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Couple issues. One is there is a pernicious view propagated by certain philosophers that consciousness and self are the artifacts and epiphenomena of language.

Couple issues. One is there is a pernicious view propagated by certain philosophers that consciousness and self are the artifacts and epiphenomena of language. The irony is that in this view, a domesticated animal is more conscious than a wild one because it has been socialized, strongly implying consciousness is a measure of material subordination. Cui bono on that one, I would ask. The other is that the idea of "mind," exists on a scalar measure of consciousness, and that by imitating human behavior, it can somehow appear on a scale of equivalence to humans. Oh, really? If we can be measured as equivalent to our imitations and simulations, one should wonder what that makes us. A lot of these musings about artificial consciousness are a proxy for justifying a materialist ontology that mainly serves to decouple people from an ideal or exogenous morality, and it makes them view each other on a spectrum of less than human livestock. I suspect Kant is to blame, and while the materialist view of consciousness drives some interesting tech, it is also the foundation for some really obvious and forseeable unforced evil - as we are seeing now with the rise of technocratic authoritarianism a mere ~35 years after it it yielded its wall. I'd also thank the author for walking right into this like that, as I think a modern conversation about the consequences of materialist ontologies is coming due.

heavenlyblue 4y ago
> technocratic authoritarianism I really like when philosophers misatribute the current issues of society to some sort of a "wrong choice of philosophy" kind of situation. Jesus Christ, the reason "technocratic authoritanianism" is in action is because tech is the latest niche on the bandwagon of rich nouveau. Of course these would be correlated as people look up to people who recently became billionaires. Everybody at the age of 40 could think "If I made all the right choices I would have been them". On top of this, the whole tech industry is still operating in legally gray areas as we didn't have enough time to build our legal codexes to deal with these issues. Here's your technical auhtoritanianism. You could say the same about East India Company or Big Oil in the past. Nothing to do with Kant.
photochemsyn 4y ago
A slight aside - rather than language being the 'core of consciousness', it's the only tool available for one conscious entity to communicate the phenomenon of consciousness to another conscious entity. If consciousness is the self-awareness that one is using sensory information to construct an internal model of reality, of the world surrounding one self, and that the internal model may be (or certainly is) an imperfect representation of that world, then language, symbolic concepts etc., are required to express that notion to others. One other note - many if not most wild animals are highly socialized, just not in the sense that they'd obey instructions given by humans (but perhaps those given by a pack/herd leader, or a sentry on the lookout for predators, etc.) I agree about Kant, though, and the failure of the rigid materialist viewpoint. Kant's materialism was based in an outmoded view of mathematical-physical rigor, which has been overturned everywhere, from non-Euclidean geometry to the decidability (Church-Turing) and incompleteness (Godel) issues, to quantum intederminancy and chaos/sensitive dependence - the rug was pulled out from under the Kantian materialists some time ago.
- motohagiography 4y ago
  > it's the only tool available for one conscious entity to communicate the phenomenon of consciousness to another conscious entity. While I appreciated your comment, on this item, I disagree. Though language is absolutely a tool evolved by consciousness(s) to act on others, it only passes the test of being sufficient or necessary to do so when we expand the definition of language to include all communications - which makes it a circular definition. I routinely relate to other consciousnesses (advanced training of horses) without language. In fact, I do it because it is a way of relating without the filter of languge and its key artifact, ego. It could be said we develop an individual languge together, and that the logic I use is a language to communicate consistently with different horses, but whether the gestures I use is an invented language to affect responses, or a discovered communion to transmit the effect of my intentions is a pretty huge question. By example, does the act of sex exist without language? Since simple organisms do it, I would say yes it does, and that there is a demonstrable way to relate physically without language, it shows language is not a necessary condition of either consciousness or of relating to other consciousness. Essentially, I don't think one can say that language is a necessary condition of consciousness without a circular definition where language incorporates everything that is evidence of consciousness. What it means is that there is a substrate of being and consciousness below that of language, and that all things that are the artifacts of language are logically separate from those that are the artifacts of experience. You can use language to convince someone they are a dog, but they are not a dog, even if they think they are, because there is a reality beneath the artifacts of language that is both accessible and immutable. There is a real, and the consequences of apprehending that axiom are pretty profound.

heavenlyblue 4y ago

> technocratic authoritarianism I really like when philosophers misatribute the current issues of society to some sort of a "wrong choice of philosophy" kind of situation. Jesus Christ, the reason "technocratic authoritanianism" is in action is because tech is the latest niche on the bandwagon of rich nouveau. Of course these would be correlated as people look up to people who recently became billionaires. Everybody at the age of 40 could think "If I made all the right choices I would have been them". On top of this, the whole tech industry is still operating in legally gray areas as we didn't have enough time to build our legal codexes to deal with these issues. Here's your technical auhtoritanianism. You could say the same about East India Company or Big Oil in the past. Nothing to do with Kant.

photochemsyn 4y ago

A slight aside - rather than language being the 'core of consciousness', it's the only tool available for one conscious entity to communicate the phenomenon of consciousness to another conscious entity. If consciousness is the self-awareness that one is using sensory information to construct an internal model of reality, of the world surrounding one self, and that the internal model may be (or certainly is) an imperfect representation of that world, then language, symbolic concepts etc., are required to express that notion to others. One other note - many if not most wild animals are highly socialized, just not in the sense that they'd obey instructions given by humans (but perhaps those given by a pack/herd leader, or a sentry on the lookout for predators, etc.) I agree about Kant, though, and the failure of the rigid materialist viewpoint. Kant's materialism was based in an outmoded view of mathematical-physical rigor, which has been overturned everywhere, from non-Euclidean geometry to the decidability (Church-Turing) and incompleteness (Godel) issues, to quantum intederminancy and chaos/sensitive dependence - the rug was pulled out from under the Kantian materialists some time ago.

motohagiography 4y ago
> it's the only tool available for one conscious entity to communicate the phenomenon of consciousness to another conscious entity. While I appreciated your comment, on this item, I disagree. Though language is absolutely a tool evolved by consciousness(s) to act on others, it only passes the test of being sufficient or necessary to do so when we expand the definition of language to include all communications - which makes it a circular definition. I routinely relate to other consciousnesses (advanced training of horses) without language. In fact, I do it because it is a way of relating without the filter of languge and its key artifact, ego. It could be said we develop an individual languge together, and that the logic I use is a language to communicate consistently with different horses, but whether the gestures I use is an invented language to affect responses, or a discovered communion to transmit the effect of my intentions is a pretty huge question. By example, does the act of sex exist without language? Since simple organisms do it, I would say yes it does, and that there is a demonstrable way to relate physically without language, it shows language is not a necessary condition of either consciousness or of relating to other consciousness. Essentially, I don't think one can say that language is a necessary condition of consciousness without a circular definition where language incorporates everything that is evidence of consciousness. What it means is that there is a substrate of being and consciousness below that of language, and that all things that are the artifacts of language are logically separate from those that are the artifacts of experience. You can use language to convince someone they are a dog, but they are not a dog, even if they think they are, because there is a reality beneath the artifacts of language that is both accessible and immutable. There is a real, and the consequences of apprehending that axiom are pretty profound.