5 ms·

Response from Scott Aaronson: https://scottaaronson.blog/?p=1799 https://scottaaronson.blog/?p=1799

photonthug 3y ago
other related stuff: https://scottaaronson.blog/?p=1823 https://scottaaronson.blog/?p=1823 https://www.scottaaronson.com/response-p1.pdf https://www.scottaaronson.com/response-p1.pdf https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/5pYPdmKMzDLZHe4zx/link-scott-aaronson-on-integrated-information-theory https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/5pYPdmKMzDLZHe4zx/link-scott... and probably lots from hacker-news too: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23158502 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23158502 that said i'm still keen to see more/better discussion of IIT, and/or more modern extensions. IIT is certainly quantitative, and arguably elegant, despite problems. so it puzzles me how eager some people are to just junk it rather than repairing it.
- mrtranscendence 3y ago
  I rarely see IIT characterized as complete junk. Personally, I don't see much value in it as I don't think it answers, or even grapples with, the hard problem of consciousness. Tell me how integrated information gives rise to subjective experience and maybe I'll start buying what they're selling.
  - rvcdbn 3y ago
    You could ask the same kind of question about General Relativity. Sure mass/energy causes the curvature of spacetime but tell me how it does or your theory is worthless. Even without the “how” GR still makes testable predictions that are born out by experiment. And this is the shape of all our physical theories. I think this is the kind of theory IIT is trying to be.
    - mrtranscendence 3y ago
      Well, there's a reason it's called "the hard problem of consciousness" and not "just some incidental observation about models of consciousness". When evaluating general relativity it's not important to ask how mass/energy causes the curvature of spacetime; that's not the point of general relativity. But a theory of consciousness that doesn't explain the most intriguing, important component of consciousness doesn't explain what's important to me.
  - photonthug 3y ago
    I think what they are selling is not answers, but more like a non-metaphysical platform to propose answers within, i.e. a decent start at a scientific framework. Frameworks shouldn't be confused with answers, although they might represent some way of getting closer to answers. Besides IIT, is there an alternative scientific/quantified framework that could even try to grapple with your question? For purposes of comparison, here's another approach that's super interesting ( https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4168033/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4168033/ ). So both frameworks are looking at system structure/dynamics and then attempting to deduce/quantify some aspect of them that (hopefully) gives us some insight into "Mind" or "Consciousness". But to me, grounding such inquiries directly in neuroscience seems awkward, because brain only runs Mind. Uncovering a bunch of implementation details about that from FMRIs probably won't give us a lot of interesting insight at the right level. To an extent some implementation details are important and might shed light on the architecture/algorithm of Consciousness/Mind, but evolved systems are also going to be cluttered up with total hacks that evolution brute-forced where implementation is kinda arbitrary. All of which is to say, IIT being "platform agnostic" and proposing stuff like a thermostat is more conscious than a rock, a dog moreso than a thermostat, and a human more than a dog is not just a cool trick. Being able to approach this kind of intuitive problem in a somewhat rigorous way seems like a necessary requirement for a serious scientific theory of mind. I like the Ising and graph theory modeling approach, but the implementation details of {neuron-counting, FMRI, lesions on functional areas, etc} is probably a distraction if you're trying to understand mind rather than medicine.
wzdd 3y ago
This issue with Aaronson's response is that it comes from the perspective of first accepting Chalmers' "Hard Problem of consciousness". The "Hard Problem of consciousness", despite the name, is actually a statement of position. Briefly, it states that: a) We have experiences, like being hungry, tasting a strawberry, seeing blue, etc. b) It's possible to imagine a being which located food when hungry, ate when necessary, used colours to navigate the world, etc, but did not have these conscious experiences. To put it another way, what we've learnt so far about how the brain works gives us great insight into how we would eat, navigate, etc, but does not give us any insight into either how or why we would have conscious experiences. c) Therefore conscious experiences are not explicable by physical brain processes. This is a belief arising from an appeal to intuition and does not present a testable or falsifiable proposition. Integrated Information Theory (which I am not a vigorous proponent of) posits that the experience of consciousness is related to the level of "integration" of a system. However, if you come to this while believing in the "Hard Problem", that cannot possibly be true, because IIT relates consciousness to physical properties of the system such as connectivity, but the "Hard Problem" defines consciousness as something which does not arise from any physical property of the system.
- goatlover 3y ago
  I don't think you need b) to make the argument work. You just need to point out that a) isn't present in physical theories, except as labels or correlations. The zombie argument is b), which is just one of several thought experiments to illustrate the argument being made, but it's not necessary to make the argument work. Chalmers, Nagel, McGinn and Block have all made arguments that don't rely on b). Nagel states it most clearly in that science is the view from nowhere. The world doesn't feel like, taste like, look like anything on it's own, because those are creature-based sensations which depend on the kind of sensory organs and nervous systems an animal has.
  - wzdd 3y ago
    The position still seems to boil down to "Reducing experience to labels or correlations doesn't feel right to me", which actually dovetails nicely with your Nagel quote, since you can't rely on your intuition when attempting to understand a system from the inside.

