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Why so much dislike for this? It's a theory that pushes on some of the foundational assumptions we make. Maybe it resonates and maybe not. But just being open t

Why so much dislike for this? It's a theory that pushes on some of the foundational assumptions we make. Maybe it resonates and maybe not. But just being open to a new set of ideas means we can maybe learn something new and interesting. Or not and that's fine too. People seem angry that someone else would talk about an idea they don't currently agree with.

ajuc 7y ago
It uses handwavy definitions, it's untestable and makes a lot of assumptions without providing any new predictions.
- bsenftner 7y ago
  It is an attempt to extend the hard sciences into a non-quantitative domain. Consider it early work that might become something like quantum mechanics, but being early, the terms and definitions are still finding their foundations. This is the point where great careers are made, if you're brave enough to dive into the unknown and use your mind for solving truly unknown questions.
- platz 7y ago
  Nothing about the topic consciousness is fundamentally testable. Which is why it's often a topic for philosophy rather than science.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
  - arnoooooo 7y ago
    Actually, we all have consciousness, and can therefore experiment. A lot of experiments have been done about consciousness through meditation, psychedelics, etc.
    - rabbitonrails 7y ago
      How do you know that I am conscious?
      - arnoooooo 7y ago
        If you are a human, I don't know for sure, but it seems reasonable to assume.
        SamBam 7y ago
        It's not a matter of assuming, it's a pretty serious point: Is there any test you can imagine that will prove anything about another person's consciousness? If not, then any discussion about consciousness is "handwavy" and "untestable." Tests about your own consciousness are interesting, but ultimately can't answer anything about consciousness in general, because they are by definition n=1, since you can't know if my results are actually the result of consciousness.
        arnoooooo 7y ago
        I can't think of any test, no. But I don't think this makes discussions about consciousness useless. If you tell me something about your consciousness I can check if it fits my experience, and you can test something I say for yourself. What this means is that there might not be an absolute truth about this, only relative truths. But then, this applies to anything, as no experience can happen outside of consciousness, so all of science is the same way.
PixyMisa 7y ago
Because it is obscurantist nonsense that explains nothing.
- ethanbond 7y ago
  As opposed to all of the other explanations of consciousness...
bitL 7y ago
Because there are a lot of scientific wackos that are trying to push it to mainstream without any proof, see e.g. PhDs in congnitive neuroscience with focus on art and whole conferences organized around such ideas. It looks like some New Age cult inside science. Whether it's true or not, there is no methodology how to measure it, putting it outside scientific domain. It's on the level of simulation hypothesis. The rationale is that consciousness as a quality exists and is present in universe, so there must be some mechanisms for consciousness to emerge - if it is another layer or whatever on top of universe we have no clue. But most proponents of the theory sound like cultists.
- hosh 7y ago
  There's an assumption that consciousness must be a result of emergent properties. I am not sure something like that has been definitively proven. I think there will never be a proof of consciousness that will satisfy the standards set by scientific experimentation.
  - bitL 7y ago
    OK, my use of "emergent" is not appropriate either, it's just difficult to say anything as I have no clue what is behind it, if it is emergent, if it is an inherent property of universe, if it is outside universe in some "machine" or superbeing or whatever. Those are great sci-fi and philosophical topics, not sure about science itself as we know it right now though.
    - hosh 7y ago
      Just saying, what if it is the scientific method itself is what limits what we can explore with consciousness? There is also an underlying assumption that the scientific method can explain everything ... ... it is a far cry from the early scientists who considered Nature as an intelligence one has to trick or seduce into giving up its secrets through the scientific method. That to hold an objective or skeptical stance was to pretend that there is such a thing as absolute objectivity. These days, the modern stance is the default, not the radical stance.
  - 7y ago
AnIdiotOnTheNet 7y ago
