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It is a semantic dispute, but in this case, it's an interesting one. The words in question are "I" and "feel". You even used the word: >many of us feel a desir

It is a semantic dispute, but in this case, it's an interesting one. The words in question are "I" and "feel". You even used the word: >many of us feel a desire Can you restate that clause without using any synonym for experience, subjectivity, consciousness, etc.? I posit that you can't, and the fact that you can't explain the most basic fact of existence except recursively is itself interesting.

FeepingCreature 6y ago
Okay, first of all the fact that people cannot explain their experience does not invalidate their experience. Second of all, that is totally possible to explain if you know about the map-territory distinction and how it plays out psychologically. Basically, humans are meat robots whose brain contains a symbolic-experiential map of their surroundings, meaning it (among many other things) associates symbolic concepts with sensations. Since humans self-model as part of their social behavior, the map contains a representation of themselves. The map also contains a sensory input and associated symbolic representation for its own operation; the meat robot calls "the meat robot sensing in the map that the meat robot is modelling itself" consciousness or "being itself". Separately, it calls the concept it associates with itself "I" and the sensory input of operating the map "being".
- GeneralMayhem 6y ago
  I don't disagree with your first point. I meant that it's interesting that there is a phenomenon that is undefinable despite (in my view) self-evidently existing I'm familiar with the map-territory distinction, but I still don't think that's sufficient. I'll grant that it's possible to define "I" as an arm's-length name for a representation - basically the same as "my body" or "my hands". And we can, without any philosophical complexity, do that with consciousness itself - I can talk about "my state of consciousness" in the third person. That doesn't, to me, explain subjectivity. The simplest factory robot will have a model of self - likely a much more accurate one than mine. Is it conscious? Does it subjectively experience?
  - FeepingCreature 6y ago
    If it has a (recursive?) model of itself and a sensory input representing its operation, I would argue it's conscious. For instance, I believe computers are conscious in this sense; not in the sense that anything that computes is conscious but in the sense that `top` (or the Windows Task Manager) fulfills many of the listed traits - self-awareness, self-modelling, discrimination. Of course, computers can't actually do nearly as much as we can with their consciousness, but that's a question of skills that are not themselves consciousness. For the closest example, I think there's probably something it is to be like the Linux OOM killer.

FeepingCreature 6y ago

Okay, first of all the fact that people cannot explain their experience does not invalidate their experience. Second of all, that is totally possible to explain if you know about the map-territory distinction and how it plays out psychologically. Basically, humans are meat robots whose brain contains a symbolic-experiential map of their surroundings, meaning it (among many other things) associates symbolic concepts with sensations. Since humans self-model as part of their social behavior, the map contains a representation of themselves. The map also contains a sensory input and associated symbolic representation for its own operation; the meat robot calls "the meat robot sensing in the map that the meat robot is modelling itself" consciousness or "being itself". Separately, it calls the concept it associates with itself "I" and the sensory input of operating the map "being".

GeneralMayhem 6y ago
I don't disagree with your first point. I meant that it's interesting that there is a phenomenon that is undefinable despite (in my view) self-evidently existing I'm familiar with the map-territory distinction, but I still don't think that's sufficient. I'll grant that it's possible to define "I" as an arm's-length name for a representation - basically the same as "my body" or "my hands". And we can, without any philosophical complexity, do that with consciousness itself - I can talk about "my state of consciousness" in the third person. That doesn't, to me, explain subjectivity. The simplest factory robot will have a model of self - likely a much more accurate one than mine. Is it conscious? Does it subjectively experience?
- FeepingCreature 6y ago
  If it has a (recursive?) model of itself and a sensory input representing its operation, I would argue it's conscious. For instance, I believe computers are conscious in this sense; not in the sense that anything that computes is conscious but in the sense that `top` (or the Windows Task Manager) fulfills many of the listed traits - self-awareness, self-modelling, discrimination. Of course, computers can't actually do nearly as much as we can with their consciousness, but that's a question of skills that are not themselves consciousness. For the closest example, I think there's probably something it is to be like the Linux OOM killer.