4 ms·

> "Self-awareness with a theory of mind" doesn't account for qualia, Sure it does. "Self-awareness with a theory of mind" has sentience, i.e. the ability to pr

> "Self-awareness with a theory of mind" doesn't account for qualia, Sure it does. "Self-awareness with a theory of mind" has sentience, i.e. the ability to process external stimuli via senses, as a base prerequisite. > which IMO are the most important part of consciousness discourse. I've never understood why some people think so. I think it's the least interesting. It's basic biological machinery. The only difference between how you, a worm, and in the not too distant future a successor to the robot that implements the 300 neuron connectome of that same worm experience qualia, is that you have self-awareness. You have the ability to reflect on your experiences. That's what's special and interesting IMO. > a certain ineffable sense of here-ness and me-ness that I think is closely tied with qualia. I don't think it's tied to qualia at all. I think it's basically irrelevant aside from sentience being a necessary prerequisite. The here-ness and me-ness you refer to is a function of self-awareness, not qualia. "I think, therefore I am". > I think you're going to mostly talk past people who are trying to engage with the so-called "hard problem" of consciousness. One of the problems in discussing this stuff is agreeing on terms so everyone can be sure to understand everyone else's point, but personally I don't think the so called "hard problem" of consciousness is the hard problem at all.

bccdee 2y ago
> the ability to process external stimuli via senses A camera does this. > You have the ability to reflect on your experiences. So does a camera pointed at a mirror. It captures sensory data about its own activity and then processes that data. Big whoop. Simply processing data related to your own experiences is completely mundane. Any program which ingests its own logs is, by your logic, conscious. > [Qualia are] basic biological machinery. You may have misunderstood qualia. When you see a red object, the sensory data reflecting the colour of the object is not a quale. The platonic thing, the redness that you feel on the level of conscious awareness, is a quale. The "inverted qualia" thought experiment can help make this distinction clear: Imagine a person who sees every red object as green and every green object as red. Their behaviour is still the exact same as it would otherwise be—to them, green means stop and red means go. They respond identically to the same wavelength, yet something is different. That something, as the thought experiment goes, is their qualia. Strictly speaking, I don't think qualia exist, but it certainly feels as if they do. That extra layer of perceived experience—the feeling that I exist in a world of vivid reds and greens and warmths and chills and touch and emotion and all these feelings that feel discrete, feel like they're happening to me—that's what people mean when they talk about consciousness. I think that's all downstream from the illusion of qualia. > The here-ness and me-ness you refer to is a function of self-awareness, not qualia. "I think, therefore I am". The camera or the log-ingesting program don't have any emotional sense of vivid lived experience, though. In fact, though they process sensory data, they can hardly be said to feel at all. I'd argue that qualia are what distinguishes mere sensing from feeling, at least on an intuitive level. Consciousness is a deeply intuitive notion, after all. > personally I don't think the so called "hard problem" of consciousness is the hard problem at all If it isn't hard, then why do so many people struggle with it? I don't think "hard-problem"-style consciousness is really an extant phenomenon, but we certainly feel as if it is on a deep intuitive level. That's significant. The non-existence of "real" consciousness raises the question of why we believe we are conscious so strongly to begin with. I think if you slip away from the concept of qualia, you lose the ability to understand why we care so much about consciousness in the first place.
- ruthmarx 2y ago
  > A camera does this. No, it doesn't. > So does a camera pointed at a mirror. No, there is no 'reflecting' going on here. > You may have misunderstood qualia. Not at all. Been debating this stuff with vegans for years now. > The platonic thing, the redness that you feel on the level of conscious awareness, is a quale. You're assuming there is a 'redness' to feel at all. What yo describe is only possible with self-awareness. Otherwise, it's just sensory data. > feel like they're happening to me—that's what people mean when they talk about consciousness. I think that's all downstream from the illusion of qualia. I think it's the opposite. Qualia as you describe it is only possible as a result of self-awareness, not as a building block for it. > The camera or the log-ingesting program don't have any emotional sense of vivid lived experience, though. That and other reasons is why it's a poor analogy. The camera is not sensing, and is not reflecting on anything. Processing data is not reflecting. > If it isn't hard, then why do so many people struggle with it? It's a particular theory/view of conciseness that not everyone adapts. It's like asking why people struggle with any other philosophical idea. > The non-existence of "real" consciousness raises the question of why we believe we are conscious so strongly to begin with. I think if you slip away from the concept of qualia, you lose the ability to understand why we care so much about consciousness in the first place. I maintain qualia isn't at all important here. The hierarchy goes sensory data i.e. sentience, then self-awareness, then qualia. Basic sentience is a solved problem, and the more insight to qualia that you want will become clear once we have more insight into self-awareness.
  - bccdee 2y ago
    > The camera is not sensing, and is not reflecting on anything. What is sensing, if not ingesting data from sensors? What is reflecting upon something, if not processing data related to that thing? What is self-awareness, if not processing data related to yourself? The camera which processes its own image is not truly conscious, even if there's an image recognition algorithm onboard which identifies its reflection as an image of itself, even if the image goes through extensive processing. But if the camera feels something about seeing itself, then it's certainly conscious. You say "the camera is not sensing,"—I would argue that it's trivially sensing, but I suspect that what you mean by "sensing" is similar to what I've been calling "feeling." I argued that qualia are the distinction between inanimate sensing (the thing a camera does) and sentient feeling, but you rejected that. How do you construct this relationship, then, between inanimate data processing and your sentient sensing? You said sentience is upstream of self-awareness ("The hierarchy goes sensory data i.e. sentience, then self-awareness"), so self-awareness can't play a role. > What you describe is only possible with self-awareness. It's not myself I'm aware of in that situation, though. It's the "redness." Why is awareness of "red" necessarily mediated by awareness of the self? > It's like asking why people struggle with any other philosophical idea. Yeah, it is. The philosophies we intuitively gravitate towards tell us a lot about ourselves. "Hard-problem"-ism in particular is deeply compelling to (I think) most people, even though there is no objective evidence in support of it. That's really interesting. > Not at all. Been debating this stuff with vegans for years now. I'm curious why this would come up in a discussion on veganism.

