulating your mother, you've built a simple predictive model of your mother's behaviour. These aren't the same. It's like the difference between my actual social network, and the model of my social network that Facebook has. My actual social network contain considerable nuance that isn't captured by Facebook's data model.
- red75prime 8y ago
  That. Chalmers claims that he can easily imagine p-zombie, which doesn't experience anything, and it doesn't feel like a big stretch on a first glance. But if you try to imagine a being, which is physically identical to you, but with no experience of, say, red color, you'll have a hard time arguing that you can.
  - aninhumer 8y ago
    No. I have absolutely no difficulty imagining such a thing. You might suppose that any physically identical entity must necessarily experience consciousness, and that may even be true, but this does not preclude imagining a p-zombie, any more than a knowledge of anatomy and aerodynamics precludes imagining a dragon.
    - red75prime 8y ago
      How? You look at red apple, you think "such a nice red apple, but one side is a bit yellow". But "red" doesn't mean anything to you, you don't experience it. If you can imagine that, explain why red-p-zombie-you insist on being able to experience red color, while in fact he/she doesn't experience it. I can only suppose that you imagine someone like you with a textual annotation above his/her head "I don't experience red color", and not trying to imagine what it is like to be such a person. Doesn't it defy the purpose of a thought experiment? You don't imagine conscious experiences, but imagine descriptions of presence or absence of conscious experiences. ETA: Using your analogy it is like imagining pigeon with a label "Dragon" above its head, and then concluding that there's no logical reasons that dragons can't fly or exist. When you imagine a "real" dragon and then ponders on this imagination, you have to conclude that your imagined physics must be different for it to work.
      - aninhumer 8y ago
        >You look at red apple, you think "such a nice red apple, but one side is a bit yellow". But "red" doesn't mean anything to you, you don't experience it. If you can imagine that Of course I can't imagine being a p-zombie, because there is no experience of being a p-zombie, that's the point. When I imagine a p-zombie, it is someone else. >explain why red-p-zombie-you insist on being able to experience red color, while in fact he/she doesn't experience it. They would say they experience it for the exact same reasons a non-p-zombie does. A chemical process in their brain produces that reaction. The difference is that they never actually have that experience, they just act as if they did.
- aninhumer 8y ago
  How do we know the experience itself influences behaviour? Just because we experience something that feels like a decision-making process does not mean that experience is part of the process itself. For all we know, our consciousness is just a spectator along for the ride.
  - naasking 8y ago
    This can seem plausible until you ask yourself how we can be talking about consciousness and experience if these things don't influence our behaviour.
    - aninhumer 8y ago
      It certainly seems implausible that our physical brains would behave as if they experienced things without ever having any kind of input from that process, but not impossible. But the point of the idea of p-zombies isn't to describe something that plausibly exists. It's thought experiment to highlight the hard problem of consciousness, by demonstrating how the notion of experience is separable in our conception from any physical process we can imagine. That is, regardless of how our brain physically comes to behave as if it were conscious, we can still conceive of a version of it that does not actually experience consciousness. This is because, at least to me, conscious experience is something entirely unlike any physical process. I can conceive of it being the result of a physical process, but nonetheless, my conception of that experience is still of a separate thing which happens as a result of that process. And as such, I can always imagine any such physical process occurring without the corresponding experience. To say that conscious experience "is" a physical process, is to my conception, a category error.
      - naasking 8y ago
        > It's thought experiment to highlight the hard problem of consciousness, by demonstrating how the notion of experience is separable in our conception from any physical process we can imagine. Except it isn't. The p-zombie thought experiment entails the p-zombie world thought experiment, where a universe evolved with nothing but p-zombies, and this world is identical to our own. How do you suppose our p-zombie equivalents would be here debating consciousness in this very moment in a universe in which such a thing doesn't actually exist? > That is, regardless of how our brain physically comes to behave as if it were conscious, we can still conceive of a version of it that does not actually experience consciousness. I certainly can't without allowing what seems to be absurdity or inconsistency. I'm not sure how you manage to do it. > To say that conscious experience "is" a physical process, is to my conception, a category error. Why?
mr_toad 8y ago
You seem to be implying that consciousness has no influence on behaviour.
- aninhumer 8y ago
  It might influence it, or it might not. It's entirely plausible to me that the conclusions reached by the processes of ones mind, are completely separate from the experience of reaching those conclusions.
naasking 8y ago
> This only proves that behaving identically to a human is reducible to an algorithm. The actual experience of consciousness is something secondary to behaviour. We've started a conversation in other threads below, but I just wanted to point out that your claim here is actually conjecture. We don't actually know that the experience of consciousness is separate from behaviour. I further conjecture that this claim is outright false because it requires a non-trivial expansion of our ontology for what seems to amount to special pleading that consciousness is special when compared to every other phenomenon that has fallen to scientific inquiry. Ask yourself why consciousness is really all that different from vitalism which was felled by biology. The same will happen to dualism in good time.
- mikeash 8y ago
  It's worse than conjecture, it's contrary to the available evidence. The actual experience of consciousness clearly influences human behavior, otherwise we wouldn't talk about it.
  - naasking 8y ago
    > The actual experience of consciousness clearly influences human behavior, otherwise we wouldn't talk about it. The argument that epiphenominalists put forth is that zombies can also talk "as if" they had consciousness, with all the same arguments that we put forth that they are conscious, that qualia are important, etc. The difference is that they simply aren't conscious, they are just acting out a play, and what they mean by consciousness is not the same thing as what we mean. If you think then that the concept of consciousness then becomes virtually vacuous, amounting merely to your first person, passive observation of an automoton that is your body moving through space and time, then you're not alone.

