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The tragedy (depending on how you look at it) with discussions about consciousness is that any possible consciousness we envision is inevitably human-like. We w

The tragedy (depending on how you look at it) with discussions about consciousness is that any possible consciousness we envision is inevitably human-like. We wouldn’t see it as “consciousness” even if it was only somewhat different from ours (animals); a consciousness that is really different may look to us like any natural process. A question of “is X conscious?” has no meaning if you remove that constraint of “human-like”. Like with any question we ask, we cannot remove ourselves from this one.

lukan 3y ago
I am not so sure about it. The question is, whether consciousness also leads to changing behavior. Say we try to communicate with method X and the sun answers with a flare, would probably be proof. But it could also be, it has consciousness, but simply would not care much about and ignore us.
- strogonoff 3y ago
  “Answers” is a word that hints that you are still thinking of it as human-like consciousness. A valid point could be that our consciousness is social (“answering” is a thing), and by extension any alien consciousness we expect would also have to be social as one of the constraints that make it sufficiently human-like.
  - lukan 3y ago
    That is a good point. I need to clarify my consciousness about it. In general I don't think a consciousness needs to be social to react to other consciousness. They might pose a threat or benefit. Say we want to build a dyson sphere and that would disrupt the suns ability to communicate with other suns (also social I know). I try to find better examples ..
  - colordrops 3y ago
    Is there any other definition of consciousness than one of a subjective experience that observes and reacts to its environment?
    - chongli 3y ago
      What is a subjective experience? To me, this seems like an infinite regress problem.
      - MacsHeadroom 3y ago
        Subjective experience is the awareness of an internal representation.
        chongli 3y ago
        What is awareness then? Do you see my point? Either you end up with a circle of references or an infinite regress of definitions to describe the ineffable. It’s the problem of qualia [1]. They can’t really be defined, only pointed at. My experience of seeing the colour red is non-universalizable. Thus the word red can only point at it, it can’t describe or define it. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qualia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qualia
    - strogonoff 3y ago
      I would say there is no working definition of consciousness at all—and potentially there can’t be a complete and provably correct one, if we assume Gödel’s incompleteness theorem is true. The reason is that our arguments about consciousness originate from consciousness itself, we are building a model of the system while being inside of it. The only definitive statement that can be made, I guess, is that consciousness exists. As far as consciousness that doesn’t react, there are materialist/behaviourist/illusionist views that hold that only observed behaviour matters and anything else may well not exist, but I personally am not convinced by them.
- ajmurmann 3y ago
  Even that wouldn't indicate the sun is conscious. Your computer responds when you press a key, is that proof it's conscious? (I don't think it's impossible that computers are conscious, but I cannot even proof that humans other than me possess a consciousness)
Jensson 3y ago
> We wouldn’t see it as “consciousness” even if it was only somewhat different from ours (animals); Most humans see animals as having a consciousness with feelings and dreams like us. Why would you think otherwise? Why else would it be illegal to torture animals? That we even call it "torture" means we think the animals suffers from it, we don't say we torture a rock when we crack it, that means we see them as having a consciousness.
- card_zero 3y ago
  The human anxiety about animal suffering needs arguments to support it. You can't argue from it to support something else. It's already a weak position that we just go along with because of feels.
  - Jensson 3y ago
    > The human anxiety about animal suffering needs arguments to support it You want arguments supporting that humans dislike seeing animals suffer? To most people that would be obvious, I'm not sure what to say.
    - card_zero 3y ago
      No, that's not what I meant. I'm saying that reasoning from anxiety is not valid.
      - Jensson 3y ago
        It is valid, we are talking about what humans thinks, not what is true. If humans thinks animals are conscious then they think animals are conscious, doesn't mean animals actually are conscious. And the fact that I don't get downvoted here is evidence people here also think that animals are conscious, which supports my argument that people think animals are conscious.
        card_zero 3y ago
mannykannot 3y ago
Human consciousness is an important thing that we do not understand, and therefore well worth studying in itself. Anyone who can get some sort of handle on other forms of consciousness is encouraged to investigate further, but that might not be possible until we have a better understanding of human consciousness. One of the overlooked features of the so-called scientific revolution is that it shifted focus from "big" questions to questions of a more constrained scope, but that are amenable to investigation. This turned out to be much more effective than those preoccupied with the "big" questions might have imagined.
theptip 3y ago
I think you can envision “non-human-like”. Eg we already imagine animals can be conscious. Conscious just means an intelligence that is self-aware and has subjective experience. If you define that as human-like then your point stands tautologically. But I think there is a very wide space of conscious possible-minds. Simple examples would be hive-minds, faster minds, slower minds, distributed minds, quantum minds, it’s really quite easy to imagine conscious non-human minds.
- strogonoff 3y ago
  An animal’s consciousness is not exactly human-like, but close enough. Envision something on completely foreign time & space scales and it might be indistinguishable from, say, a weather system.

