11 ms·

The problem I have with qualia is that the argument assumes that qualia are a transcendent, non-physical thing. Why can't a qualia, eg, the experience of the re

The problem I have with qualia is that the argument assumes that qualia are a transcendent, non-physical thing. Why can't a qualia, eg, the experience of the redness of red, simply be what that conscious thing experiences when a set of neurons is activated in a particular way? I know that sounds circular, so I'll expand. We can't know exactly how one person experiences a particular shade of red vs another person. But we can know that one person can experience the exact same shade of red in different ways in different contexts: what thing is red (a rose vs a welt), or what it the current lighting is, or their mood on different days. From that we can conclude that the red qualia isn't some transcendent fixed property. We also know from experiments on conscious, human subjects undergoing brain surgery that stimulating certain networks can result in complex phenomena: eg, the subject smells fall leaves with a hint of maple syrup, say. Or they suddenly feel the impression of being in the presence of a long dead aunt. The brain builds up associations, and each "node" that is activated nudges associated nodes into activation, and so on. I assume we've all had the experience where we are trying to remember the name of someone: we picture them in our mind and all we can come up with is the feeling it has two syllables and starts with a vowel. In those cases those associations are manifest but it wasn't enough to trigger the primary node (the name) we are seeking. Why can't qualia simply be the state of consciousness when a particular set of nodes are in a particular state. So many other experiences seem to be exactly this; why assign a mystical, non-physical property for the case of subjective experiences? I'm in the camp that the most likely outcome is that artificial neural networks can be conscious and have real experiences, but the toy networks we have today don't have nearly the right topology to achieve such states.

doctor_eval 3y ago
> I'm in the camp that the most likely outcome is that artificial neural networks can be conscious and have real experiences, but the toy networks we have today don't have nearly the right topology to achieve such states. Agree with all you say, but just suspect that when we do come up with a network that can achieve such states, we will look at it and shake our heads and say, “So… is that all there is to it?”
- tasty_freeze 3y ago
  Agreed -- when I talk (and I don't think I'm alone) words seem to spontaneously tumble from my mouth without any effort. I'm learning what I'm saying at the same moment the person I'm talking with hears it. Only when I've painted myself into a verbal corner, or there is some complex concept that where I need to rehearse the phrasing before I get my idea across, does consciousness enter into it. That is all to say: 90%+ of what comes out of my mouth is about as sophisticated as ChatGPT.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - Terr_ 3y ago
    I suspect talking yourself through a problem (e.g. rubber-duck debugging) works because (A) the forced encode+decode loop causes additional re-checking and re-interpretation, and (B) it recruits more brain-areas that would otherwise be bypassed by the faster/cheaper internal information path.
  - momirlan 3y ago
    it seems that way, but all you say goes through a complex filter built during a lifetime: experience, memories, desires, fears. most of this is subconscious, but it's still part of your conscience. not to mention that talking at a pub after a few pints is different from talking in a meeting where you have to filter every word to obtain the effect you want.
    - doctor_eval 3y ago
      But that's the problem, we can explain all of this with LLMs. > all you say goes through a complex filter built during a lifetime: experience, memories, desires, fears. most of this is subconscious, but it's still part of your conscience aka "training" > not to mention that talking at a pub after a few pints is different from talking in a meeting where you have to filter every word to obtain the effect you want aka "temperature" I'm not trying to trivialise this, but I really don't see that this is in any way a strong argument against AI.
consilient 3y ago
> simply be what that conscious thing experiences when a set of neurons is activated in a particular way? That is what it is, but that's totally independent of whether they're physical. One is a sign pointing to the thing, the other is a claim about the characteristics of the thing. "This is a question mark: ?" versus "A question mark is a punctuation mark that indicates an interrogative phrase." versus "A question mark is half to three quarters of a roughly circular shape, open at the lower left, with a small line segment at the bottom followed by an open space and then a dot."
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
DFHippie 3y ago
> I'm in the camp that the most likely outcome is that artificial neural networks can be conscious and have real experiences, but the toy networks we have today don't have nearly the right topology to achieve such states. I'm in the camp that says this question is unanswerable. We know we individually are conscious because we experience it. We accept that other people are conscious because they are so similar to us and they say they are, so by Occam's Razor they aren't zombies and they aren't lying. We haven't proven they are conscious, but we accept it. It seems reasonable. But if our test is just that it seems reasonable, there will be no convincing someone that a very dissimilar thing isn't just lying or faking it. We say some things are not conscious not because we have evidence of this, but because the test is whether we ourselves say "Yes, this is conscious." Furthermore, we hold onto this distinction as important because it has ethical consequence. We can do what we want to things that aren't conscious, so it's important that as many things as possible not be conscious. Is that thing conscious? It depends. Does it taste good? One more thing: we say we are unconscious under anesthesia or when we are asleep. Why? Because we don't don't have any memory of what it was like to be in these states. But this is a test of memory, not consciousness. I don't have memories from when I was one year old, but I'm fairly certain I was conscious then.
- mathewsanders 3y ago
  +100 > Because we don't don't have any memory of what it was like to be in these states. I want to add an anecdote from about 5 years ago when I fainted: there is a tiny moment as I was regaining consciousness that I had an experience that is unlike anything I’d ever experienced before (and words really fail to describe it) there was no sense of time, or even presence- it was like pure observation. It wasn’t the blackness nothingness that I think is associated with being unconscious, instead it was the opposite- it felt like hundreds of images, sounds and thoughts all layered on top of each other- it was very ‘noisy’. That might sound stressful, but I don’t remember feeling anything at all. It was only when some of that noise faded away that I experienced a sense of ‘self’ again and a moment later I formed the idea where am I? And then I opened my eyes and everything was back to typical conscious experience (although feeling a little disoriented).
- tasty_freeze 3y ago
xpl 3y ago
> but the toy networks we have today don't have nearly the right topology to achieve such states. But why do you think it needs some "right topology"? Why can't "qualia-generating" computation be simple? If you mean it needs recurrence (i.e. not being simply feed-forward) — then a network continuously fed with its previous output (which is the way you run LLMs!) does have this property.

