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We don't know what qualia are so it's an acceptable possibility to me (unprovable, mind) that such a circuit may 'experience' something. It would be unutterably

We don't know what qualia are so it's an acceptable possibility to me (unprovable, mind) that such a circuit may 'experience' something. It would be unutterably basic if it happened, nonetheless I'm ok with that. There's also a view that consciousness is intrinsic to everything (ah, here you go https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/does-consciousness-pervade-the-universe/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/does-consciousnes...) which is a cheap, cheesy and IMO totally unacceptable way to 'explain' consciousness and I reject that as an explanation, but it doesn't make it actually wrong. Edit: missed your last line "We have explanation for how there can be experiences/qualia" - I'm surprised, you can explain it, got any links?

PaulDavisThe1st 4y ago
Sure, pan-qualism/pan-psychism may well turn out to be a respectable postion. [ fixed the missing "no" in the GP ]
- namero999 4y ago
  Panpsychism is untenable because it trades the hard problem of consciousness for the composition problem. The only consistent and coherent game in town is analytical idealism.
  - zasdffaa 4y ago
    It might be a piss-poor explanation, because it doesn't explain anything, it presumes its conclusion, but that doesn't make it wrong. And if you throw in phrases like "composition problem" and "analytical idealism" the fer fuck's sake provide some simple explanation or something.
    - namero999 4y ago
      Something that assumes its conclusion and doesn't explain anything is not even wrong... At any rate, given the context of the thread I didn't feel the need to clarify what the composition problem nor idealism are. But since you ask: The composition (aka combination) problem refers to the need to explain how multiple bits of consciousness combine together to form a united and cohesive experience such as yours or mine. The hard problem focuses instead on how quantities (matter) give rise to qualities (experience). Analytic Idealism is the view that experience is the ontological primitive. Both problems sublimate away. Yes, you can derive physics from it. In fact you don't even bother physics in any way: all we know about it remains valid under analytic idealism. If anything, many counterintuitive findings of QM fall into place under AI. If this pique your interest, here's a good intro https://www.essentiafoundation.org/analytic-idealism-course/ https://www.essentiafoundation.org/analytic-idealism-course/.
      - zasdffaa 4y ago
        > Something that assumes its conclusion and doesn't explain anything is not even wrong... No. It can be entirely right. It just isn't useful in any way. From your link "Analytic Idealism is a theory of the nature of reality that maintains that the universe is experiential in essence" Maintain all you like. It might even - per my prior statement on pan-psychism - be true. I want quantifiable evidence before we accept it as true. Cough up. Anyway, thanks for the descriptions of the tech terms.
        namero999 4y ago
        Can you argument your desire for a quantifiable evidence without begging the question? There is research compatible with these claims. It's mentioned and linked in the link I've previously provided.
        zasdffaa 4y ago
        > Can you argument your desire for a quantifiable evidence without begging the question? Don't fall back to sophistry. Is there evidence? yes or no, if yes then show me. > There is research compatible with these claims. It's mentioned and linked in the link I've previously provided. I'm downloading the single video which mentions the word evidence. If there is any more evidence links, please show me them, especially written evidence, and especially especially, empirical evidence. Edit: right, they're saying that experience is essential to reality. They provide evidence in the form of quantum experiments. I can provisionally accept that, very provisionally. Does it say anything about what consciousness actually is, which is what you (seemed to) claim? Haven't found any sign of that yet.
