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>I can’t really grasp that. Do my thoughts make sense? Where’s the flaw? This is the "Argument from Incredulity by Implausible Consciousness Substrate"[0]. Oth
by dTal 6y ago
>I can’t really grasp that. Do my thoughts make sense? Where’s the flaw?
This is the "Argument from Incredulity by Implausible Consciousness Substrate"[0]. Other examples include Searle's Chinese Room, and the China Brain thought experiment (what is it with China?). To your credit, you've immediately spotted the problem - how is the actual human brain any different? It's also some sort of broadly mechanistic physical system, unless you're into divine spirits (but that just moves your problems).
The flaw is that there is no flaw, the only actual argument is your personal incredulity. And the reason your intuition is giving you bad results is that scale matters. The implausible substrates are far, far too small to realistically encompass the computation that a brain does, and this makes them poor "intuition pumps" (a useful phrase coined by Daniel Dennet). Your field of rocks looks more like a football field of sand, ankle deep. And of course, manipulating them one by one according to a tiny set of rules is absurdly distorting in time - to properly capture the sheer amount of parallel information processing, perhaps you should instead imagine them buzzing and vibrating and bouncing around and exchanging information and state with the grains around them in highly nonlinear ways. Does this start to sound a bit more of a plausible?
[0] A subtype of the "argument from bad analogy", which goes: 1) make absurd analogy, 2) point out that analogy is absurd, 3) wave hands
- algoholix 6y agoFirst of all, thanks for mentioning those other examples to me, I haven't heard of them before and will definitely engage with them further. You're right that I can't just dismiss the possibility of the stones or the paper developing a consciousness. However, this fallacy wasn't unnoticed by me, I just don't see a way to approach this question in a more scientific way than by using my intuition. So you're proposing that there is actually no difference between human brains and computers in respect to the ability to be conscious, did I get that right? I don't understand your argument about the stones "buzzing and vibrating and bouncing around [...] in highly nonlinear ways" though. That doesn't resemble the computations made by a discrete computer anymore, does it? Or are you hinting at precisely those differences between computers and brains (i.e. mathematically discrete vs. mathematically continuous)? Also, why do you think parallel information processing matters? Does it really matter in a computer? Could you elaborate on your argument that scale (in terms of calculation speed; in terms of memory it surely matters) does indeed matter? I don't think it's any more plausible for a huge pool of fast-moving "magic sand" to be conscious (excuse me for once again committing a scientific fallacy here, I'm open for suggestions on methodology).
- briga 6y agoThere is another more nuanced argument, by Colin McGinn, that states that consciousness is a broadly mechanistic system, just not one that human minds are equipped to understand. Which could of course be another type of personal incredulity, but given the general lack of consensus on the subject so far seems possible
- arnoooooo 6y agoI fail to see how you're not just waving hands. You assume that consciousness is an emergent property of matter, you think it's plausible, but you can't explain it or prove it.
- dTal 6y agoI assume physicalism as a premise, yes, although I make allusion to other possibilities (and hint that they have problems too). The post that am replying to also seems to assume it, so it's not really in scope for my reply. Feel free to expand on how you think it solves the dilemma outlined in the post though!
- ncmncm 6y agoAnything that happened, can.