bccdee 2y ago

> the ability to process external stimuli via senses A camera does this. > You have the ability to reflect on your experiences. So does a camera pointed at a mirror. It captures sensory data about its own activity and then processes that data. Big whoop. Simply processing data related to your own experiences is completely mundane. Any program which ingests its own logs is, by your logic, conscious. > [Qualia are] basic biological machinery. You may have misunderstood qualia. When you see a red object, the sensory data reflecting the colour of the object is not a quale. The platonic thing, the redness that you feel on the level of conscious awareness, is a quale. The "inverted qualia" thought experiment can help make this distinction clear: Imagine a person who sees every red object as green and every green object as red. Their behaviour is still the exact same as it would otherwise be—to them, green means stop and red means go. They respond identically to the same wavelength, yet something is different. That something, as the thought experiment goes, is their qualia. Strictly speaking, I don't think qualia exist, but it certainly feels as if they do. That extra layer of perceived experience—the feeling that I exist in a world of vivid reds and greens and warmths and chills and touch and emotion and all these feelings that feel discrete, feel like they're happening to me—that's what people mean when they talk about consciousness. I think that's all downstream from the illusion of qualia. > The here-ness and me-ness you refer to is a function of self-awareness, not qualia. "I think, therefore I am". The camera or the log-ingesting program don't have any emotional sense of vivid lived experience, though. In fact, though they process sensory data, they can hardly be said to feel at all. I'd argue that qualia are what distinguishes mere sensing from feeling, at least on an intuitive level. Consciousness is a deeply intuitive notion, after all. > personally I don't think the so called "hard problem" of consciousness is the hard problem at all If it isn't hard, then why do so many people struggle with it? I don't think "hard-problem"-style consciousness is really an extant phenomenon, but we certainly feel as if it is on a deep intuitive level. That's significant. The non-existence of "real" consciousness raises the question of why we believe we are conscious so strongly to begin with. I think if you slip away from the concept of qualia, you lose the ability to understand why we care so much about consciousness in the first place.

ruthmarx 2y ago
> A camera does this. No, it doesn't. > So does a camera pointed at a mirror. No, there is no 'reflecting' going on here. > You may have misunderstood qualia. Not at all. Been debating this stuff with vegans for years now. > The platonic thing, the redness that you feel on the level of conscious awareness, is a quale. You're assuming there is a 'redness' to feel at all. What yo describe is only possible with self-awareness. Otherwise, it's just sensory data. > feel like they're happening to me—that's what people mean when they talk about consciousness. I think that's all downstream from the illusion of qualia. I think it's the opposite. Qualia as you describe it is only possible as a result of self-awareness, not as a building block for it. > The camera or the log-ingesting program don't have any emotional sense of vivid lived experience, though. That and other reasons is why it's a poor analogy. The camera is not sensing, and is not reflecting on anything. Processing data is not reflecting. > If it isn't hard, then why do so many people struggle with it? It's a particular theory/view of conciseness that not everyone adapts. It's like asking why people struggle with any other philosophical idea. > The non-existence of "real" consciousness raises the question of why we believe we are conscious so strongly to begin with. I think if you slip away from the concept of qualia, you lose the ability to understand why we care so much about consciousness in the first place. I maintain qualia isn't at all important here. The hierarchy goes sensory data i.e. sentience, then self-awareness, then qualia. Basic sentience is a solved problem, and the more insight to qualia that you want will become clear once we have more insight into self-awareness.
- bccdee 2y ago
  > The camera is not sensing, and is not reflecting on anything. What is sensing, if not ingesting data from sensors? What is reflecting upon something, if not processing data related to that thing? What is self-awareness, if not processing data related to yourself? The camera which processes its own image is not truly conscious, even if there's an image recognition algorithm onboard which identifies its reflection as an image of itself, even if the image goes through extensive processing. But if the camera feels something about seeing itself, then it's certainly conscious. You say "the camera is not sensing,"—I would argue that it's trivially sensing, but I suspect that what you mean by "sensing" is similar to what I've been calling "feeling." I argued that qualia are the distinction between inanimate sensing (the thing a camera does) and sentient feeling, but you rejected that. How do you construct this relationship, then, between inanimate data processing and your sentient sensing? You said sentience is upstream of self-awareness ("The hierarchy goes sensory data i.e. sentience, then self-awareness"), so self-awareness can't play a role. > What you describe is only possible with self-awareness. It's not myself I'm aware of in that situation, though. It's the "redness." Why is awareness of "red" necessarily mediated by awareness of the self? > It's like asking why people struggle with any other philosophical idea. Yeah, it is. The philosophies we intuitively gravitate towards tell us a lot about ourselves. "Hard-problem"-ism in particular is deeply compelling to (I think) most people, even though there is no objective evidence in support of it. That's really interesting. > Not at all. Been debating this stuff with vegans for years now. I'm curious why this would come up in a discussion on veganism.