5 ms·

I never quite understood what we mean by "consciousness" but I find fascinating that most modern philosophers who describe themselves as materialists / non reli

by bambax 5mo ago

I never quite understood what we mean by "consciousness" but I find fascinating that most modern philosophers who describe themselves as materialists / non religious can argue in the same sentence that there is something special and extra-natural about the human experience. It's one or the other: either nature is all there is, and therefore, consciousness is a purely natural phenomenon, that we can investigate, and probably eventually replicate, and can't deny to other beings or to machines upfront; OR there is something outside reality that we might as well call God. I'm strongly in the former camp, but I don't have issues with the latter one. What upsets me is the inconsistency of those who try to support both ideas at the same time. They shouldn't be allowed to have it both ways.

twak 5mo ago
I've yet to find a falsifiable definition of consciousness. I do believe in intelligence (which is measured against a particular task) and ego (which inflates the self over the other).
energy123 5mo ago
I don't know anyone who supports both ideas at the same time. Are you saying that philosophers do? Most philosophers are materialists or computational functionalists, while being monists. This means they aren't dualists, and it means they do not adopt the supernatural explanation. But they are careful not to rule out dualism. There's this pattern I've observed in discussions about philosophy. First there's a rejection of philosophy as silly and misguided, followed by a rediscovery of the same concepts that philosophers have developed, but under a new ad-hoc and less precise language. Congratulations, you're a philosopher.
- mikk14 5mo ago
  I don't know if this is discussed by actual serious philosophers, but consider the issue of "mind uploading." I have seen very staunch monists seriously discussing that, if you were to produce a complete digital copy of your brain -- copying any possible information to the most minute synapse -- then you effectively "uploaded" yourself into a computer and can live a digital life. These people believe this while at the same time considering dualism so ridiculous as to laugh dualists out of the room. The evident problem being that "mind uploading" is the most dualistic possible position to take. A real monist would easily see that by doing mind uploading you have just created a clone that is a whole separate entity from yourself and it is not yourself.
  - energy123 5mo ago
    But you are taking an opinionated view of the resolution to the Ship of Theseus paradox. If you are a computational functionalist, then it really is "you" afterwards (or rather there's now two identical "you" until the original "you" is destroyed). A monist could also point to your hypocrisy of believing that you are still your child self despite every atom in your body having been replaced between then and now.
    - mikk14 5mo ago
      A true monist would realize that any experience of the uploaded being that received a copy of the brain is not felt by the original brain that has been copied. This is a fact and it is elementary to see it as true, as well as supporting the view that the copy is not the same being at all. If your description of computation functionalists is accurate, then they simply are dualists and would do good in admitting this to themselves. Invoking the Ship of Theseus is a distraction. The Ship of Theseus paradox does not involve a full copy at the atomic level while the original still stands. If it did, the paradox would not even exists. The paradox exists because there is the key element that you do not have in mind copying/uploading: _continuity_.
      - amanaplanacanal 5mo ago
        Isn't continuity just an implementation detail? Suppose your brain was replaced a bit at a time with mechanical hardware, the end result is an uploaded mind while maintaining continuity.
        mikk14 5mo ago
        I admit that this is a troubling problem with the position that I stated, but I don't think it's a complete takedown. The easiest rebuttal would be to simply say that continuity is not a mere implementation detail. If you give up continuity, you can make a copy without altering the original, you just have to read it. But if you need to ensure continuity you have to alter the original. This seems to me a very fundamental part of the process, making it qualitatively different.
- deleted 5mo ago
  [deleted]
- narag 5mo ago
  I don't know anyone who supports both ideas at the same time. Are you saying that philosophers do? Every guy saying that free will doesn't exist is arguing exactly this. Physical causality considered an obstacle to freedom implies that the conscious entity is somehow outside the physical world.
  - amanaplanacanal 5mo ago
    You are implying that consciousness has to include free will? Why?
    - narag 5mo ago
