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I find Thomas Nagel's "what it is like to be" [1] concept fascinating. I have spent quite some time trying to imagine what it is like to be a rock. Mind you,

by smokel 2y ago

I find Thomas Nagel's "what it is like to be" [1] concept fascinating. I have spent quite some time trying to imagine what it is like to be a rock. Mind you, not from the perspective of a human ("A rock will probably experience time very quickly, because it erodes, etc. etc"), but from the perspective of the rock itself. That is, it has no senses, no memory, no capabilities for abstraction, no consciousness. This ruminating has led me to believe that time and logic are human concepts, and are not as universal as is commonly believed. With recent insights into neural networks, I wouldn't even be surprised if the laws of physics follow from the way our brains are wired, instead of the other way around. Perhaps this is simply a modern take on idealism or realism, but I can't find a strand of philosophy with which I feel at home. Obviously, there is a bootstrapping problem with trying to reason from something that cannot reason. And I am well aware that my brain must exist in some form of reality. To conclusively prove some apparatus for that is way out of the scope of science. Scientifically there is probably very little to learn from this anyway, apart from opening one's mind to some alternative possibilities. It's a fun exercise, though. However, the entire discussion about what consciousness is, strikes me as less interesting. Is this really more than being able to conjure up memories of past experiences? [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/What_Is_It_Like_to_Be_a_Bat%3F https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/What_Is_It_Like_to_Be_a_Bat%3F

dmbche 2y ago
I can recommend Being No One, by Thomas Metzinger, for essays. For sci-fi, have a look at Blindsight, by Peter Watts (for free on his website: Https://www.rifters.com/real/Blindsight.html)
- smokel 2y ago
  Thanks for the recommendations! I have read Thomas Metzinger's Ego Tunnel (2009), but as far as I understand it, he takes on a naturalist standpoint, and assumes that consciousness arises from that. I prefer to take a radical agnostic point of view, where consciousness does not even have meaning outside of those who experience it. Implying that "meaning" or "reasoning" make no sense universally.
  - robwwilliams 2y ago
    You just communicated meaning to me. Defining “outside of those [plural] who experience it” is the tricky part.
  - PaulDavisThe1st 2y ago
    "meaning" and "reasoning" have nothing inherently to do with consciousness at all.
    - smokel 2y ago
      That depends on your philosophical outlook. Existentialism and phenomenology both seem to think that meaning requires consciousness. I personally think that there is little or no meaning outside humans (or similar entities). Unless I'm missing something, perhaps you care to elaborate?
- joloooo 2y ago
  Thanks for the recs, Mindware by Andy Clark is also a great book on these topics. https://global.oup.com/academic/product/mindware-9780199828159?cc=us&lang=en& https://global.oup.com/academic/product/mindware-97801998281...
Trasmatta 2y ago
> However, the entire discussion about what consciousness is, strikes me as less interesting. Is this really more than being able to conjure up memories of past experiences? I don't think memory and consciousness are intrinsically linked. Memory is something consciousness can be aware of, but it's not consciousness itself. Someone can have their ability to process and remember memories permanently or temporarily damaged, and yet still have a conscious experience. An AI can have memory, but not have a conscious experience. (Or at least it seems that way - if something like Integrated Information Theory is true, then maybe AI does have some sort of first person conscious experience. I tend to doubt that, but I could be wrong.) EDIT: although I might be conflating short term and long term memory. I wonder if consciousness requires at LEAST some form of memory processing, even if it's just the past couple of seconds. Perhaps the "Strange Loop" needs at least that to arise. I'm not sure.
- robwwilliams 2y ago
  Yes, consciousness requires some embedding in time (duration). It requires a capacity of recursion. Hofstadter’s stance loop is a temporal process. There is no atemporal “frozen” state we can call consciousness. It is dynamic. That is what bothers me about the Chalmer’s piece. There are not three states of a thermostat’s “What’s it like”. He is showboating his writting chops and parroting Nagel’s dualism.
  - vidarh 2y ago
    > There is no atemporal “frozen” state we can call consciousness. It is dynamic. That is a huge assumption we just have no way of knowing. For starters, we don't know whether we are in an atemporal "frozen" state or not.
    - robwwilliams 2y ago
      It is a highly pragmatic assumption like absolutely everything else, even cogito ergo sum. Tell me what is not an assumption and then maybe we can talk. My take: Epistemology is metaphysical bs, and “truth” is a convention we agree to within communities of speakers.
stronglikedan 2y ago
> trying to imagine what it is like to be a rock That is how I perceive meditation to be. At least, the end goal that I have yet to achieve, anyway.
- vidarh 2y ago
  That depends very much on the school of meditation. It sounds like you're focusing on concentration practice. Mindfulness practice is toward the other side of the spectrum: The goal is not to suppress your own sensations or thoughts, but to be mindful of them and observe them in a detached manner. The best analogy I've come across is to sit at the side of the river and watch the boats go past, instead of jumping on them and racing down. But you're not trying to clear the river of boats. There's overlap, in that the finer control you want to have over your ability to be mindful of specific aspects of your thoughts, emotions, body etc., the more concentration you need to be able to muster to calm yourself enough.
TaupeRanger 2y ago
Scientifically, there is a lot to learn. If we understand alternate forms of consciousness, we can potentially alter our own and open up new avenues of experience. Your last comment strikes me as strange for someone who seems to be well read on the topic. Saying that consciousness is an ability to recall memories doesn’t really describe what it is in the natural sense. The memories themselves are composed of conscious experiences, so that definition is circular. An explanation of what consciousness is would include an explanation about why, for example, chocolate tastes the way it does, rather than like vanilla, or some other completely unknown taste. Until we can explain its character (rather than just describe it), we can’t explain what it is. It’s sort of like dark energy: we can describe the phenomenon but we haven’t fully explained what it is.
- smokel 2y ago
  My last comment on consciousness should probably also be interpreted from the rock perspective. It does not make sense, because I assume that a rock has no consciousness to begin with, and no memory to entertain it. A sister comment suggests that memory and consciousness are less intrinsically linked that I tend to believe. It might be fruitful to come up with a decision tree on what people believe consciousness to be :) Personally, apart from the rock meditation, I am not as much interested in the definition of consciousness, because I think it is a trap, based on a categorical mistake. I'd rather get away from the anthropocentric viewpoint. Then again, I sometimes doubt that a scientific method will get us there.
vidarh 2y ago
> And I am well aware that my brain must exist in some form of reality. T To mess with your head a bit more: We know of no other way that we know the flow of time than indirectly through memory of the flow of events and sensory inputs. And so while it seems probable that our brains must exist, consider that e.g. a simulated mind that is paused, and where the same step is executed over and over, with no ability to change state, would have no way of telling that apart from the same step being executed only once, to move on to the next. In that case it's not clear that there'd need to be any full brain, just whatever consciousness is, in a state that has a notion that it has a memory of a past instant. Put another way: Your consciousness could be just a single frame of a movie, hinting at a past and future that might not exist. Forever repeating the same infinitely short instant, and nothing else. Maybe the universe is just a large tableau of conscious instants statically laid out and never changing or interacting with each other. We wouldn't know any different. Of course that is entirely untestable, and so just a fun philosophical question to ponder, mostly as a means to point out just how little we can know, and so how willing we need to be to accept that what matters isn't what we can know, but what is likely to be able to affect our observed world. E.g. I see myself as a materialist (philosophically speaking) not because I believe it is or can be proven, but because it is our observable reality. If that materialist reality is shaped by our minds and only exists in some abstract form, or we're all in a simulation etc., then that is irrelevant unless/until we find a way to pierce the veil and/or those aspects "leaks" into our observable reality somehow.
metaxz 2y ago
This one resonates very well with me: https://www.organism.earth/library/document/simulation-consciousness-existence https://www.organism.earth/library/document/simulation-consc... You have to give it a chance. He is first building up an argument about why consciousness cannot depend just on the physical substrate itself but rather on the "interpretation" of this. It is very important to understand this part/argument. What follows is something that resonates with you namely how our consciousness is now 'tuned' to the current physical laws.
metalman 2y ago
what of a stones gestation and its long existance as a geological stratum then some event!, and a fracuring of its colective existance as stone, and aquiring an identity as rock, not mear sand or gravel, short of the exalted state of bieng a bolder, a rock in a very real sense, we share this

