3 ms·

It's a dumb click-bait title (riffing on Nagel's "What is it like to be a bat?"), but the actual question presented a bit further down is: "Moving down the sca

It's a dumb click-bait title (riffing on Nagel's "What is it like to be a bat?"), but the actual question presented a bit further down is: "Moving down the scale through lizards and fish to slugs, similar considerations apply. There does not seem to be much reason to suppose that phenomenology should wink out while a reasonably complex perceptual psychology persists… As we move along the scale from fish and slugs through simple neural networks all the way to thermostats, where should consciousness wink out?" The author seems to have succeeded in answering her own question (at least in hand-wavy fashion) at the same time as posing it, as well as implicitly defining consciousness. So, yeah, it's not like anything to be a thermostat.

robwwilliams 2y ago
Perfect!
cubefox 2y ago
Surely you agree that not only thermostats are not conscious, but also simple neural networks are not. E.g. a single layer perceptron. And it's intuitively also not just a matter of number of layers or neurons. By the way: The headline is, I assume, by Annaka Harris, while the essay is by David Chalmers.
- HarHarVeryFunny 2y ago
  > Surely you agree that not only thermostats are not conscious, but also simple neural networks are not Sure - there is a difference between merely being cold and also being aware of being cold. A piece of ice (or a cold thermometer for that matter) can be cold, but to experience being cold - to be aware/conscious of it - requires some minimal level of cognitive apparatus ("a reasonably complex perceptual psychology") to process those sensory inputs and contrast them to the differing sensation of not being cold and be able to think about it! There is some evidence, such as "blindsight" (ability to see without being aware of it - a loss of visual consciousness) that consciousness may not only require the mental apparatus to process a sensory input, but may also require specific neural pathways (which may be missing, or damaged) to gain access to specific internal neural state in the first place. It's difficult to know exactly where the line is - which animals do have a sufficiently complex brain to able to introspect on and experience their own state, but clearly simple neural nets (e.g. anything without feedback paths) don't, and simple animals like insects don't either.

robwwilliams 2y ago

Perfect!

cubefox 2y ago

Surely you agree that not only thermostats are not conscious, but also simple neural networks are not. E.g. a single layer perceptron. And it's intuitively also not just a matter of number of layers or neurons. By the way: The headline is, I assume, by Annaka Harris, while the essay is by David Chalmers.

HarHarVeryFunny 2y ago
> Surely you agree that not only thermostats are not conscious, but also simple neural networks are not Sure - there is a difference between merely being cold and also being aware of being cold. A piece of ice (or a cold thermometer for that matter) can be cold, but to experience being cold - to be aware/conscious of it - requires some minimal level of cognitive apparatus ("a reasonably complex perceptual psychology") to process those sensory inputs and contrast them to the differing sensation of not being cold and be able to think about it! There is some evidence, such as "blindsight" (ability to see without being aware of it - a loss of visual consciousness) that consciousness may not only require the mental apparatus to process a sensory input, but may also require specific neural pathways (which may be missing, or damaged) to gain access to specific internal neural state in the first place. It's difficult to know exactly where the line is - which animals do have a sufficiently complex brain to able to introspect on and experience their own state, but clearly simple neural nets (e.g. anything without feedback paths) don't, and simple animals like insects don't either.