6 ms·

Your consciousness is your brain hardware. The software exists in the neuronal connections and weights (both of which change over the course of your lifetime),

Your consciousness is your brain hardware. The software exists in the neuronal connections and weights (both of which change over the course of your lifetime), and if these are taken from a real brain (presumably the brain that's been sliced and scanned) then the resulting simulation will be conscious. Specifically the consciousness of the dead person whose brain was used as the model for the simulation. That is unless you are not a materialist, i.e., you believe that the mind is the product of some non-physical plane that somehow interacts with the physical world through the brain...

Alex3917 15y ago
"That is unless you are not a materialist, i.e., you believe that the mind is the product of some non-physical plane that somehow interacts with the physical world through the brain..." Is there any good arguments in favor of materialism? It's always struck me as a completely ridiculous position.
- babblefrog 15y ago
  To me, the best argument would be that everything else that we have looked at in the universe appears to be completely materialistic. Do you know some reason why the brain might be different?
  - hasenj 15y ago
    This subject is just too philosophical for a HN comment, but I think there are at least a few problems with this argument. First of all, almost by definition, we can't really look at anything that's not materialistic; it's just a limitation. For instance, there's no way to prove or disprove the existence of awareness in something or someone. If a robot walks like humans, looks like humans, is it a human? Does it experience anything? Do insects have consciousness? Do animals have it? Does anyone besides me have it? Who says even I have it? How can we test for it? Can we even define it? Who says that my computer mouse doesn't have it? Second, I believe that we only know a tiny fraction of what's out there, or of what's there to know, so it's hard to say that there's nothing beyond matter. And who even says that everything we looked at is materialistic? Is time materialistic? Can it be made from something else? Third, there's nothing materialistic about awareness. It's not as though we can say "it's like a computer program, just more complicated". We can't say that emotions are like variables that control the behavior of a program. Do you know any reason why awareness might be materialistic?
    - lincolnq 15y ago
      Awareness is materialistic because it affects the physical world. How does it affect the physical world? You thought about it, those thoughts were translated into nervous system impulses which caused you to press keys on your computer, which was translated to electrical impulses, etc. So far, we've found exactly zero processes which we can observe (i.e., which affect the physical world) that can't be explained by physics. Yes, there are some processes which we can observe which we can't YET explain very well. But when I am ignorant about a phenomenon, that is a fact about my state of mind, not about the phenomenon. It seems likely that consciousness / awareness is just another physical phenomenon that we haven't explained yet. Here are some other examples of "mysterious phenomena" which it took a while to explain: fire, why the sun rises and sets, the discrepancy of Mercury's orbit (explained by relativity), discrete energy levels (explained by quantum physics). Now, what makes you think physics will never explain consciousness? I think I answered your first and third. To answer your second question, both the theory of relativity and quantum physics dissolve time (it's just a variable), as I understand them.
      - hasenj 15y ago
        You're talking about different things. Awareness, Will, machine-like-decision-making. Decision-making can be completely robotic. Will, or Free Will, and whether or not it's compatible with materialism, is another controversial problem. Awareness, is what you feel subjectively. I can build a robot that senses colors, and when it sees the color red, it screams "OMG! RED!!!". This robot however has no awareness what so ever. What you described is exactly the kind of thing that might happen with robots, but it has no relationship to the awareness/consciousness aspect of the problem. > Here are some other examples of "mysterious phenomena" which it took a while to explain (...) This is a weak argument, and really it's irrelevant to the mind-body