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You're assuming consciousness is a single bit, when that's not even true in humans. How "conscious" are you when slowly waking up? It varies by circumstance, to

You're assuming consciousness is a single bit, when that's not even true in humans. How "conscious" are you when slowly waking up? It varies by circumstance, too, e.g. I'd say I'm certainly less explicitly self-aware when I'm walking a familiar route and not thinking about much than when pondering my place in the universe. It's easy to imagine a mind that only had the first kind of experience. We don't even need to consider easy cases of variable consciousness like sleep (maybe with lucid dreams), sedation, coma, etc. Consciousness is a matter of degree, and there's no hard evidence about how low the scale goes.

lisper 7y ago
> You're assuming consciousness is a single bit No, I'm not. Consciousness is a continuum, not a dichotomy. There are nonetheless systems whose degree of consciousness is indistinguishable from zero. > there's no hard evidence about how low the scale goes. Of course there is. It goes down to zero. Rocks are not conscious. Dead people are not conscious. Even humans under general anesthesia are not conscious.
- procgen 7y ago
  Is anyone but you conscious? If so, how can you be certain?
  - lisper 7y ago
    > Is anyone but you conscious? Yes. > If so, how can you be certain? I can't be absolutely certain of that nor of anything else. The philosophical-zombie hypothesis cannot be ruled out by evidence. But I observe others producing complex I/O behavior that is qualitatively similar to that which I produce and that I attribute to my own consciousness. I also see evidence that my consciousness supervenes on the operation of my brain, and I observe that other people have brains. The most parsimonious explanation for all that is that other humans are also conscious.
    - procgen 7y ago
      Do you have any sense of what the simplest conscious system looks like? Can we construct one from legos in an aircraft hangar?
      - lisper 7y ago
        > Do you have any sense of what the simplest conscious system looks like? Nope. > Can we construct one from legos in an aircraft hangar? Almost certainly not. We can't even construct one on a silicon chip (yet).

lisper 7y ago

> You're assuming consciousness is a single bit No, I'm not. Consciousness is a continuum, not a dichotomy. There are nonetheless systems whose degree of consciousness is indistinguishable from zero. > there's no hard evidence about how low the scale goes. Of course there is. It goes down to zero. Rocks are not conscious. Dead people are not conscious. Even humans under general anesthesia are not conscious.

procgen 7y ago
Is anyone but you conscious? If so, how can you be certain?
- lisper 7y ago
  > Is anyone but you conscious? Yes. > If so, how can you be certain? I can't be absolutely certain of that nor of anything else. The philosophical-zombie hypothesis cannot be ruled out by evidence. But I observe others producing complex I/O behavior that is qualitatively similar to that which I produce and that I attribute to my own consciousness. I also see evidence that my consciousness supervenes on the operation of my brain, and I observe that other people have brains. The most parsimonious explanation for all that is that other humans are also conscious.
  - procgen 7y ago
    Do you have any sense of what the simplest conscious system looks like? Can we construct one from legos in an aircraft hangar?
    - lisper 7y ago
      > Do you have any sense of what the simplest conscious system looks like? Nope. > Can we construct one from legos in an aircraft hangar? Almost certainly not. We can't even construct one on a silicon chip (yet).