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"I think consciousness is just emergent from complexity, so what I have to say is valid, but people who suspect that's not the full story, well that's pointless

"I think consciousness is just emergent from complexity, so what I have to say is valid, but people who suspect that's not the full story, well that's pointless to debate, they should use my framework for discussion" sheesh. weak.

jjcon 5y ago
It is pointless to debate with someone that invokes ideas outside the realm of scientific inquiry... that is definitionally true isn't it?
- vba616 5y ago
  If I claim "no advanced automobile will ever develop the ability to run like a horse as an emergent phenomenon" Does that mean that I regard running as outside the realm of scientific inquiry?
  - jjcon 5y ago
    I think OP is saying in this specific instance a lot of people are defining the word ‘consciousness’ as to be outside the realm of scientific inquiry. Certainly there is room to question if neural nets have developed consciousness as an emergent phenomena but if your definition of consciousness falls outside of scientific inquiry… what is the point in discussing it? Does that make more sense?
- NateEag 5y ago
  If so, then there's no point in ever debating a mathematical idea.
  - jjcon 5y ago
    Since when is math outside the realm of science?
    - NateEag 5y ago
      Math is established by logic and proof. If a proof is sound, it should stand eternally. Humans are not perfect, so sometimes we are collectively mistaken about a proof's correctness. The fundamental nature of the process is still one of establishing inviolably proven facts and building on top of them. Science, on the other hand, is a never-ending iterative approximation process with occasional massive discontinuities when accepted theories are overturned. It relies on observed report and falsification of our current best guesses. No scientific "law" can ever be proven true, just labeled "not known to be wrong so far". Math is much closer to philosophy than science. It just happens to be pragmatically useful to the sciences: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Unreasonable_Effectiveness_of_Mathematics_in_the_Natural_Sciences https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Unreasonable_Effectivene...
      - jjcon 5y ago
        I don't think any of that would put it outside the realm of science by any stretch though - science has its gradients, where some of it is ruled by math alone and other components are more data driven/'right until proven wrong' but it all falls under the scientific tooling and approach to the world.
theferalrobot 5y ago
>but people who suspect that's not the full story, well that's pointless to debate, they should use my framework for discussion You can believe whatever you want, use whatever framework you want (religion, spirituality, science etc). I'm just pointing out that it is pointless to debate between the two because they fundamentally disagree about how to inquire about the world and answer questions like this. Everyone in this debate is talking past each other without acknowledging that they are starting from two very different positions and sets of definitions.
- fsckboy 5y ago
  it sounds like you put yourself in a class of people who are perfectly rational, and therefore anything that you can't think of doesn't exist, and anybody who thinks about those things is a mystic. you are making a mistake like physicists who believed "God does not play dice with the world" at the dawn of quantum mechanics or "time is a constant, not the speed of light" at the dawn of relativity. You have no idea where consciousness comes from, stop assuming you do, it's poor science. (For the record, I'm sure the integral of my history of atheism is strictly greater than yours, mentioning since that seems to be the subtext of your argument.)
  - theferalrobot 5y ago
    I think you are completely missing what I am saying and you also seem to be fallaciously appealing to skepticism (are you a global skeptic [0]?). Sure you can say ‘but there is so much we don’t know’, I’m not arguing we know everything. That is not in any way what I am saying. I am saying it is pointless to appeal to such things. If we always appealed to skepticism science would never advance because everything would be too unknowable. We get to define what words like consciousness means, so we can intentionally define to be within the realm of scientific inquiry. Most people probably define consciousness outside of scientific realm of inquiry (notions of a soul etc) and that is fine, but at least in the first definition there can be scientific debate. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radical_skepticism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radical_skepticism

jjcon 5y ago

It is pointless to debate with someone that invokes ideas outside the realm of scientific inquiry... that is definitionally true isn't it?

vba616 5y ago
If I claim "no advanced automobile will ever develop the ability to run like a horse as an emergent phenomenon" Does that mean that I regard running as outside the realm of scientific inquiry?
- jjcon 5y ago
  I think OP is saying in this specific instance a lot of people are defining the word ‘consciousness’ as to be outside the realm of scientific inquiry. Certainly there is room to question if neural nets have developed consciousness as an emergent phenomena but if your definition of consciousness falls outside of scientific inquiry… what is the point in discussing it? Does that make more sense?
NateEag 5y ago
If so, then there's no point in ever debating a mathematical idea.
- jjcon 5y ago
  Since when is math outside the realm of science?
  - NateEag 5y ago
    Math is established by logic and proof. If a proof is sound, it should stand eternally. Humans are not perfect, so sometimes we are collectively mistaken about a proof's correctness. The fundamental nature of the process is still one of establishing inviolably proven facts and building on top of them. Science, on the other hand, is a never-ending iterative approximation process with occasional massive discontinuities when accepted theories are overturned. It relies on observed report and falsification of our current best guesses. No scientific "law" can ever be proven true, just labeled "not known to be wrong so far". Math is much closer to philosophy than science. It just happens to be pragmatically useful to the sciences: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Unreasonable_Effectiveness_of_Mathematics_in_the_Natural_Sciences https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Unreasonable_Effectivene...
    - jjcon 5y ago
      I don't think any of that would put it outside the realm of science by any stretch though - science has its gradients, where some of it is ruled by math alone and other components are more data driven/'right until proven wrong' but it all falls under the scientific tooling and approach to the world.

theferalrobot 5y ago

>but people who suspect that's not the full story, well that's pointless to debate, they should use my framework for discussion You can believe whatever you want, use whatever framework you want (religion, spirituality, science etc). I'm just pointing out that it is pointless to debate between the two because they fundamentally disagree about how to inquire about the world and answer questions like this. Everyone in this debate is talking past each other without acknowledging that they are starting from two very different positions and sets of definitions.

fsckboy 5y ago
it sounds like you put yourself in a class of people who are perfectly rational, and therefore anything that you can't think of doesn't exist, and anybody who thinks about those things is a mystic. you are making a mistake like physicists who believed "God does not play dice with the world" at the dawn of quantum mechanics or "time is a constant, not the speed of light" at the dawn of relativity. You have no idea where consciousness comes from, stop assuming you do, it's poor science. (For the record, I'm sure the integral of my history of atheism is strictly greater than yours, mentioning since that seems to be the subtext of your argument.)
- theferalrobot 5y ago
  I think you are completely missing what I am saying and you also seem to be fallaciously appealing to skepticism (are you a global skeptic [0]?). Sure you can say ‘but there is so much we don’t know’, I’m not arguing we know everything. That is not in any way what I am saying. I am saying it is pointless to appeal to such things. If we always appealed to skepticism science would never advance because everything would be too unknowable. We get to define what words like consciousness means, so we can intentionally define to be within the realm of scientific inquiry. Most people probably define consciousness outside of scientific realm of inquiry (notions of a soul etc) and that is fine, but at least in the first definition there can be scientific debate. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radical_skepticism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radical_skepticism