16 ms·

A landscape of consciousness: Toward a taxonomy of explanations and implications

105 points by danielam 2y ago

bzmrgonz 2y ago
This is a wonderful project, I had no idea there was so much fragmentation n the topic of consciousness. Maybe we should feed these writings and concepts to AI and ask it to give us any grand unifying commonality among them, if any.
- bubblyworld 2y ago
  I would love to be wrong about this, but I don't think anyone knows how to do that yet. You're basically asking for automatic most-likely hypothesis generation given a set of input data. Concepts about consciousness in this case, but you could imagine doing the same with scientific data, system traces around bugs and crashes, etc. That would be wild!
- russdill 2y ago
  It's precisely the type of thing that current LLMs are not suited for. They excel at extrapolating between existing writings and ideas. They do really poorly when trying to do something novel.
  - mistermann 2y ago
    On their own yes, but as human-like intelligent agents running within a larger framework it's a different story.
- superb_dev 2y ago
  Just skip all the thinking ourselves and see if some AI can come up with plausible sounding nonsense? I’m not interested
- dcre 2y ago
  You should probably try thinking about it instead.
- poikroequ 2y ago
  Why do people feel the need to AI everything?
cut3 2y ago
This topic is so interesting. If I were creating a system for everything, it seems like empty space needs awareness of anything it could expand to contain, so all things would be aware of all other things as a base universal conscious hitbox. Panpsychism seems neat to think about.
- CuriouslyC 2y ago
  You don't need empty space. All the processing power can be tied to entities, and space emerges from relationships between entities. Want something fun to think about? What if the Heisenberg uncertainty principle is basically a function of the information capacity of the thing being examined. To make a computer analogy, imagine you have 8 bits of information - using 6 for position leaves 2 momentum, for example.
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
brotchie 2y ago
Two things I'm absolutely convinced of at this point. 1. Consciousness is primitive. That is, interior experience is a fundamental property of the universe: any information system in the universe that has certain properties has an interior experience, 2. Within the human population, interior experience varies vastly between individuals. Assertion 1 is informed though reading, introspection, meditation, and psychedelic experience. I've transitions the whole spectrum of being a die hard physical materialist to high conviction that consciousness is primitive. I'm not traditionally panpsychic, which most commonly postulates that every bit of matter has some level of conscious experience. I really think information and information processing is the fundamental unit (realized as certain configurations of matter) and certain information system's (e.g. our brain) have an interior experience. Assertion 2 is informed through discussion with others. Denial of Chalmer's hard problem doesn't make sense to me. Like it seems logically flawed to argue that consciousness is emergent. Interior experience can't "emerge" from the traditional laws of physics, it's like a nonsense argument. The observation that folks really challenge this makes me deeply believe that the interior experience across humans is not at all uniform. The interior experience of somebody who vehemently denies the hard problem must be so much different from my interior experience to the extend that the divide can't be bridged.
- tanepiper 2y ago
  You word my position here too. 20's - a rabid Dawkins reading Athiest. 40's - I think Dawkins is an idiot and my favourite book is "Beelzebub's Tales to His Grandson"
  - tasty_freeze 2y ago
    You don't come off as being a nuanced thinker if those are your two positions on Dawkins. I can understand disagreeing with him, but calling him an idiot impugns you more than him.
    - mistermann 2y ago
      Assuming your model of him is correct. How many videos of him "destroying" theists have you watched on TikTok? I've seen 100+, and agree that he's an idiot, amazingly so. Watch carefully the words he uses as he "proves" his "facts".
