3 ms·

You have to be very careful when deciding what can and can't be a scientific theory. Not being able to directly observe something isn't actually a problem. We

You have to be very careful when deciding what can and can't be a scientific theory. Not being able to directly observe something isn't actually a problem. We can't directly observe black holes. We can't directly observe the center of the sun, in the foreseeable future. We can't directly observe the evolution of life on Earth. But we can use our theories to explain these things to also make predictions that can be observed, tested, and used to discard incorrect hypotheses. Where science ends is when there are no observations you could make which would disprove your hypothesis. For instance, intelligent design basically says, an intelligent designer could have done things in whatever weird way they are, so any observations are just how it happened.

AnIdiotOnTheNet 8y ago
Right, and therefore consciousness is unexplainable by science, because as far as science is concerned it doesn't even exist. There is no measurement that can be made to determine, for instance, if AlphaGo is a thinking, conscious mind, or merely an advanced algorithm. In scientific terms, there is no meaningful distinction.
- whatshisface 8y ago
  >In scientific terms, there is no meaningful distinction. That might be going to far. To an electric field an uncharged particle "doesn't exist," but that doesn't actually mean that uncharged particles don't exist. Likewise there could be particles that don't interact with any known force, or even particles that interact with nothing. The right thing to say is that the existence of those things is categorically unknowable, and that studying them may even be a waste of time, but you shouldn't say that they are known not to exist. It's a similar story for consciousness, which is at least purported to interact with things, although the interaction is one-way in the "wrong" direction.
  - AnIdiotOnTheNet 8y ago
    > The right thing to say is that the existence of those things is categorically unknowable, and that studying them may even be a waste of time, but you shouldn't say that they are known not to exist. But that isn't what I said, I said that from a scientific perspective there is no meaningful distinction, which is exactly what you're saying. Its existence or lack thereof is irrelevant because it cannot be measured.
- saalweachter 8y ago
  Ehhhhhh. I was trying to say the opposite. Or rather, I was actually trying to say that phenomenon are rarely unscientific, only the explanations. You can have scientific and unscientific explanations of the origin of life on Earth. You really only declare a phenomenon unscientific if we've spent a long time not being able to come up with any good scientific explanations. For instance, we commonly regard the question, "What happened before the Big Bang?" as outside the reach of science. But that's just provisional -- if someone came up with a really great theory that explained the nature of the universe before the Big Bang, and it produced testable predictions, then suddenly the question would in fact be inside the reach of science.
  - AnIdiotOnTheNet 8y ago
    The difference is that we can conceive of such testable predictions, even if we don't have any currently. That's because they'd be objectively observable. I challenge you to even conceive of what a "test for consciousness" would look like. Let's imagine you have one. How confident in it will you be when the first person who fails it says "but I am conscious!"?
    - saalweachter 8y ago
      You are confusing "a scientific test for consciousness" with "a scientific theory of consciousness". False positive and negative rates are not particularly new to science or medicine. When we run blood tests to determine if a person has a particular disease, some percent of people with the disease will be tested as not having it, and some percentage of people without the disease will be tested as having it. Just because we fail to detect something accurately 100% of the time doesn't mean we don't understand it.
      - AnIdiotOnTheNet 8y ago
        You're missing the point, which is this: How do you know your scientific test is accurate? With a disease, we know by looking at the results of people who were inoculated or treated vs those who weren't. This is possible because data is objective. When you are making your magic consciousness detector, how will you know when it is working?
amelius 8y ago
The "scientific method" is very clearly defined. See for instance: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_method https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_method

AnIdiotOnTheNet 8y ago

Right, and therefore consciousness is unexplainable by science, because as far as science is concerned it doesn't even exist. There is no measurement that can be made to determine, for instance, if AlphaGo is a thinking, conscious mind, or merely an advanced algorithm. In scientific terms, there is no meaningful distinction.

whatshisface 8y ago
>In scientific terms, there is no meaningful distinction. That might be going to far. To an electric field an uncharged particle "doesn't exist," but that doesn't actually mean that uncharged particles don't exist. Likewise there could be particles that don't interact with any known force, or even particles that interact with nothing. The right thing to say is that the existence of those things is categorically unknowable, and that studying them may even be a waste of time, but you shouldn't say that they are known not to exist. It's a similar story for consciousness, which is at least purported to interact with things, although the interaction is one-way in the "wrong" direction.
- AnIdiotOnTheNet 8y ago
  > The right thing to say is that the existence of those things is categorically unknowable, and that studying them may even be a waste of time, but you shouldn't say that they are known not to exist. But that isn't what I said, I said that from a scientific perspective there is no meaningful distinction, which is exactly what you're saying. Its existence or lack thereof is irrelevant because it cannot be measured.
saalweachter 8y ago
Ehhhhhh. I was trying to say the opposite. Or rather, I was actually trying to say that phenomenon are rarely unscientific, only the explanations. You can have scientific and unscientific explanations of the origin of life on Earth. You really only declare a phenomenon unscientific if we've spent a long time not being able to come up with any good scientific explanations. For instance, we commonly regard the question, "What happened before the Big Bang?" as outside the reach of science. But that's just provisional -- if someone came up with a really great theory that explained the nature of the universe before the Big Bang, and it produced testable predictions, then suddenly the question would in fact be inside the reach of science.
- AnIdiotOnTheNet 8y ago
  The difference is that we can conceive of such testable predictions, even if we don't have any currently. That's because they'd be objectively observable. I challenge you to even conceive of what a "test for consciousness" would look like. Let's imagine you have one. How confident in it will you be when the first person who fails it says "but I am conscious!"?
  - saalweachter 8y ago
    You are confusing "a scientific test for consciousness" with "a scientific theory of consciousness". False positive and negative rates are not particularly new to science or medicine. When we run blood tests to determine if a person has a particular disease, some percent of people with the disease will be tested as not having it, and some percentage of people without the disease will be tested as having it. Just because we fail to detect something accurately 100% of the time doesn't mean we don't understand it.
    - AnIdiotOnTheNet 8y ago
      You're missing the point, which is this: How do you know your scientific test is accurate? With a disease, we know by looking at the results of people who were inoculated or treated vs those who weren't. This is possible because data is objective. When you are making your magic consciousness detector, how will you know when it is working?

amelius 8y ago

The "scientific method" is very clearly defined. See for instance: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_method https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_method