by smokel 2y ago

dmbche 2y ago

I can recommend Being No One, by Thomas Metzinger, for essays. For sci-fi, have a look at Blindsight, by Peter Watts (for free on his website: Https://www.rifters.com/real/Blindsight.html)

smokel 2y ago
Thanks for the recommendations! I have read Thomas Metzinger's Ego Tunnel (2009), but as far as I understand it, he takes on a naturalist standpoint, and assumes that consciousness arises from that. I prefer to take a radical agnostic point of view, where consciousness does not even have meaning outside of those who experience it. Implying that "meaning" or "reasoning" make no sense universally.
- robwwilliams 2y ago
  You just communicated meaning to me. Defining “outside of those [plural] who experience it” is the tricky part.
- PaulDavisThe1st 2y ago
  "meaning" and "reasoning" have nothing inherently to do with consciousness at all.
  - smokel 2y ago
    That depends on your philosophical outlook. Existentialism and phenomenology both seem to think that meaning requires consciousness. I personally think that there is little or no meaning outside humans (or similar entities). Unless I'm missing something, perhaps you care to elaborate?
joloooo 2y ago
Thanks for the recs, Mindware by Andy Clark is also a great book on these topics. https://global.oup.com/academic/product/mindware-9780199828159?cc=us&lang=en& https://global.oup.com/academic/product/mindware-97801998281...