problem. All things you described are physical states to begin with. A more approximation of the mind-body problem might be some one saying something like this: fire is not the same sort of thing that water is. I can hold water in my hand, but can I hold fire in my hand? I can store water for later use; can I store fire for later use? Now this sort of argument could be right or wrong, but it seems like a plausible thing to say. It's not saying fire is some kind of a super-natural miracle. I think we both agree that we don't know what awareness is; the difference is I'm saying I know what it's not: and I know it will not arise from a computer simulating a brain. Overall I think consciousness is an interesting topic that's worth reading about. I don't mind someone being a materialist, but it doesn't seem like you appreciate the difficulty of the problem. It's theoretically possible that one day we'll know more about awareness, and I don't know what that knowledge would be like, but I'm pretty sure it's not something that arises from running some sort of a computer program. And I can also say with about 85% certainty that it's not reducible to any of the physics we know about today. It's also theoretically possible that we'll never know what awareness is. It might seem outrageous and somewhat a "forbidden" idea to speak, but it's a possibility. Either due to time restraints (the universe dying before we get there) or conceptual restraints (as in, maybe our minds are just not smart enough to figure it out). Unlike most other things in nature, I don't know of anyone who even came up with a hypothesis of what awareness might be. For instance, atoms where theoretically discussed long before science proved they existed, and many different models were advanced to explain and account for planetary motions (many of them were wrong, but you get the idea). But awareness, doesn't even have any model that might account for it; not even a wrong one. That's a strong indication that it might be something outside our comprehension; not much unlike the nature of space and time.
apl 15y ago
Non-materialism isn't as far-fetched as you make it out to be. In fact, no materialist account has managed to give a plausible explanation of how subjectivity and qualia emerge from physical substrates. Not so far, at least. See David Chalmers, among others. EDIT: Really? Downvotes?
- tedkimble 15y ago
  Have you looked into a Deleuzian materialist philosophy? I like DeLanda's article on the open-ended nature of the world: http://www.diss.sense.uni-konstanz.de/virtualitaet/delanda.htm http://www.diss.sense.uni-konstanz.de/virtualitaet/delanda.h...
- CamperBob 15y ago
  I'd say the burden of proof is on the antimaterialist schools.
- khafra 15y ago
  The short version, without references or argumentation: Science can't prove that there aren't any supernatural requirements for a sentient mind. However, Science has proven that most of our intuitions about our own cognition are wrong. Since intuition is the only evidence we have that subjectivity and qualia can arise from mysterious nonphysical processes but not computational, physical processes, Occam's Razor demands that we accept the explanation which accords with proven laws of physics.
Locke1689 15y ago
No, consciousness is the sum of the brain hardware, brain software (which is malleable and not hardwired), and input. If specific input is required to produce emergent conscious behavior, we may not have that result.
hasenj 15y ago
> That is unless you are not a materialist, i.e., you believe that the mind is the product of some non-physical plane that somehow interacts with the physical world through the brain... It has a name: dualism http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dualism_%28philosophy_of_mind%29 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dualism_%28philosophy_of_mind%2... Why are you implying that it's stupid? EDIT: Also note, you don't have to be a dualist to think that consciousness is not a property of a brain model. You could be a materialist and think that consciousness can be given to a machine, but still think it's separate from the turing-machine model of computation. That is, hold the view that consciousness is not a property that can emerge from a computation process; but rather some other different kind of process that's not yet known.
- ciphergoth 15y ago
  You seem to be implying that if a philosophical position has a name, it is not stupid. I'm sorry to be the one to break this to you but that's far from being so.

