5 ms·

Whenever I see "qualia" being discussed I just roll my eyes. Asking whether a CPU can experience qualia is kind of like asking if atoms can experience anything

Whenever I see "qualia" being discussed I just roll my eyes. Asking whether a CPU can experience qualia is kind of like asking if atoms can experience anything. The CPU is just the substrate on which software runs.

saulpw 4y ago
You're being quite dismissive of a very real question. Where does our subjective experience come from? If there was an AGI with human-level intelligence, would it have its own subjective experience? How could we possibly know (either way)? For that matter, does a brain have a subjective experience, or is it just the substrate on which a mind runs?
- adastra22 4y ago
  Why does it matter?
- UmbertoNoEco 4y ago
  Probably it is a valid question, but I lost my patience a long long long time ago with the David Chalmers and Thomas Nagels of this world. They love to play a god of the gaps game with consciousness which it is really boring. The same thing some scientists did regarding life in the 19th century , which still some people play btw: the search for the supposed elan-vital. Count me in with Dr I-refute-thus Johnson and the anesthesiologists on the physical-reductionist side.
- K0SM0S 4y ago
  There's no asking, let alone answering this question beyond mere speculations, until we've defined "subjective experience" in objective terms — i.e. positively provable, measurable in some unambiguous way (not merely inferred). That is the hard problem. Solving it might require reframing the problem such that this dichotomy isn't even relevant anymore (like say electromagnetic information isn't "opposed" or "dual" or "exclusive" to a gravitational field but merely concurrent) if we are to unify somehow the general field of "theory of mind".
  - tshaddox 4y ago
    It strikes me as odd to start from the position "we declare this thing to undeniably exist" and then spend generations trying to spit out even one sentence describing what evidence or explanation for its existence might even plausibly look like.
    - K0SM0S 4y ago
      …to the point of claiming it "must be present in all things, living or otherwise, even particles, yet perfectly invisible" (panpsychism, iirc?). Because why not generalizing a flawed hypothesis whose observational range is limited to a tiny subset of existence (advanced biological species, as far as we know). ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ IMHO it's the old darkness/duality problem all over again — postulating some "essence" (e.g. the spiritual/religious Soul) and basing theory on a mere intuition, instead of invoking a "placeholder" (like "dark matter" isn't necessarily matter but literally "something that behaves as such" whatever it actually is, or like "dark energy" isn't necessarily a fifth interaction but certainly behaves as such or as anti-gravity of sorts; wherein "dark" means "unknown and hidden from direct observation, merely inferred"). Hence my call to not infer the very measurement thereof if we are to call an explanatory hypothesis. Should we start by stating that "qualia" or "consciousness" or whatever is a placeholder name for "whatever dark (unknown, black-box) mechanism explains the observable phenomenon named as such", then we might have a chance at actually forming a coherent theory thereof. IMHO.
      - tshaddox 4y ago
        > Should we start by stating that "qualia" or "consciousness" or whatever is a placeholder name for "whatever dark (unknown, black-box) mechanism explains the observable phenomenon named as such", then we might have a chance at actually forming a coherent theory thereof. IMHO. Perhaps, although in the case of qualia I’m not sure what the phenomenon is that we need a placeholder explanation for. For dark matter we’ve got certain observations of galaxies. For qualia we’ve got, what? A lot of people who feel very strongly that they are unable to deny the existence of something that they cannot describe beyond that claim of undeniable existence? If that’s how astrophysicists explained dark matter I’d be inclined to think that maybe it just doesn’t exist. Edit: thanks to autocomplete we were briefly embroiled in an argument about the existence of quails.