fvdessen 8y ago

How is the experience of consciousness secondary to behaviour when the concept of consciousness emerged from and influenced our behaviour ? It seems as strange to me to imagine that we could have two identically behaving beings, one with consciousness, and one without; as imagining that we could have identically behaving beings, one with eyesight and one without.

majewsky 8y ago
When I think of my mother (e.g. how she would react when I tell her something), that's basically a simulation of her running in my head. Is this simulation self-aware? If not, then that's one way to imagine two identically behaving beings, one with consciousness (my actual mother) and one without (my brain's simulation of her). (For the sake of argument, I assume that I know my mother so well that her behavior will be indistinguishable for all intents and purposes from my simulation of her in my head.)
- fvdessen 8y ago
  Or maybe you substitute her consciousness with your own.
- red75prime 8y ago
  If your model of your mother is aware of her own existence as a model in your brain, wouldn't she beg you to continue modelling her, or mention the fact at least? > I assume that I know my mother so well that her behavior will be indistinguishable for all intents and purposes from my simulation of her in my head. Then you are running perfect simulation of your mother and some parts of her environment (such that she'll not freak out finding herself in nothingness) in your brain, so yes, she'll be conscious.
- naasking 8y ago
  You're not simulating your mother, you've built a simple predictive model of your mother's behaviour. These aren't the same. It's like the difference between my actual social network, and the model of my social network that Facebook has. My actual social network contain considerable nuance that isn't captured by Facebook's data model.
red75prime 8y ago
That. Chalmers claims that he can easily imagine p-zombie, which doesn't experience anything, and it doesn't feel like a big stretch on a first glance. But if you try to imagine a being, which is physically identical to you, but with no experience of, say, red color, you'll have a hard time arguing that you can.
- aninhumer 8y ago
  No. I have absolutely no difficulty imagining such a thing. You might suppose that any physically identical entity must necessarily experience consciousness, and that may even be true, but this does not preclude imagining a p-zombie, any more than a knowledge of anatomy and aerodynamics precludes imagining a dragon.
  - red75prime 8y ago
    How? You look at red apple, you think "such a nice red apple, but one side is a bit yellow". But "red" doesn't mean anything to you, you don't experience it. If you can imagine that, explain why red-p-zombie-you insist on being able to experience red color, while in fact he/she doesn't experience it. I can only suppose that you imagine someone like you with a textual annotation above his/her head "I don't experience red color", and not trying to imagine what it is like to be such a person. Doesn't it defy the purpose of a thought experiment? You don't imagine conscious experiences, but imagine descriptions of presence or absence of conscious experiences. ETA: Using your analogy it is like imagining pigeon with a label "Dragon" above its head, and then concluding that there's no logical reasons that dragons can't fly or exist. When you imagine a "real" dragon and then ponders on this imagination, you have to conclude that your imagined physics must be different for it to work.
    - aninhumer 8y ago
      >You look at red apple, you think "such a nice red apple, but one side is a bit yellow". But "red" doesn't mean anything to you, you don't experience it. If you can imagine that Of course I can't imagine being a p-zombie, because there is no experience of being a p-zombie, that's the point. When I imagine a p-zombie, it is someone else. >explain why red-p-zombie-you insist on being able to experience red color, while in fact he/she doesn't experience it. They would say they experience it for the exact same reasons a non-p-zombie does. A chemical process in their brain produces that reaction. The difference is that they never actually have that experience, they just act as if they did.
aninhumer 8y ago
How do we know the experience itself influences behaviour? Just because we experience something that feels like a decision-making process does not mean that experience is part of the process itself. For all we know, our consciousness is just a spectator along for the ride.