Alex3917 15y ago

"That is unless you are not a materialist, i.e., you believe that the mind is the product of some non-physical plane that somehow interacts with the physical world through the brain..." Is there any good arguments in favor of materialism? It's always struck me as a completely ridiculous position.

babblefrog 15y ago
To me, the best argument would be that everything else that we have looked at in the universe appears to be completely materialistic. Do you know some reason why the brain might be different?
- hasenj 15y ago
  This subject is just too philosophical for a HN comment, but I think there are at least a few problems with this argument. First of all, almost by definition, we can't really look at anything that's not materialistic; it's just a limitation. For instance, there's no way to prove or disprove the existence of awareness in something or someone. If a robot walks like humans, looks like humans, is it a human? Does it experience anything? Do insects have consciousness? Do animals have it? Does anyone besides me have it? Who says even I have it? How can we test for it? Can we even define it? Who says that my computer mouse doesn't have it? Second, I believe that we only know a tiny fraction of what's out there, or of what's there to know, so it's hard to say that there's nothing beyond matter. And who even says that everything we looked at is materialistic? Is time materialistic? Can it be made from something else? Third, there's nothing materialistic about awareness. It's not as though we can say "it's like a computer program, just more complicated". We can't say that emotions are like variables that control the behavior of a program. Do you know any reason why awareness might be materialistic?
  - lincolnq 15y ago
    Awareness is materialistic because it affects the physical world. How does it affect the physical world? You thought about it, those thoughts were translated into nervous system impulses which caused you to press keys on your computer, which was translated to electrical impulses, etc. So far, we've found exactly zero processes which we can observe (i.e., which affect the physical world) that can't be explained by physics. Yes, there are some processes which we can observe which we can't YET explain very well. But when I am ignorant about a phenomenon, that is a fact about my state of mind, not about the phenomenon. It seems likely that consciousness / awareness is just another physical phenomenon that we haven't explained yet. Here are some other examples of "mysterious phenomena" which it took a while to explain: fire, why the sun rises and sets, the discrepancy of Mercury's orbit (explained by relativity), discrete energy levels (explained by quantum physics). Now, what makes you think physics will never explain consciousness? I think I answered your first and third. To answer your second question, both the theory of relativity and quantum physics dissolve time (it's just a variable), as I understand them.
    - hasenj 15y ago
      You're talking about different things. Awareness, Will, machine-like-decision-making. Decision-making can be completely robotic. Will, or Free Will, and whether or not it's compatible with materialism, is another controversial problem. Awareness, is what you feel subjectively. I can build a robot that senses colors, and when it sees the color red, it screams "OMG! RED!!!". This robot however has no awareness what so ever. What you described is exactly the kind of thing that might happen with robots, but it has no relationship to the awareness/consciousness aspect of the problem. > Here are some other examples of "mysterious phenomena" which it took a while to explain (...) This is a weak argument, and really it's irrelevant to the mind-body problem. All things you described are physical states to begin with. A more approximation of the mind-body problem might be some one saying something like this: fire is not the same sort of thing that water is. I can hold water in my hand, but can I hold fire in my hand? I can store water for later use; can I store fire for later use? Now this sort of argument could be right or wrong, but it seems like a plausible thing to say. It's not saying fire is some kind of a super-natural miracle. I think we both agree that we don't know what awareness is; the difference is I'm saying I know what it's not: and I know it will not arise from a computer simulating a brain. Overall I think consciousness is an interesting topic that's worth reading about. I don't mind someone being a materialist, but it doesn't seem like you appreciate the difficulty of the problem. It's theoretically possible that one day we'll know more about awareness, and I don't know what that knowledge would be like, but I'm pretty sure it's not something that arises from running some sort of a computer program. And I can also say with about 85% certainty that it's not reducible to any of the physics we know about today. It's also theoretically possible that we'll never know what awareness is. It might seem outrageous and somewhat a "forbidden" idea to speak, but it's a possibility. Either due to time restraints (the universe dying before we get there) or conceptual restraints (as in, maybe our minds are just not smart enough to figure it out). Unlike most other things in nature, I don't know of anyone who even came up with a hypothesis of what awareness might be. For instance, atoms where theoretically discussed long before science proved they existed, and many different models were advanced to explain and account for planetary motions (many of them were wrong, but you get the idea). But awareness, doesn't even have any model that might account for it; not even a wrong one. That's a strong indication that it might be something outside our comprehension; not much unlike the nature of space and time.

apl 15y ago

Non-materialism isn't as far-fetched as you make it out to be. In fact, no materialist account has managed to give a plausible explanation of how subjectivity and qualia emerge from physical substrates. Not so far, at least. See David Chalmers, among others. EDIT: Really? Downvotes?

tedkimble 15y ago
Have you looked into a Deleuzian materialist philosophy? I like DeLanda's article on the open-ended nature of the world: http://www.diss.sense.uni-konstanz.de/virtualitaet/delanda.htm http://www.diss.sense.uni-konstanz.de/virtualitaet/delanda.h...
CamperBob 15y ago
I'd say the burden of proof is on the antimaterialist schools.
khafra 15y ago
The short version, without references or argumentation: Science can't prove that there aren't any supernatural requirements for a sentient mind. However, Science has proven that most of our intuitions about our own cognition are wrong. Since intuition is the only evidence we have that subjectivity and qualia can arise from mysterious nonphysical processes but not computational, physical processes, Occam's Razor demands that we accept the explanation which accords with proven laws of physics.

Locke1689 15y ago

No, consciousness is the sum of the brain hardware, brain software (which is malleable and not hardwired), and input. If specific input is required to produce emergent conscious behavior, we may not have that result.

hasenj 15y ago

> That is unless you are not a materialist, i.e., you believe that the mind is the product of some non-physical plane that somehow interacts with the physical world through the brain... It has a name: dualism http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dualism_%28philosophy_of_mind%29 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dualism_%28philosophy_of_mind%2... Why are you implying that it's stupid? EDIT: Also note, you don't have to be a dualist to think that consciousness is not a property of a brain model. You could be a materialist and think that consciousness can be given to a machine, but still think it's separate from the turing-machine model of computation. That is, hold the view that consciousness is not a property that can emerge from a computation process; but rather some other different kind of process that's not yet known.

ciphergoth 15y ago
You seem to be implying that if a philosophical position has a name, it is not stupid. I'm sorry to be the one to break this to you but that's far from being so.