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In my opinion, if consciousness turns out to be anti-material meaning after years and years we cannot replicate or find any model to explain it. Then we have to

by tekni5 3y ago

In my opinion, if consciousness turns out to be anti-material meaning after years and years we cannot replicate or find any model to explain it. Then we have to assume that it is contained outside of the "system" which could only mean that the world is built around consciousness and everything else is a dream or simulation. However I don't actually believe this, just an idea. I think consciousness is probably much more simpler than we think, if you look at evolution it developed very quickly compared to other things.

simonh 3y ago
I think for consciousness you need a sophisticated mental model of the world, but also a sophisticated mental model of other intentional agents and their mental processes. You need to be able to reason about the knowledge, beliefs and likely actions of others. When this is generalised to enable modelling and reasoning about our own knowledge, beliefs and intentions, that’s consciousness. We literally become aware of ourselves in ways we can reason about. I actually don’t think most living things, even animals, are conscious. Mammals and some other higher animals possibly. Simple organisms have simple sense/response nervous systems. Their reactions are mostly automatic, but can learn basic patterns of stimuli.
- magicalhippo 3y ago
  > I think for consciousness you need a sophisticated mental model of the world, but also a sophisticated mental model of other intentional agents and their mental processes. A random find[1] that I found interesting. Some quotes: A growing set of experiments therefore appears to establish a key prediction of [Attention Schema Theory]: without consciousness of an item, attention on the item is still possible, but the control of attention with respect to that item almost entirely breaks down. The relationship is not “consciousness is attention”; instead, it is “consciousness is necessary for the control of attention.” AST also predicts that people construct models of other people’s attention [...]. Ample evidence confirms that this is so. Activity in at least some subregions of the [temporoparietal junction] has also been found in association with one’s own attention. Moreover, TPJ activity is associated with the interaction between attention and reported consciousness. A recent study argued that this activity is consistent with error correction of a predictive model of attention. [1]: https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2116933119 https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2116933119 (open access)
laratied 3y ago
You could say the exact same thing about the "soul". I just do not understand why we can't take the idea that consciousness doesn't exist seriously. The word practically has no meaning. "We know consciousness exists because we are conscious" is as circular reasoning as it gets. It is so strange to me that we can't even be bothered to explore if this question is the 21st century version of how many angels can dance on the head of a pin. There has to be so many things that we currently believe to be true that are utter nonsense. When we believe something exists but we can't even define what the word means that is probably a good place to look for nonsense.
- uoaei 3y ago
  This is a fundamentally different situation, because it's very possible that consciousness is the only thing that we can or will ever experience directly. I agree that things like UFOs cannot be explained in that way, because those experiences are products of our sense-making, but consciousness is the act of sense-making itself which is hard to deny.
- simonh 3y ago
  I don’t buy this at all. We have experiences. It’s the one brute fact we are sure of, but it’s enough to build from that a coherent materialist model of the world that is consistent and testable. Everything we think and know is built up from the foundation of our conscious experiences though. I’m no solipsist, I’m a thoroughgoing materialist, but if we don’t accept the evidential nature of our conscious experiences as being real phenomena, we have nothing.
- shrimp_emoji 3y ago
  It's such a cursed term that the thing some people mean by it does exist, like the ability to sense things around you, communicate on a human level, and have an operant short term memory of at least 5 minutes. When I see someone use "consciousness", I'm assuming they mean something grander akin to a soul, like a special, immutable self that they feel like they possess, which I think is just embellishing an illusion the mind creates for itself. Some people do mean it that way, but some not. It should be scrapped from our vocabulary since it just scrambles communication.
mmmBacon 3y ago
I’m my view I think the early emergence of consciousness says that it’s more complicated not less. My reasoning is that it must mean the framework for consciousness is embedded in the basic building blocks of life. If that’s the case then our understanding of how those basic building blocks work still has a long way to go. To make a physics analogy it’s like we have a good understanding of mechanics but haven’t yet learned what electromagnetism is.

by tekni5 3y ago

simonh 3y ago

I think for consciousness you need a sophisticated mental model of the world, but also a sophisticated mental model of other intentional agents and their mental processes. You need to be able to reason about the knowledge, beliefs and likely actions of others. When this is generalised to enable modelling and reasoning about our own knowledge, beliefs and intentions, that’s consciousness. We literally become aware of ourselves in ways we can reason about. I actually don’t think most living things, even animals, are conscious. Mammals and some other higher animals possibly. Simple organisms have simple sense/response nervous systems. Their reactions are mostly automatic, but can learn basic patterns of stimuli.

magicalhippo 3y ago
> I think for consciousness you need a sophisticated mental model of the world, but also a sophisticated mental model of other intentional agents and their mental processes. A random find[1] that I found interesting. Some quotes: A growing set of experiments therefore appears to establish a key prediction of [Attention Schema Theory]: without consciousness of an item, attention on the item is still possible, but the control of attention with respect to that item almost entirely breaks down. The relationship is not “consciousness is attention”; instead, it is “consciousness is necessary for the control of attention.” AST also predicts that people construct models of other people’s attention [...]. Ample evidence confirms that this is so. Activity in at least some subregions of the [temporoparietal junction] has also been found in association with one’s own attention. Moreover, TPJ activity is associated with the interaction between attention and reported consciousness. A recent study argued that this activity is consistent with error correction of a predictive model of attention. [1]: https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2116933119 https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2116933119 (open access)

laratied 3y ago

You could say the exact same thing about the "soul". I just do not understand why we can't take the idea that consciousness doesn't exist seriously. The word practically has no meaning. "We know consciousness exists because we are conscious" is as circular reasoning as it gets. It is so strange to me that we can't even be bothered to explore if this question is the 21st century version of how many angels can dance on the head of a pin. There has to be so many things that we currently believe to be true that are utter nonsense. When we believe something exists but we can't even define what the word means that is probably a good place to look for nonsense.

uoaei 3y ago
This is a fundamentally different situation, because it's very possible that consciousness is the only thing that we can or will ever experience directly. I agree that things like UFOs cannot be explained in that way, because those experiences are products of our sense-making, but consciousness is the act of sense-making itself which is hard to deny.
simonh 3y ago
I don’t buy this at all. We have experiences. It’s the one brute fact we are sure of, but it’s enough to build from that a coherent materialist model of the world that is consistent and testable. Everything we think and know is built up from the foundation of our conscious experiences though. I’m no solipsist, I’m a thoroughgoing materialist, but if we don’t accept the evidential nature of our conscious experiences as being real phenomena, we have nothing.
shrimp_emoji 3y ago
It's such a cursed term that the thing some people mean by it does exist, like the ability to sense things around you, communicate on a human level, and have an operant short term memory of at least 5 minutes. When I see someone use "consciousness", I'm assuming they mean something grander akin to a soul, like a special, immutable self that they feel like they possess, which I think is just embellishing an illusion the mind creates for itself. Some people do mean it that way, but some not. It should be scrapped from our vocabulary since it just scrambles communication.

mmmBacon 3y ago

I’m my view I think the early emergence of consciousness says that it’s more complicated not less. My reasoning is that it must mean the framework for consciousness is embedded in the basic building blocks of life. If that’s the case then our understanding of how those basic building blocks work still has a long way to go. To make a physics analogy it’s like we have a good understanding of mechanics but haven’t yet learned what electromagnetism is.