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> True, but those experiments are inevitably restricted to the aspects of consciousness available for indirect observation and comparison. As noted before, all
by Nevermark 4y ago
> True, but those experiments are inevitably restricted to the aspects of consciousness available for indirect observation and comparison.
As noted before, all observations are indirect. That has not been the unique challenge for studying consciousness.
The unique challenge has been an inability to create constructive or destructive experiments.
We didn't know how to construct consciousness candidates or precursors, of varying kinds to study. We are getting close to that (i.e. self-awareness as a functional quality is certainly a precursor.)
And we have not been able to create controlled demolition of an consciousness candidates, due to the morals of human experiments. (But our artificial minds will be alterable and destructible at will, to test hypothesis.)
- didericis 4y agoYou’re reiterating a point I acknowledged. There are subtleties you’re ignoring. Our conscious experience is in fact a unique phenomenon because it is all perceivable phenomenon. You can create as many self reflective machines as you like and experiment on them and compare them to output from humans, and maybe you’ll learn things, but you can’t ever get to looking at consciousness at all. There is no indirect or direct data you can use to compare all of your experience to something that sits inside a fraction of it. What you’re talking about are behavioral experiments comparing the reported thoughts and actions of separate acknowledged conscious actors, ie other people, to the internal states and outputs of machines. You’re not looking at consciousness when you do that. Looking at consciousness requires looking at all experience. Which is fundamentally impossible. When you try to look at all of experience as a single object to study nothing is differentiated. There is zero information.