6 ms·

Consciousness has an easy enough explanation requiring no quantum physics

teilo 5y ago
Dunning-Kruger. Consciousness has, as yet, no empirical explanation. Only a variety of theories that, so far, have failed to make any headway in providing an explanation. That's why it's called the "hard problem of consciousness." If you think there is an easy answer, then you do not yet understand the question.
- faeyanpiraat 5y ago
  I think the OP meant that no fancy physics is required for neurons to work, and consciousness is in some not yet known way the result of our brain wiring. Just like you do not need quantum physics to explain how muscles work.
  - seiferteric 5y ago
    Not saying I believe it but I think it is conceivable that the neural networks in our brain are there for certain things like motor function learning, basically like a fancy control system, while the "mysterious quantum stuff" is there for "consciousness". The fact is we can't really define consciousness so we don't know what it takes to make it...
    - mannykannot 5y ago
      The view stated in your last sentence is a commonly-held one, but if we needed complete definitions of something before we could have knowledge of it, I doubt we would ever have come up with the idea of a gravitational field or a wave function. The solid definition of consciousness will follow from our future understanding of how minds work, not be a prerequisite for it.
      - seiferteric 5y ago
        > I doubt we would ever have come up with the idea of a gravitational field or a wave function. But that is the opposite of the case here. We came up with those ideas after we had an understanding of the system. With consciousness, people casually use the term all the time and think they have a vague idea of what it is, but we have little understanding of the system. It may be that it simply does not exist for example.
        mannykannot 5y ago
        you have a point - they are not exact analogies - but, as you say, we came up with those ideas after we had an understanding of the system. If we can discover things without having a prior definition of them, then having a vague prior definition should be no obstacle - even if it leads to some initial confusion, clearing that up through the gathering of evidence should be no harder than coming up with a definition for something we previously did not suspect through the gathering of evidence. This is so even if it turns out that the phenomenon does not exist, such as in the case of the mythical causal effects of the four humors.
- mannykannot 5y ago
  The "Hard Problem" is much more specific - and speculative - than the observation that current theories have made little or no progress (whether they have made any progress remains to be seen, and any claim that they have not is just opinion.) It is the claim that the scientific method cannot, in principle, explain the "what it is like" aspect of experience - that there is some sort of unbridgeable explanatory gap.
- roenxi 5y ago
  > Consciousness has, as yet, no empirical explanation. Because nobody has a definition and when it turns out that computers can fit the definition people will move the goalposts. The hard problem of consciousness is getting a priest to agree to a definition that a scientist can test. Because everything that touches the real world can probably be modelled with distressing accuracy by matrix multiplications and a little non-linearity.
  - mistermann 5y ago
    > Because nobody has a definition That's not the only reason though. > The hard problem of consciousness is getting a priest to agree to a definition that a scientist can test. Scientists are free (assuming free will) to define their own, which I think they (some) actually have.
- breuleux 5y ago
  > If you think there is an easy answer, then you do not yet understand the question. There is no easy answer that people find satisfactory, but it very well might be that people's intuitive understanding of their own consciousness is incoherent and there are in fact no answers at all that don't violate one or more of the arbitrary axioms that populate the thoughtspace regarding that concept.
- tsimionescu 5y ago