- tshaddox 4y ago
  Sometimes questions need to be dismissed, including very real questions that many people in good faith spend their lives thinking about and discussing. Sometimes the "answer" to a question is the dismissal of the question, or more accurately, the solution to the problem the question refers to involves an explanation that the question was ill-formed or nonsensical. I won't say I'm at that point with the question of qualia, but I share the other commenter's reflexive eye-rolling when I hear it invoked. Perhaps the question doesn't deserve to be dismissed, but I'd certainly like to see some new clarity about what the question is really asking, what problems would be solved by finding an answer to the question, or heck, even a remotely plausible description of what form a valid answer might take.
  - ImprobableTruth 4y ago
    Well, on the other hand I also roll my eyes pretty hard whenever I see a post that pretends that subjective experience is some esoteric concept. The question is simply "Will robots feel just like you do, or will they merely be pretending?" - it's something any child could understand. Answers could be something like "No, because they lack X", "Yes, but only those that have X" or "Yes, everything does (panpsychism)". Do you care about potential AI suffering? If you care about animal suffering, the answer to the question would have pretty obvious and major ethical implications. Now, I'm not convinced that humans can ever determine an answer, so I can understand thinking it's just navel gazing, but I imagine the same applies to knowing what happened before the big bang. I think it's quite evident that this doesn't mean either question is malformed.
    - bseidensticker 4y ago
      I can't be sure that other people feel in the same way that I do. I assume they do because they act like it and so I go along with it. If I can't be 100% sure that people feel in the same way that I do, then asking that same question for robots is totally pointless.
      - ImprobableTruth 4y ago
        I'm pretty sure your rationale is more complex than that, you probably also account for things like "how similar are they to me?". After all, you wouldn't believe a video game character if they told you they were conscious, right? >If I can't be 100% sure that people feel in the same way that I do, then asking that same question for robots is totally pointless. I don't see how that at all follows.
- olalonde 4y ago
  You can't possibly know. Just as you can't possibly know if anyone else experiences a subjective experience or if you're the only one who does. In practice, it is advisable to act as if agents who behave as if they had a subjective experience really do (people, AGIs, animals, etc.). Related: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophical_zombie https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophical_zombie
  - tomcatfish 4y ago
    The concept of a philosophical zombie is outright incoherent under most formulations. The argument runs "What if everything was exactly like a universe where everyone had a mind except that no one had a mind?" The answer is that one of these things is true: * P-zombies would write IDENTICAL papers about how they experience qualia but p-zombie land wouldn't * The mind has some effect on the universe you can detect, so P-zombie universe looks quite different
    - olalonde 4y ago
      The p-zombie thought experiment pre-supposes or rather, defines, consciousness as being non-physical. If it were physical, the two worlds would obviously be distinguishable. My take-away from it is that the p-zombie world is simply our world. The theory that "a non-physical consciousness exists" can't be tested and is therefore a bad theory.
d_tr 4y ago
> The CPU is just the substrate on which software runs. So what? Software is still physical configuration on a running system.

