4 ms·

Philosophers have coined the term P-zombies. LLMs can be considered as P-zombies if they do not possess consciousness. Functionally equivalent but no soul. Subs

Philosophers have coined the term P-zombies. LLMs can be considered as P-zombies if they do not possess consciousness. Functionally equivalent but no soul. Substance Dualism was used by philosophers to deny animals consciousness.

farts_mckensy 2y ago
Non materialist bullshit.
kbelder 2y ago
>Functionally equivalent but no soul. I think it's an incoherent concept. If the 'soul' is anything, there is some difference in the brain that would allow it. You can't have two people with identical brains and claim that one has a soul, unless you believe in magic.
- bee_rider 2y ago
  Is there a non-magical description of a soul? I thought it was an essentially magical concept. I’m not sure that makes it incoherent.
- bobxmax 2y ago
  It's been interesting seeing those with an entirely materialist understanding of the universe try to grapple with and deal with consciousness as LLMs have emerged. To maintain that belief you have to either believe there is a physical source of consciousness, or that consciousness doesn't exist, neither of which most people can accept, yet LLMs are forcing people to confront.
  - thfuran 2y ago
    You think most people can't accept that consciousness is a phenomenon with basis solely in physical reality?
    - Isamu 2y ago
      Also LLMs represent, for most people I suspect, something entirely unconnected with notions of consciousness.
    - grantcas 2y ago
      [dead]
- goatlover 2y ago
  But you can have things like property dualism, strong emergentism, cognitive closue, neutral monism and panpsychism. Naturalistic philosophers don't appeal to the soul or magic, they just say there's more to nature than stuff described by physical sciences. You can disagree of course, but then you have to account for everything in nature, including consciousness, by only using physical constituents. And best of luck with that. Nobody has succeeded so far. The problem is that subjective experiences don't fit well with objective explanations. Nagal laid this out in his paper, "What it's like to be a bat", and other philosophers like Chalmers expanded on it with p-zombies and blind color scientists.
  - nthingtohide 2y ago
    I think the only property humans consider special in themselves are emotions. I have the following thesis. In evolution, exact pattern matching is computationally expensive. Just as I know my mother regardless of her clothes, hairstyle, her aging face, the match isn't exact. But brain uses heuristics to pump up 89 percent match to 100 percent match. This saves computational resources. These heuristics are what we call emotions. When snake like object appears in visual field, emotional heuristic pumps up slight resemblance to generate fear response. Analytical observation would take too much time. That's why emotions appear pre rational. Capgras syndrome shows when emotional heuristic malfunctions. Visual recognition is intact. But emotional heuristic which pumps up recognition score malfunctions. That's why patient recognises face but feels it's an imposter. These arguments prove emotions are mere computational shortcuts.
    - goatlover 2y ago
      How do you explain the visual field? EM radiation isn't colored in the range visible to humans, that's just how we see it. There are no physical colored properties, rather there are wavelengths. But there are color experiences. Same goes for the other sensations. You don't need to go as far as emotions. Sensation alone is hard to explain in physical terms. Computation doesn't explain it either. Color values are just numeric properties we assign to the shades of our color experiences. But they aren't the experiences, they're just numeric values or symbols to be stored for something that can output wavelengths of light.
_wire_ 2y ago
Re dualism: To paraphrase Chonsky (link below), the legacy of Descartes' observations for "mechanical philosophy" is profound: substance-dualism became untenable because no coherent idea of material can be formulated. Newton exorcised the machine (material), leaving the ghost intact to be curious about itself. Today we study the organism called the body without need of a philosophical grounding in any reality. "mechanical philosophy" ended with Newton's work obviating any coherent notion of an "intelligible world". Faced with unreconcilable confusion about what constitutes reality, science quietly abandoned the idea and moved ahead with "intelligible theories about the world", which Chomsky regards as one of most significant shifts in science. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=bWDJ2zFe4Pc https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=bWDJ2zFe4Pc In various speeches and lectures on the history of science and linguistics, Chomsky comments on artificial intelligence, by referring to Alan Turing's seminal paper, in which Turing proposed the so-called "test." Chomsky refers to the paper's first paragraph where Turing concedes that the meaning of the word "intelligence" is so indistinct as to be left to be determined by Gallop. Turing punts on the entire question of the meaning of intelligence by suggesting an "imitation game." Today's state of the art of machine intelligence has not advanced past Turing's proposal. Chomsky wonders if we may have to resign ourselves to the limit that it never will, in which light of reason we might embark on further study of ourselves, rather than contrive facsimiles and endure all the attendant hazards.
unwise-exe 2y ago
>> Functionally equivalent but no soul. Something that predicts no observable differences is unfalsifiable aka bullshit.
- notfed 2y ago
  So you're saying consciousness is bullshit? Because the point is that we don't know how to observe the difference between something that is conscious and something that isn't.
  - Ukv 2y ago
    Not GP but I'd argue that whatever we mean by consciousness must at least have physical impact. Something that doesn't couldn't decide our actions in the physical world like laughing at a joke or painting a picture, and critically couldn't even be what we're referring to when we talk about consciousness as we are now. From there I think "we don't know how" is in part down to needing advances in neuroscience, and in part down to "consciousness" being a hazy term with disagreement over definition. But for frameworks that accept the above (physicalism, interactionist dualism, ...) I do think it's in theory testable whether something is conscious for any given pinned-down definition (e.g, "are the neurons constituting internal train of thought firing"), and I would be inclined to say the frameworks that don't accept the above are indeed the more "bullshit" ones.
    - vacuity 2y ago
      Science is limited by what we can falsify, which follows from what we can observe. We should attribute no normative weight to whether something should or shouldn't be scientifically analyzable. So we should always improve our means of observation, as well as our culture towards the things that are difficult or downright impossible to scientifically analyze. Science is a part of philosophy, or a derivation of philosophy with feedback. We should develop all open avenues of philosophy in the course of living.
      - Ukv 2y ago

farts_mckensy 2y ago

Non materialist bullshit.

