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The problem is, we don't have a definition nor a test for consciousness. So these discussions usually go in circles. i am aware of three definitions of conscio

The problem is, we don't have a definition nor a test for consciousness. So these discussions usually go in circles. i am aware of three definitions of consciousness, used often without clarity: a/ consciousness = intelligence. By this definition, a lot of AI has some level of consciousness b/ conciouness = being awake and alert. A lot of studies for instance that compare MRI of alert vs unconscious humans focus on this aspect. c/ consciousness the way we humans experience the sense of self awareness ("watching a movie from inside", etc). This must be more than an illusion because for instance right now I am writing about it so that "sense" is affecting my actions. But how do you even define or test for it? It's likely you have a lot of (a) without (c), and you could have a lot of (c) with little (a). We can test for (a) but not for (c), so for now it's all philosophical speculation. Until we can define and test for (c), I don't see much progress being made here.

fjfaase 6y ago
> This must be more than an illusion because for instance right now I am writing about it so that "sense" is affecting my actions. No, it could be that (c) is an illusion of the fact that you are doing the writing, which I guess is the result of enough (a). There is some scientific evidence that (c) is 'constructed' afterwards by (a) and (b). For example (c) looks to lag about half a second behind the actual sensed reality.
- diegoperini 6y ago
  > For example (c) looks to lag about half a second behind the actual sensed reality I think you meant (b) lags behind, not (c). I might be wrong.
ordu 6y ago
The most funny problem with defining consciousness is the ability of definition to mark people as conscious and everything else as non-conscious. It is bad to kill human and it is acceptable to kill animal -- why? Because of consciousness of human, isn't it? So if animals are conscious then they should have "human" rights, including access to education and medicine. Moreover, there are groups who would fight any definition which treat new-born humans as non-conscious (because from their point of view the most important property of such a definition is it is the first step to legalizing child killings). But there are theories that point to an idea of consciousness as of something acquired by humans in their individual development. It means that in some special cases child could develop into a non-conscious adult. Does it mean that it is ok to slaughter such an adult and to eat his meat? Does it mean that abortion is a morally neutral thing? At some point psychology was forced to stop using word "soul", because results of a research of a soul led to troubles for different religions, for example, if a soul is a function of a mortal brain, so a soul cannot be immortal, isn't it? Psychology mechanically replaced 'soul' with 'mind' and continued. I believe we came to a point, when psychology would need to find a new term for "consciousness", so psychologist's findings didn't lead to disastrous conclusions in a social plane. From the other hand, biology managed to research life all this time without changing terms, despite of the fact, that biology pinned life to a matter, and therefore there could be no life after death.
lhorie 6y ago
> we don't have a definition nor a test for consciousness Isn't this a bit like saying we don't have a definition for "cloud" due to not having defined exactly at which density, size, etc water vapor qualifies as a cloud? There's certainly a gradient of chemical responses to outside stimulus within an organism, ranging from reflex to subconscious responses (e.g. heartbeat speed) to awareness to consciousness. Defining consciousness within that gradient would then simply consist of specifying exactly which subset of responses qualify as falling under the umbrella definition for consciousness (e.g. certain patterns of chemical response in specific parts of a brain). There's then the argument that it's effectively impossible for two things to be exactly the same physically, so how can we know that "my" experience of consciousness is not some unique snowflake in some universe simulation. An interesting psychological tidbit that seems relevant is the observation that every salmon has the same number of bones. What's interesting about it is that many people have the incorrect intuition that skeletons within a fish species have a much higher variance than they actually do. Similarly, there's this intuition that just because neurons connect in seemingly random ways, that a more complex pattern built on top of of said neurons might then have higher variance than genetics would suggest. The problem with a lot of philosophical arguments is that they jump from "consciousness is vaguely defined" to "therefore it's technically possible for some highly unlikely setup to be true". That's not how we do science elsewhere (i.e. we typically look at what's statistically more likely via p values, phenotypes, etc). Another point of contention is the somewhat tautological nature of defining consciousness. It basically boils down to "it is what it is and it isn't what it isn't". But the thing is: many things are defined in tautological ways (e.g. the cloud above, or what is the first "chicken" in the "chicken and egg" problem). You could easily get out of the problem by simply specifying an arbitrary definition with arbitrary breadth, since it is already inherently vague and arbitrary to begin with. This is more or less the same process by which we came up with the definition of even hard science things like the meter. Regardless, even without an exact definition, it's possible to engage in the discussion of ethics of lab grown consciousness, specifically how it applies to real life. One can argue that lab grown consciousness is not necessarily bad in and of itself (similar to the fact that animal slaughter exists for the purpose of feeding people). I think people objections to it stem from ascribing human rights (e.g. not being subject to cruelty) to things that are inherently similar to humans. But in that sense, it doesn't even need to be remotely close to being human-like, as we already debate about the ethics of animal torture and hypothetical scenarios that never actually play out in real life w/ real functioning people. At the end of the day, ethics are just a framework to formulate things like rule of law, and ultimately are about a balance between individual freedom vs collective interest. We know from politics that there are virtually endless disagreements about where said balance lies. One could then argue that it's phenotypical that individuals may have disagreeing opinions about various subjects and that there's no point in pursuing "absolute righteousness" when said endeavor boils down to equally pleasing all members of a phenotypically heterogeneous population. From there, there are two possible logical conclusions: a) that "bad" things must necessarily exist because badness is not a consensus (and contradictory depending on who you ask) and that existence is an eternal struggle or b) that the pursuit of absolute righteousness involves taking the zen approach of letting go and letting things be as they are.
geonic 6y ago
There is a famous definition of consciousness by Thomas Nagel which states that an organism is conscious if there is something that is like to be that organism. I‘ve always liked that definition even though it doesn‘t tell us how and why it emerges. But nobody knows that anyway. The amazing thing for me about consciousness is that it seemingly emerges from the gray matter of the brain. From the outside there is nothing that would suggest such a thing yet it exists. We don‘t know when and how exactly it comes into existence but there seems to be a connection between the complexity of the neural network and the things it is capable of. Then there is the argument that consciousness may not be reserved for human or animal brains but instead is a state emerging from a system of sufficient complexity. What if there a consciousnesses out there that operate on time scales beyond our means of recognition? This is a philosophical point of view but fascinating to think about.
- smegger001 6y ago
  >an organism is conscious if there is something that is like to be that organism. I am afraid i don't seem to parse that
  - falcor84 6y ago
    The relevant reading material is "What is it like to be a bat"[0]. The way I understand it is that is asking you to imagine yourself as that type of being and try to identify whether it makes sense to you, such that if it does, then that object could be conscious. I (and many others) find it to be a really silly thought experiment, since it's testing your own power of imagination rather than anything interesting about the object. [0] 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
  - Cytobit 6y ago
    I agree. Here is the quote from the Wikipedia article intro. >Nagel famously asserts that "an organism has conscious mental states if and only if there is something that it is like to be that organism—something it is like for the organism." I cannot figure out what the pronoun "it" is supposed to be refering to: the organism, or the something? Specifically the phase "it is like to be" does not grok for me.