codeflo 2y ago
As a thought experiment, imagine we were to scan the position of every molecule in the human body to the Heisenberg limit of accuracy. Imagine we were to plug the resulting model in a physics simulation that models every biochemical and physical interaction with perfect fidelity. This is a thought experiment, and what I suggest isn't ruled out by physics, so let's assume it's technologically possible. Would the simulated being be "conscious" in the same way the original human is? Would it experience "qualia"? If you think the answer might be no, then congratulations, you actually believe in immaterial souls, no matter how materialist or rationalist you otherwise claim to be.
- mistermann 2y ago
  Not necessarily, one could be a Pedant.
- vundercind 2y ago
  Only holds if whatever hardware that’s pretending to be the matter can act exactly like the matter without being the same thing. For the distinction, consider the difference between a simulation of a simple chemical process in a computer—even a perfectly accurate one!—and the actual thing happening. Is the thing going on in the computer the same? No, no matter how perfect the simulation. It’s a little electricity moving around, looking nothing whatsoever like the real thing. The simulation is meaning that we impose on that electricity moving around. That being the case, this reduces to “if we recreate the matter and state exactly, for-real, is that consciousness?” in which case yeah, sure, probably so. This doesn’t work if the thing running the simulation requires interpretation.
  - s1artibartfast 2y ago
    exactly, The parent post does not address the issue of representation vs reality. You can simulate every molecular interaction in a fire, but that does not mean the simulation gives off the same heat. You can write a perfectly accurate equation for splitting an atom, but the equation does not release energy.
    - 2y ago
tasty_freeze 2y ago
I've never understood why Chalmer's reasoning is so captivating to people. The whole idea of p-zombies seems absurd on its face. Quoting the article: (quote) His core argument against materialism, in its original form, is deceptively (and delightfully) simple: 1. In our world, there are conscious experiences. 2. There is a logically possible world physically identical to ours, in which the positive facts about consciousness in our world do not hold. 3. Therefore, facts about consciousness are further facts about our world, over and above the physical facts. 4. So, materialism is false. (endquote) Point 2 is textbook begging the question: it imagines a world which is physically identical to ours but consciousness is different there. That is baking in the presupposition that consciousness is not a physical process. Points 3 and 4 then "cleverly" detect the very contradiction he has planted and claims victory.
- codeflo 2y ago
  If you believe that what we describe as "consciousness" is emergent from the ideas a material brain develops about itself, then it's in fact not logically possible to have a world that is physically identical to ours yet does not contain consciousness. So indeed, premise 2. sneaks in the conclusion. To illustrate this point, here's an argument with the same structure that would similarly "prove" that gravity doesn't cause things to fall down: 1. In our world, there is gravity and things fall down. 2. There is a logically possible world where there is gravity yet things do not fall down. 3. Therefore, things falling down is a further fact about our world, over and above gravity. 4. So, gravity causing things to fall down is false.
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
  - goatlover 2y ago
    But Chalmers doesn't think that approach works, nor any other physicalist attempt to explain consciousness. The problem with what you stated is that you're substituting ideas about consciousness for sensations. And those aren't the same thing. We experience sensations as part of being embodied organisms, and then we think about those sensations.
kkoncevicius 2y ago
To me it seems that the hard problem of consciousness can be stated a lot simpler, like so: How can we tell if another person is conscious or not? As far as I see, this is not possible and will never be possible. Hence the "hard problem".
- pmayrgundter 2y ago