  The hard problem of consciousness seems almost entirely made up by people who a priori reject physcalism and reductionism. They generally start by assuming that there is something different between knowing what, say, a color is vs the experience of seeing that color, and deduce from this that qualia exist and have definite meaning. However, if we don't start with such assumptions, it is easy to accept that our attention mechanisms have some way of interpreting the stimuli that they receive, and that similar computational architectures will interpret these stimuli the same way. It is entirely possible that all humans experience pain almost identically, aand that it is even more or less identical to how dogs experience pain; while at the same time, an alien or AGI might experience these things entirely differently. It is also quite obvious that a being without self-reflection, such as a microprocessor, will not have this experience mechanism, almost by definition. With enough study of the computational structure of the brain, we will likely come to even understand the precise advantage that experiences (self-reflection) have. To give just one personal reason why I don't believe in the idea/importance of qualia, I feel very clearly that there are certain mental states that I experience (such as colors and smells etc), but there are also mental states that don't have an associated experience. for example, I don't think there is such a thing as 'the feeling of thinking about the number 277`. This to me suggests strongly that experiences are a specialized part of our computational apparatus, with specific roles that we don't understand precisely now (like so much about our minds), but with limited applicability - not some be-all, end-all of consciousness and thought. I will also note that my position is entirely in line with philosophers like Daniel Dennett, it is not some dismissal of mainstream philosophical thought.
  - teilo 5y ago
    "knowing" and "experiencing" may or may not be different things. I believe they are aspects of the same thing. But equating them does not solve the problem. What does it mean "to know" as opposed to contain, or have access to information? A computer program, in one sense, "knows" what the current value of a variable is. But it has no awareness of its own knowing. There is no doubt that we are creatures of stimuli that is computationally processed in the nervous system. However, there is an ontological difference between the the ability to process stimuli, and the experience of said stimuli. The presumption is that with a sufficiently complex system, the ability to experience stimuli will self-reflective awareness, i.e., consciousness will emerge. But that's a whole lot of hand-waving. What is the mechanism? None is offered. It is only assumed. As others have noted, we cannot even agree on what the term "consciousness" means, and because of this, some would like to posit that consciousness does not actually exist, i.e., that it is illusory. The irony of this conjecture is that they are trying to convince self-aware beings that they are not self-aware. The intent to convince the other is itself a function of self-awareness. Intent cannot exist without self-awareness, and Persuasion of "the other" also cannot exist without self-awareness. Denying a phenomenon does not make it go away. I could just as easily respond to the person making this argument that if, indeed, self-awareness is an illusion, then so is their argument. It is mere data, the product of a series of calculations leading to a linguistic expression that intends to communicate nothing. It is merely the output from an extremely complex set of interlocking algorithms. Despite the difficulty of agreeing to a definition of consciousness, we each, to a person, know what it is because of our own experience. The reason all current attempts to explain consciousness are unsatisfactory is because these attempts contradict our common experience. In fact, every attempt so far denies experience itself. They are unsatisfactory because they are illogical, or because they do not provide any explanation at all, but merely presume that somehow the conclusion is achieved, despite the lack of any mechanism in the proposition that can bring us to that conclusion. If we can even go so far as to agree: "Consciousness is a property of a being that is aware of its own existence, and is able to contemplate its own existence as an entity distinct from its environment," this does not make it any easier to explain how any computational model will arrive at such a property. One does not have to be a theist to acknowledge this. Some of the best minds in consciousness research are atheists.
mandmandam 5y ago
Do tell.
squeaky-clean 5y ago
Would you mind sharing it?
umvi 5y ago
Let me guess though, the margin is too small to contain said explanation? (This is a reference to Fermat's Last Theorem in which Fermat confidently proclaimed in a margin of his book that he had a simple elegant proof which the margin was too small to contain)

