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I hear this a lot, but is it really a mystery/incompatible with materialism? Is there a reason consciousness couldn't be what it feels like to be a certain type

I hear this a lot, but is it really a mystery/incompatible with materialism? Is there a reason consciousness couldn't be what it feels like to be a certain type of computation? I don't see why we would need something immaterial or some undiscovered material component to explain it.

kaibee 3y ago
Well the undiscovered part is why it should feel like anything at all. And this is definitely relevant because consciousness clearly exists enough that we exert physical force about it, so its gotta be somewhere in physics. But where?
- idle_zealot 3y ago
  Why does it need to be in physics? What would that look like, a Qualia Boson? It could be an emergent property like life itself. Physics doesn't "explain" life, it explains the physical mechanisms behind the chemical interactions that ultimately produce life by virtue of self-replicating patterns spreading and mutating. There is no Life is physics, and yet we see it all around it because it emerges as a complex result of fundamental rules. My expectation is that experience is emergent from computation that controls an agent and models the world around that agent, and that experience isn't a binary. A tree is more aware than a rock, an ant more than a tree, a squirrel more than an ant, and so on until you reach humans, but there may not be any real change in kind as the conditions for experience become more developed. I guess my real point is that I don't view experience or consciousness as something special or exceptional. My guess is that over time we come to understand how the brain works better and better but never find anything that definitively explains consciousness because it's totally subjective and immeasurable. We eventually produce computers complex enough to behave totally convincingly human, and they will claim to be conscious, maybe even be granted personhood, but we'll never actually know for sure if they experience the world, just like we don't know that other humans do.
  - PH95VuimJjqBqy 3y ago
    If life is an emergent property of physics then it's replicable which means it's not spiritual.
- robwwilliams 3y ago
  Toward the end of Hofstadter’s Gödel, Escher, Bach there is a simple and plausible recursive attentional explanation, but without any serious neuroscience. The thalamo-cortico-thalamic system is a massively recursive CNS system. Ray Guillery’s biok The Brain As A Tool is a good introduction to the relevant neuroscience with a hat tip to consciousness written long after GEB.
dekhn 3y ago
I mean, if you're a compatibilist, there's no mystery. In that model, we live in a causally deterministic universe but still have free will. I would say instead "the subjective experience of consciousness is an emergent property of complex systems with certain properties". I guess that's consistent with "the experience of consciousness is the feeling of a certain type of computation". Personally these sorts of things don't really matter to me- I don't really care if other people are conscious, and I don't think I could prove it either way- I just assume other people are conscious, and that we can make computers that are conscious. And that's exactly what I'm pushing for: ML that passes every Turing-style test that we can come up with. Because, as they say "if you can't tell, does it really matter?"
beezlebroxxxxxx 3y ago
Why is consciousness computation? What does it even mean to say something feels like being "a type of computation"? The concept of consciousness is wildly more expansive and diverse than computation, rather than the other way around. A strict materialist account or "explanation" of consciousness seems to just end up a category error. I take it as no surprise that a website devoted to the computers and software often insists that this is the only way to look at it, but there are entire philosophical movements that have developed fascinating accounts of consciousness that are far from strict materialism, nor are they "spiritual" or religious which is a common rejoinder by materialists, an example is the implications of Ludwig Wittgenstein's work from Philosophical Investigations and his analysis of language. And even in neuroscience there is far from complete agreement on the topic at all.
- ux-app 3y ago
  >Why is consciousness computation? if there is no duality, then what else can it be? > there are entire philosophical movements that have developed fascinating accounts of consciousness that are far from strict materialism philosophers can bloviate all day. meanwhile the computer nerds built a machine that can engage in creative conversation, pass physician and bar exams, create art, music and code. I'm not saying there's nothing to learn from philosophy, but gee you have to admit that philosophers come up a little short wrt practical applications of their "Philosophical Investigations"

kaibee 3y ago

Well the undiscovered part is why it should feel like anything at all. And this is definitely relevant because consciousness clearly exists enough that we exert physical force about it, so its gotta be somewhere in physics. But where?

idle_zealot 3y ago
Why does it need to be in physics? What would that look like, a Qualia Boson? It could be an emergent property like life itself. Physics doesn't "explain" life, it explains the physical mechanisms behind the chemical interactions that ultimately produce life by virtue of self-replicating patterns spreading and mutating. There is no Life is physics, and yet we see it all around it because it emerges as a complex result of fundamental rules. My expectation is that experience is emergent from computation that controls an agent and models the world around that agent, and that experience isn't a binary. A tree is more aware than a rock, an ant more than a tree, a squirrel more than an ant, and so on until you reach humans, but there may not be any real change in kind as the conditions for experience become more developed. I guess my real point is that I don't view experience or consciousness as something special or exceptional. My guess is that over time we come to understand how the brain works better and better but never find anything that definitively explains consciousness because it's totally subjective and immeasurable. We eventually produce computers complex enough to behave totally convincingly human, and they will claim to be conscious, maybe even be granted personhood, but we'll never actually know for sure if they experience the world, just like we don't know that other humans do.
- PH95VuimJjqBqy 3y ago
  If life is an emergent property of physics then it's replicable which means it's not spiritual.
robwwilliams 3y ago
Toward the end of Hofstadter’s Gödel, Escher, Bach there is a simple and plausible recursive attentional explanation, but without any serious neuroscience. The thalamo-cortico-thalamic system is a massively recursive CNS system. Ray Guillery’s biok The Brain As A Tool is a good introduction to the relevant neuroscience with a hat tip to consciousness written long after GEB.

dekhn 3y ago

I mean, if you're a compatibilist, there's no mystery. In that model, we live in a causally deterministic universe but still have free will. I would say instead "the subjective experience of consciousness is an emergent property of complex systems with certain properties". I guess that's consistent with "the experience of consciousness is the feeling of a certain type of computation". Personally these sorts of things don't really matter to me- I don't really care if other people are conscious, and I don't think I could prove it either way- I just assume other people are conscious, and that we can make computers that are conscious. And that's exactly what I'm pushing for: ML that passes every Turing-style test that we can come up with. Because, as they say "if you can't tell, does it really matter?"

beezlebroxxxxxx 3y ago

Why is consciousness computation? What does it even mean to say something feels like being "a type of computation"? The concept of consciousness is wildly more expansive and diverse than computation, rather than the other way around. A strict materialist account or "explanation" of consciousness seems to just end up a category error. I take it as no surprise that a website devoted to the computers and software often insists that this is the only way to look at it, but there are entire philosophical movements that have developed fascinating accounts of consciousness that are far from strict materialism, nor are they "spiritual" or religious which is a common rejoinder by materialists, an example is the implications of Ludwig Wittgenstein's work from Philosophical Investigations and his analysis of language. And even in neuroscience there is far from complete agreement on the topic at all.

ux-app 3y ago
>Why is consciousness computation? if there is no duality, then what else can it be? > there are entire philosophical movements that have developed fascinating accounts of consciousness that are far from strict materialism philosophers can bloviate all day. meanwhile the computer nerds built a machine that can engage in creative conversation, pass physician and bar exams, create art, music and code. I'm not saying there's nothing to learn from philosophy, but gee you have to admit that philosophers come up a little short wrt practical applications of their "Philosophical Investigations"