  Mechanical telepathy may be possible, and for me could possibly answer this question. You and they put on a device whereby you tap into their conscious experience, see through their eyes, hear the voices in their head...
  - TaupeRanger 2y ago
    Even then, you're still only experiencing your own, single, unitary stream of experience, you've just replaced or superimposed parts of it with signals from another nervous system. But even if you can somehow replace/superimpose the signals coming through their optic nerve, for example, into your own experience, that still doesn't answer the question of whether or not they have their own stream of experience to begin with. That is simply unknowable, outside of the reasonable assumptions we all make to avoid solipsism (but they are still assumptions at the end of the day).
  - Thiez 2y ago
    That seems unlikely, as neural networks don't all develop exactly the same. There is some natural variance which brain regions perform which function. E.g. Broca's area (very important for speech) only 'usually' lies on your left hemisphere. We know from experiments that stimulating certain areas of the brain produces certain (predictable) feelings, but to stimulate the brain in such a way to transfer an exact thought or a specific vision would seem impossible without a very detailed scan of the source and destination brain, and a complex remapping in between. And some experiences may not be transferable if the target doesn't hawe the required circuitry.
- poikroequ 2y ago
  We don't know if dark matter exists, but we can still observe it by its gravitational effect on large astronomical objects. We can't be sure it's dark matter, but it's "likely" dark matter. I believe we can do something similar with consciousness. We can make measurements or observations of a person and conclude they are "likely" consciousness. Maybe we can't ever be 100% certain whether a person is conscious or not. But nothing in science is 100% certain. No matter how much evidence we have, it would only take a single counterexample to disprove a well established scientific theory.
detourdog 2y ago
I’m still thinking about what Helen Keller discussed in her paper on consciousness and language. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40466814 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40466814 The paper is linked and disused in this thread. Her description of the void before having language is eye opening.
pmayrgundter 2y ago
Robert Kuhn is a really impressive dude. I've been occasionally running across his videos on YT from these interviews. I'm very impressed that he's rolling it all up into a written research project as well. "I have discussed consciousness with over 200 scientists and philosophers who work on or think about consciousness and related fields (Closer To Truth YouTube; Closer To Truth website)." https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLFJr3pJl27pJKWEUWv9X56y_ut3xwFDv1 https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLFJr3pJl27pJKWEUWv9X5... https://www.youtube.com/@CloserToTruthTV/videos https://www.youtube.com/@CloserToTruthTV/videos
utkarsh858 2y ago
Vedic philosophy has an interesting take on the problem of consciousness. It take consciousness to be emanating from particles the size of atoms. They word those atomic particles as 'atma' ( in english souls, some even call it spiriton!).Those particles are fundamental to the universe and indivisible like quarks, bosons etc. Like radiation emanating from sun, it handles consciousness as 'emanating' from soul. Each and every living being starting from size of a cell has a soul feeling (partially) about mechanisms of its body. A multi-cellular organism is then explained as a universe in itself where millions of cells with souls are thriving. The organism will then contain a 'chief soul' directing the working of whole body (which will be us case of humans). Further the philosophy expands this concept to the real universe in which all organisms with their individual consciousness are directed by a chief 'super consciousness'( in Vedic terminology it is termed as paramatma, some translate that as equal to God Concept) Although then it further expands by saying that there are infinite (almost) parallel universes but that's other thing...
