7 ms·

You're asking the wrong question by excluding cognition and using a very ill-defined word ("consciousness"). "Consciousness" is not a thing. It's a collection o

by epgui 4y ago

You're asking the wrong question by excluding cognition and using a very ill-defined word ("consciousness"). "Consciousness" is not a thing. It's a collection of things, many of which are what we usually refer to as "cognition". People who like to talk about consciousness have a problem keeping the goalposts in place (and trying to exclude cognition from consciousness, presumably because "cognition" doesn't sound mysterious enough, is a great example of this sort of moving of goalposts). The truth is consciousness is an emergent phenomenon, and it can only be understood as such. Of course we have a lot more to learn, but we understand the fundamentals of neuroscience and biochemistry, and we know how our conscious experiences emerge from those. A neuroanatomy textbook (eg.: Blumenfeld) is probably the best place to start. There is unfortunately no single "thing" called "consciousness" that we will ever be able to point to.

Nevermark 4y ago
That view seems pessimistic without any strong argument, other than critiquing people for not yet understanding something we all agree we don’t understand yet. > Consciousness" is not a thing. It's a collection of things, […] A collection of things is a thing. > The truth is consciousness is an emergent phenomenon, […] I don’t think that is controversial at all. We have unraveled the workings of many emergent phenomena. Emergent doesn’t mean incomprehensible.
- epgui 4y ago
  It's only a thing if you can define it, but there is no agreed upon definition of what collection of things comprise consciousness. We have all the pieces, and we know we have all the pieces (note: this doesn't mean we don't have a lot more to learn, both can be true). There is little controversy over how it all roughly works together. The only real controversy is semantics: what do we mean when we say "consciousness". In programmerland, one might say something like "the abstraction you're using is counter-productive", for whatever reason, when looking at some junior hire's code. It's very much the same here: trying to understand consciousness is asking the wrong question. It's like asking "Why is there a God?": it's an unproductive question because it's a question that can't be answered. The abstraction in the question simply doesn't map 1:1 to abstractions in the world in which we live. If we want to understand our world, we'll maximize our odds of success if we focus on studying the abstractions of this world. I wouldn't describe myself as a pessimist at all, and I'm not sure why you thought my comment was pessimistic... But this opinion of mine (because that's what it is, it's an opinion, not an argument) is a professional opinion. This isn't my field of expertise, but I do have expertise in very adjacent fields.
  - Nevermark 4y ago
    A phenomena can be defined by a pattern, even if it’s not well defined in a technical sense. And a pattern is a thing. Consciousness is an everyday experience that appears to be reliably shared by billions of entities who communicate about it to each other. And have done so for at least millennia. To use a colloquialism: It’s a thing
    - bbwbsb 4y ago
      There are types without values. That the type is itself a value does not mean that it has values itself. False is a type with no values. Consciousness is not a value. Replace type with concept and value with thing, and we get a rebuttal using the same language. You can also switch the terms, depending on how 'a thing' is interpreted. If you are more familiar with set theory, replace type with proposition, value with element. The critical difference is between reference and referent. Further if large numbers of people holding something is true for considerable duration is sufficient for something to 'be a thing', we'd also have an argument for 'the consciousness of the human heart' being a thing, which I don't think anyone would argue in good faith these days. There are probably better examples, but note that the duration of time and frequency of experience are parameters with no obvious values indicating at which point the underlying 'thing' should be accepted as undeniably 'a thing'. The whole point of requiring it to be technically defined is that all this confusion just goes away and it becomes possible to ask more meaningful and less ambiguous questions about it. That said, I will concede that the argument I have made does not say that consciousness is definitely not 'a thing', just that it is defensible to say that it is not a thing, given that it is held that either it does not represent a proposition, or that the proposition it represents is not true. (note I'm using the term proposition with some handwaving).
      - epgui 4y ago
        This commenter understands the importance of definition.
      - Nevermark 4y ago