- naasking 8y ago
  This can seem plausible until you ask yourself how we can be talking about consciousness and experience if these things don't influence our behaviour.
  - aninhumer 8y ago
    It certainly seems implausible that our physical brains would behave as if they experienced things without ever having any kind of input from that process, but not impossible. But the point of the idea of p-zombies isn't to describe something that plausibly exists. It's thought experiment to highlight the hard problem of consciousness, by demonstrating how the notion of experience is separable in our conception from any physical process we can imagine. That is, regardless of how our brain physically comes to behave as if it were conscious, we can still conceive of a version of it that does not actually experience consciousness. This is because, at least to me, conscious experience is something entirely unlike any physical process. I can conceive of it being the result of a physical process, but nonetheless, my conception of that experience is still of a separate thing which happens as a result of that process. And as such, I can always imagine any such physical process occurring without the corresponding experience. To say that conscious experience "is" a physical process, is to my conception, a category error.
    - naasking 8y ago
      > It's thought experiment to highlight the hard problem of consciousness, by demonstrating how the notion of experience is separable in our conception from any physical process we can imagine. Except it isn't. The p-zombie thought experiment entails the p-zombie world thought experiment, where a universe evolved with nothing but p-zombies, and this world is identical to our own. How do you suppose our p-zombie equivalents would be here debating consciousness in this very moment in a universe in which such a thing doesn't actually exist? > That is, regardless of how our brain physically comes to behave as if it were conscious, we can still conceive of a version of it that does not actually experience consciousness. I certainly can't without allowing what seems to be absurdity or inconsistency. I'm not sure how you manage to do it. > To say that conscious experience "is" a physical process, is to my conception, a category error. Why?

mr_toad 8y ago

You seem to be implying that consciousness has no influence on behaviour.

aninhumer 8y ago
It might influence it, or it might not. It's entirely plausible to me that the conclusions reached by the processes of ones mind, are completely separate from the experience of reaching those conclusions.

naasking 8y ago

> This only proves that behaving identically to a human is reducible to an algorithm. The actual experience of consciousness is something secondary to behaviour. We've started a conversation in other threads below, but I just wanted to point out that your claim here is actually conjecture. We don't actually know that the experience of consciousness is separate from behaviour. I further conjecture that this claim is outright false because it requires a non-trivial expansion of our ontology for what seems to amount to special pleading that consciousness is special when compared to every other phenomenon that has fallen to scientific inquiry. Ask yourself why consciousness is really all that different from vitalism which was felled by biology. The same will happen to dualism in good time.

mikeash 8y ago
It's worse than conjecture, it's contrary to the available evidence. The actual experience of consciousness clearly influences human behavior, otherwise we wouldn't talk about it.
- naasking 8y ago
  > The actual experience of consciousness clearly influences human behavior, otherwise we wouldn't talk about it. The argument that epiphenominalists put forth is that zombies can also talk "as if" they had consciousness, with all the same arguments that we put forth that they are conscious, that qualia are important, etc. The difference is that they simply aren't conscious, they are just acting out a play, and what they mean by consciousness is not the same thing as what we mean. If you think then that the concept of consciousness then becomes virtually vacuous, amounting merely to your first person, passive observation of an automoton that is your body moving through space and time, then you're not alone.