Trasmatta 2y ago

> However, the entire discussion about what consciousness is, strikes me as less interesting. Is this really more than being able to conjure up memories of past experiences? I don't think memory and consciousness are intrinsically linked. Memory is something consciousness can be aware of, but it's not consciousness itself. Someone can have their ability to process and remember memories permanently or temporarily damaged, and yet still have a conscious experience. An AI can have memory, but not have a conscious experience. (Or at least it seems that way - if something like Integrated Information Theory is true, then maybe AI does have some sort of first person conscious experience. I tend to doubt that, but I could be wrong.) EDIT: although I might be conflating short term and long term memory. I wonder if consciousness requires at LEAST some form of memory processing, even if it's just the past couple of seconds. Perhaps the "Strange Loop" needs at least that to arise. I'm not sure.

robwwilliams 2y ago
Yes, consciousness requires some embedding in time (duration). It requires a capacity of recursion. Hofstadter’s stance loop is a temporal process. There is no atemporal “frozen” state we can call consciousness. It is dynamic. That is what bothers me about the Chalmer’s piece. There are not three states of a thermostat’s “What’s it like”. He is showboating his writting chops and parroting Nagel’s dualism.
- vidarh 2y ago
  > There is no atemporal “frozen” state we can call consciousness. It is dynamic. That is a huge assumption we just have no way of knowing. For starters, we don't know whether we are in an atemporal "frozen" state or not.
  - robwwilliams 2y ago
    It is a highly pragmatic assumption like absolutely everything else, even cogito ergo sum. Tell me what is not an assumption and then maybe we can talk. My take: Epistemology is metaphysical bs, and “truth” is a convention we agree to within communities of speakers.

stronglikedan 2y ago

> trying to imagine what it is like to be a rock That is how I perceive meditation to be. At least, the end goal that I have yet to achieve, anyway.

vidarh 2y ago
That depends very much on the school of meditation. It sounds like you're focusing on concentration practice. Mindfulness practice is toward the other side of the spectrum: The goal is not to suppress your own sensations or thoughts, but to be mindful of them and observe them in a detached manner. The best analogy I've come across is to sit at the side of the river and watch the boats go past, instead of jumping on them and racing down. But you're not trying to clear the river of boats. There's overlap, in that the finer control you want to have over your ability to be mindful of specific aspects of your thoughts, emotions, body etc., the more concentration you need to be able to muster to calm yourself enough.

TaupeRanger 2y ago

Scientifically, there is a lot to learn. If we understand alternate forms of consciousness, we can potentially alter our own and open up new avenues of experience. Your last comment strikes me as strange for someone who seems to be well read on the topic. Saying that consciousness is an ability to recall memories doesn’t really describe what it is in the natural sense. The memories themselves are composed of conscious experiences, so that definition is circular. An explanation of what consciousness is would include an explanation about why, for example, chocolate tastes the way it does, rather than like vanilla, or some other completely unknown taste. Until we can explain its character (rather than just describe it), we can’t explain what it is. It’s sort of like dark energy: we can describe the phenomenon but we haven’t fully explained what it is.

smokel 2y ago
My last comment on consciousness should probably also be interpreted from the rock perspective. It does not make sense, because I assume that a rock has no consciousness to begin with, and no memory to entertain it. A sister comment suggests that memory and consciousness are less intrinsically linked that I tend to believe. It might be fruitful to come up with a decision tree on what people believe consciousness to be :) Personally, apart from the rock meditation, I am not as much interested in the definition of consciousness, because I think it is a trap, based on a categorical mistake. I'd rather get away from the anthropocentric viewpoint. Then again, I sometimes doubt that a scientific method will get us there.

vidarh 2y ago

> And I am well aware that my brain must exist in some form of reality. T To mess with your head a bit more: We know of no other way that we know the flow of time than indirectly through memory of the flow of events and sensory inputs. And so while it seems probable that our brains must exist, consider that e.g. a simulated mind that is paused, and where the same step is executed over and over, with no ability to change state, would have no way of telling that apart from the same step being executed only once, to move on to the next. In that case it's not clear that there'd need to be any full brain, just whatever consciousness is, in a state that has a notion that it has a memory of a past instant. Put another way: Your consciousness could be just a single frame of a movie, hinting at a past and future that might not exist. Forever repeating the same infinitely short instant, and nothing else. Maybe the universe is just a large tableau of conscious instants statically laid out and never changing or interacting with each other. We wouldn't know any different. Of course that is entirely untestable, and so just a fun philosophical question to ponder, mostly as a means to point out just how little we can know, and so how willing we need to be to accept that what matters isn't what we can know, but what is likely to be able to affect our observed world. E.g. I see myself as a materialist (philosophically speaking) not because I believe it is or can be proven, but because it is our observable reality. If that materialist reality is shaped by our minds and only exists in some abstract form, or we're all in a simulation etc., then that is irrelevant unless/until we find a way to pierce the veil and/or those aspects "leaks" into our observable reality somehow.

metaxz 2y ago

This one resonates very well with me: https://www.organism.earth/library/document/simulation-consciousness-existence https://www.organism.earth/library/document/simulation-consc... You have to give it a chance. He is first building up an argument about why consciousness cannot depend just on the physical substrate itself but rather on the "interpretation" of this. It is very important to understand this part/argument. What follows is something that resonates with you namely how our consciousness is now 'tuned' to the current physical laws.

metalman 2y ago

what of a stones gestation and its long existance as a geological stratum then some event!, and a fracuring of its colective existance as stone, and aquiring an identity as rock, not mear sand or gravel, short of the exalted state of bieng a bolder, a rock in a very real sense, we share this