When we talk about consciousness, as in the subjective experience of being, that's ultimately a proxy for "which things can we do really awful stuff to". We reason that for things that are not conscious there is no suffering (since it can't be experienced) and therefore we are free to exploit those things in any way we wish. Lately the trend has been to argue that AI is not, that even though we can create algorithms complicated enough to do the kinds of analysis our own minds do (and in a not-entirely-dissimilar way), they are "just algorithms" and have no experience of suffering for us to concern ourselves with. This is convenient for us, because it allows us to exploit such things without being bothered by ethical reasoning. This is also why many will argue that animals are not conscious, and some will even argue that many humans are not [0]. [0] Which is a perfectly rational statement if you operate from a basis of empiricism. There is no way to measure the consciousness (again, the experience of being) of something, meaning you can only observe your own and everyone else, though similar to you, may as well be an automaton.
- jjmorrison 7y ago
  > There is no way to measure the consciousness (again, the experience of being) of something Right - that's the whole game this author is playing. One question that is so easily answered if you spend time observing is whether or not YOU are conscious. That is the only thing you can ever be sure of. Because you feel conscious. You feel like something is happening. You might be a brain in a vat and everyone else is an automaton. But you definitely know that you are experiencing something.
ohyes 7y ago
Yes, I think anything that “sounds like” science but is pretty clearly not measurable or verifiable gets treated with harsh ridicule. This is really a very different philosophical take on our own self importance in the universe. In western philosophy consciousness has been the pervasive thing that “makes us better” than everything else on the planet. (This is true even biblically if you think about it). The idea that this doesn’t make us special is actually very subversive to a lot of human self identification. If you look into other traditions than the European one, I think the idea exists already to some extent. But in the circles we run in (and extra so societally) those views are still the minority. Being told for thousands of years that your special and then having someone come in and say “maybe you’re not.” Is going to elicit a response from those invested in it.
- jjmorrison 7y ago
  > I think the idea exists already to some extent. It's almost as if we've always known the true nature of our consciousness, we just keep overlooking it :)
  - ohyes 7y ago
    To some extent it’s about inconvenience, right? Having limited time and not being special (as in connected inextricably to everything else but being not unique or important), really changes ethical considerations, many of which are the basis of our society. A lot of our human selfishness is natural and ingrained, survival of the fittest is fairly ugly. So we justify ourselves in various ways. But once you know it’s hard to unknow, so there’s a lot to feel empty about in the quiet moments when you remember.
mannykannot 7y ago
Peronally, my response is not anything more hostile than a tendency for my eyes to roll -- and the reason for that comes from how this argument seems to be using the flexibility of language to avoid the issues. There is a problem that precedes this essay: 'consciousness' nominally has a meaning of merely being aware of, and responding to, the environment, but this is not the self-aware consciousness that is currently unexplained, and a definition that would include thermostats does not help with that problem. The author compounds this by additionally defining 'experience' as any form of 'undergoing interaction'.
- gloriousduke 7y ago
  > nominally has a meaning of merely being aware of, and responding to, the environment, but this is not the self-aware consciousness that is currently unexplained By this do you mean we've explained how "what is it like to be a bat?" works? (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/What_Is_It_Like_to_Be_a_Bat%3F https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/What_Is_It_Like_to_Be_a_Bat%3F) If so, can you point me toward that explanation?
  - mannykannot 7y ago
    I was thinking of something simpler: the flexibility of meaning of the word 'consciousness' -- for example, in Merriam-Webster: 1a: the quality or state of being aware especially of something within oneself. (my emphasis.) If you regard 'especially' to indicate that the emphasized clause is optional (edit: or maybe even if not), you could arguably say (and people do) that anything alive fits this definition, as do even things like thermostats. This, however, is not the consciousness that the science and philosophy of mind is concerned with: it is specifically concerned with the sort of consciousness that we exhibit, which is aware that it is an agent in the world, aware that it has this awareness, and aware that other people are also aware in this sense. Update: I may have misunderstood your question. The nature of consciousness in other animals is also an open issue and is being studied. It would be very odd indeed if there was nothing like it in any other species, but, at the same time, no other living species on earth has it to the extent we do. I don't think these observations justify the extremely broad definitions of panpsychism, and I do not think panpsychism helps with studying these animals any more that it helps with humans. Nagel's point is, I think, rather tangential - he is arguing that we probably will never know what it is like to be a bat, as it is likely too far from any experience we could have. I think he is probably right, and again, panpsychism will not change that.

