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What gap are you speaking of though? Do you suspect there is some as yet undiscovered fundamental quantity of the universe which lay dormant for billions of yea

What gap are you speaking of though? Do you suspect there is some as yet undiscovered fundamental quantity of the universe which lay dormant for billions of years until the human form evolved to make use of it?

andybak 5y ago
> Do you suspect there is some as yet undiscovered fundamental quantity of the universe which lay dormant for billions of years until the human form evolved to make use of it? No idea. That's not what I'm discussing here. The gap is the fact that I indisputably experience things that happen to me. I feel them. There is an "I" to talk about that has genuine meaning in a way that it wouldn't do if a fictional character or a computer programming used the word. It's possible to imagine a form of life as complex as ours with functioning societies where non of the lifeforms experienced the world as an "I". Maybe ants don't have an "I". NPCs in a video game or GPT3 almost certainly don't. At some point GPTx or video game NPCs might become as complex or behaviourly rich as a real person but still lack an "I". This is a p-zombie. The "gap" I'm referring to is the difference beween similar entities, one of which experiences qualia when the other doesn't.
- CuriousSkeptic 5y ago
  You seem to extrapolate from a single sample that the probabilities of an “I” experience differs between individuals based on how similar they are to you. I would say that if you can imagine other complex life forms without that experience it must be equally valid to assume the same can be true for everyone around you. Perhaps it’s only you.
  - andybak 5y ago
    > Perhaps it’s only you. And thus solipsism rears it's slightly unsightly head once again. Solipsism has always had the virtue of being coherent - unlike many other theories in this area. I think pan-psychism also has this quality. The issue is they are both lead you to some bizarre conclusions. In some ways it's an analogue to the role Many Worlds plays in the philosophy of Quantum Theory. "cheap on assumptions, expensive on universes"... I do lean towards some form of pan-psychism. Or at least I'm not sure you can get to "I" from a strictly materialist starting point. However I think it's also likely that we're missing a fundemental part of the problem and these conversations will one day look like the babblings of children.
    - CuriousSkeptic 5y ago
      I think its not only analogue to the many worlds, I quite suspect it’s the same problem actually. Or rather it seems we’re basically asking the wrong questions and therefore ending up with seemingly bizarre or contradicting things like particle/wave duality or the concept of time. How can we have consciousness when there is no objective “now”? To me the question of which processes experience consciousness is akin to asking if a sound wave is a crescendo or how many image frames in a movie is required to make a scene. Well, it depends... you might say, and the follow up question “depends on what?” is much more interesting. Some physicists say the world is fully determined. That there are at least four fully existing dimensions of space time, or even more than that given some interpretations of quantum mechanics. So we are given a static structure with certain patterns following specific laws of how the structure may be formed. Like if you made a 3D-print of a play of conways game of life. Now in that static structure we have this interesting phenomenon called consciousness that at first approximation looks like paths of focus tracing specific patterns. There might be just a single path, or many, or even a single connected path through them all as you say. I’m a compaibilist here, I don’t think it’s a difference with more substance to it than the particle/wave duality. It’s mostly a matter of perspective.
- bserge 5y ago
  I see what you mean, however in my opinion this "I" you are talking about is just an evolution of the human brain, most likely for the purpose of social cohesiveness/activity/integration/interaction. Everything we do beyond maintaining our own body is for society. Every action taken is rooted in social hierarchy, social undertakings, social interaction. Better clothes, better cars, better phones for better social status, more knowledge, more money, more research to advance society. Someone who lives alone in the woods will not take care of themselves much (just like ants, btw), and everyone who has discovered/learned something has an almost compulsive need to share it with others. If they didn't share, they'd be an outcast, considered broken by everyone else. A lot of similarities with an ant or bee hive there, except we're more autonomous as individuals. Our species is not just about the individual, and as society grew, it required more and more advanced individual hardware and software, which our primitive brains did not have. So it was evolving. Evolving likely by cooperative/social individuals/groups being superior to less cooperative/social ones in survival and warfare. And what it has evolved into is the "I" we experience today. It adds a whole new layer of complexity, but it's still just "software" running on the same brain as everything else and using the same resources. There is that theory of the bicameral mind, not sure how accepted it is, but it does seem like a good description of an earlier version of our current minds. And yes, I believe other social animals also have this sense of "I", even if primitive. Just one of my (possibly insane) theories, since I find myself thinking about this quite often, in the context of artificial intelligence based on the human one.
  - andybak 5y ago
    I agree with most of this but all that adaptation and behavioral complexity could also happen to a race of p-zombies. And I still struggle to see how "I" (as distinct from behavioral patterns mostly indistinguishable from "I"-hood) can emerge in a materialist univere without some substrate that has properties beyond the mechanical. I'm veering dangerously close to mysticism and the non-falsifiable here. But it seems inescapable for the same reason Descartes clearly stated. My "I"-ness is the only indisputable fact about reality and the one from which all other beliefs follow.

