4 ms·

> Either all the computation happens "in the dark", as in a calculator or an Excel spreadsheet or a slide rule or Factorio, in which case we are p-zombies and c

> Either all the computation happens "in the dark", as in a calculator or an Excel spreadsheet or a slide rule or Factorio, in which case we are p-zombies and consciousness is an illusion, which contradicts every waking moment of our experience You are still presupposing the premise here, in multiple ways: 1) "My experience is that I'm conscious, and math cannot result in consciousness, therefore consciousness is a separate thing." Question: who says math cannot result in consciousness? Do you have empirical proof of that? 2) "We have solved the easy problem of consciousness, we know exactly how the brain works" implicitly assumes that the formation of consciousness is NOT among the things we've learned while mapping out all features of the brain. This, again, is not an assumption that's supported by anything than wishful thinking. And, further: > or, everything is conscious, from brains to slide rules and spreadsheets, and that is incredibly, and also has a number of problems (e.g.: why aren't my neurons individually conscious? Why does consciousness stop at my skull, that is, why is the causality of signal-trains in neurons more "conscious" than phonons in the hydroxyapatite crystals in my skull?). "Some math can produce consciousness" does not mean "ALL math HAS to produce consciousness" does not mean "EVERY PART of all math has to BE conscious." Of course it's hard to define consciousness if the implicit definition is "certainly not anything that I don't like." The hard problem of consciousness is only hard because the default human move is to _make_ it hard.

zetalyrae 5mo ago
> Question: who says math cannot result in consciousness? Which math? Why some kinds of information processing and not others? If all information processing leads to consciousness: why does consciousness stop at the boundary of the brain? Why isn't every neuron individually and separately conscious? Why not the two hemispheres of the brain? Why isn't every causally-linked volume of the universe a single mind? > Implicitly assumes that the formation of consciousness is NOT among the things we've learned while mapping out all features of the brain. The point is that it's not clear at all what empirical knowledge we could acquire that would explain consciousness. Is in: what is the shape of the answer, and can a collection of material facts about the world have that shape? > Of course it's hard to define consciousness if the implicit definition is "certainly not anything that I don't like." The hard problem of consciousness is only hard because the default human move is to _make_ it hard. This is just a tiresome ad hominem. I want to be a materialist and an eliminativist. I would like this to be simple!
- thepasch 5mo ago
  > If all information processing leads to consciousness Did you actually read what you just responded to?
  - zetalyrae 5mo ago
    Why some kinds of information processing and not others? As I wrote elsethread: why are some types of information processing "privileged" to create phenomenal experiences, while others run "in the dark"?
    - thepasch 5mo ago
      > Why some kinds of information processing and not others? I have no idea. If that's what the hard problem of consciousness boils down to - we don't know why some complex math produces consciousness and other complex math doesn't - then it boils down to "we haven't found the means to sufficiently analyze the math that does produce it." Which would turn it into... a math problem? My suspicion is that it has something to do with evolutionary pressure. Consciousness is something that evolves when systems that include their own existence within their data model become much more likely to continue existing versus those that don't. Statistics does the rest.
    - robwwilliams 5mo ago
      Mainly because of recursive processes that modulate attentional focus, but of a special sort that we are just beginning to understand.
    - skirmish 5mo ago
      > Why some kinds of information processing and not others? Using Rovelli's example: why some clouds create a thunderstorm and not others? It is just a complex phenomenon that happens only under right conditions.
    - don_esteban 5mo ago
      What about this: Let us classify the information processing along two axis: a) low-level (evolutionarily ancient), direct stimuli-response, vs high-level (involving prefrontal cortex) b) processing stimuli from the outside world (sound, light) vs internal stimuli (tactile/pain ... all the way to internal stimuli originating in brain - 'thinking about thinking') Note that both are continuous scale, not binary. The consciousness would then be the high-level processing of internal signals. Obviously, consciousness also results being on continuous scale.
suzzer99 5mo ago
Here's my question: Is our consciousness fundamentally different than a gorilla's? If the answer is no, then I'd ask if a gorilla's consciousness is fundamentally different than a baboon's? I think that answer has to be no by definition, assuming the first answer is no. And so on, until we get to where a human's consciousness is not fundamentally different than a tube worm, just a continuum of degrees. I'm not sure what to draw from this. But whenever I read something that speculates on the nature of consciousness, I always try to look at it through the lens of the human-to-tube worm scale. Does the argument survive a continuum, or does it depend on human consciousness being fundamentally unique in some way? I guess you could argue that even though there's a continuum, consciousness effectively hits zero somewhere around reptiles. Sort of like how technically I feel Alpha Centauri's gravity, but effectively it's zero. So in that case, the argument only has to survive mammals to say corvids.
- __patchbit__ 5mo ago
  Some scientists accept consciousness resides in single cell paramecia.
  - philipallstar 5mo ago
    Saying "accept" assumes it's true. What's happening is "some scientists define consciousness incredibly broadly."
- somenameforme 5mo ago
  You say "our" consciousness, but how do you know you're not the only conscious entity alive? The problem of consciousness is that not only is it plainly absurd sounding, but it's also completely unmeasurable. There is no test or metric you can use to determine whether I, you, or anything else has a consciousness. And I think this more or less immediately precludes logical reasoning about it.
  - Brian_K_White 5mo ago
    You can't tell the difference between a person and an mp3 player saying the same words, even if the words are about inner life musings. And you can't tell the difference between a person exhibiting many behavioral actions and something I could rig up with an electric motor and a light sensor to exhibit tropism, seeking things, avoiding other things. But if you only had a remote controlled roomba to interact with the world, you would be able to make yourself known to me. I don't mean that you could substitute a voice with writing out words on the floor, I mean your actions, the overall totality no single act, would would expose a driving source of actions that so far nothing else exhibits. We just anthropomorphize everything because we have so much in common with all the other animals. When a dog or a dolphin does something, we have had experiences that we recognize as being practically identical, and we know what our experience was like. It's protecting it's baby. I protect MY baby! Yes and an electric motor can turn a crank, and you can turn a crank. Simple outward alignments like that are some kind of logical trap everyone falls for because we don't have any other conceptual vocabulary to even think with.
satisfice 5mo ago
The problem of consciousness is hard partly because it is objectively hard to make conscious people— all of whom are experts at the experience of living in their own bodies— agree on what consciousness is.
svara 5mo ago
> My experience is that I'm conscious, and math cannot result in consciousness, therefore consciousness is a separate thing." Question: who says math cannot result in consciousness? Do you have empirical proof of that? A lot of people, myself included, have the intuition that thinking that this might be possible is a sort of type error, to put it in CS terms. A bit like asking "Have you proven that ice cream? Are you sure maths can not prove that ice cream? Do you have empirical evidence?" Asking for empirical evidence seems beside the point, since the issue is a logical one.
- DangitBobby 5mo ago
  As far as we know math can describe all of physics and sufficiently complex physics could describe our brains, thus math could describe our brains. Does that mean we aren't conscious? Where is the chain broken?
  - svara 5mo ago
    There's nothing wrong with that chain. This is what some philosophers would call the 'easy ' problem of consciousness, to distinguish it from the 'hard' problem, which is the next step: How do you get from a physical model of brain physiology and behavior to subjective experience of mental states?
    - chr1 5mo ago
      In that chain there is no distinction between subjective experience of mental state and evolution of physical state of the brain. If you believe that the 'hard' problem exists then that chain must be modified. What most of the p-zombie supporters say is merely equivalent to adding an external observer. It is like saying that a player following a sim in a game, makes sims actions more meaningful, which is kind of true but also completely irrelevant to anything that the sims do.
      - svara 5mo ago
        I don't think the question of whether subjective phenomena are casual has any bearing on whether there's a 'hard problem' and I also don't think the term 'hard problem' is used like that by others. Whether subjective experience is casual or not is a different, additional question.

