4 ms·

I have a definition of consciousness: consciousness arises when a creature not only applies a theory of mind to others (predators, prey, and its conspecifics wo

I have a definition of consciousness: consciousness arises when a creature not only applies a theory of mind to others (predators, prey, and its conspecifics would all be likely others) but also applies a theory of mind to itself. (given that we have the most data on ourselves, it is not surprising that we'd have an "I", but it is a little surprising that the "I" modelled usually has such a high variance from others' models of oneself)

ben_w 3y ago
Great (although that's a hypothesis for a cause rather than a definition), but for any discussion with another person, you have to be sure in advance that they don't use one of the other 49 common meanings of "consciousness". What I care about when I ask if an AI is or isn't conscious, is if it has the kind of experiences of existing that I know I have. Why is there a feeling of sensations rather than just the sensations themselves in this body of mine? How is it that I am more than mere stimulus-response? Is it homunculi all the way down?
- k__ 3y ago
  I found the works of Thomas Metzinger illuminating, at least in terms of human consciousness.
  - ivansavz 3y ago
    +1 for Metzinger's ideas. It's pretty much the only theory of consciousness that I've read about that makes any sense. Here is a little extract for anyone not familiar: > My first step in this chapter is to introduce the hypothetical notion of a phenomenal self-model (PSM). [...] I will then investigate how a PSM, integrated into a yet more complex, higher-order form of representational content, forms the central necessary condition for a conscious first-person perspective to emerge on the representational as well as on the functional level of description. [...] > The content of the PSM is the content of the conscious self: your current bodily sensations, your present emotional situation, plus all the contents of your phenomenally experienced cognitive processing. They are constituents of your PSM. Intuitively, and in a certain metaphorical sense, one could even say that you are the content of your PSM. All those properties of yourself, to which you can now direct your attention, form the content of your current PSM. Your self-directed thoughts operate on the current contents of your PSM: they cannot operate on anything else. [...] > From a logical and epistemological perspective it is helpful to differentiate between simulation and emulation, in order to further enrich the concept of a PSM. We can then, in a second step, conceptually analyze the PSM as a special variant, namely, self-emulation. [...] It is the possibility of reflexive or self-directed emulation that is of particular interest from a philosophical perspective. Self-modeling is that special case, in which the target system and the simulating-emulating system are identical: A self-modeling information-processing system internally and continuously simulates its own observable output as well as it emulates abstract properties of its own internal information processing. [...] > Using a term from computer science, we could therefore metaphorically describe self-modeling in a conscious agent as “internal user modeling.” In human beings, it is particularly interesting to note how the self-model simultaneously treats the target system “as an object” (e.g., by using proprioceptive feedback in internally simulating ongoing bodily movements) and “as a subject” (e.g., by emulating its own cognitive processing in a way that makes it available for conscious access). This is what “embodiment” means, and what at the same time generates the intuitive roots of the mind-body problem: the human self-model treats the target system as subject and object at the same time. [...] from Chapter 6 of "Being No One: The Self-Model Theory of Subjectivity" by Thomas Metzinger. ___ Also worth looking into are the similar explanations on concisousness-as-self-model (in a simulation generated by our brain) by Joscha Bach. I'm not sure if Bach came to the same perspective independently or he read Metzinger, but he definitely presents his ideas in a more accessible language language (vs. Metzinger's heavy, precise philosophical jargon, which I found heavy to read). I'd love to find more sources on this (books/talks/papers), or find a place where these ideas are actively discussed.
- xcode42 3y ago
  Good luck. I've given up trying to explain qualia to people, and why they are at the core of why conscience matters. It's so frustrating. Once I heard it for the first time it seemed obvious to me and I was glad someone had already made up a word for it, but every time I try to explain it to people in the consciousness discussion people just look at me cross-eyed I must just be explaining it wrong :)
- 082349872349872 3y ago
  How do we know that other H sapiens have the same kind of experiences of existing as you have? Best I can do is that "I know, right?" is a fairly universal reaction, so we know that even if others' qualia are not identical to ours, they are at least isomorphic. As to "more than mere stimulus-response", much of me is pretty basic stimulus-response. Certainly the derivative controller, and arguably all the proportional controller as well. It's only the integral controller that's not, and much of that could be adequately explained by an FSM with a high number of states. (it is a little known fact that Regexen were originally derived as a mathematical model of what neural networks could potentially recognise!) (see https://thefarside.net/i/61ee3cb4 https://thefarside.net/i/61ee3cb4 infra)
  - bumby 3y ago
    >How do we know that other H sapiens have the same kind of experiences of existing as you have? Best I can do is that "I know, right?" This was answered in a different comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39103099 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39103099 I think the point is that we agree that I (as the individual asking) has consciousness, then we can infer that others have consciousness based on similarity. Another H sapiens is very much like me, so they are very likely to have similar experiences. Chimpanzees less so, but still similar enough to infer they are more likely than not to be have similar experience. And on down the line, through dogs, earthworms, plants, and bacteria...each getting potentially less likely the further from similitude they become.
    - 082349872349872 3y ago
      I prefer using my definition because it offers something more testable than just some (arbitrary?) degree of similarity. For instance, cows have been shown to spend (significantly) more time standing near (randomly placed) pictures of smiling farmers than pictures of frowning farmers, which suggests that they have enough of a theory of mind to prefer farmers who appear to be in good moods to those who appear to be in poor ones. That, of course, doesn't say anything about whether cows have a theory of their own mind, nor did that study do the (perhaps not so obvious?) step of recording picture placement relative to the cow's "bubble" (a curious bovine approaches head on; a frightened bovine leaves head first; a skeptical bovine places itself sideways to the object at a distance, with one eye upon it, so it can change to either of the first two if it comes to a decision either way), but at least it offers something more quantifiable than "I believe this thing to be more like me than that thing".
- grantcas 3y ago
  [dead]
aebtebeten 3y ago
today's serendipity: https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/consciousness-3 https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/consciousness-3

ben_w 3y ago

Great (although that's a hypothesis for a cause rather than a definition), but for any discussion with another person, you have to be sure in advance that they don't use one of the other 49 common meanings of "consciousness". What I care about when I ask if an AI is or isn't conscious, is if it has the kind of experiences of existing that I know I have. Why is there a feeling of sensations rather than just the sensations themselves in this body of mine? How is it that I am more than mere stimulus-response? Is it homunculi all the way down?