- Thiez 2y ago
  That's a nice story but does it make any testable predictions? Because it appears to introduce many new concepts that would be measurable with particle physics, yet mysteriously have never been observed. And if these magic soul particles don't interact with matter in measurable ways, how do you know their size?
  - utkarsh858 2y ago
    > testable predictions In 1970, an experiment was conducted where a monkey's head was implanted into another monkey's body. The monkey did gained consciousness but was not able to move it's new body( I can barely imagine the pain it must have been feeling). If the possibility that the center of consciousness is completely independent of the body, I will say that the even though another monkey's head has been transplanted it will still have the consciousness and recognition of current body. >Mysteriously never been observed Was Higgs boson ever observed before 2012? Was it's theory ever proposed before 1964? Were people criticizing the attempt to discover it as 'magic particles mysteriously never observed'? >Don't interact with matter Yes those 'magic particles' can interact with matter through the curtain of probability and chances. The neurons firing inside a brain and subsequent signals passing to adjacent neurons are probabilistic. To direct the way a certain group of neurons towards a certain activity one has to tweak those probabilities, which can be changed via influence of external fields. >Nice story That's not a story but philosophy :) Vedic philosophy knew about the concept of atoms which it called 'anu' given by Kanad and it stated group of atoms as 'paramanu', way before Dalton proposed it.
robwwilliams 2y ago
What a massive and impressive coverage. The author, Robert Kuhn of Closer to Truth (https://closertotruth.com https://closertotruth.com), ends this beast with a request to readers: > Feedback is appreciated, critique too—especially explanations or theories of consciousness not included, or not described accurately, or not classified properly; also, improvements of the classification typology. I think RK would enjoy Humberto Maturana’s take on cognition and self-cognition. Maturana usually does not use the word “consciousness”. Start with Maturana’s book with Francisco Valera: Autopoiesis and Cognition: The Realization of the Living (1970) The appendix of this book is important (“The Nervous System”). Last few pages blew my brain or mind ;-) Thinking about consciousness without thinking more deeply about temporality is one problem most (or perhaps even all) models of consciousness still have. Since Robert Kuhn works in thalamocortical activity the theme of timing should resonant.
Animats 2y ago
"The implications of consciousness explanations or theories are assessed with respect to four questions: meaning/purpose/value (if any); AI consciousness; virtual immortality; and survival beyond death." This is theology. What's it doing in Elsevier's "Progress in Biophysics and Molecular Biology"? Most of the classical arguments in this area are now obsolete. The classic big question, presented in the article, was, “Out of meat, how do you get thought?". That's no longer so mysterious. You get some basic processing elements from molecular biology. The puzzle, for a long time, was, can a large number of basic processing elements with no overall design self-organize into intelligence. Then came LLMs, which do exactly that.
someoldgit 2y ago
Kuhn's compendium of theories is very comprehensive in many of the philosophical areas but could be more detailed in section 9.3 on Electromagnetic field theories, which is my favourite. Another up to date compilation of 15 articles on Electromagnetic Field Theories of Consciousness: Opportunities and Obstacles is available here https://www.frontiersin.org/research-topics/18437/electromagnetic-field-theories-of-consciousness-opportunities-and-obstacles/magazine https://www.frontiersin.org/research-topics/18437/electromag... One of the authors (Joachim Keppler) has a very interesting recent paper here https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/human-neuroscience/articles/10.3389/fnhum.2024.1379191/full https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/human-neuroscience/arti...
cantorshegel2 2y ago
how is hegel and his science of logic not in this?

