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>Conversely, the main tenet of illusionism is to deny the existence of phenomenally conscious states. For an illusionist there is “nothing it is like” to be in

>Conversely, the main tenet of illusionism is to deny the existence of phenomenally conscious states. For an illusionist there is “nothing it is like” to be in any mental state. Proponents of the theory only accept “quasi-phenomenal” states and properties, which are purely physical, but misrepresented as phenomenal by our introspective mechanisms. >While it is no longer a question of understanding the magic itself, we still have to explain how it happens. The “hard problem” has been replaced by the “illusion problem”. It consists in explaining why it seems to us that we are phenomenally conscious Lol. "why it seems to us that we are phenomenally conscious". Maybe because we are phenomenally conscious? The very subjective experience of pondering whether we are phenomenally conscious, or for that matter the subjective experience of anything else whatsoever, is already proof sufficient that we are phenomenally conscious because it is an example of phenomenal consciousness. Granted, maybe there are some good defenses of illusionism out there, but based on this text it seems to me that illusionism is just a sort of hail mary pass attempt to save reductive physicalism by deploying a bunch of hand-waving and deceptive semantics.

n4r9 2y ago
For me, it's the other way around. I don't feel like there's anything special about "what it's like" to experience a certain mental state that cannot be explained physically/algorithmically. It feels like the concept of qualia is a last-ditch attempt by humans to make themselves feel special.
- exitb 2y ago
  Nowadays it seems rather easy to have a computer that talks as if it were conscious. Do you think it really does perceive itself the same way we do? I woke up a human today, but someone else woke up an algorithm? If not, what’s missing?
  - yldedly 2y ago
    According to the theory, an attention model. Here's artificial consciousness in three steps: 1. Have a robot build perception models of its environment and itself 2. Have the robot allocate computational resources and sensory bandwidth to the models using attention 3. Have the robot control attention using model predictive control Because the attention model is less detailed than its actual attention, by virtue of being a model, it doesn't represent the mechanisms of attention or modeling accurately. Instead, it uses non-physical concepts such as "mental possession" to model itself or other agents paying attention to things, or "qualia" to denote the recursion that occurs when percepts we attend to are summarized by the attention model (which in turn can be attended to, and so on).
  - n4r9 2y ago
    I don't think there's anything in principle preventing computers from becoming conscious, if that's what you're asking. I'm not convinced LLMs are there yet, although sometimes they do sound like it.
- dbspin 2y ago
  The hard problem of consciousness is hard for a reason. There's no obvious way to link the experience all of us (solipsism aside) are having at each and every moment with the mechanism that generates it. It's a category error to confuse the two, misidentifying the map and the territory. Stating as above, that qualia can be reduced to an illusion of qualia merely restates the problem in an effort to elide it. 'I'm imagining that I have a feeling' isn't qualitatively different to 'I'm feeling the feeling'. Given that it's fairly trivial to link affect and self awareness to concrete adaptive advantages, and that each can be diminished through neurological damage - we know that phenomenology is both useful and organic. What we don't understand is precisely how it comes into being and 'where' it resides - besides using words like 'emergent' in nonspecific and hand wavy ways.
  - n4r9 2y ago
    > There's no obvious way to link the experience with the mechanism that generates it I agree that it's not obvious. I suppose where I disagree with anti-physicalists is that I think it can conceivably be resolved by reference to physical facts. I can imagine reading a computer program that simulates the human brain and thinking "ah yes, that captures everything about what I feel". Whereas I don't think the anti-physicalists will ever accept such a possibility.