k__ 3y ago
I found the works of Thomas Metzinger illuminating, at least in terms of human consciousness.
- ivansavz 3y ago
  +1 for Metzinger's ideas. It's pretty much the only theory of consciousness that I've read about that makes any sense. Here is a little extract for anyone not familiar: > My first step in this chapter is to introduce the hypothetical notion of a phenomenal self-model (PSM). [...] I will then investigate how a PSM, integrated into a yet more complex, higher-order form of representational content, forms the central necessary condition for a conscious first-person perspective to emerge on the representational as well as on the functional level of description. [...] > The content of the PSM is the content of the conscious self: your current bodily sensations, your present emotional situation, plus all the contents of your phenomenally experienced cognitive processing. They are constituents of your PSM. Intuitively, and in a certain metaphorical sense, one could even say that you are the content of your PSM. All those properties of yourself, to which you can now direct your attention, form the content of your current PSM. Your self-directed thoughts operate on the current contents of your PSM: they cannot operate on anything else. [...] > From a logical and epistemological perspective it is helpful to differentiate between simulation and emulation, in order to further enrich the concept of a PSM. We can then, in a second step, conceptually analyze the PSM as a special variant, namely, self-emulation. [...] It is the possibility of reflexive or self-directed emulation that is of particular interest from a philosophical perspective. Self-modeling is that special case, in which the target system and the simulating-emulating system are identical: A self-modeling information-processing system internally and continuously simulates its own observable output as well as it emulates abstract properties of its own internal information processing. [...] > Using a term from computer science, we could therefore metaphorically describe self-modeling in a conscious agent as “internal user modeling.” In human beings, it is particularly interesting to note how the self-model simultaneously treats the target system “as an object” (e.g., by using proprioceptive feedback in internally simulating ongoing bodily movements) and “as a subject” (e.g., by emulating its own cognitive processing in a way that makes it available for conscious access). This is what “embodiment” means, and what at the same time generates the intuitive roots of the mind-body problem: the human self-model treats the target system as subject and object at the same time. [...] from Chapter 6 of "Being No One: The Self-Model Theory of Subjectivity" by Thomas Metzinger. ___ Also worth looking into are the similar explanations on concisousness-as-self-model (in a simulation generated by our brain) by Joscha Bach. I'm not sure if Bach came to the same perspective independently or he read Metzinger, but he definitely presents his ideas in a more accessible language language (vs. Metzinger's heavy, precise philosophical jargon, which I found heavy to read). I'd love to find more sources on this (books/talks/papers), or find a place where these ideas are actively discussed.
xcode42 3y ago
Good luck. I've given up trying to explain qualia to people, and why they are at the core of why conscience matters. It's so frustrating. Once I heard it for the first time it seemed obvious to me and I was glad someone had already made up a word for it, but every time I try to explain it to people in the consciousness discussion people just look at me cross-eyed I must just be explaining it wrong :)
082349872349872 3y ago
How do we know that other H sapiens have the same kind of experiences of existing as you have? Best I can do is that "I know, right?" is a fairly universal reaction, so we know that even if others' qualia are not identical to ours, they are at least isomorphic. As to "more than mere stimulus-response", much of me is pretty basic stimulus-response. Certainly the derivative controller, and arguably all the proportional controller as well. It's only the integral controller that's not, and much of that could be adequately explained by an FSM with a high number of states. (it is a little known fact that Regexen were originally derived as a mathematical model of what neural networks could potentially recognise!) (see https://thefarside.net/i/61ee3cb4 https://thefarside.net/i/61ee3cb4 infra)
- bumby 3y ago
  >How do we know that other H sapiens have the same kind of experiences of existing as you have? Best I can do is that "I know, right?" This was answered in a different comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39103099 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39103099 I think the point is that we agree that I (as the individual asking) has consciousness, then we can infer that others have consciousness based on similarity. Another H sapiens is very much like me, so they are very likely to have similar experiences. Chimpanzees less so, but still similar enough to infer they are more likely than not to be have similar experience. And on down the line, through dogs, earthworms, plants, and bacteria...each getting potentially less likely the further from similitude they become.
  - 082349872349872 3y ago
    I prefer using my definition because it offers something more testable than just some (arbitrary?) degree of similarity. For instance, cows have been shown to spend (significantly) more time standing near (randomly placed) pictures of smiling farmers than pictures of frowning farmers, which suggests that they have enough of a theory of mind to prefer farmers who appear to be in good moods to those who appear to be in poor ones. That, of course, doesn't say anything about whether cows have a theory of their own mind, nor did that study do the (perhaps not so obvious?) step of recording picture placement relative to the cow's "bubble" (a curious bovine approaches head on; a frightened bovine leaves head first; a skeptical bovine places itself sideways to the object at a distance, with one eye upon it, so it can change to either of the first two if it comes to a decision either way), but at least it offers something more quantifiable than "I believe this thing to be more like me than that thing".
grantcas 3y ago
[dead]

aebtebeten 3y ago

today's serendipity: https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/consciousness-3 https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/consciousness-3