105 points by danielam 2y ago

This is a wonderful project, I had no idea there was so much fragmentation n the topic of consciousness. Maybe we should feed these writings and concepts to AI and ask it to give us any grand unifying commonality among them, if any.

bubblyworld 2y ago
I would love to be wrong about this, but I don't think anyone knows how to do that yet. You're basically asking for automatic most-likely hypothesis generation given a set of input data. Concepts about consciousness in this case, but you could imagine doing the same with scientific data, system traces around bugs and crashes, etc. That would be wild!
russdill 2y ago
It's precisely the type of thing that current LLMs are not suited for. They excel at extrapolating between existing writings and ideas. They do really poorly when trying to do something novel.
- mistermann 2y ago
  On their own yes, but as human-like intelligent agents running within a larger framework it's a different story.
superb_dev 2y ago
Just skip all the thinking ourselves and see if some AI can come up with plausible sounding nonsense? I’m not interested
dcre 2y ago
You should probably try thinking about it instead.
poikroequ 2y ago
Why do people feel the need to AI everything?

cut3 2y ago

This topic is so interesting. If I were creating a system for everything, it seems like empty space needs awareness of anything it could expand to contain, so all things would be aware of all other things as a base universal conscious hitbox. Panpsychism seems neat to think about.

CuriouslyC 2y ago
You don't need empty space. All the processing power can be tied to entities, and space emerges from relationships between entities. Want something fun to think about? What if the Heisenberg uncertainty principle is basically a function of the information capacity of the thing being examined. To make a computer analogy, imagine you have 8 bits of information - using 6 for position leaves 2 momentum, for example.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]

brotchie 2y ago

Two things I'm absolutely convinced of at this point. 1. Consciousness is primitive. That is, interior experience is a fundamental property of the universe: any information system in the universe that has certain properties has an interior experience, 2. Within the human population, interior experience varies vastly between individuals. Assertion 1 is informed though reading, introspection, meditation, and psychedelic experience. I've transitions the whole spectrum of being a die hard physical materialist to high conviction that consciousness is primitive. I'm not traditionally panpsychic, which most commonly postulates that every bit of matter has some level of conscious experience. I really think information and information processing is the fundamental unit (realized as certain configurations of matter) and certain information system's (e.g. our brain) have an interior experience. Assertion 2 is informed through discussion with others. Denial of Chalmer's hard problem doesn't make sense to me. Like it seems logically flawed to argue that consciousness is emergent. Interior experience can't "emerge" from the traditional laws of physics, it's like a nonsense argument. The observation that folks really challenge this makes me deeply believe that the interior experience across humans is not at all uniform. The interior experience of somebody who vehemently denies the hard problem must be so much different from my interior experience to the extend that the divide can't be bridged.

tanepiper 2y ago
You word my position here too. 20's - a rabid Dawkins reading Athiest. 40's - I think Dawkins is an idiot and my favourite book is "Beelzebub's Tales to His Grandson"
- tasty_freeze 2y ago
  You don't come off as being a nuanced thinker if those are your two positions on Dawkins. I can understand disagreeing with him, but calling him an idiot impugns you more than him.
  - mistermann 2y ago
    Assuming your model of him is correct. How many videos of him "destroying" theists have you watched on TikTok? I've seen 100+, and agree that he's an idiot, amazingly so. Watch carefully the words he uses as he "proves" his "facts".

codeflo 2y ago

As a thought experiment, imagine we were to scan the position of every molecule in the human body to the Heisenberg limit of accuracy. Imagine we were to plug the resulting model in a physics simulation that models every biochemical and physical interaction with perfect fidelity. This is a thought experiment, and what I suggest isn't ruled out by physics, so let's assume it's technologically possible. Would the simulated being be "conscious" in the same way the original human is? Would it experience "qualia"? If you think the answer might be no, then congratulations, you actually believe in immaterial souls, no matter how materialist or rationalist you otherwise claim to be.

mistermann 2y ago
Not necessarily, one could be a Pedant.
vundercind 2y ago
Only holds if whatever hardware that’s pretending to be the matter can act exactly like the matter without being the same thing. For the distinction, consider the difference between a simulation of a simple chemical process in a computer—even a perfectly accurate one!—and the actual thing happening. Is the thing going on in the computer the same? No, no matter how perfect the simulation. It’s a little electricity moving around, looking nothing whatsoever like the real thing. The simulation is meaning that we impose on that electricity moving around. That being the case, this reduces to “if we recreate the matter and state exactly, for-real, is that consciousness?” in which case yeah, sure, probably so. This doesn’t work if the thing running the simulation requires interpretation.
- s1artibartfast 2y ago
  exactly, The parent post does not address the issue of representation vs reality. You can simulate every molecular interaction in a fire, but that does not mean the simulation gives off the same heat. You can write a perfectly accurate equation for splitting an atom, but the equation does not release energy.
  - 2y ago

tasty_freeze 2y ago

I've never understood why Chalmer's reasoning is so captivating to people. The whole idea of p-zombies seems absurd on its face. Quoting the article: (quote) His core argument against materialism, in its original form, is deceptively (and delightfully) simple: 1. In our world, there are conscious experiences. 2. There is a logically possible world physically identical to ours, in which the positive facts about consciousness in our world do not hold. 3. Therefore, facts about consciousness are further facts about our world, over and above the physical facts. 4. So, materialism is false. (endquote) Point 2 is textbook begging the question: it imagines a world which is physically identical to ours but consciousness is different there. That is baking in the presupposition that consciousness is not a physical process. Points 3 and 4 then "cleverly" detect the very contradiction he has planted and claims victory.