fjfaase 6y ago

> This must be more than an illusion because for instance right now I am writing about it so that "sense" is affecting my actions. No, it could be that (c) is an illusion of the fact that you are doing the writing, which I guess is the result of enough (a). There is some scientific evidence that (c) is 'constructed' afterwards by (a) and (b). For example (c) looks to lag about half a second behind the actual sensed reality.

diegoperini 6y ago
> For example (c) looks to lag about half a second behind the actual sensed reality I think you meant (b) lags behind, not (c). I might be wrong.

ordu 6y ago

The most funny problem with defining consciousness is the ability of definition to mark people as conscious and everything else as non-conscious. It is bad to kill human and it is acceptable to kill animal -- why? Because of consciousness of human, isn't it? So if animals are conscious then they should have "human" rights, including access to education and medicine. Moreover, there are groups who would fight any definition which treat new-born humans as non-conscious (because from their point of view the most important property of such a definition is it is the first step to legalizing child killings). But there are theories that point to an idea of consciousness as of something acquired by humans in their individual development. It means that in some special cases child could develop into a non-conscious adult. Does it mean that it is ok to slaughter such an adult and to eat his meat? Does it mean that abortion is a morally neutral thing? At some point psychology was forced to stop using word "soul", because results of a research of a soul led to troubles for different religions, for example, if a soul is a function of a mortal brain, so a soul cannot be immortal, isn't it? Psychology mechanically replaced 'soul' with 'mind' and continued. I believe we came to a point, when psychology would need to find a new term for "consciousness", so psychologist's findings didn't lead to disastrous conclusions in a social plane. From the other hand, biology managed to research life all this time without changing terms, despite of the fact, that biology pinned life to a matter, and therefore there could be no life after death.