ajuc 7y ago

It uses handwavy definitions, it's untestable and makes a lot of assumptions without providing any new predictions.

bsenftner 7y ago
It is an attempt to extend the hard sciences into a non-quantitative domain. Consider it early work that might become something like quantum mechanics, but being early, the terms and definitions are still finding their foundations. This is the point where great careers are made, if you're brave enough to dive into the unknown and use your mind for solving truly unknown questions.
platz 7y ago
Nothing about the topic consciousness is fundamentally testable. Which is why it's often a topic for philosophy rather than science.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- arnoooooo 7y ago
  Actually, we all have consciousness, and can therefore experiment. A lot of experiments have been done about consciousness through meditation, psychedelics, etc.
  - rabbitonrails 7y ago
    How do you know that I am conscious?
    - arnoooooo 7y ago
      If you are a human, I don't know for sure, but it seems reasonable to assume.
      - SamBam 7y ago
        It's not a matter of assuming, it's a pretty serious point: Is there any test you can imagine that will prove anything about another person's consciousness? If not, then any discussion about consciousness is "handwavy" and "untestable." Tests about your own consciousness are interesting, but ultimately can't answer anything about consciousness in general, because they are by definition n=1, since you can't know if my results are actually the result of consciousness.
        arnoooooo 7y ago
        I can't think of any test, no. But I don't think this makes discussions about consciousness useless. If you tell me something about your consciousness I can check if it fits my experience, and you can test something I say for yourself. What this means is that there might not be an absolute truth about this, only relative truths. But then, this applies to anything, as no experience can happen outside of consciousness, so all of science is the same way.

PixyMisa 7y ago

Because it is obscurantist nonsense that explains nothing.

ethanbond 7y ago
As opposed to all of the other explanations of consciousness...

bitL 7y ago

Because there are a lot of scientific wackos that are trying to push it to mainstream without any proof, see e.g. PhDs in congnitive neuroscience with focus on art and whole conferences organized around such ideas. It looks like some New Age cult inside science. Whether it's true or not, there is no methodology how to measure it, putting it outside scientific domain. It's on the level of simulation hypothesis. The rationale is that consciousness as a quality exists and is present in universe, so there must be some mechanisms for consciousness to emerge - if it is another layer or whatever on top of universe we have no clue. But most proponents of the theory sound like cultists.

hosh 7y ago
There's an assumption that consciousness must be a result of emergent properties. I am not sure something like that has been definitively proven. I think there will never be a proof of consciousness that will satisfy the standards set by scientific experimentation.
- bitL 7y ago
  OK, my use of "emergent" is not appropriate either, it's just difficult to say anything as I have no clue what is behind it, if it is emergent, if it is an inherent property of universe, if it is outside universe in some "machine" or superbeing or whatever. Those are great sci-fi and philosophical topics, not sure about science itself as we know it right now though.
  - hosh 7y ago
    Just saying, what if it is the scientific method itself is what limits what we can explore with consciousness? There is also an underlying assumption that the scientific method can explain everything ... ... it is a far cry from the early scientists who considered Nature as an intelligence one has to trick or seduce into giving up its secrets through the scientific method. That to hold an objective or skeptical stance was to pretend that there is such a thing as absolute objectivity. These days, the modern stance is the default, not the radical stance.
- 7y ago

AnIdiotOnTheNet 7y ago

When we talk about consciousness, as in the subjective experience of being, that's ultimately a proxy for "which things can we do really awful stuff to". We reason that for things that are not conscious there is no suffering (since it can't be experienced) and therefore we are free to exploit those things in any way we wish. Lately the trend has been to argue that AI is not, that even though we can create algorithms complicated enough to do the kinds of analysis our own minds do (and in a not-entirely-dissimilar way), they are "just algorithms" and have no experience of suffering for us to concern ourselves with. This is convenient for us, because it allows us to exploit such things without being bothered by ethical reasoning. This is also why many will argue that animals are not conscious, and some will even argue that many humans are not [0]. [0] Which is a perfectly rational statement if you operate from a basis of empiricism. There is no way to measure the consciousness (again, the experience of being) of something, meaning you can only observe your own and everyone else, though similar to you, may as well be an automaton.