doctor_eval 3y ago

> I'm in the camp that the most likely outcome is that artificial neural networks can be conscious and have real experiences, but the toy networks we have today don't have nearly the right topology to achieve such states. Agree with all you say, but just suspect that when we do come up with a network that can achieve such states, we will look at it and shake our heads and say, “So… is that all there is to it?”

tasty_freeze 3y ago
Agreed -- when I talk (and I don't think I'm alone) words seem to spontaneously tumble from my mouth without any effort. I'm learning what I'm saying at the same moment the person I'm talking with hears it. Only when I've painted myself into a verbal corner, or there is some complex concept that where I need to rehearse the phrasing before I get my idea across, does consciousness enter into it. That is all to say: 90%+ of what comes out of my mouth is about as sophisticated as ChatGPT.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- Terr_ 3y ago
  I suspect talking yourself through a problem (e.g. rubber-duck debugging) works because (A) the forced encode+decode loop causes additional re-checking and re-interpretation, and (B) it recruits more brain-areas that would otherwise be bypassed by the faster/cheaper internal information path.
- momirlan 3y ago
  it seems that way, but all you say goes through a complex filter built during a lifetime: experience, memories, desires, fears. most of this is subconscious, but it's still part of your conscience. not to mention that talking at a pub after a few pints is different from talking in a meeting where you have to filter every word to obtain the effect you want.
  - doctor_eval 3y ago
    But that's the problem, we can explain all of this with LLMs. > all you say goes through a complex filter built during a lifetime: experience, memories, desires, fears. most of this is subconscious, but it's still part of your conscience aka "training" > not to mention that talking at a pub after a few pints is different from talking in a meeting where you have to filter every word to obtain the effect you want aka "temperature" I'm not trying to trivialise this, but I really don't see that this is in any way a strong argument against AI.

consilient 3y ago

> simply be what that conscious thing experiences when a set of neurons is activated in a particular way? That is what it is, but that's totally independent of whether they're physical. One is a sign pointing to the thing, the other is a claim about the characteristics of the thing. "This is a question mark: ?" versus "A question mark is a punctuation mark that indicates an interrogative phrase." versus "A question mark is half to three quarters of a roughly circular shape, open at the lower left, with a small line segment at the bottom followed by an open space and then a dot."

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]

DFHippie 3y ago

> I'm in the camp that the most likely outcome is that artificial neural networks can be conscious and have real experiences, but the toy networks we have today don't have nearly the right topology to achieve such states. I'm in the camp that says this question is unanswerable. We know we individually are conscious because we experience it. We accept that other people are conscious because they are so similar to us and they say they are, so by Occam's Razor they aren't zombies and they aren't lying. We haven't proven they are conscious, but we accept it. It seems reasonable. But if our test is just that it seems reasonable, there will be no convincing someone that a very dissimilar thing isn't just lying or faking it. We say some things are not conscious not because we have evidence of this, but because the test is whether we ourselves say "Yes, this is conscious." Furthermore, we hold onto this distinction as important because it has ethical consequence. We can do what we want to things that aren't conscious, so it's important that as many things as possible not be conscious. Is that thing conscious? It depends. Does it taste good? One more thing: we say we are unconscious under anesthesia or when we are asleep. Why? Because we don't don't have any memory of what it was like to be in these states. But this is a test of memory, not consciousness. I don't have memories from when I was one year old, but I'm fairly certain I was conscious then.

mathewsanders 3y ago
+100 > Because we don't don't have any memory of what it was like to be in these states. I want to add an anecdote from about 5 years ago when I fainted: there is a tiny moment as I was regaining consciousness that I had an experience that is unlike anything I’d ever experienced before (and words really fail to describe it) there was no sense of time, or even presence- it was like pure observation. It wasn’t the blackness nothingness that I think is associated with being unconscious, instead it was the opposite- it felt like hundreds of images, sounds and thoughts all layered on top of each other- it was very ‘noisy’. That might sound stressful, but I don’t remember feeling anything at all. It was only when some of that noise faded away that I experienced a sense of ‘self’ again and a moment later I formed the idea where am I? And then I opened my eyes and everything was back to typical conscious experience (although feeling a little disoriented).
tasty_freeze 3y ago

xpl 3y ago

> but the toy networks we have today don't have nearly the right topology to achieve such states. But why do you think it needs some "right topology"? Why can't "qualia-generating" computation be simple? If you mean it needs recurrence (i.e. not being simply feed-forward) — then a network continuously fed with its previous output (which is the way you run LLMs!) does have this property.