4 ms·

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 explain

by 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.

by n4r9 2y ago

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.