jjmorrison 7y ago
> There is no way to measure the consciousness (again, the experience of being) of something Right - that's the whole game this author is playing. One question that is so easily answered if you spend time observing is whether or not YOU are conscious. That is the only thing you can ever be sure of. Because you feel conscious. You feel like something is happening. You might be a brain in a vat and everyone else is an automaton. But you definitely know that you are experiencing something.

ohyes 7y ago

Yes, I think anything that “sounds like” science but is pretty clearly not measurable or verifiable gets treated with harsh ridicule. This is really a very different philosophical take on our own self importance in the universe. In western philosophy consciousness has been the pervasive thing that “makes us better” than everything else on the planet. (This is true even biblically if you think about it). The idea that this doesn’t make us special is actually very subversive to a lot of human self identification. If you look into other traditions than the European one, I think the idea exists already to some extent. But in the circles we run in (and extra so societally) those views are still the minority. Being told for thousands of years that your special and then having someone come in and say “maybe you’re not.” Is going to elicit a response from those invested in it.

jjmorrison 7y ago
> I think the idea exists already to some extent. It's almost as if we've always known the true nature of our consciousness, we just keep overlooking it :)
- ohyes 7y ago
  To some extent it’s about inconvenience, right? Having limited time and not being special (as in connected inextricably to everything else but being not unique or important), really changes ethical considerations, many of which are the basis of our society. A lot of our human selfishness is natural and ingrained, survival of the fittest is fairly ugly. So we justify ourselves in various ways. But once you know it’s hard to unknow, so there’s a lot to feel empty about in the quiet moments when you remember.

mannykannot 7y ago

Peronally, my response is not anything more hostile than a tendency for my eyes to roll -- and the reason for that comes from how this argument seems to be using the flexibility of language to avoid the issues. There is a problem that precedes this essay: 'consciousness' nominally has a meaning of merely being aware of, and responding to, the environment, but this is not the self-aware consciousness that is currently unexplained, and a definition that would include thermostats does not help with that problem. The author compounds this by additionally defining 'experience' as any form of 'undergoing interaction'.

gloriousduke 7y ago
> nominally has a meaning of merely being aware of, and responding to, the environment, but this is not the self-aware consciousness that is currently unexplained By this do you mean we've explained how "what is it like to be a bat?" works? (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/What_Is_It_Like_to_Be_a_Bat%3F https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/What_Is_It_Like_to_Be_a_Bat%3F) If so, can you point me toward that explanation?
- mannykannot 7y ago
  I was thinking of something simpler: the flexibility of meaning of the word 'consciousness' -- for example, in Merriam-Webster: 1a: the quality or state of being aware especially of something within oneself. (my emphasis.) If you regard 'especially' to indicate that the emphasized clause is optional (edit: or maybe even if not), you could arguably say (and people do) that anything alive fits this definition, as do even things like thermostats. This, however, is not the consciousness that the science and philosophy of mind is concerned with: it is specifically concerned with the sort of consciousness that we exhibit, which is aware that it is an agent in the world, aware that it has this awareness, and aware that other people are also aware in this sense. Update: I may have misunderstood your question. The nature of consciousness in other animals is also an open issue and is being studied. It would be very odd indeed if there was nothing like it in any other species, but, at the same time, no other living species on earth has it to the extent we do. I don't think these observations justify the extremely broad definitions of panpsychism, and I do not think panpsychism helps with studying these animals any more that it helps with humans. Nagel's point is, I think, rather tangential - he is arguing that we probably will never know what it is like to be a bat, as it is likely too far from any experience we could have. I think he is probably right, and again, panpsychism will not change that.