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Yes they are - they are AS non-nebulous as you can possibly get - totally black and white obvious. "Is there a stream of experiences?" is very straightforward,

Yes they are - they are AS non-nebulous as you can possibly get - totally black and white obvious. "Is there a stream of experiences?" is very straightforward, black and white. It's what you have when you're awake, and what you lose when you're in dreamless sleep. Not nebulous in any way. "Can you pay attention to this part of your experience?" is a very black-and-white, non-nebulous question with an easy yes or no answer. Not sure what you're reading into this.

jacobr1 3y ago
No, it is unclear because this definition insufficiently distinguishes a cluster of related, and ill-defined concepts. Consider a video camera. It seems like it is a consuming a "stream of experiences". But most people wouldn't consider it it conscious. Why not under your definition? It works when on, and is stops when turned off. Black and white. But clearly we are missing some nuance in the details. Maybe we also require some interpretation of the experiences? I can spin a convolutional neural net that identify objects within a video: interpretation. Does that make it conscious? No? Then we need something else to define it. Maybe response to stimuli? We can program machines for that, but then also things like fire respond to environment interactions too. And so on. It really isn't black and white after all.
vidarh 3y ago
What is an experience? What does "pay attention" mean?
- ChainOfFools 3y ago
  Dualism, or at any rate the version of it that can be described as operating on the (possibly unconscious) assumption that a world "outside" of this world exists, is the secret ingredient at work here, smuggled in along with the kinds of notions expressed by the person you're replying to. We just can't seem to fully disentangle very old deep-seated animist instincts, even sophisticated formulations of them, like the soul or consciousness, from our reasoning and descriptions of dynamic systems. I'm not sure this is a bad thing even though I recognize that it is a crutch. completely materialist interpretation of phenomena would probably lead us to the realization that we are not alive at all, and that what I call "my life" is just a kind of curling strand of causality frozen in the Parmenides block universe. I've come to suspect that a habit of using the passive voice when discussing these phenomna contributes immensely to their ongoing currency. Steering away from this by asking questions like, "_who_ or _what_ is attending to/experiencing the stream?" may be a useful way to ground these statements in material terms.
  - vidarh 3y ago
    I see dualism vs. consciousness as separate. Dualism is often used as an explanation for how (real, not compatibilist) free will can exist in an otherwise materialist world, but it'd still require the "outside" to be "magic" in the sense that it'd require a class of logic that is neither deterministic, nor random, nor just any form of combination of the two (e.g. not stochastic). Consciousness, on the other hand, boils down to what gives rise to the sensation of self-awareness, and what that sensation actually is, and it's not a given that requires any form of dualism (or that any form of dualism would solve the question at all) or that a strict materialist world can't involve self awareness. For what we know, self-awareness could be a property of matter itself, and the only thing different between "conscious" and "non-conscious" is getting to a level of sufficient reasoning-ability to actually be able to express it.
- TaupeRanger 3y ago
  You're having experiences right now. It's that. You're paying attention to these words. It's that.
  - pixl97 3y ago
    You keep saying stream of experience, but you don't actually have a stream in the sense of a continuous uninterrupted experience. Your mind let's you believe that though.
    - vidarh 3y ago
      That's a good point. We appear to have no way (and probably can't have) to discern passage of time from a static experience of a single infinitesimally short moment, as our only experience of time is through memory that we can't know whether is a static snapshot or dynamic.
    - TaupeRanger 3y ago
      Since we don't understand its nature, we actually have no idea whatsoever whether it's a continuous stream or not. I mean obviously we sleep, but I take it you didn't mean that kind of interruption, which is beside the point. But either way, it doesn't matter, because "stream" can simply mean "the quick succession of experiences that seem to be continuous to the experiencer". And none of this really matters at all for the discussion at hand, the answer is the same either way.
      - pixl97 3y ago
        Consciousness is not a continuous stream at all, the fact you fall asleep or can be given medication to turn it off is an obvious example. Nova/PBS recently did a number of episodes on the number of tricks your brain is playing on your at anytime. Once you start seeing the shortcuts the brain takes in action the entire process is far less magical.
  - vidarh 3y ago
    And which measurable, enumerable qualities of those things set them apart from not having experiences or not paying attention so that I can determine whether or not an AI, or a camera, or an animal, or another human, is "having experiences" or "paying attention"? Because it's still equally nebulous.

