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The simplest explanation of consciousness is that its a tool to build an abstract world model including fellow humans turned back on self. You cant drive the e

The simplest explanation of consciousness is that its a tool to build an abstract world model including fellow humans turned back on self. You cant drive the entire network because that is an interactable problem so you model it like a fellow human and either feed broad input to it or sanctify decisions already made as part of the theory of "I" I dont think gpt4 individual cells nor the algorithm can be said to have a subjective experience. I specifically doubt that the plants have one insofar as there doesn't appear to be a structure capable of building a model. The boring answer that only the cat and the human are conscious seems like the correct one. Polling a random sample of the population doesn't seem like a useful way to get at truth. Since the universe isnt an actor building a model of a larger world I don't see how it could be conscious. If there is no other there is no I.

fooker 3y ago
In your book, what would it take for something other than a human or animal to demonstrate consciousness?
- michaelmrose 3y ago
  I would be tempted to imagine it might be conscious if it merely acted as if it had motive and a model of the world. At first blush chatGPT seems conscious for instance.
  - fooker 3y ago
    I think by that definition you can argue that all the entities I mentioned in my original comment are conscious. There is no way to quantify how expressive your model of the world has to be, or what mechanisms you have to act. For example, a single neuron in an artificial neural network has a model of the world (it's weight), and can act by producing different outputs for different inputs.
    - michaelmrose 3y ago
      I think it means that consciousness isn't anything terrifically special and that human level consciousness is just something along the same spectrum with a more complicated model.
DFHippie 3y ago
If all your attention is temporarily focused on something external to yourself, an onrushing train, say, are you temporarily not conscious? People typically distinguish self-awareness from consciousness. It is not clear that they should, or shouldn't, but they typically do. They say consciousness is not facts but qualia, the sensation of the facts. A spreadsheet full of information can contain facts that differentiate blue from red. We hypothesize that a spreadsheet has no sensations, hence no qualia, hence no consciousness. We cannot actually operationalize this. We say a paramecium and a stone have no qualia, but this is more a hypothesis than a fact. I think panpsychism in its essence is accepting that qualia are something and that the imagined boundary between things that have qualia and things which don't is established only by hypothesis and tradition. In the interest of not multiplying entities beyond necessity, we dispose of the boundary. I am not a philsopher, so I don't really know what philosophers say.

fooker 3y ago

In your book, what would it take for something other than a human or animal to demonstrate consciousness?

michaelmrose 3y ago
I would be tempted to imagine it might be conscious if it merely acted as if it had motive and a model of the world. At first blush chatGPT seems conscious for instance.
- fooker 3y ago
  I think by that definition you can argue that all the entities I mentioned in my original comment are conscious. There is no way to quantify how expressive your model of the world has to be, or what mechanisms you have to act. For example, a single neuron in an artificial neural network has a model of the world (it's weight), and can act by producing different outputs for different inputs.
  - michaelmrose 3y ago
    I think it means that consciousness isn't anything terrifically special and that human level consciousness is just something along the same spectrum with a more complicated model.

DFHippie 3y ago

If all your attention is temporarily focused on something external to yourself, an onrushing train, say, are you temporarily not conscious? People typically distinguish self-awareness from consciousness. It is not clear that they should, or shouldn't, but they typically do. They say consciousness is not facts but qualia, the sensation of the facts. A spreadsheet full of information can contain facts that differentiate blue from red. We hypothesize that a spreadsheet has no sensations, hence no qualia, hence no consciousness. We cannot actually operationalize this. We say a paramecium and a stone have no qualia, but this is more a hypothesis than a fact. I think panpsychism in its essence is accepting that qualia are something and that the imagined boundary between things that have qualia and things which don't is established only by hypothesis and tradition. In the interest of not multiplying entities beyond necessity, we dispose of the boundary. I am not a philsopher, so I don't really know what philosophers say.