- CalRobert 2y ago
  I am guessing that you think sperm and eggs have no consciousness. But, humans do. When do you imagine it started? Does your mental model explain this physically/algorithmically? (Honest question, I consider this often and really have no clue)
  - n4r9 2y ago
    Asking if a single-celled organism is conscious kind of feels like asking whether quantum theory is statically typed. Like applying a descriptor from one category to objects in another.
    - HeuristicsCG 2y ago
      it's commonplace to hold the opinion that an individual particle is slightly conscious
      - ronjobber 2y ago
        This is a thing... but it is certainly not commonplace.
        HeuristicsCG 2y ago
        In philosophy of mind it's not something that would raise an eyebrow
      - n4r9 2y ago
        Are you referring to pansychism? I don't get the impression that it's very popular these days. > There are few explicit defenders of panpsychism at the present time. The most prominent are David Griffin, Gregg Rosenberg, David Skrbina and Timothy Sprigge. https://plato.stanford.edu/ARCHIVES/WIN2009/entries/panpsychism/ https://plato.stanford.edu/ARCHIVES/WIN2009/entries/panpsych...
    - CalRobert 2y ago
      But that’s my point! When was it conscious? A million cells? A billion?
- sctb 2y ago
  > It feels like the concept of qualia is a last-ditch attempt by humans to make themselves feel special. I don't think so, I think fundamentally it's just a concept used to express a more generalized form of perception (i.e. not divided into discrete senses, either internal or external). I'm happy to leave it at that, but YMMV.
  - n4r9 2y ago
    The problem is the idea that no amount of physical information can capture or encode qualia. I think this puts qualia into a different category than other kinds of perception.
w0de0 2y ago
There are no other phenomena which we accept as real - where “accept as real” is an ability to correctly predict and manipulate, ie, create technology - based purely on qualia. This is the essence of physicalism. The hard problem of consciousness is therefore broadly acknowledged. “Reductive physicalism” doesn’t need to be saved; there’s nothing else; physicalism is the fundamental philosophy of science, the prerequisite for a functional, predictive physics. Consciousness is the quandary, not physicality.
- walleeee 2y ago
  To quote Penrose: "I don't like the word materialism because we don't know what the material is." It's all a quandary, no? Wonderfully useful predictive models aside, we have almost as little metaphysical/ontological purchase as we have w.r.t. qualia. And though it is difficult to argue with physicalism (broadly conceived), there are compelling critiques of reductive physicalism.
anon84873628 2y ago
Or as the Wikipedia article on Eliminative Materialism succinctly puts it: >Another view is that eliminativism assumes the existence of the beliefs and other entities it seeks to "eliminate" and is thus self-refuting. That said, Illusionism should not be seen as a "hail mary pass attempt to save reductive physicalism". From the same Wiki page: >In the context of materialist understandings of psychology, eliminativism is the opposite of reductive materialism, [which argues] that mental states as conventionally understood do exist, and directly correspond to the physical state of the nervous system. The last line is a link to the page for "neural correlates of consciousness". The evidence for which, to me, sure suggests that there is a casual relationship between physical and mental events.
- ronjobber 2y ago
  The evidence for which, to me, sure suggests that there is a casual relationship between physical and mental events. I think it's a bit funny to call this a causal relationship. People do it all the time and what is meant depends on the meaning of "cause", but it is a bit ambiguous here if the physical events are other events that cause the mental events. My mental model of reductive physicalism is that the physical events are the mental events, i.e. the mental event occurs if and only if the physical event occurs.
HeuristicsCG 2y ago
the point of eliminativism is exactly to eliminate, not reduce.

