4 ms·

For the "Universe in a nutshell" version overview of neuroscience, I'll plug my own book Journey of the Mind: How Thinking Emerged from Chaos (more on that belo

For the "Universe in a nutshell" version overview of neuroscience, I'll plug my own book Journey of the Mind: How Thinking Emerged from Chaos (more on that below) Anil Seth's Being You is a recent one that does a good job of summarizing the most popular theories in consciousness. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/53036979-being-you https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/53036979-being-you The Routledge Handbook of Consciousness (https://www.amazon.com/Routledge-Handbook-Consciousness-Handbooks-Philosophy/dp/1138936219/ https://www.amazon.com/Routledge-Handbook-Consciousness-Hand...) is far more comprehensive and while being more academicky is still an excellent read. Unfortunately both miss what I think is easily the best and most computationally robust and fleshed out consciousness theory, but that's because it's so tragically unknown. I co-authored a book that covers this (while staying accessible) https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/58085266-journey-of-the-mind https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/58085266-journey-of-the-... So much of the stuff in the mathematical-this and physics-that of conscious experience is just crap because there is very little understanding of biological consciousness and what it is and where we can find it, and where we cannot. These start with assumptions of what consciousness is and then go on to mathematize these non-validated assumptions. (Integrated Information Theory) IIT is the most popular among these. https://scottaaronson.blog/?p=1799 https://scottaaronson.blog/?p=1799 -- this article captures well why IIT, and many like it, are bad models of consciousness.

conrod_ 4y ago
Thanks for the reply! I have to say, I am quite giddy. When I posted this question, I wasn't expecting to get a reply from an author and researcher on this very topic. I am a software engineer by profession, but this is a topic that has been on the back of my mind for many years. Even when I read popsci books about the universe and the big bang and so on, i felt spiritually unsatisfied because they often do not address this elephant in the room - consciousness. A theory of everything that explains the laws of universe will be imo incomplete if it doesn't also explain, at the fundamental level, the laws of the universe that exists behind our eyes. It really deserves more attention and awareness among geeks and the general public.
- b800h 4y ago
  You might be waiting a long time. Things like Tarski's Undefinability Theorem (moreso than Gödel) make it rather unlikely that this will turn out to be possible. But I agree with your assertion.
- techno_tsar 4y ago
  There has been a turn in consciousness research in the last in the decade towards some kind of panpsychism for precisely your sentiment: a completed physics should also be a completed phenomenology. David Chalmers has written extensively and seriously entertained panpsychism in recent years. Galileo’s Error, published in 2019, by Phillip Goff traces the history of the mind-body problem and illustrates how we divorced our consciousness from the physical world during the development of early modern science and philosophy. Last century, Ernst Mach and Bertrand Russell argued in favour for neutral monism, a stance which holds that the mental and physical are two sides of the same coin. It seems like these ideas are coming back after a long stretch of dogmatic physicalism. Panpsychism gets a bad rep for sounding like it has associations with vacuous or flimsy New Age beliefs, but it means a totally different thing in the context of philosophy of mind and consciousness studies. It is the claim that consciousness might be a building block of the universe. The main problem with panpsychism is not that it is incredulous, but that it currently lacks a compelling explanation for our individual subjectivity. If consciousness and mental properties are ubiquitous in the universe, why do I have my consciousness and you have yours? The main motivation to believe in panpsychism seems to be its incredible elegance and self-consistency. That alone does not make it true, but it might be a very big hint on where to look for answers.
- noting0002 4y ago
  [dead]
  - naasking 4y ago
    > As we see with LLM consciousness is not needed to fake humans You are just assuming that LLMs aren't conscious. We don't have a way to evaluate that at this time.
- 4y ago
prox 4y ago
Doesn’t your nickname chaitanya mean “consciousness” ?
- ChaitanyaSai 4y ago
  Also one of my first names :) I am kinda shocked I didnt actually make the connection until you pointed it out. I mean, I've always thought of Chaitanya as meaning enlightenment (one of its other meanings) and it's not like we periodically dwell on the meaning of our names.
  - prox 4y ago
    It’s a nice confluence, that words and symbols and meaning sometimes converge!

conrod_ 4y ago

Thanks for the reply! I have to say, I am quite giddy. When I posted this question, I wasn't expecting to get a reply from an author and researcher on this very topic. I am a software engineer by profession, but this is a topic that has been on the back of my mind for many years. Even when I read popsci books about the universe and the big bang and so on, i felt spiritually unsatisfied because they often do not address this elephant in the room - consciousness. A theory of everything that explains the laws of universe will be imo incomplete if it doesn't also explain, at the fundamental level, the laws of the universe that exists behind our eyes. It really deserves more attention and awareness among geeks and the general public.

b800h 4y ago
You might be waiting a long time. Things like Tarski's Undefinability Theorem (moreso than Gödel) make it rather unlikely that this will turn out to be possible. But I agree with your assertion.
techno_tsar 4y ago
There has been a turn in consciousness research in the last in the decade towards some kind of panpsychism for precisely your sentiment: a completed physics should also be a completed phenomenology. David Chalmers has written extensively and seriously entertained panpsychism in recent years. Galileo’s Error, published in 2019, by Phillip Goff traces the history of the mind-body problem and illustrates how we divorced our consciousness from the physical world during the development of early modern science and philosophy. Last century, Ernst Mach and Bertrand Russell argued in favour for neutral monism, a stance which holds that the mental and physical are two sides of the same coin. It seems like these ideas are coming back after a long stretch of dogmatic physicalism. Panpsychism gets a bad rep for sounding like it has associations with vacuous or flimsy New Age beliefs, but it means a totally different thing in the context of philosophy of mind and consciousness studies. It is the claim that consciousness might be a building block of the universe. The main problem with panpsychism is not that it is incredulous, but that it currently lacks a compelling explanation for our individual subjectivity. If consciousness and mental properties are ubiquitous in the universe, why do I have my consciousness and you have yours? The main motivation to believe in panpsychism seems to be its incredible elegance and self-consistency. That alone does not make it true, but it might be a very big hint on where to look for answers.
noting0002 4y ago
[dead]
- naasking 4y ago
  > As we see with LLM consciousness is not needed to fake humans You are just assuming that LLMs aren't conscious. We don't have a way to evaluate that at this time.
4y ago

prox 4y ago

Doesn’t your nickname chaitanya mean “consciousness” ?

ChaitanyaSai 4y ago
Also one of my first names :) I am kinda shocked I didnt actually make the connection until you pointed it out. I mean, I've always thought of Chaitanya as meaning enlightenment (one of its other meanings) and it's not like we periodically dwell on the meaning of our names.
- prox 4y ago
  It’s a nice confluence, that words and symbols and meaning sometimes converge!