        namero999 4y ago
        It's not sophistry, it was a preemptive question anticipating your response, which in fact showed up: you asked what consciousness _is_. This is the sort of question Babbage would have replied to with his famous remark. "What is" is a philosophical, in fact metaphysical, question. You know what consciousness is. Just pinch yourself. To ask what something _is_ implies reduction. You want a description of experience in terms of something else. So you are begging the question, having already concluded that it's not fundamental. In idealism experience is the reduction basis, so the question makes no sense. On the contrary, one should try to explain everything else in terms of experience (and if you don't accept a reduction basis, then you won't be able to explain anything, even with materialism). Now, the explanations need to be consistent with empirical evidence and they need to have explanatory power. I submit to you that AI succeeds, and the empirical adequacy of those claims is abundantly linked in the description of the material you are downloading. Science and scientific theories are concerned with the behaviour of nature, not its essence. They tell us how it behaves, not what it is. We build models out of observations and given the chance, we should stand by a model with the most explanatory power.
  - goodthenandnow 4y ago
    > the composition problem Would these be like the “easy problems” then? Besides, wouldn't that be exactly like our current physics? (Where we reduce until we find something fundamental like “electric charge just is and has this properties”, similarly for Quantum fields and the like -- and then how that composes and interacts with other fundamentals is the whole business.)
    - namero999 4y ago
      The composition problem is considered the hard problem of panpsychism. But as your intuition correctly points out, it is definitely easier than the original hard problem of materialism, which is a category jump from quantities to qualities. The main difference is that physics is quantifiable, so we can come up with in-principle explanations of really complex stuff (weather forecasts, life itself, etc). With qualities it's a different ballgame, because we are talking about different subjects combining into one. Not saying that it's a dead end, but we haven't even yet started to define the problem, let alone solving it. There are other more compelling roads. Rather than a combination mechanism, we can look at the problem from a decomposition perspective. This is easier because it's a really well understood phenomenon that we can actually study: the compartmentalization of one unified mind into separate minds, also known as multiple personality disorder or dissociative identity disorder. Here, we have a clear in-principle path to walk.
postultimate 4y ago
> We don't know what qualia are Actually, no. This is the one part of the problem we are clear on. Since this is an adequate excuse to give a lecture, here we go: Suppose I say "I am fat", and suppose you say of me "he is fat". In both of these sentences, the same thing is meant - an observation of the physical world was made, and excess lipids were detected. However, if I say "I am looking at a laptop", and you say "he is looking at a laptop", we don't mean the same thing. You mean that a particular physical state has been observed, with my eyeballs and brain directed laptopwards. Whereas what I mean... ...well, what I certainly don't mean is that I see any eyeballs, or brain. I don't observe any process of looking at all. I just look. What I mean by "I am looking" is completely different to what you mean by "he is looking" even though the two statements are formally similar. In other words, there are two wildly different, incommensurable uses of the word "am". One of them has a corresponding "is", one of them does not. So, getting back to qualia, there simply are no qualia. There are qualia that am, but as noted above, that doesn't imply that there are qualia that are.