kbelder 2y ago

>Functionally equivalent but no soul. I think it's an incoherent concept. If the 'soul' is anything, there is some difference in the brain that would allow it. You can't have two people with identical brains and claim that one has a soul, unless you believe in magic.

bee_rider 2y ago
Is there a non-magical description of a soul? I thought it was an essentially magical concept. I’m not sure that makes it incoherent.
bobxmax 2y ago
It's been interesting seeing those with an entirely materialist understanding of the universe try to grapple with and deal with consciousness as LLMs have emerged. To maintain that belief you have to either believe there is a physical source of consciousness, or that consciousness doesn't exist, neither of which most people can accept, yet LLMs are forcing people to confront.
- thfuran 2y ago
  You think most people can't accept that consciousness is a phenomenon with basis solely in physical reality?
  - Isamu 2y ago
    Also LLMs represent, for most people I suspect, something entirely unconnected with notions of consciousness.
  - grantcas 2y ago
    [dead]
goatlover 2y ago
But you can have things like property dualism, strong emergentism, cognitive closue, neutral monism and panpsychism. Naturalistic philosophers don't appeal to the soul or magic, they just say there's more to nature than stuff described by physical sciences. You can disagree of course, but then you have to account for everything in nature, including consciousness, by only using physical constituents. And best of luck with that. Nobody has succeeded so far. The problem is that subjective experiences don't fit well with objective explanations. Nagal laid this out in his paper, "What it's like to be a bat", and other philosophers like Chalmers expanded on it with p-zombies and blind color scientists.
- nthingtohide 2y ago
  I think the only property humans consider special in themselves are emotions. I have the following thesis. In evolution, exact pattern matching is computationally expensive. Just as I know my mother regardless of her clothes, hairstyle, her aging face, the match isn't exact. But brain uses heuristics to pump up 89 percent match to 100 percent match. This saves computational resources. These heuristics are what we call emotions. When snake like object appears in visual field, emotional heuristic pumps up slight resemblance to generate fear response. Analytical observation would take too much time. That's why emotions appear pre rational. Capgras syndrome shows when emotional heuristic malfunctions. Visual recognition is intact. But emotional heuristic which pumps up recognition score malfunctions. That's why patient recognises face but feels it's an imposter. These arguments prove emotions are mere computational shortcuts.
  - goatlover 2y ago
    How do you explain the visual field? EM radiation isn't colored in the range visible to humans, that's just how we see it. There are no physical colored properties, rather there are wavelengths. But there are color experiences. Same goes for the other sensations. You don't need to go as far as emotions. Sensation alone is hard to explain in physical terms. Computation doesn't explain it either. Color values are just numeric properties we assign to the shades of our color experiences. But they aren't the experiences, they're just numeric values or symbols to be stored for something that can output wavelengths of light.

_wire_ 2y ago

Re dualism: To paraphrase Chonsky (link below), the legacy of Descartes' observations for "mechanical philosophy" is profound: substance-dualism became untenable because no coherent idea of material can be formulated. Newton exorcised the machine (material), leaving the ghost intact to be curious about itself. Today we study the organism called the body without need of a philosophical grounding in any reality. "mechanical philosophy" ended with Newton's work obviating any coherent notion of an "intelligible world". Faced with unreconcilable confusion about what constitutes reality, science quietly abandoned the idea and moved ahead with "intelligible theories about the world", which Chomsky regards as one of most significant shifts in science. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=bWDJ2zFe4Pc https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=bWDJ2zFe4Pc In various speeches and lectures on the history of science and linguistics, Chomsky comments on artificial intelligence, by referring to Alan Turing's seminal paper, in which Turing proposed the so-called "test." Chomsky refers to the paper's first paragraph where Turing concedes that the meaning of the word "intelligence" is so indistinct as to be left to be determined by Gallop. Turing punts on the entire question of the meaning of intelligence by suggesting an "imitation game." Today's state of the art of machine intelligence has not advanced past Turing's proposal. Chomsky wonders if we may have to resign ourselves to the limit that it never will, in which light of reason we might embark on further study of ourselves, rather than contrive facsimiles and endure all the attendant hazards.

unwise-exe 2y ago

>> Functionally equivalent but no soul. Something that predicts no observable differences is unfalsifiable aka bullshit.

notfed 2y ago
So you're saying consciousness is bullshit? Because the point is that we don't know how to observe the difference between something that is conscious and something that isn't.
- Ukv 2y ago
  Not GP but I'd argue that whatever we mean by consciousness must at least have physical impact. Something that doesn't couldn't decide our actions in the physical world like laughing at a joke or painting a picture, and critically couldn't even be what we're referring to when we talk about consciousness as we are now. From there I think "we don't know how" is in part down to needing advances in neuroscience, and in part down to "consciousness" being a hazy term with disagreement over definition. But for frameworks that accept the above (physicalism, interactionist dualism, ...) I do think it's in theory testable whether something is conscious for any given pinned-down definition (e.g, "are the neurons constituting internal train of thought firing"), and I would be inclined to say the frameworks that don't accept the above are indeed the more "bullshit" ones.
  - vacuity 2y ago
    Science is limited by what we can falsify, which follows from what we can observe. We should attribute no normative weight to whether something should or shouldn't be scientifically analyzable. So we should always improve our means of observation, as well as our culture towards the things that are difficult or downright impossible to scientifically analyze. Science is a part of philosophy, or a derivation of philosophy with feedback. We should develop all open avenues of philosophy in the course of living.
    - Ukv 2y ago