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Saying consciousness is emergent is definitely weird, but the problem is, so are all the other possible explanations. If you're trying to avoid supernatural exp

Saying consciousness is emergent is definitely weird, but the problem is, so are all the other possible explanations. If you're trying to avoid supernatural explanations then emergence is the best of a baffling bad bunch IMHO. (Then I would back this up a bit with "once you start investigating it, a lot of aspects of consciousness are quite different to what people would intuitively expect" and that makes it all a bit more feasible. E.g. saccades and the fovea are fascinating and counterintuitive, what else are we getting wrong?)

vikramkr 6y ago
Is it though? Until we have more information, all these explanations are equally unsubstantiated. If you're speculating without the data and I sight needed to actually understand it, then the proposal isn't any better because it feels less supernatural. The actual explanation will probably seem really weird and supernatural to us now since we dont have the data and experiments to understand it. Today, quantum tunneling is still weird, still hard to wrap your mind around, but it's a phenomenon that we understand well enough to work with. We try to avoid it when making a CPU, try to make it happen when we use a scanning tunneling microscope. But 250 years ago trying to explain how a scanning tunneling microscope that just appeared into the world would have seemed impossible without invoking some supernatural sounding explanation. We have consciousness, we dont know where it came from yet, maybe there's a consciousness field we'll find when we figure out how to unite gravity and quantum mechanics, maybe theres an emergent property we'll understand once we can map a brain's functions and do some data science on it, maybe there's some explanation that we cant even imagine yet, but until there's data none are less supernatural than the others
visarga 6y ago
> If you're trying to avoid supernatural explanations then emergence is the best of a baffling bad bunch IMHO. Emergence is a general word, too general. I think what we need here is just self-replication. Self replication leads to competition, which given enough time leads to the evolution of perception and ultimately reasoning.

vikramkr 6y ago

Is it though? Until we have more information, all these explanations are equally unsubstantiated. If you're speculating without the data and I sight needed to actually understand it, then the proposal isn't any better because it feels less supernatural. The actual explanation will probably seem really weird and supernatural to us now since we dont have the data and experiments to understand it. Today, quantum tunneling is still weird, still hard to wrap your mind around, but it's a phenomenon that we understand well enough to work with. We try to avoid it when making a CPU, try to make it happen when we use a scanning tunneling microscope. But 250 years ago trying to explain how a scanning tunneling microscope that just appeared into the world would have seemed impossible without invoking some supernatural sounding explanation. We have consciousness, we dont know where it came from yet, maybe there's a consciousness field we'll find when we figure out how to unite gravity and quantum mechanics, maybe theres an emergent property we'll understand once we can map a brain's functions and do some data science on it, maybe there's some explanation that we cant even imagine yet, but until there's data none are less supernatural than the others

visarga 6y ago

> If you're trying to avoid supernatural explanations then emergence is the best of a baffling bad bunch IMHO. Emergence is a general word, too general. I think what we need here is just self-replication. Self replication leads to competition, which given enough time leads to the evolution of perception and ultimately reasoning.