zetalyrae 5mo ago

> Question: who says math cannot result in consciousness? Which math? Why some kinds of information processing and not others? If all information processing leads to consciousness: why does consciousness stop at the boundary of the brain? Why isn't every neuron individually and separately conscious? Why not the two hemispheres of the brain? Why isn't every causally-linked volume of the universe a single mind? > Implicitly assumes that the formation of consciousness is NOT among the things we've learned while mapping out all features of the brain. The point is that it's not clear at all what empirical knowledge we could acquire that would explain consciousness. Is in: what is the shape of the answer, and can a collection of material facts about the world have that shape? > Of course it's hard to define consciousness if the implicit definition is "certainly not anything that I don't like." The hard problem of consciousness is only hard because the default human move is to _make_ it hard. This is just a tiresome ad hominem. I want to be a materialist and an eliminativist. I would like this to be simple!

thepasch 5mo ago
> If all information processing leads to consciousness Did you actually read what you just responded to?
- zetalyrae 5mo ago
  Why some kinds of information processing and not others? As I wrote elsethread: why are some types of information processing "privileged" to create phenomenal experiences, while others run "in the dark"?
  - thepasch 5mo ago
    > Why some kinds of information processing and not others? I have no idea. If that's what the hard problem of consciousness boils down to - we don't know why some complex math produces consciousness and other complex math doesn't - then it boils down to "we haven't found the means to sufficiently analyze the math that does produce it." Which would turn it into... a math problem? My suspicion is that it has something to do with evolutionary pressure. Consciousness is something that evolves when systems that include their own existence within their data model become much more likely to continue existing versus those that don't. Statistics does the rest.
  - robwwilliams 5mo ago
    Mainly because of recursive processes that modulate attentional focus, but of a special sort that we are just beginning to understand.
  - skirmish 5mo ago
    > Why some kinds of information processing and not others? Using Rovelli's example: why some clouds create a thunderstorm and not others? It is just a complex phenomenon that happens only under right conditions.
  - don_esteban 5mo ago
    What about this: Let us classify the information processing along two axis: a) low-level (evolutionarily ancient), direct stimuli-response, vs high-level (involving prefrontal cortex) b) processing stimuli from the outside world (sound, light) vs internal stimuli (tactile/pain ... all the way to internal stimuli originating in brain - 'thinking about thinking') Note that both are continuous scale, not binary. The consciousness would then be the high-level processing of internal signals. Obviously, consciousness also results being on continuous scale.