      That's backwards. People saying that there's no free will because determinism is implying that human consciousness is outside the physical world. Actually that's what TFA is about and makes a great job explaining it. My comment was responding to energy123 questioning there are philosophers that are both materialistic and consider human consciousness is "special". The moment you separate consciousness from all the physical processes that support it (and that's what negating "free" will arguing that it's caused by material forces) you're placing it in a different "plane". That's hardly an unheard-of position, there are many thinkers that fall for this.
      - GoblinSlayer 5mo ago
        That's strange, hard determinists are eliminativists, and eliminativists don't believe in consciousness, but I never saw them speaking about both at the same time.
        narag 5mo ago
        They don't believe in consciousness... at all? I guess they don't recognize consciousness for some definition of it that includes agency.
        GoblinSlayer 5mo ago
- redwood 5mo ago
  I think a lot of people interpret philosophers' arguments differently and it isn't always clear what a philosopher themselves truly believes. For example Searle's Chinese room thought experiment... On the one hand you can easily construe it to imply that he believes there's something fundamentally special about human consciousness that cannot be reproduced by a machine. On the other hand you could interpret his perspective, which I think is more in line with his real perspective, as implyimg that replicating the human mind machine requires truly replicating it physically rather than approximating it and that it's misleading to imply that you can get there with an approximation ... Still I can see how this confuses dualists or could appear in line with their point of view even though it is arguably a nuanced take on the materiallist view
  - Eisenstein 5mo ago
    > you can easily construe it to imply that he believes there's something fundamentally special about human consciousness that cannot be reproduced by a machine. On the other hand you could interpret his perspective, which I think is more in line with his real perspective, as implyimg that replicating the human mind machine requires truly replicating it physically I'm not sure I understand. If we must replicate a human brain physically in order to create something that has consciousness, then how is that not something 'special that cannot be reproduced by a machine'?
    - redwood 5mo ago
      Your comment does serve the point I was making. Still there is a perspective that if you could artificially reproduce the human mind top to bottom, a truly perfect reproduction in other words, then you ought to be able to trigger an identical consciousness. In other words yes special type of machine is needed for the machine nevertheless not some special soul. Of course the counterpoint and maybe the one you're making is that special machine ought to be simply called a soul machine and we could all agree it would be very difficult to reproduce it and it is intrinsically special... but maybe that's for the very specific form of Consciousness we have... but maybe there are other forms
      - 5mo ago
adwn 5mo ago
No, there is at least one other option, which is that consciousness [1] is a phenomenon that we can't replicate in non-biological brains [2], but from which the existence of a "God"-like being, as the term is understood by major religions, still doesn't follow. [1] Or "qualia", to be precise. [2] For example, the existence of qualia might require certain carbon-based structures which aren't present in silicon-based devices.
- cortic 5mo ago
  There is nothing that we know of in carbon based structures that violates universal causality, even in quantum scales where causality becomes more vague it is replaced by a measurable randomness. So there should be no reason we cannot reduce these phenomena to actual quantifiable and there for Computable elements.
  - funimpoded 5mo ago
    Computing something isn’t the same thing as it actually happening.
    - morpheos137 5mo ago
      That is a dubious asertion. At high enough resolution the model converges on the modeled.
      - funimpoded 5mo ago
        "Resolution" has nothing whatsoever to do with it. No amount of scribbling graphite onto paper will produce a butterfly.
        pixl97 5mo ago
        [citation needed]
        5mo ago
XorNot 5mo ago
"might as well call God" is a bizzare conclusion for the latter though because "God" is far from an abstract concept - it's probably one of the most heavily loaded terms in every human culture.
- taneq 5mo ago
  Overloaded, I’d say. There are many different definitions, most incompatible with each other, such that the term is almost meaningless without extensive preceding discussion.
deleted 5mo ago
[deleted]
NewEntryHN 5mo ago
If the thing "outside of reality" ever reveals useful to explain anything about reality, then it becomes part of reality.