other related stuff: https://scottaaronson.blog/?p=1823 https://scottaaronson.blog/?p=1823 https://www.scottaaronson.com/response-p1.pdf https://www.scottaaronson.com/response-p1.pdf https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/5pYPdmKMzDLZHe4zx/link-scott-aaronson-on-integrated-information-theory https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/5pYPdmKMzDLZHe4zx/link-scott... and probably lots from hacker-news too: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23158502 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23158502 that said i'm still keen to see more/better discussion of IIT, and/or more modern extensions. IIT is certainly quantitative, and arguably elegant, despite problems. so it puzzles me how eager some people are to just junk it rather than repairing it.

mrtranscendence 3y ago
I rarely see IIT characterized as complete junk. Personally, I don't see much value in it as I don't think it answers, or even grapples with, the hard problem of consciousness. Tell me how integrated information gives rise to subjective experience and maybe I'll start buying what they're selling.
- rvcdbn 3y ago
  You could ask the same kind of question about General Relativity. Sure mass/energy causes the curvature of spacetime but tell me how it does or your theory is worthless. Even without the “how” GR still makes testable predictions that are born out by experiment. And this is the shape of all our physical theories. I think this is the kind of theory IIT is trying to be.
  - mrtranscendence 3y ago
    Well, there's a reason it's called "the hard problem of consciousness" and not "just some incidental observation about models of consciousness". When evaluating general relativity it's not important to ask how mass/energy causes the curvature of spacetime; that's not the point of general relativity. But a theory of consciousness that doesn't explain the most intriguing, important component of consciousness doesn't explain what's important to me.
- photonthug 3y ago
  I think what they are selling is not answers, but more like a non-metaphysical platform to propose answers within, i.e. a decent start at a scientific framework. Frameworks shouldn't be confused with answers, although they might represent some way of getting closer to answers. Besides IIT, is there an alternative scientific/quantified framework that could even try to grapple with your question? For purposes of comparison, here's another approach that's super interesting ( https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4168033/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4168033/ ). So both frameworks are looking at system structure/dynamics and then attempting to deduce/quantify some aspect of them that (hopefully) gives us some insight into "Mind" or "Consciousness". But to me, grounding such inquiries directly in neuroscience seems awkward, because brain only runs Mind. Uncovering a bunch of implementation details about that from FMRIs probably won't give us a lot of interesting insight at the right level. To an extent some implementation details are important and might shed light on the architecture/algorithm of Consciousness/Mind, but evolved systems are also going to be cluttered up with total hacks that evolution brute-forced where implementation is kinda arbitrary. All of which is to say, IIT being "platform agnostic" and proposing stuff like a thermostat is more conscious than a rock, a dog moreso than a thermostat, and a human more than a dog is not just a cool trick. Being able to approach this kind of intuitive problem in a somewhat rigorous way seems like a necessary requirement for a serious scientific theory of mind. I like the Ising and graph theory modeling approach, but the implementation details of {neuron-counting, FMRI, lesions on functional areas, etc} is probably a distraction if you're trying to understand mind rather than medicine.

wzdd 3y ago

This issue with Aaronson's response is that it comes from the perspective of first accepting Chalmers' "Hard Problem of consciousness". The "Hard Problem of consciousness", despite the name, is actually a statement of position. Briefly, it states that: a) We have experiences, like being hungry, tasting a strawberry, seeing blue, etc. b) It's possible to imagine a being which located food when hungry, ate when necessary, used colours to navigate the world, etc, but did not have these conscious experiences. To put it another way, what we've learnt so far about how the brain works gives us great insight into how we would eat, navigate, etc, but does not give us any insight into either how or why we would have conscious experiences. c) Therefore conscious experiences are not explicable by physical brain processes. This is a belief arising from an appeal to intuition and does not present a testable or falsifiable proposition. Integrated Information Theory (which I am not a vigorous proponent of) posits that the experience of consciousness is related to the level of "integration" of a system. However, if you come to this while believing in the "Hard Problem", that cannot possibly be true, because IIT relates consciousness to physical properties of the system such as connectivity, but the "Hard Problem" defines consciousness as something which does not arise from any physical property of the system.

goatlover 3y ago
I don't think you need b) to make the argument work. You just need to point out that a) isn't present in physical theories, except as labels or correlations. The zombie argument is b), which is just one of several thought experiments to illustrate the argument being made, but it's not necessary to make the argument work. Chalmers, Nagel, McGinn and Block have all made arguments that don't rely on b). Nagel states it most clearly in that science is the view from nowhere. The world doesn't feel like, taste like, look like anything on it's own, because those are creature-based sensations which depend on the kind of sensory organs and nervous systems an animal has.
- wzdd 3y ago
  The position still seems to boil down to "Reducing experience to labels or correlations doesn't feel right to me", which actually dovetails nicely with your Nagel quote, since you can't rely on your intuition when attempting to understand a system from the inside.