suzzer99 5mo ago

Here's my question: Is our consciousness fundamentally different than a gorilla's? If the answer is no, then I'd ask if a gorilla's consciousness is fundamentally different than a baboon's? I think that answer has to be no by definition, assuming the first answer is no. And so on, until we get to where a human's consciousness is not fundamentally different than a tube worm, just a continuum of degrees. I'm not sure what to draw from this. But whenever I read something that speculates on the nature of consciousness, I always try to look at it through the lens of the human-to-tube worm scale. Does the argument survive a continuum, or does it depend on human consciousness being fundamentally unique in some way? I guess you could argue that even though there's a continuum, consciousness effectively hits zero somewhere around reptiles. Sort of like how technically I feel Alpha Centauri's gravity, but effectively it's zero. So in that case, the argument only has to survive mammals to say corvids.

__patchbit__ 5mo ago
Some scientists accept consciousness resides in single cell paramecia.
- philipallstar 5mo ago
  Saying "accept" assumes it's true. What's happening is "some scientists define consciousness incredibly broadly."
somenameforme 5mo ago
You say "our" consciousness, but how do you know you're not the only conscious entity alive? The problem of consciousness is that not only is it plainly absurd sounding, but it's also completely unmeasurable. There is no test or metric you can use to determine whether I, you, or anything else has a consciousness. And I think this more or less immediately precludes logical reasoning about it.
- Brian_K_White 5mo ago
  You can't tell the difference between a person and an mp3 player saying the same words, even if the words are about inner life musings. And you can't tell the difference between a person exhibiting many behavioral actions and something I could rig up with an electric motor and a light sensor to exhibit tropism, seeking things, avoiding other things. But if you only had a remote controlled roomba to interact with the world, you would be able to make yourself known to me. I don't mean that you could substitute a voice with writing out words on the floor, I mean your actions, the overall totality no single act, would would expose a driving source of actions that so far nothing else exhibits. We just anthropomorphize everything because we have so much in common with all the other animals. When a dog or a dolphin does something, we have had experiences that we recognize as being practically identical, and we know what our experience was like. It's protecting it's baby. I protect MY baby! Yes and an electric motor can turn a crank, and you can turn a crank. Simple outward alignments like that are some kind of logical trap everyone falls for because we don't have any other conceptual vocabulary to even think with.

satisfice 5mo ago

The problem of consciousness is hard partly because it is objectively hard to make conscious people— all of whom are experts at the experience of living in their own bodies— agree on what consciousness is.

svara 5mo ago

> My experience is that I'm conscious, and math cannot result in consciousness, therefore consciousness is a separate thing." Question: who says math cannot result in consciousness? Do you have empirical proof of that? A lot of people, myself included, have the intuition that thinking that this might be possible is a sort of type error, to put it in CS terms. A bit like asking "Have you proven that ice cream? Are you sure maths can not prove that ice cream? Do you have empirical evidence?" Asking for empirical evidence seems beside the point, since the issue is a logical one.

DangitBobby 5mo ago
As far as we know math can describe all of physics and sufficiently complex physics could describe our brains, thus math could describe our brains. Does that mean we aren't conscious? Where is the chain broken?
- svara 5mo ago
  There's nothing wrong with that chain. This is what some philosophers would call the 'easy ' problem of consciousness, to distinguish it from the 'hard' problem, which is the next step: How do you get from a physical model of brain physiology and behavior to subjective experience of mental states?
  - chr1 5mo ago
    In that chain there is no distinction between subjective experience of mental state and evolution of physical state of the brain. If you believe that the 'hard' problem exists then that chain must be modified. What most of the p-zombie supporters say is merely equivalent to adding an external observer. It is like saying that a player following a sim in a game, makes sims actions more meaningful, which is kind of true but also completely irrelevant to anything that the sims do.
    - svara 5mo ago
      I don't think the question of whether subjective phenomena are casual has any bearing on whether there's a 'hard problem' and I also don't think the term 'hard problem' is used like that by others. Whether subjective experience is casual or not is a different, additional question.