lukan 3y ago

I am not so sure about it. The question is, whether consciousness also leads to changing behavior. Say we try to communicate with method X and the sun answers with a flare, would probably be proof. But it could also be, it has consciousness, but simply would not care much about and ignore us.

strogonoff 3y ago
“Answers” is a word that hints that you are still thinking of it as human-like consciousness. A valid point could be that our consciousness is social (“answering” is a thing), and by extension any alien consciousness we expect would also have to be social as one of the constraints that make it sufficiently human-like.
- lukan 3y ago
  That is a good point. I need to clarify my consciousness about it. In general I don't think a consciousness needs to be social to react to other consciousness. They might pose a threat or benefit. Say we want to build a dyson sphere and that would disrupt the suns ability to communicate with other suns (also social I know). I try to find better examples ..
- colordrops 3y ago
  Is there any other definition of consciousness than one of a subjective experience that observes and reacts to its environment?
  - chongli 3y ago
    What is a subjective experience? To me, this seems like an infinite regress problem.
    - MacsHeadroom 3y ago
      Subjective experience is the awareness of an internal representation.
      - chongli 3y ago
        What is awareness then? Do you see my point? Either you end up with a circle of references or an infinite regress of definitions to describe the ineffable. It’s the problem of qualia [1]. They can’t really be defined, only pointed at. My experience of seeing the colour red is non-universalizable. Thus the word red can only point at it, it can’t describe or define it. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qualia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qualia
  - strogonoff 3y ago
    I would say there is no working definition of consciousness at all—and potentially there can’t be a complete and provably correct one, if we assume Gödel’s incompleteness theorem is true. The reason is that our arguments about consciousness originate from consciousness itself, we are building a model of the system while being inside of it. The only definitive statement that can be made, I guess, is that consciousness exists. As far as consciousness that doesn’t react, there are materialist/behaviourist/illusionist views that hold that only observed behaviour matters and anything else may well not exist, but I personally am not convinced by them.
ajmurmann 3y ago
Even that wouldn't indicate the sun is conscious. Your computer responds when you press a key, is that proof it's conscious? (I don't think it's impossible that computers are conscious, but I cannot even proof that humans other than me possess a consciousness)

Jensson 3y ago

> We wouldn’t see it as “consciousness” even if it was only somewhat different from ours (animals); Most humans see animals as having a consciousness with feelings and dreams like us. Why would you think otherwise? Why else would it be illegal to torture animals? That we even call it "torture" means we think the animals suffers from it, we don't say we torture a rock when we crack it, that means we see them as having a consciousness.

card_zero 3y ago
The human anxiety about animal suffering needs arguments to support it. You can't argue from it to support something else. It's already a weak position that we just go along with because of feels.
- Jensson 3y ago
  > The human anxiety about animal suffering needs arguments to support it You want arguments supporting that humans dislike seeing animals suffer? To most people that would be obvious, I'm not sure what to say.
  - card_zero 3y ago
    No, that's not what I meant. I'm saying that reasoning from anxiety is not valid.
    - Jensson 3y ago
      It is valid, we are talking about what humans thinks, not what is true. If humans thinks animals are conscious then they think animals are conscious, doesn't mean animals actually are conscious. And the fact that I don't get downvoted here is evidence people here also think that animals are conscious, which supports my argument that people think animals are conscious.
      - card_zero 3y ago

mannykannot 3y ago

Human consciousness is an important thing that we do not understand, and therefore well worth studying in itself. Anyone who can get some sort of handle on other forms of consciousness is encouraged to investigate further, but that might not be possible until we have a better understanding of human consciousness. One of the overlooked features of the so-called scientific revolution is that it shifted focus from "big" questions to questions of a more constrained scope, but that are amenable to investigation. This turned out to be much more effective than those preoccupied with the "big" questions might have imagined.

theptip 3y ago

I think you can envision “non-human-like”. Eg we already imagine animals can be conscious. Conscious just means an intelligence that is self-aware and has subjective experience. If you define that as human-like then your point stands tautologically. But I think there is a very wide space of conscious possible-minds. Simple examples would be hive-minds, faster minds, slower minds, distributed minds, quantum minds, it’s really quite easy to imagine conscious non-human minds.

strogonoff 3y ago
An animal’s consciousness is not exactly human-like, but close enough. Envision something on completely foreign time & space scales and it might be indistinguishable from, say, a weather system.