        Nothing is fully defined formally. The most fundamental aspects of reality, and mathematics, are still not founded completely on formal definitions, without resorting to circular reasoning, and attempts to prove things assuming the things that are being proved. Existence isn't well defined. Yet Descartes' famous informal claim "I think, therefore I am" is still a compelling statement that each of us can use to verify we do exist. Despite many unanswered questions. Likewise, "I am aware of myself, my own thoughts, my interactions with a world around me" is a compelling statement supporting consciousness. The fact that we can all verify our own consciousness the same way, and discuss those experiences with each other, makes it even more compelling. Despite lots of unanswered questions. -- Your counter examples are also weak. Most subjective beliefs about hearts having consciousness are not nearly as credible as informal arguments for existence and consciousness. Conscious hearts are not virtually universally experienced. Informal reasoning about why a heart, a blood pumping organ, would correlate with consciousness are not generally accepted informal arguments. People whose hearts are replaced with artificial or donated organs don't reliably report a loss of consciousness.
Madmallard 4y ago
Consciousness is just your brain working. Everyone that tries to mystify or expand on it further is making shit up. The glasgow coma scale has existed for a long time in medicine. You literally lose parts of consciousness before the whole as various physiologic markers deteriorate. This isn’t even pessimistic. It’s just not an interesting explanation and people love to be led by novel ideas regardless of their basis in reality.
- messe 4y ago
  I think you’re confusing consciousness (qualia, the subjective experience of being you) with awareness.
  - Madmallard 4y ago
    Nope I'm not. Every aspect of your experience is your nervous system and the sensory organs at work. The "Why is red RED?" thing is a complete joke from a scientific standpoint.
    - messe 4y ago
      Yes, you are. > Every aspect of your experience is your nervous system and the sensory organs at work There's still a leap from that to the existence of subjective experience.
      - epgui 4y ago
        There is not, though. It's all there is. It's almost like by insisting that there is a subjective experience (as opposed to what?) you close your eyes to how that experience arises, and prefer instead to implicitly attribute it some magical attributes such that it can never be explained mechanically.
      - Madmallard 4y ago
        Everyone has a different subjective experience of everything because our neurology is different. No person has the exact same arrangement of rods and cones in their eyes, or cilia in ears, or anything like that. No two people have the same arrangement of neurons or dendritic connections in their brain. No two people have the same weights to each of their neurons, so to speak from a ML standpoint. And because of that, all of our experiences are unique and subjective. BUT, we are SO similar genetically that there is SHARED properties to nearly all experiences among ALL humans, strongly arguing for objectivity to it. Why is red specifically what we perceive as red is not answerable. How it affects you cognitively and emotionally is based on the entirety of your upbringing and past experiences as well as your sense neurology. Our brain has quite a lot of neurons and connections! Trillions of connections and billions of neurons! A lot can change and be affected in innumerably complex ways! It's more than sufficient to explain the entirety of our subjective experience.
floatingleaf 4y ago
If you are controlling a computer, that control is not visible within the software of computer. The state of computer is accessible to you from "outside", say, by reading hardware state. And you can manipulate that state directly from outside. This control and access, which needs a true observer, is consciousness. If a computer is taken as layer of reality, then this control is in outside layer of reality. But we don't stop there: It is observer in all layers of reality, whatever reality is made of. The observer can never be represented in any layer of reality. We should consider that experience layer, like sound and vision are an independent layer of reality than underlying "material" reality. A materialist will say latter exists a priory, and thus experience is off the material layer. But we can as well argue that experience layer is a-priori. My taste sense, for e.g. has no equivalence in material reality. It deserves its own layer of reality. If I hear a voice of someone, it is singular experience rather than experience of collection of frequencies. Color like white is an experience of multiple frequencies of light. Our perceptions, happening with help of neurons, are not based on light at all. Projection is a-priory present, from which we create even light and other formulations... A mathematical reality is in its own layer of reality. A conceptual reality of say, chair, is also in a "mental" reality. So we should assume that all are simply abstract layers of reality. But our mental conditioning has created "things" model, just because we can touch and feel, or perceive a boundary in what we see. As observer, which creates memory of observation, and accesses it, all in the present. An observation which is not in time and space, but creates sense of time and space out of observation. And so on... A totally different model of reality.

