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Your consciousness is an illusion. Explain to me how a somewhat intelligent creature would experience it's life without consciousness? What's the alternative?

• amelius 7y ago
  It seems more likely that physics is the illusion.
  • mekkkkkk 7y ago
    Go on.
    • vankessel 7y ago
      I'll expand my own take on this thought, borrowing a mathematical analogy I read recently. Take the real and complex numbers. The real numbers have the nice property that they are easy to order since they form a line. Given any two you can tell which is larger. When you go up the complex numbers you lose this obvious ordering, you can define a new ordering, but it is no longer trivial since you are comparing points on a plane. Now, some people see complex numbers as an extension of the real numbers, but it would be more accurate to call them a generalization of the real numbers. The real numbers are a subset of the complex numbers that satisfy the property of having this obvious ordering. This again extends to the complex numbers and quaternions. A quaternion is a point on a 4D plane that does not necessarily satisfy commutativity, AKA ab != ba. The subset of quaternions that do satisfy commutativity are the complex numbers. Every time you go up a level you lose an axiom, which is an assumption on how things work for that system. In a sense an axiom is a useful limitation that gives a certain structure to things. So what if there are 0 axioms? This would mean everything is possible, no limitations. 2 + 2 = 5. Obviously everything being possible is not useful. Now how does this apply to physics? Physical laws are our axioms. But what if there are actually no physical laws, we are just witnessing the subset of "everything" that appears to have structure? If we are only capable of understanding things that are rational, we would be inherently unable to process events that are irrational. We would project this irrational observation down to the rational subset that we can make sense of. Let me finish with an example. Take a uniform quantum superposition. It has an equally random chance of being measured 0 or 1. There is no hidden information determining this, it is truly random. This is irrational because there seems like there should be a reason for one final outcome being measured over the other due to our familiarity with cause-and-effect, but this ultimately appears to have no cause. We project this phenomena down to the rational and explain it the best we can with quantum states and probability.
• CharlesColeman 7y ago
  > Your consciousness is an illusion. People say the same thing the passage of time, too. We live in a block where all events, past, present, and future are fixed and unchanging. It's essentially denialism: if a phenomenon doesn't fit well into my framework, it must not really exist because framework.
  • agitator 7y ago
    I'm not denying that the experience of life or consciousness exists. I just think it's not as significant as some make it out to be. The question still stands. How would a creature experience life without consciousness? Or let's even say you created a generally intelligent neural net with sufficient sensors, cameras, and actuators for it to live in our physical world, piped into the neural network. It learns to use it's sensors and actuators, much like a growing child would. What is it's experience? How does this neural network experience life as compared to our brains? To give you a hint, it wouldn't have a Heads-Up-Display with a battery indicator. It would feel tired or hungry. It would experience life immersed in the world to the extent that it's sensors would allow it. It's sensors would be naturally fused in it's neural net in whatever way was most optimal for it's environment. Much in the same way that we use sight, sensation in our feet and muscles, and the liquid in our ears to maintain our balance without ever thinking about the source or distinction in the data our brains are receiving.
    • CharlesColeman 7y ago
      > The question still stands. How would a creature experience life without consciousness? It wouldn't. "experience of life" ~= consciousness.
    • mekkkkkk 7y ago
      So do you assume that any sufficiently complex process is conscious?
      • agitator 7y ago
        Not at all. I'm saying consciousness isn't unique to humans.
• monktastic1 7y ago
  All I know is that "experiences seem to be happening." This "sheer fact of seeming" (aka experience) is all I can ever know, and to label it an "illusion" isn't really meaningful. "Illusions" are specific experiences that don't correspond to some truth (that I have derived from my metaphysical models, which I in turn derived from my experiences).