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By the laws of physics, it's pretty clear we don't. The same chemical and electromagnetic interactions that drive everything around us are active in our brains,
by svachalek 6mo ago
By the laws of physics, it's pretty clear we don't. The same chemical and electromagnetic interactions that drive everything around us are active in our brains, causing us to do things and feel things. We feel like we're in control of it, we feel like there's something there riding around inside. We grant that other people have the same magic, because I clearly do. But rocks, trees, LLMs, those are not people and clearly, clearly not conscious because they don't have our magic.
- vidarh 6mo agoIndeed. We assume a lot, because we don't know. We don't have have settled, universal definitions of what consciousness means. But that also means that while we like to rule out consciousness in other things, we don't have a clear basis for doing so.
- root_axis 6mo agoBased on that reasoning anything could be conscious. If that's a bullet you want to bite, fair enough.
- kortex 6mo agoI'll bite that bullet. In fact I contend the idea that "humans and maybe some animals are conscious, but other things are not" is the special pleading stand. Why are the oscillating fundamental fields over here (brains) special, but the oscillations over there (computers, oceans, rocks) not? If they are, where do you draw the line? It smacks of "babies dont feel pain" (widely believed until the 80s! the 1980s!) sort of reasoning. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panpsychism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panpsychism
- root_axis 6mo agoActually I don't really have any problems with panpsychism. It's a pretty uncommon perspective, but when discussing conscious machines, it at least presents a consistent criteria for consciousness.
- vidarh 6mo agoI do not know, because we have no known way of measuring consciousness. I merely object to the notion that we know how to tell who or what has a consciousness.
- digitaltrees 6mo agoHard disagree. We reliably operate with the concept of a self that’s distinct from others. The chemical and physical processes change in response to stimulus.