saulpw 4y ago

You're being quite dismissive of a very real question. Where does our subjective experience come from? If there was an AGI with human-level intelligence, would it have its own subjective experience? How could we possibly know (either way)? For that matter, does a brain have a subjective experience, or is it just the substrate on which a mind runs?

adastra22 4y ago
Why does it matter?
UmbertoNoEco 4y ago
Probably it is a valid question, but I lost my patience a long long long time ago with the David Chalmers and Thomas Nagels of this world. They love to play a god of the gaps game with consciousness which it is really boring. The same thing some scientists did regarding life in the 19th century , which still some people play btw: the search for the supposed elan-vital. Count me in with Dr I-refute-thus Johnson and the anesthesiologists on the physical-reductionist side.
K0SM0S 4y ago
There's no asking, let alone answering this question beyond mere speculations, until we've defined "subjective experience" in objective terms — i.e. positively provable, measurable in some unambiguous way (not merely inferred). That is the hard problem. Solving it might require reframing the problem such that this dichotomy isn't even relevant anymore (like say electromagnetic information isn't "opposed" or "dual" or "exclusive" to a gravitational field but merely concurrent) if we are to unify somehow the general field of "theory of mind".
- tshaddox 4y ago
  It strikes me as odd to start from the position "we declare this thing to undeniably exist" and then spend generations trying to spit out even one sentence describing what evidence or explanation for its existence might even plausibly look like.
  - K0SM0S 4y ago
    …to the point of claiming it "must be present in all things, living or otherwise, even particles, yet perfectly invisible" (panpsychism, iirc?). Because why not generalizing a flawed hypothesis whose observational range is limited to a tiny subset of existence (advanced biological species, as far as we know). ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ IMHO it's the old darkness/duality problem all over again — postulating some "essence" (e.g. the spiritual/religious Soul) and basing theory on a mere intuition, instead of invoking a "placeholder" (like "dark matter" isn't necessarily matter but literally "something that behaves as such" whatever it actually is, or like "dark energy" isn't necessarily a fifth interaction but certainly behaves as such or as anti-gravity of sorts; wherein "dark" means "unknown and hidden from direct observation, merely inferred"). Hence my call to not infer the very measurement thereof if we are to call an explanatory hypothesis. Should we start by stating that "qualia" or "consciousness" or whatever is a placeholder name for "whatever dark (unknown, black-box) mechanism explains the observable phenomenon named as such", then we might have a chance at actually forming a coherent theory thereof. IMHO.
    - tshaddox 4y ago
      > Should we start by stating that "qualia" or "consciousness" or whatever is a placeholder name for "whatever dark (unknown, black-box) mechanism explains the observable phenomenon named as such", then we might have a chance at actually forming a coherent theory thereof. IMHO. Perhaps, although in the case of qualia I’m not sure what the phenomenon is that we need a placeholder explanation for. For dark matter we’ve got certain observations of galaxies. For qualia we’ve got, what? A lot of people who feel very strongly that they are unable to deny the existence of something that they cannot describe beyond that claim of undeniable existence? If that’s how astrophysicists explained dark matter I’d be inclined to think that maybe it just doesn’t exist. Edit: thanks to autocomplete we were briefly embroiled in an argument about the existence of quails.
tshaddox 4y ago
Sometimes questions need to be dismissed, including very real questions that many people in good faith spend their lives thinking about and discussing. Sometimes the "answer" to a question is the dismissal of the question, or more accurately, the solution to the problem the question refers to involves an explanation that the question was ill-formed or nonsensical. I won't say I'm at that point with the question of qualia, but I share the other commenter's reflexive eye-rolling when I hear it invoked. Perhaps the question doesn't deserve to be dismissed, but I'd certainly like to see some new clarity about what the question is really asking, what problems would be solved by finding an answer to the question, or heck, even a remotely plausible description of what form a valid answer might take.
- ImprobableTruth 4y ago
  Well, on the other hand I also roll my eyes pretty hard whenever I see a post that pretends that subjective experience is some esoteric concept. The question is simply "Will robots feel just like you do, or will they merely be pretending?" - it's something any child could understand. Answers could be something like "No, because they lack X", "Yes, but only those that have X" or "Yes, everything does (panpsychism)". Do you care about potential AI suffering? If you care about animal suffering, the answer to the question would have pretty obvious and major ethical implications. Now, I'm not convinced that humans can ever determine an answer, so I can understand thinking it's just navel gazing, but I imagine the same applies to knowing what happened before the big bang. I think it's quite evident that this doesn't mean either question is malformed.
  - bseidensticker 4y ago
    I can't be sure that other people feel in the same way that I do. I assume they do because they act like it and so I go along with it. If I can't be 100% sure that people feel in the same way that I do, then asking that same question for robots is totally pointless.
    - ImprobableTruth 4y ago
      I'm pretty sure your rationale is more complex than that, you probably also account for things like "how similar are they to me?". After all, you wouldn't believe a video game character if they told you they were conscious, right? >If I can't be 100% sure that people feel in the same way that I do, then asking that same question for robots is totally pointless. I don't see how that at all follows.
olalonde 4y ago
You can't possibly know. Just as you can't possibly know if anyone else experiences a subjective experience or if you're the only one who does. In practice, it is advisable to act as if agents who behave as if they had a subjective experience really do (people, AGIs, animals, etc.). Related: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophical_zombie https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophical_zombie
- tomcatfish 4y ago
  The concept of a philosophical zombie is outright incoherent under most formulations. The argument runs "What if everything was exactly like a universe where everyone had a mind except that no one had a mind?" The answer is that one of these things is true: * P-zombies would write IDENTICAL papers about how they experience qualia but p-zombie land wouldn't * The mind has some effect on the universe you can detect, so P-zombie universe looks quite different
  - olalonde 4y ago
    The p-zombie thought experiment pre-supposes or rather, defines, consciousness as being non-physical. If it were physical, the two worlds would obviously be distinguishable. My take-away from it is that the p-zombie world is simply our world. The theory that "a non-physical consciousness exists" can't be tested and is therefore a bad theory.

d_tr 4y ago

> The CPU is just the substrate on which software runs. So what? Software is still physical configuration on a running system.