n4r9 2y ago

For me, it's the other way around. I don't feel like there's anything special about "what it's like" to experience a certain mental state that cannot be explained physically/algorithmically. It feels like the concept of qualia is a last-ditch attempt by humans to make themselves feel special.

exitb 2y ago
Nowadays it seems rather easy to have a computer that talks as if it were conscious. Do you think it really does perceive itself the same way we do? I woke up a human today, but someone else woke up an algorithm? If not, what’s missing?
- yldedly 2y ago
  According to the theory, an attention model. Here's artificial consciousness in three steps: 1. Have a robot build perception models of its environment and itself 2. Have the robot allocate computational resources and sensory bandwidth to the models using attention 3. Have the robot control attention using model predictive control Because the attention model is less detailed than its actual attention, by virtue of being a model, it doesn't represent the mechanisms of attention or modeling accurately. Instead, it uses non-physical concepts such as "mental possession" to model itself or other agents paying attention to things, or "qualia" to denote the recursion that occurs when percepts we attend to are summarized by the attention model (which in turn can be attended to, and so on).
- n4r9 2y ago
  I don't think there's anything in principle preventing computers from becoming conscious, if that's what you're asking. I'm not convinced LLMs are there yet, although sometimes they do sound like it.
dbspin 2y ago
The hard problem of consciousness is hard for a reason. There's no obvious way to link the experience all of us (solipsism aside) are having at each and every moment with the mechanism that generates it. It's a category error to confuse the two, misidentifying the map and the territory. Stating as above, that qualia can be reduced to an illusion of qualia merely restates the problem in an effort to elide it. 'I'm imagining that I have a feeling' isn't qualitatively different to 'I'm feeling the feeling'. Given that it's fairly trivial to link affect and self awareness to concrete adaptive advantages, and that each can be diminished through neurological damage - we know that phenomenology is both useful and organic. What we don't understand is precisely how it comes into being and 'where' it resides - besides using words like 'emergent' in nonspecific and hand wavy ways.
- n4r9 2y ago
  > There's no obvious way to link the experience with the mechanism that generates it I agree that it's not obvious. I suppose where I disagree with anti-physicalists is that I think it can conceivably be resolved by reference to physical facts. I can imagine reading a computer program that simulates the human brain and thinking "ah yes, that captures everything about what I feel". Whereas I don't think the anti-physicalists will ever accept such a possibility.
CalRobert 2y ago
I am guessing that you think sperm and eggs have no consciousness. But, humans do. When do you imagine it started? Does your mental model explain this physically/algorithmically? (Honest question, I consider this often and really have no clue)
- n4r9 2y ago
  Asking if a single-celled organism is conscious kind of feels like asking whether quantum theory is statically typed. Like applying a descriptor from one category to objects in another.
  - HeuristicsCG 2y ago
    it's commonplace to hold the opinion that an individual particle is slightly conscious
    - ronjobber 2y ago
      This is a thing... but it is certainly not commonplace.
      - HeuristicsCG 2y ago
        In philosophy of mind it's not something that would raise an eyebrow
    - n4r9 2y ago
      Are you referring to pansychism? I don't get the impression that it's very popular these days. > There are few explicit defenders of panpsychism at the present time. The most prominent are David Griffin, Gregg Rosenberg, David Skrbina and Timothy Sprigge. https://plato.stanford.edu/ARCHIVES/WIN2009/entries/panpsychism/ https://plato.stanford.edu/ARCHIVES/WIN2009/entries/panpsych...
  - CalRobert 2y ago
    But that’s my point! When was it conscious? A million cells? A billion?
sctb 2y ago
> It feels like the concept of qualia is a last-ditch attempt by humans to make themselves feel special. I don't think so, I think fundamentally it's just a concept used to express a more generalized form of perception (i.e. not divided into discrete senses, either internal or external). I'm happy to leave it at that, but YMMV.
- n4r9 2y ago
  The problem is the idea that no amount of physical information can capture or encode qualia. I think this puts qualia into a different category than other kinds of perception.

w0de0 2y ago

There are no other phenomena which we accept as real - where “accept as real” is an ability to correctly predict and manipulate, ie, create technology - based purely on qualia. This is the essence of physicalism. The hard problem of consciousness is therefore broadly acknowledged. “Reductive physicalism” doesn’t need to be saved; there’s nothing else; physicalism is the fundamental philosophy of science, the prerequisite for a functional, predictive physics. Consciousness is the quandary, not physicality.

walleeee 2y ago
To quote Penrose: "I don't like the word materialism because we don't know what the material is." It's all a quandary, no? Wonderfully useful predictive models aside, we have almost as little metaphysical/ontological purchase as we have w.r.t. qualia. And though it is difficult to argue with physicalism (broadly conceived), there are compelling critiques of reductive physicalism.

anon84873628 2y ago

Or as the Wikipedia article on Eliminative Materialism succinctly puts it: >Another view is that eliminativism assumes the existence of the beliefs and other entities it seeks to "eliminate" and is thus self-refuting. That said, Illusionism should not be seen as a "hail mary pass attempt to save reductive physicalism". From the same Wiki page: >In the context of materialist understandings of psychology, eliminativism is the opposite of reductive materialism, [which argues] that mental states as conventionally understood do exist, and directly correspond to the physical state of the nervous system. The last line is a link to the page for "neural correlates of consciousness". The evidence for which, to me, sure suggests that there is a casual relationship between physical and mental events.

ronjobber 2y ago
The evidence for which, to me, sure suggests that there is a casual relationship between physical and mental events. I think it's a bit funny to call this a causal relationship. People do it all the time and what is meant depends on the meaning of "cause", but it is a bit ambiguous here if the physical events are other events that cause the mental events. My mental model of reductive physicalism is that the physical events are the mental events, i.e. the mental event occurs if and only if the physical event occurs.

HeuristicsCG 2y ago

the point of eliminativism is exactly to eliminate, not reduce.