PaulDavisThe1st 4y ago

Sure, pan-qualism/pan-psychism may well turn out to be a respectable postion. [ fixed the missing "no" in the GP ]

namero999 4y ago
Panpsychism is untenable because it trades the hard problem of consciousness for the composition problem. The only consistent and coherent game in town is analytical idealism.
- zasdffaa 4y ago
  It might be a piss-poor explanation, because it doesn't explain anything, it presumes its conclusion, but that doesn't make it wrong. And if you throw in phrases like "composition problem" and "analytical idealism" the fer fuck's sake provide some simple explanation or something.
  - namero999 4y ago
    Something that assumes its conclusion and doesn't explain anything is not even wrong... At any rate, given the context of the thread I didn't feel the need to clarify what the composition problem nor idealism are. But since you ask: The composition (aka combination) problem refers to the need to explain how multiple bits of consciousness combine together to form a united and cohesive experience such as yours or mine. The hard problem focuses instead on how quantities (matter) give rise to qualities (experience). Analytic Idealism is the view that experience is the ontological primitive. Both problems sublimate away. Yes, you can derive physics from it. In fact you don't even bother physics in any way: all we know about it remains valid under analytic idealism. If anything, many counterintuitive findings of QM fall into place under AI. If this pique your interest, here's a good intro https://www.essentiafoundation.org/analytic-idealism-course/ https://www.essentiafoundation.org/analytic-idealism-course/.
    - zasdffaa 4y ago
      > Something that assumes its conclusion and doesn't explain anything is not even wrong... No. It can be entirely right. It just isn't useful in any way. From your link "Analytic Idealism is a theory of the nature of reality that maintains that the universe is experiential in essence" Maintain all you like. It might even - per my prior statement on pan-psychism - be true. I want quantifiable evidence before we accept it as true. Cough up. Anyway, thanks for the descriptions of the tech terms.
      - namero999 4y ago
        Can you argument your desire for a quantifiable evidence without begging the question? There is research compatible with these claims. It's mentioned and linked in the link I've previously provided.
        zasdffaa 4y ago
        > Can you argument your desire for a quantifiable evidence without begging the question? Don't fall back to sophistry. Is there evidence? yes or no, if yes then show me. > There is research compatible with these claims. It's mentioned and linked in the link I've previously provided. I'm downloading the single video which mentions the word evidence. If there is any more evidence links, please show me them, especially written evidence, and especially especially, empirical evidence. Edit: right, they're saying that experience is essential to reality. They provide evidence in the form of quantum experiments. I can provisionally accept that, very provisionally. Does it say anything about what consciousness actually is, which is what you (seemed to) claim? Haven't found any sign of that yet.
        namero999 4y ago
        It's not sophistry, it was a preemptive question anticipating your response, which in fact showed up: you asked what consciousness _is_. This is the sort of question Babbage would have replied to with his famous remark. "What is" is a philosophical, in fact metaphysical, question. You know what consciousness is. Just pinch yourself. To ask what something _is_ implies reduction. You want a description of experience in terms of something else. So you are begging the question, having already concluded that it's not fundamental. In idealism experience is the reduction basis, so the question makes no sense. On the contrary, one should try to explain everything else in terms of experience (and if you don't accept a reduction basis, then you won't be able to explain anything, even with materialism). Now, the explanations need to be consistent with empirical evidence and they need to have explanatory power. I submit to you that AI succeeds, and the empirical adequacy of those claims is abundantly linked in the description of the material you are downloading. Science and scientific theories are concerned with the behaviour of nature, not its essence. They tell us how it behaves, not what it is. We build models out of observations and given the chance, we should stand by a model with the most explanatory power.
- goodthenandnow 4y ago
  > the composition problem Would these be like the “easy problems” then? Besides, wouldn't that be exactly like our current physics? (Where we reduce until we find something fundamental like “electric charge just is and has this properties”, similarly for Quantum fields and the like -- and then how that composes and interacts with other fundamentals is the whole business.)
  - namero999 4y ago
    The composition problem is considered the hard problem of panpsychism. But as your intuition correctly points out, it is definitely easier than the original hard problem of materialism, which is a category jump from quantities to qualities. The main difference is that physics is quantifiable, so we can come up with in-principle explanations of really complex stuff (weather forecasts, life itself, etc). With qualities it's a different ballgame, because we are talking about different subjects combining into one. Not saying that it's a dead end, but we haven't even yet started to define the problem, let alone solving it. There are other more compelling roads. Rather than a combination mechanism, we can look at the problem from a decomposition perspective. This is easier because it's a really well understood phenomenon that we can actually study: the compartmentalization of one unified mind into separate minds, also known as multiple personality disorder or dissociative identity disorder. Here, we have a clear in-principle path to walk.

postultimate 4y ago

> We don't know what qualia are Actually, no. This is the one part of the problem we are clear on. Since this is an adequate excuse to give a lecture, here we go: Suppose I say "I am fat", and suppose you say of me "he is fat". In both of these sentences, the same thing is meant - an observation of the physical world was made, and excess lipids were detected. However, if I say "I am looking at a laptop", and you say "he is looking at a laptop", we don't mean the same thing. You mean that a particular physical state has been observed, with my eyeballs and brain directed laptopwards. Whereas what I mean... ...well, what I certainly don't mean is that I see any eyeballs, or brain. I don't observe any process of looking at all. I just look. What I mean by "I am looking" is completely different to what you mean by "he is looking" even though the two statements are formally similar. In other words, there are two wildly different, incommensurable uses of the word "am". One of them has a corresponding "is", one of them does not. So, getting back to qualia, there simply are no qualia. There are qualia that am, but as noted above, that doesn't imply that there are qualia that are.