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Well I think the tricky thing about consciousness is that it can’t be an illusion. There is no doubt that you and I have the subjective experience of consciousn
by Gatsky 7y ago
Well I think the tricky thing about consciousness is that it can’t be an illusion. There is no doubt that you and I have the subjective experience of consciousness. Whether it is an illusion or not doesn’t really matter, you are just making a judgement about the legitimacy of the process which leads to consciousness.
I think what you are getting at is the zombie concept. This is where we construct a being which has sensory inputs and actions, and behaves like a human, but isn’t actually conscious. Distinguishing zombies from real consciousness is supposed to highlight the difficulty in detecting or measuring consciousness. But, by definition the zombie doesn’t have any subjective experience. As soon as you introduce that, you are really saying the zombie is conscious.
As for using consciousness to decide if suffering has moral significance, well yeah that is an interesting idea. One concern is that if we can’t understand or detect consciousness, then we may create conscious artificial life which experiences unimaginable suffering, without even realising it. I don’t think we can say that the experiences of an AI will always lack moral significance.
- SubiculumCode 7y agoWhat a strange concept: My Ryzen AMD CPU is maybe experiencing suffering.
- kypro 7y ago> Well I think the tricky thing about consciousness is that it can’t be an illusion. There is no doubt that you and I have the subjective experience of consciousness. Whether it is an illusion or not doesn’t really matter, you are just making a judgement about the legitimacy of the process which leads to consciousness. I'm not sure if you're implying I do or not, but to clarify, I don't deny there is something we believe to be an experience of consciousness. I just don't believe it is any more real than a computer, or to use your example, a zombie claiming consciousness. > I think what you are getting at is the zombie concept. This is where we construct a being which has sensory inputs and actions, and behaves like a human, but isn’t actually conscious. Distinguishing zombies from real consciousness is supposed to highlight the difficulty in detecting or measuring consciousness. But, by definition the zombie doesn’t have any subjective experience. As soon as you introduce that, you are really saying the zombie is conscious. Yes, I think we are "zombies" who truly believe from their programming that they are human with a conscious experience of their selfs. I think this belief is evolutionarily important because it might be the only thing that stops pain being morally irrelevant. Or at the very least, it makes us believe the pain of a conscious entity is worth considering.
- Gatsky 7y agoI don’t quite get what you are saying. Consciousness must be real, in fact some people make the point it is the only thing we can be sure is real. How can you hold a belief without consciousness?