jacobr1 3y ago

No, it is unclear because this definition insufficiently distinguishes a cluster of related, and ill-defined concepts. Consider a video camera. It seems like it is a consuming a "stream of experiences". But most people wouldn't consider it it conscious. Why not under your definition? It works when on, and is stops when turned off. Black and white. But clearly we are missing some nuance in the details. Maybe we also require some interpretation of the experiences? I can spin a convolutional neural net that identify objects within a video: interpretation. Does that make it conscious? No? Then we need something else to define it. Maybe response to stimuli? We can program machines for that, but then also things like fire respond to environment interactions too. And so on. It really isn't black and white after all.

vidarh 3y ago

What is an experience? What does "pay attention" mean?

ChainOfFools 3y ago
Dualism, or at any rate the version of it that can be described as operating on the (possibly unconscious) assumption that a world "outside" of this world exists, is the secret ingredient at work here, smuggled in along with the kinds of notions expressed by the person you're replying to. We just can't seem to fully disentangle very old deep-seated animist instincts, even sophisticated formulations of them, like the soul or consciousness, from our reasoning and descriptions of dynamic systems. I'm not sure this is a bad thing even though I recognize that it is a crutch. completely materialist interpretation of phenomena would probably lead us to the realization that we are not alive at all, and that what I call "my life" is just a kind of curling strand of causality frozen in the Parmenides block universe. I've come to suspect that a habit of using the passive voice when discussing these phenomna contributes immensely to their ongoing currency. Steering away from this by asking questions like, "_who_ or _what_ is attending to/experiencing the stream?" may be a useful way to ground these statements in material terms.
- vidarh 3y ago
  I see dualism vs. consciousness as separate. Dualism is often used as an explanation for how (real, not compatibilist) free will can exist in an otherwise materialist world, but it'd still require the "outside" to be "magic" in the sense that it'd require a class of logic that is neither deterministic, nor random, nor just any form of combination of the two (e.g. not stochastic). Consciousness, on the other hand, boils down to what gives rise to the sensation of self-awareness, and what that sensation actually is, and it's not a given that requires any form of dualism (or that any form of dualism would solve the question at all) or that a strict materialist world can't involve self awareness. For what we know, self-awareness could be a property of matter itself, and the only thing different between "conscious" and "non-conscious" is getting to a level of sufficient reasoning-ability to actually be able to express it.
TaupeRanger 3y ago
You're having experiences right now. It's that. You're paying attention to these words. It's that.
- pixl97 3y ago
  You keep saying stream of experience, but you don't actually have a stream in the sense of a continuous uninterrupted experience. Your mind let's you believe that though.
  - vidarh 3y ago
    That's a good point. We appear to have no way (and probably can't have) to discern passage of time from a static experience of a single infinitesimally short moment, as our only experience of time is through memory that we can't know whether is a static snapshot or dynamic.
  - TaupeRanger 3y ago
    Since we don't understand its nature, we actually have no idea whatsoever whether it's a continuous stream or not. I mean obviously we sleep, but I take it you didn't mean that kind of interruption, which is beside the point. But either way, it doesn't matter, because "stream" can simply mean "the quick succession of experiences that seem to be continuous to the experiencer". And none of this really matters at all for the discussion at hand, the answer is the same either way.
    - pixl97 3y ago
      Consciousness is not a continuous stream at all, the fact you fall asleep or can be given medication to turn it off is an obvious example. Nova/PBS recently did a number of episodes on the number of tricks your brain is playing on your at anytime. Once you start seeing the shortcuts the brain takes in action the entire process is far less magical.
- vidarh 3y ago
  And which measurable, enumerable qualities of those things set them apart from not having experiences or not paying attention so that I can determine whether or not an AI, or a camera, or an animal, or another human, is "having experiences" or "paying attention"? Because it's still equally nebulous.