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> Well, I'm wondering if consciousness is even a real state that can be defined precisely, or is it simply a made up construct so we humans can feel better abou

by vekker 7y ago

> Well, I'm wondering if consciousness is even a real state that can be defined precisely, or is it simply a made up construct so we humans can feel better about ourselves. Statements like this always baffle me. People who straight up deny that there is something like subjective experience. I mean, I guess it's possible that there are non-conscious humans with no notion of what experiencing existence is like ("p-zombies") and their internal logic systems then will logically argue against the existence of consciousness. There's obviously no way to "objectively prove" to one another that a human being or sufficiently complex AI is conscious, because that's the very definition of subjectiveness, but if only for moral and ethical reasons I think it's safer to assume all beings have a level of consciousness.

PeterWhittaker 7y ago
To my read and mind, there was no denial of that subjective experience, merely an attempt to frame a useful question around it. All of science is based upon shareable ideas, many testable. They may have begun as vague notions bouncing inchoate through our consciousness (or subconsciousness, etc., yada, so forth) but at some point they became expressible, then, eventually, measurable. If we want to study consciousness, whatever it/they is/are, then first we need to agree to useful operational definitions, things we can tease apart observationally, reason about, form hypotheses, then eventually theories. If one accepts that all human experience are fundamentally based on biology (since our meat seems to be all we have, at least until some extra-corporeal notion such as the soul is itself capable of being measured, analyzed, and reasoned about), then, fundamentally, our individual subjective experiences are based on what would likely be common chemistry and biology. So back to the original comment: Is consciousness a real state? We identify it as such, but perhaps it is several, perhaps many, cooperative or even competitive microstates, if you will, all of which together give us the experience of consciousness, but which are inaccessible to us... ...just as the perception of individual hues and saturations within our eyes are inaccessible, since they reach "us" after considerable backend processing (literally, since visual processing is largely occipital). If we are going to make progress on understanding consciousness, we first need to set it aside and ask "what is going on?" at various levels, then, eventually, draw a complete picture from those dots....
gus_massa 7y ago
The problem with p-zombies is that they lie when you ask if they have consciousness. It's technically not a lie, because they actually believe they are not p-zombies. Just imagine that humanity is composed of half normal people and half p-zombies. What experiment can you do to separate them? What if all humans are normal people? What if all humans are liar p-zombies?

by vekker 7y ago

PeterWhittaker 7y ago

To my read and mind, there was no denial of that subjective experience, merely an attempt to frame a useful question around it. All of science is based upon shareable ideas, many testable. They may have begun as vague notions bouncing inchoate through our consciousness (or subconsciousness, etc., yada, so forth) but at some point they became expressible, then, eventually, measurable. If we want to study consciousness, whatever it/they is/are, then first we need to agree to useful operational definitions, things we can tease apart observationally, reason about, form hypotheses, then eventually theories. If one accepts that all human experience are fundamentally based on biology (since our meat seems to be all we have, at least until some extra-corporeal notion such as the soul is itself capable of being measured, analyzed, and reasoned about), then, fundamentally, our individual subjective experiences are based on what would likely be common chemistry and biology. So back to the original comment: Is consciousness a real state? We identify it as such, but perhaps it is several, perhaps many, cooperative or even competitive microstates, if you will, all of which together give us the experience of consciousness, but which are inaccessible to us... ...just as the perception of individual hues and saturations within our eyes are inaccessible, since they reach "us" after considerable backend processing (literally, since visual processing is largely occipital). If we are going to make progress on understanding consciousness, we first need to set it aside and ask "what is going on?" at various levels, then, eventually, draw a complete picture from those dots....

gus_massa 7y ago

The problem with p-zombies is that they lie when you ask if they have consciousness. It's technically not a lie, because they actually believe they are not p-zombies. Just imagine that humanity is composed of half normal people and half p-zombies. What experiment can you do to separate them? What if all humans are normal people? What if all humans are liar p-zombies?