lhorie 6y ago

> we don't have a definition nor a test for consciousness Isn't this a bit like saying we don't have a definition for "cloud" due to not having defined exactly at which density, size, etc water vapor qualifies as a cloud? There's certainly a gradient of chemical responses to outside stimulus within an organism, ranging from reflex to subconscious responses (e.g. heartbeat speed) to awareness to consciousness. Defining consciousness within that gradient would then simply consist of specifying exactly which subset of responses qualify as falling under the umbrella definition for consciousness (e.g. certain patterns of chemical response in specific parts of a brain). There's then the argument that it's effectively impossible for two things to be exactly the same physically, so how can we know that "my" experience of consciousness is not some unique snowflake in some universe simulation. An interesting psychological tidbit that seems relevant is the observation that every salmon has the same number of bones. What's interesting about it is that many people have the incorrect intuition that skeletons within a fish species have a much higher variance than they actually do. Similarly, there's this intuition that just because neurons connect in seemingly random ways, that a more complex pattern built on top of of said neurons might then have higher variance than genetics would suggest. The problem with a lot of philosophical arguments is that they jump from "consciousness is vaguely defined" to "therefore it's technically possible for some highly unlikely setup to be true". That's not how we do science elsewhere (i.e. we typically look at what's statistically more likely via p values, phenotypes, etc). Another point of contention is the somewhat tautological nature of defining consciousness. It basically boils down to "it is what it is and it isn't what it isn't". But the thing is: many things are defined in tautological ways (e.g. the cloud above, or what is the first "chicken" in the "chicken and egg" problem). You could easily get out of the problem by simply specifying an arbitrary definition with arbitrary breadth, since it is already inherently vague and arbitrary to begin with. This is more or less the same process by which we came up with the definition of even hard science things like the meter. Regardless, even without an exact definition, it's possible to engage in the discussion of ethics of lab grown consciousness, specifically how it applies to real life. One can argue that lab grown consciousness is not necessarily bad in and of itself (similar to the fact that animal slaughter exists for the purpose of feeding people). I think people objections to it stem from ascribing human rights (e.g. not being subject to cruelty) to things that are inherently similar to humans. But in that sense, it doesn't even need to be remotely close to being human-like, as we already debate about the ethics of animal torture and hypothetical scenarios that never actually play out in real life w/ real functioning people. At the end of the day, ethics are just a framework to formulate things like rule of law, and ultimately are about a balance between individual freedom vs collective interest. We know from politics that there are virtually endless disagreements about where said balance lies. One could then argue that it's phenotypical that individuals may have disagreeing opinions about various subjects and that there's no point in pursuing "absolute righteousness" when said endeavor boils down to equally pleasing all members of a phenotypically heterogeneous population. From there, there are two possible logical conclusions: a) that "bad" things must necessarily exist because badness is not a consensus (and contradictory depending on who you ask) and that existence is an eternal struggle or b) that the pursuit of absolute righteousness involves taking the zen approach of letting go and letting things be as they are.

geonic 6y ago

There is a famous definition of consciousness by Thomas Nagel which states that an organism is conscious if there is something that is like to be that organism. I‘ve always liked that definition even though it doesn‘t tell us how and why it emerges. But nobody knows that anyway. The amazing thing for me about consciousness is that it seemingly emerges from the gray matter of the brain. From the outside there is nothing that would suggest such a thing yet it exists. We don‘t know when and how exactly it comes into existence but there seems to be a connection between the complexity of the neural network and the things it is capable of. Then there is the argument that consciousness may not be reserved for human or animal brains but instead is a state emerging from a system of sufficient complexity. What if there a consciousnesses out there that operate on time scales beyond our means of recognition? This is a philosophical point of view but fascinating to think about.

smegger001 6y ago
>an organism is conscious if there is something that is like to be that organism. I am afraid i don't seem to parse that
- falcor84 6y ago
  The relevant reading material is "What is it like to be a bat"[0]. The way I understand it is that is asking you to imagine yourself as that type of being and try to identify whether it makes sense to you, such that if it does, then that object could be conscious. I (and many others) find it to be a really silly thought experiment, since it's testing your own power of imagination rather than anything interesting about the object. [0] 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
- Cytobit 6y ago
  I agree. Here is the quote from the Wikipedia article intro. >Nagel famously asserts that "an organism has conscious mental states if and only if there is something that it is like to be that organism—something it is like for the organism." I cannot figure out what the pronoun "it" is supposed to be refering to: the organism, or the something? Specifically the phase "it is like to be" does not grok for me.