andybak 5y ago

> Do you suspect there is some as yet undiscovered fundamental quantity of the universe which lay dormant for billions of years until the human form evolved to make use of it? No idea. That's not what I'm discussing here. The gap is the fact that I indisputably experience things that happen to me. I feel them. There is an "I" to talk about that has genuine meaning in a way that it wouldn't do if a fictional character or a computer programming used the word. It's possible to imagine a form of life as complex as ours with functioning societies where non of the lifeforms experienced the world as an "I". Maybe ants don't have an "I". NPCs in a video game or GPT3 almost certainly don't. At some point GPTx or video game NPCs might become as complex or behaviourly rich as a real person but still lack an "I". This is a p-zombie. The "gap" I'm referring to is the difference beween similar entities, one of which experiences qualia when the other doesn't.

CuriousSkeptic 5y ago
You seem to extrapolate from a single sample that the probabilities of an “I” experience differs between individuals based on how similar they are to you. I would say that if you can imagine other complex life forms without that experience it must be equally valid to assume the same can be true for everyone around you. Perhaps it’s only you.
- andybak 5y ago
  > Perhaps it’s only you. And thus solipsism rears it's slightly unsightly head once again. Solipsism has always had the virtue of being coherent - unlike many other theories in this area. I think pan-psychism also has this quality. The issue is they are both lead you to some bizarre conclusions. In some ways it's an analogue to the role Many Worlds plays in the philosophy of Quantum Theory. "cheap on assumptions, expensive on universes"... I do lean towards some form of pan-psychism. Or at least I'm not sure you can get to "I" from a strictly materialist starting point. However I think it's also likely that we're missing a fundemental part of the problem and these conversations will one day look like the babblings of children.
  - CuriousSkeptic 5y ago
    I think its not only analogue to the many worlds, I quite suspect it’s the same problem actually. Or rather it seems we’re basically asking the wrong questions and therefore ending up with seemingly bizarre or contradicting things like particle/wave duality or the concept of time. How can we have consciousness when there is no objective “now”? To me the question of which processes experience consciousness is akin to asking if a sound wave is a crescendo or how many image frames in a movie is required to make a scene. Well, it depends... you might say, and the follow up question “depends on what?” is much more interesting. Some physicists say the world is fully determined. That there are at least four fully existing dimensions of space time, or even more than that given some interpretations of quantum mechanics. So we are given a static structure with certain patterns following specific laws of how the structure may be formed. Like if you made a 3D-print of a play of conways game of life. Now in that static structure we have this interesting phenomenon called consciousness that at first approximation looks like paths of focus tracing specific patterns. There might be just a single path, or many, or even a single connected path through them all as you say. I’m a compaibilist here, I don’t think it’s a difference with more substance to it than the particle/wave duality. It’s mostly a matter of perspective.
bserge 5y ago
I see what you mean, however in my opinion this "I" you are talking about is just an evolution of the human brain, most likely for the purpose of social cohesiveness/activity/integration/interaction. Everything we do beyond maintaining our own body is for society. Every action taken is rooted in social hierarchy, social undertakings, social interaction. Better clothes, better cars, better phones for better social status, more knowledge, more money, more research to advance society. Someone who lives alone in the woods will not take care of themselves much (just like ants, btw), and everyone who has discovered/learned something has an almost compulsive need to share it with others. If they didn't share, they'd be an outcast, considered broken by everyone else. A lot of similarities with an ant or bee hive there, except we're more autonomous as individuals. Our species is not just about the individual, and as society grew, it required more and more advanced individual hardware and software, which our primitive brains did not have. So it was evolving. Evolving likely by cooperative/social individuals/groups being superior to less cooperative/social ones in survival and warfare. And what it has evolved into is the "I" we experience today. It adds a whole new layer of complexity, but it's still just "software" running on the same brain as everything else and using the same resources. There is that theory of the bicameral mind, not sure how accepted it is, but it does seem like a good description of an earlier version of our current minds. And yes, I believe other social animals also have this sense of "I", even if primitive. Just one of my (possibly insane) theories, since I find myself thinking about this quite often, in the context of artificial intelligence based on the human one.
- andybak 5y ago
  I agree with most of this but all that adaptation and behavioral complexity could also happen to a race of p-zombies. And I still struggle to see how "I" (as distinct from behavioral patterns mostly indistinguishable from "I"-hood) can emerge in a materialist univere without some substrate that has properties beyond the mechanical. I'm veering dangerously close to mysticism and the non-falsifiable here. But it seems inescapable for the same reason Descartes clearly stated. My "I"-ness is the only indisputable fact about reality and the one from which all other beliefs follow.