codeflo 2y ago
If you believe that what we describe as "consciousness" is emergent from the ideas a material brain develops about itself, then it's in fact not logically possible to have a world that is physically identical to ours yet does not contain consciousness. So indeed, premise 2. sneaks in the conclusion. To illustrate this point, here's an argument with the same structure that would similarly "prove" that gravity doesn't cause things to fall down: 1. In our world, there is gravity and things fall down. 2. There is a logically possible world where there is gravity yet things do not fall down. 3. Therefore, things falling down is a further fact about our world, over and above gravity. 4. So, gravity causing things to fall down is false.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- goatlover 2y ago
  But Chalmers doesn't think that approach works, nor any other physicalist attempt to explain consciousness. The problem with what you stated is that you're substituting ideas about consciousness for sensations. And those aren't the same thing. We experience sensations as part of being embodied organisms, and then we think about those sensations.

kkoncevicius 2y ago

To me it seems that the hard problem of consciousness can be stated a lot simpler, like so: How can we tell if another person is conscious or not? As far as I see, this is not possible and will never be possible. Hence the "hard problem".

pmayrgundter 2y ago
Mechanical telepathy may be possible, and for me could possibly answer this question. You and they put on a device whereby you tap into their conscious experience, see through their eyes, hear the voices in their head...
- TaupeRanger 2y ago
  Even then, you're still only experiencing your own, single, unitary stream of experience, you've just replaced or superimposed parts of it with signals from another nervous system. But even if you can somehow replace/superimpose the signals coming through their optic nerve, for example, into your own experience, that still doesn't answer the question of whether or not they have their own stream of experience to begin with. That is simply unknowable, outside of the reasonable assumptions we all make to avoid solipsism (but they are still assumptions at the end of the day).
- Thiez 2y ago
  That seems unlikely, as neural networks don't all develop exactly the same. There is some natural variance which brain regions perform which function. E.g. Broca's area (very important for speech) only 'usually' lies on your left hemisphere. We know from experiments that stimulating certain areas of the brain produces certain (predictable) feelings, but to stimulate the brain in such a way to transfer an exact thought or a specific vision would seem impossible without a very detailed scan of the source and destination brain, and a complex remapping in between. And some experiences may not be transferable if the target doesn't hawe the required circuitry.
poikroequ 2y ago
We don't know if dark matter exists, but we can still observe it by its gravitational effect on large astronomical objects. We can't be sure it's dark matter, but it's "likely" dark matter. I believe we can do something similar with consciousness. We can make measurements or observations of a person and conclude they are "likely" consciousness. Maybe we can't ever be 100% certain whether a person is conscious or not. But nothing in science is 100% certain. No matter how much evidence we have, it would only take a single counterexample to disprove a well established scientific theory.

detourdog 2y ago

I’m still thinking about what Helen Keller discussed in her paper on consciousness and language. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40466814 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40466814 The paper is linked and disused in this thread. Her description of the void before having language is eye opening.

pmayrgundter 2y ago

Robert Kuhn is a really impressive dude. I've been occasionally running across his videos on YT from these interviews. I'm very impressed that he's rolling it all up into a written research project as well. "I have discussed consciousness with over 200 scientists and philosophers who work on or think about consciousness and related fields (Closer To Truth YouTube; Closer To Truth website)." https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLFJr3pJl27pJKWEUWv9X56y_ut3xwFDv1 https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLFJr3pJl27pJKWEUWv9X5... https://www.youtube.com/@CloserToTruthTV/videos https://www.youtube.com/@CloserToTruthTV/videos

utkarsh858 2y ago

Vedic philosophy has an interesting take on the problem of consciousness. It take consciousness to be emanating from particles the size of atoms. They word those atomic particles as 'atma' ( in english souls, some even call it spiriton!).Those particles are fundamental to the universe and indivisible like quarks, bosons etc. Like radiation emanating from sun, it handles consciousness as 'emanating' from soul. Each and every living being starting from size of a cell has a soul feeling (partially) about mechanisms of its body. A multi-cellular organism is then explained as a universe in itself where millions of cells with souls are thriving. The organism will then contain a 'chief soul' directing the working of whole body (which will be us case of humans). Further the philosophy expands this concept to the real universe in which all organisms with their individual consciousness are directed by a chief 'super consciousness'( in Vedic terminology it is termed as paramatma, some translate that as equal to God Concept) Although then it further expands by saying that there are infinite (almost) parallel universes but that's other thing...