Dunning-Kruger. Consciousness has, as yet, no empirical explanation. Only a variety of theories that, so far, have failed to make any headway in providing an explanation. That's why it's called the "hard problem of consciousness." If you think there is an easy answer, then you do not yet understand the question.

faeyanpiraat 5y ago
I think the OP meant that no fancy physics is required for neurons to work, and consciousness is in some not yet known way the result of our brain wiring. Just like you do not need quantum physics to explain how muscles work.
- seiferteric 5y ago
  Not saying I believe it but I think it is conceivable that the neural networks in our brain are there for certain things like motor function learning, basically like a fancy control system, while the "mysterious quantum stuff" is there for "consciousness". The fact is we can't really define consciousness so we don't know what it takes to make it...
  - mannykannot 5y ago
    The view stated in your last sentence is a commonly-held one, but if we needed complete definitions of something before we could have knowledge of it, I doubt we would ever have come up with the idea of a gravitational field or a wave function. The solid definition of consciousness will follow from our future understanding of how minds work, not be a prerequisite for it.
    - seiferteric 5y ago
      > I doubt we would ever have come up with the idea of a gravitational field or a wave function. But that is the opposite of the case here. We came up with those ideas after we had an understanding of the system. With consciousness, people casually use the term all the time and think they have a vague idea of what it is, but we have little understanding of the system. It may be that it simply does not exist for example.
      - mannykannot 5y ago
        you have a point - they are not exact analogies - but, as you say, we came up with those ideas after we had an understanding of the system. If we can discover things without having a prior definition of them, then having a vague prior definition should be no obstacle - even if it leads to some initial confusion, clearing that up through the gathering of evidence should be no harder than coming up with a definition for something we previously did not suspect through the gathering of evidence. This is so even if it turns out that the phenomenon does not exist, such as in the case of the mythical causal effects of the four humors.
mannykannot 5y ago
The "Hard Problem" is much more specific - and speculative - than the observation that current theories have made little or no progress (whether they have made any progress remains to be seen, and any claim that they have not is just opinion.) It is the claim that the scientific method cannot, in principle, explain the "what it is like" aspect of experience - that there is some sort of unbridgeable explanatory gap.
roenxi 5y ago
> Consciousness has, as yet, no empirical explanation. Because nobody has a definition and when it turns out that computers can fit the definition people will move the goalposts. The hard problem of consciousness is getting a priest to agree to a definition that a scientist can test. Because everything that touches the real world can probably be modelled with distressing accuracy by matrix multiplications and a little non-linearity.
- mistermann 5y ago
  > Because nobody has a definition That's not the only reason though. > The hard problem of consciousness is getting a priest to agree to a definition that a scientist can test. Scientists are free (assuming free will) to define their own, which I think they (some) actually have.
breuleux 5y ago
> If you think there is an easy answer, then you do not yet understand the question. There is no easy answer that people find satisfactory, but it very well might be that people's intuitive understanding of their own consciousness is incoherent and there are in fact no answers at all that don't violate one or more of the arbitrary axioms that populate the thoughtspace regarding that concept.
tsimionescu 5y ago
The hard problem of consciousness seems almost entirely made up by people who a priori reject physcalism and reductionism. They generally start by assuming that there is something different between knowing what, say, a color is vs the experience of seeing that color, and deduce from this that qualia exist and have definite meaning. However, if we don't start with such assumptions, it is easy to accept that our attention mechanisms have some way of interpreting the stimuli that they receive, and that similar computational architectures will interpret these stimuli the same way. It is entirely possible that all humans experience pain almost identically, aand that it is even more or less identical to how dogs experience pain; while at the same time, an alien or AGI might experience these things entirely differently. It is also quite obvious that a being without self-reflection, such as a microprocessor, will not have this experience mechanism, almost by definition. With enough study of the computational structure of the brain, we will likely come to even understand the precise advantage that experiences (self-reflection) have. To give just one personal reason why I don't believe in the idea/importance of qualia, I feel very clearly that there are certain mental states that I experience (such as colors and smells etc), but there are also mental states that don't have an associated experience. for example, I don't think there is such a thing as 'the feeling of thinking about the number 277`. This to me suggests strongly that experiences are a specialized part of our computational apparatus, with specific roles that we don't understand precisely now (like so much about our minds), but with limited applicability - not some be-all, end-all of consciousness and thought. I will also note that my position is entirely in line with philosophers like Daniel Dennett, it is not some dismissal of mainstream philosophical thought.
- teilo 5y ago
  "knowing" and "experiencing" may or may not be different things. I believe they are aspects of the same thing. But equating them does not solve the problem. What does it mean "to know" as opposed to contain, or have access to information? A computer program, in one sense, "knows" what the current value of a variable is. But it has no awareness of its own knowing. There is no doubt that we are creatures of stimuli that is computationally processed in the nervous system. However, there is an ontological difference between the the ability to process stimuli, and the experience of said stimuli. The presumption is that with a sufficiently complex system, the ability to experience stimuli will self-reflective awareness, i.e., consciousness will emerge. But that's a whole lot of hand-waving. What is the mechanism? None is offered. It is only assumed. As others have noted, we cannot even agree on what the term "consciousness" means, and because of this, some would like to posit that consciousness does not actually exist, i.e., that it is illusory. The irony of this conjecture is that they are trying to convince self-aware beings that they are not self-aware. The intent to convince the other is itself a function of self-awareness. Intent cannot exist without self-awareness, and Persuasion of "the other" also cannot exist without self-awareness. Denying a phenomenon does not make it go away. I could just as easily respond to the person making this argument that if, indeed, self-awareness is an illusion, then so is their argument. It is mere data, the product of a series of calculations leading to a linguistic expression that intends to communicate nothing. It is merely the output from an extremely complex set of interlocking algorithms. Despite the difficulty of agreeing to a definition of consciousness, we each, to a person, know what it is because of our own experience. The reason all current attempts to explain consciousness are unsatisfactory is because these attempts contradict our common experience. In fact, every attempt so far denies experience itself. They are unsatisfactory because they are illogical, or because they do not provide any explanation at all, but merely presume that somehow the conclusion is achieved, despite the lack of any mechanism in the proposition that can bring us to that conclusion. If we can even go so far as to agree: "Consciousness is a property of a being that is aware of its own existence, and is able to contemplate its own existence as an entity distinct from its environment," this does not make it any easier to explain how any computational model will arrive at such a property. One does not have to be a theist to acknowledge this. Some of the best minds in consciousness research are atheists.

mandmandam 5y ago

Do tell.

squeaky-clean 5y ago

Would you mind sharing it?

umvi 5y ago

Let me guess though, the margin is too small to contain said explanation? (This is a reference to Fermat's Last Theorem in which Fermat confidently proclaimed in a margin of his book that he had a simple elegant proof which the margin was too small to contain)