by bambax 5mo ago

twak 5mo ago

I've yet to find a falsifiable definition of consciousness. I do believe in intelligence (which is measured against a particular task) and ego (which inflates the self over the other).

energy123 5mo ago

I don't know anyone who supports both ideas at the same time. Are you saying that philosophers do? Most philosophers are materialists or computational functionalists, while being monists. This means they aren't dualists, and it means they do not adopt the supernatural explanation. But they are careful not to rule out dualism. There's this pattern I've observed in discussions about philosophy. First there's a rejection of philosophy as silly and misguided, followed by a rediscovery of the same concepts that philosophers have developed, but under a new ad-hoc and less precise language. Congratulations, you're a philosopher.

mikk14 5mo ago
I don't know if this is discussed by actual serious philosophers, but consider the issue of "mind uploading." I have seen very staunch monists seriously discussing that, if you were to produce a complete digital copy of your brain -- copying any possible information to the most minute synapse -- then you effectively "uploaded" yourself into a computer and can live a digital life. These people believe this while at the same time considering dualism so ridiculous as to laugh dualists out of the room. The evident problem being that "mind uploading" is the most dualistic possible position to take. A real monist would easily see that by doing mind uploading you have just created a clone that is a whole separate entity from yourself and it is not yourself.
- energy123 5mo ago
  But you are taking an opinionated view of the resolution to the Ship of Theseus paradox. If you are a computational functionalist, then it really is "you" afterwards (or rather there's now two identical "you" until the original "you" is destroyed). A monist could also point to your hypocrisy of believing that you are still your child self despite every atom in your body having been replaced between then and now.
  - mikk14 5mo ago
    A true monist would realize that any experience of the uploaded being that received a copy of the brain is not felt by the original brain that has been copied. This is a fact and it is elementary to see it as true, as well as supporting the view that the copy is not the same being at all. If your description of computation functionalists is accurate, then they simply are dualists and would do good in admitting this to themselves. Invoking the Ship of Theseus is a distraction. The Ship of Theseus paradox does not involve a full copy at the atomic level while the original still stands. If it did, the paradox would not even exists. The paradox exists because there is the key element that you do not have in mind copying/uploading: _continuity_.
    - amanaplanacanal 5mo ago
      Isn't continuity just an implementation detail? Suppose your brain was replaced a bit at a time with mechanical hardware, the end result is an uploaded mind while maintaining continuity.
      - mikk14 5mo ago
        I admit that this is a troubling problem with the position that I stated, but I don't think it's a complete takedown. The easiest rebuttal would be to simply say that continuity is not a mere implementation detail. If you give up continuity, you can make a copy without altering the original, you just have to read it. But if you need to ensure continuity you have to alter the original. This seems to me a very fundamental part of the process, making it qualitatively different.
deleted 5mo ago
[deleted]
narag 5mo ago
I don't know anyone who supports both ideas at the same time. Are you saying that philosophers do? Every guy saying that free will doesn't exist is arguing exactly this. Physical causality considered an obstacle to freedom implies that the conscious entity is somehow outside the physical world.
- amanaplanacanal 5mo ago
  You are implying that consciousness has to include free will? Why?
  - narag 5mo ago
    That's backwards. People saying that there's no free will because determinism is implying that human consciousness is outside the physical world. Actually that's what TFA is about and makes a great job explaining it. My comment was responding to energy123 questioning there are philosophers that are both materialistic and consider human consciousness is "special". The moment you separate consciousness from all the physical processes that support it (and that's what negating "free" will arguing that it's caused by material forces) you're placing it in a different "plane". That's hardly an unheard-of position, there are many thinkers that fall for this.
    - GoblinSlayer 5mo ago
      That's strange, hard determinists are eliminativists, and eliminativists don't believe in consciousness, but I never saw them speaking about both at the same time.
      - narag 5mo ago
        They don't believe in consciousness... at all? I guess they don't recognize consciousness for some definition of it that includes agency.
        GoblinSlayer 5mo ago
redwood 5mo ago
I think a lot of people interpret philosophers' arguments differently and it isn't always clear what a philosopher themselves truly believes. For example Searle's Chinese room thought experiment... On the one hand you can easily construe it to imply that he believes there's something fundamentally special about human consciousness that cannot be reproduced by a machine. On the other hand you could interpret his perspective, which I think is more in line with his real perspective, as implyimg that replicating the human mind machine requires truly replicating it physically rather than approximating it and that it's misleading to imply that you can get there with an approximation ... Still I can see how this confuses dualists or could appear in line with their point of view even though it is arguably a nuanced take on the materiallist view
- Eisenstein 5mo ago
  > you can easily construe it to imply that he believes there's something fundamentally special about human consciousness that cannot be reproduced by a machine. On the other hand you could interpret his perspective, which I think is more in line with his real perspective, as implyimg that replicating the human mind machine requires truly replicating it physically I'm not sure I understand. If we must replicate a human brain physically in order to create something that has consciousness, then how is that not something 'special that cannot be reproduced by a machine'?
  - redwood 5mo ago
    Your comment does serve the point I was making. Still there is a perspective that if you could artificially reproduce the human mind top to bottom, a truly perfect reproduction in other words, then you ought to be able to trigger an identical consciousness. In other words yes special type of machine is needed for the machine nevertheless not some special soul. Of course the counterpoint and maybe the one you're making is that special machine ought to be simply called a soul machine and we could all agree it would be very difficult to reproduce it and it is intrinsically special... but maybe that's for the very specific form of Consciousness we have... but maybe there are other forms
    - 5mo ago

adwn 5mo ago

No, there is at least one other option, which is that consciousness [1] is a phenomenon that we can't replicate in non-biological brains [2], but from which the existence of a "God"-like being, as the term is understood by major religions, still doesn't follow. [1] Or "qualia", to be precise. [2] For example, the existence of qualia might require certain carbon-based structures which aren't present in silicon-based devices.

cortic 5mo ago
There is nothing that we know of in carbon based structures that violates universal causality, even in quantum scales where causality becomes more vague it is replaced by a measurable randomness. So there should be no reason we cannot reduce these phenomena to actual quantifiable and there for Computable elements.
- funimpoded 5mo ago
  Computing something isn’t the same thing as it actually happening.
  - morpheos137 5mo ago
    That is a dubious asertion. At high enough resolution the model converges on the modeled.
    - funimpoded 5mo ago
      "Resolution" has nothing whatsoever to do with it. No amount of scribbling graphite onto paper will produce a butterfly.
      - pixl97 5mo ago
        [citation needed]
        5mo ago

XorNot 5mo ago

"might as well call God" is a bizzare conclusion for the latter though because "God" is far from an abstract concept - it's probably one of the most heavily loaded terms in every human culture.

taneq 5mo ago
Overloaded, I’d say. There are many different definitions, most incompatible with each other, such that the term is almost meaningless without extensive preceding discussion.

deleted 5mo ago

[deleted]

NewEntryHN 5mo ago

If the thing "outside of reality" ever reveals useful to explain anything about reality, then it becomes part of reality.