Thiez 2y ago
That's a nice story but does it make any testable predictions? Because it appears to introduce many new concepts that would be measurable with particle physics, yet mysteriously have never been observed. And if these magic soul particles don't interact with matter in measurable ways, how do you know their size?
- utkarsh858 2y ago
  > testable predictions In 1970, an experiment was conducted where a monkey's head was implanted into another monkey's body. The monkey did gained consciousness but was not able to move it's new body( I can barely imagine the pain it must have been feeling). If the possibility that the center of consciousness is completely independent of the body, I will say that the even though another monkey's head has been transplanted it will still have the consciousness and recognition of current body. >Mysteriously never been observed Was Higgs boson ever observed before 2012? Was it's theory ever proposed before 1964? Were people criticizing the attempt to discover it as 'magic particles mysteriously never observed'? >Don't interact with matter Yes those 'magic particles' can interact with matter through the curtain of probability and chances. The neurons firing inside a brain and subsequent signals passing to adjacent neurons are probabilistic. To direct the way a certain group of neurons towards a certain activity one has to tweak those probabilities, which can be changed via influence of external fields. >Nice story That's not a story but philosophy :) Vedic philosophy knew about the concept of atoms which it called 'anu' given by Kanad and it stated group of atoms as 'paramanu', way before Dalton proposed it.

robwwilliams 2y ago

What a massive and impressive coverage. The author, Robert Kuhn of Closer to Truth (https://closertotruth.com https://closertotruth.com), ends this beast with a request to readers: > Feedback is appreciated, critique too—especially explanations or theories of consciousness not included, or not described accurately, or not classified properly; also, improvements of the classification typology. I think RK would enjoy Humberto Maturana’s take on cognition and self-cognition. Maturana usually does not use the word “consciousness”. Start with Maturana’s book with Francisco Valera: Autopoiesis and Cognition: The Realization of the Living (1970) The appendix of this book is important (“The Nervous System”). Last few pages blew my brain or mind ;-) Thinking about consciousness without thinking more deeply about temporality is one problem most (or perhaps even all) models of consciousness still have. Since Robert Kuhn works in thalamocortical activity the theme of timing should resonant.

Animats 2y ago

"The implications of consciousness explanations or theories are assessed with respect to four questions: meaning/purpose/value (if any); AI consciousness; virtual immortality; and survival beyond death." This is theology. What's it doing in Elsevier's "Progress in Biophysics and Molecular Biology"? Most of the classical arguments in this area are now obsolete. The classic big question, presented in the article, was, “Out of meat, how do you get thought?". That's no longer so mysterious. You get some basic processing elements from molecular biology. The puzzle, for a long time, was, can a large number of basic processing elements with no overall design self-organize into intelligence. Then came LLMs, which do exactly that.

someoldgit 2y ago

Kuhn's compendium of theories is very comprehensive in many of the philosophical areas but could be more detailed in section 9.3 on Electromagnetic field theories, which is my favourite. Another up to date compilation of 15 articles on Electromagnetic Field Theories of Consciousness: Opportunities and Obstacles is available here https://www.frontiersin.org/research-topics/18437/electromagnetic-field-theories-of-consciousness-opportunities-and-obstacles/magazine https://www.frontiersin.org/research-topics/18437/electromag... One of the authors (Joachim Keppler) has a very interesting recent paper here https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/human-neuroscience/articles/10.3389/fnhum.2024.1379191/full https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/human-neuroscience/arti...

cantorshegel2 2y ago

how is hegel and his science of logic not in this?