by epgui 4y ago

Nevermark 4y ago

That view seems pessimistic without any strong argument, other than critiquing people for not yet understanding something we all agree we don’t understand yet. > Consciousness" is not a thing. It's a collection of things, […] A collection of things is a thing. > The truth is consciousness is an emergent phenomenon, […] I don’t think that is controversial at all. We have unraveled the workings of many emergent phenomena. Emergent doesn’t mean incomprehensible.

epgui 4y ago
It's only a thing if you can define it, but there is no agreed upon definition of what collection of things comprise consciousness. We have all the pieces, and we know we have all the pieces (note: this doesn't mean we don't have a lot more to learn, both can be true). There is little controversy over how it all roughly works together. The only real controversy is semantics: what do we mean when we say "consciousness". In programmerland, one might say something like "the abstraction you're using is counter-productive", for whatever reason, when looking at some junior hire's code. It's very much the same here: trying to understand consciousness is asking the wrong question. It's like asking "Why is there a God?": it's an unproductive question because it's a question that can't be answered. The abstraction in the question simply doesn't map 1:1 to abstractions in the world in which we live. If we want to understand our world, we'll maximize our odds of success if we focus on studying the abstractions of this world. I wouldn't describe myself as a pessimist at all, and I'm not sure why you thought my comment was pessimistic... But this opinion of mine (because that's what it is, it's an opinion, not an argument) is a professional opinion. This isn't my field of expertise, but I do have expertise in very adjacent fields.
- Nevermark 4y ago
  A phenomena can be defined by a pattern, even if it’s not well defined in a technical sense. And a pattern is a thing. Consciousness is an everyday experience that appears to be reliably shared by billions of entities who communicate about it to each other. And have done so for at least millennia. To use a colloquialism: It’s a thing
  - bbwbsb 4y ago
    There are types without values. That the type is itself a value does not mean that it has values itself. False is a type with no values. Consciousness is not a value. Replace type with concept and value with thing, and we get a rebuttal using the same language. You can also switch the terms, depending on how 'a thing' is interpreted. If you are more familiar with set theory, replace type with proposition, value with element. The critical difference is between reference and referent. Further if large numbers of people holding something is true for considerable duration is sufficient for something to 'be a thing', we'd also have an argument for 'the consciousness of the human heart' being a thing, which I don't think anyone would argue in good faith these days. There are probably better examples, but note that the duration of time and frequency of experience are parameters with no obvious values indicating at which point the underlying 'thing' should be accepted as undeniably 'a thing'. The whole point of requiring it to be technically defined is that all this confusion just goes away and it becomes possible to ask more meaningful and less ambiguous questions about it. That said, I will concede that the argument I have made does not say that consciousness is definitely not 'a thing', just that it is defensible to say that it is not a thing, given that it is held that either it does not represent a proposition, or that the proposition it represents is not true. (note I'm using the term proposition with some handwaving).
    - epgui 4y ago
      This commenter understands the importance of definition.
    - Nevermark 4y ago
      Nothing is fully defined formally. The most fundamental aspects of reality, and mathematics, are still not founded completely on formal definitions, without resorting to circular reasoning, and attempts to prove things assuming the things that are being proved. Existence isn't well defined. Yet Descartes' famous informal claim "I think, therefore I am" is still a compelling statement that each of us can use to verify we do exist. Despite many unanswered questions. Likewise, "I am aware of myself, my own thoughts, my interactions with a world around me" is a compelling statement supporting consciousness. The fact that we can all verify our own consciousness the same way, and discuss those experiences with each other, makes it even more compelling. Despite lots of unanswered questions. -- Your counter examples are also weak. Most subjective beliefs about hearts having consciousness are not nearly as credible as informal arguments for existence and consciousness. Conscious hearts are not virtually universally experienced. Informal reasoning about why a heart, a blood pumping organ, would correlate with consciousness are not generally accepted informal arguments. People whose hearts are replaced with artificial or donated organs don't reliably report a loss of consciousness.

Madmallard 4y ago

Consciousness is just your brain working. Everyone that tries to mystify or expand on it further is making shit up. The glasgow coma scale has existed for a long time in medicine. You literally lose parts of consciousness before the whole as various physiologic markers deteriorate. This isn’t even pessimistic. It’s just not an interesting explanation and people love to be led by novel ideas regardless of their basis in reality.

messe 4y ago
I think you’re confusing consciousness (qualia, the subjective experience of being you) with awareness.
- Madmallard 4y ago
  Nope I'm not. Every aspect of your experience is your nervous system and the sensory organs at work. The "Why is red RED?" thing is a complete joke from a scientific standpoint.
  - messe 4y ago
    Yes, you are. > Every aspect of your experience is your nervous system and the sensory organs at work There's still a leap from that to the existence of subjective experience.
    - epgui 4y ago
      There is not, though. It's all there is. It's almost like by insisting that there is a subjective experience (as opposed to what?) you close your eyes to how that experience arises, and prefer instead to implicitly attribute it some magical attributes such that it can never be explained mechanically.
    - Madmallard 4y ago
      Everyone has a different subjective experience of everything because our neurology is different. No person has the exact same arrangement of rods and cones in their eyes, or cilia in ears, or anything like that. No two people have the same arrangement of neurons or dendritic connections in their brain. No two people have the same weights to each of their neurons, so to speak from a ML standpoint. And because of that, all of our experiences are unique and subjective. BUT, we are SO similar genetically that there is SHARED properties to nearly all experiences among ALL humans, strongly arguing for objectivity to it. Why is red specifically what we perceive as red is not answerable. How it affects you cognitively and emotionally is based on the entirety of your upbringing and past experiences as well as your sense neurology. Our brain has quite a lot of neurons and connections! Trillions of connections and billions of neurons! A lot can change and be affected in innumerably complex ways! It's more than sufficient to explain the entirety of our subjective experience.

floatingleaf 4y ago

If you are controlling a computer, that control is not visible within the software of computer. The state of computer is accessible to you from "outside", say, by reading hardware state. And you can manipulate that state directly from outside. This control and access, which needs a true observer, is consciousness. If a computer is taken as layer of reality, then this control is in outside layer of reality. But we don't stop there: It is observer in all layers of reality, whatever reality is made of. The observer can never be represented in any layer of reality. We should consider that experience layer, like sound and vision are an independent layer of reality than underlying "material" reality. A materialist will say latter exists a priory, and thus experience is off the material layer. But we can as well argue that experience layer is a-priori. My taste sense, for e.g. has no equivalence in material reality. It deserves its own layer of reality. If I hear a voice of someone, it is singular experience rather than experience of collection of frequencies. Color like white is an experience of multiple frequencies of light. Our perceptions, happening with help of neurons, are not based on light at all. Projection is a-priory present, from which we create even light and other formulations... A mathematical reality is in its own layer of reality. A conceptual reality of say, chair, is also in a "mental" reality. So we should assume that all are simply abstract layers of reality. But our mental conditioning has created "things" model, just because we can touch and feel, or perceive a boundary in what we see. As observer, which creates memory of observation, and accesses it, all in the present. An observation which is not in time and space, but creates sense of time and space out of observation. And so on... A totally different model of reality.