3 ms·

For that to be reductive there had to be something to reduce. What would that be, without resorting to tautology?

by arde 1mo ago

ComputerPerson 1mo ago
I agree, but this is getting lost in the weeds. The simpler issue is that "mimic" doesn't apply to LLMs in the domain of biology. That would be like saying a digital recording of a bird's flight mimics the bird. Whether or not the plumage on the bird is red (in both life and the video) is an entirely different question.
GPerson 1mo ago
Unless you don’t know I’m talking about (various kinds of reductive materialism), it sounds like you’re doing exactly what I’m saying is the main rhetorical move in reductive approaches to consciousness.
- pixl97 1mo ago
  >reductive approaches to consciousness There 100% must be reductive approaches to consciousness because consciousness lives on a gradient. If your definition of consciousness exists on as a point like an electron, something that only exists as a whole, then you've already flunked out of the study of consciousness. It is wildly complex. Has a great number of pieces. Manifests itself in different ways in different animals. You have to explain what consciousness is in that framework, and not from your own subjective experiences.
  - GPerson 1mo ago
    Right if my view was some ridiculous position you just invent to try to embarrass me then it would be ridiculous. Brilliant logic. I don’t think you know what reduction means here and you don’t actually engage with what I write here and on other posts so I don’t care to explain.
- arde 1mo ago
  Mine was a straight question you should be able to answer directly for any debate to go forward, not any "rhetorical move" nor any "approach" involving anything. Any rhetorical moves or approaches of mine, reductive or not, conceding or refuting, would come after your answer but couldn't come before it because your point needs this disambiguation. So again: please, without resorting to tautology from which anything could be implied, define what consciousness is to you in a way you don't consider reductive, so we can clearly see what there would be to reduce at all.
  - GPerson 1mo ago
    Consciousness is identical to the presence of qualia, that there is something rather than nothing, that the lights are on. ‘Reductive’ means the assumption that all phenomena reduce to what represent them in an external model or linguistic description. Science, language, and reason are fundamentally reductive. So in practice the reductive assumption is just denying that things have an existence which is not identical to our models of them. And since these are the respected modes of thought most people are unaware that they are committing to a non-trivial reductive assumption when reasoning about consciousness.
    - arde 1mo ago
      The problem with non-reductive definitions such as the one you just gave there is that they don't have much information at all. What are those "lights" that are on when you say there is consciousness, apart from the presence of consciousness itself, the same thing that should be defined by that phrase? The presence of qualia is only possible, by definition, when there is already a consciousness that experiments them, but what is this? What is that something that you contrast with nothing, and how is it different from any other somethings like rocks, if at all? That just avoids defining at all.

For that to be reductive there had to be something to reduce. What would that be, without resorting to tautology?

by arde 1mo ago

For that to be reductive there had to be something to reduce. What would that be, without resorting to tautology?

I agree, but this is getting lost in the weeds. The simpler issue is that "mimic" doesn't apply to LLMs in the domain of biology. That would be like saying a digital recording of a bird's flight mimics the bird. Whether or not the plumage on the bird is red (in both life and the video) is an entirely different question.

GPerson 1mo ago

Unless you don’t know I’m talking about (various kinds of reductive materialism), it sounds like you’re doing exactly what I’m saying is the main rhetorical move in reductive approaches to consciousness.

pixl97 1mo ago
>reductive approaches to consciousness There 100% must be reductive approaches to consciousness because consciousness lives on a gradient. If your definition of consciousness exists on as a point like an electron, something that only exists as a whole, then you've already flunked out of the study of consciousness. It is wildly complex. Has a great number of pieces. Manifests itself in different ways in different animals. You have to explain what consciousness is in that framework, and not from your own subjective experiences.
- GPerson 1mo ago
  Right if my view was some ridiculous position you just invent to try to embarrass me then it would be ridiculous. Brilliant logic. I don’t think you know what reduction means here and you don’t actually engage with what I write here and on other posts so I don’t care to explain.
arde 1mo ago
Mine was a straight question you should be able to answer directly for any debate to go forward, not any "rhetorical move" nor any "approach" involving anything. Any rhetorical moves or approaches of mine, reductive or not, conceding or refuting, would come after your answer but couldn't come before it because your point needs this disambiguation. So again: please, without resorting to tautology from which anything could be implied, define what consciousness is to you in a way you don't consider reductive, so we can clearly see what there would be to reduce at all.
- GPerson 1mo ago
  Consciousness is identical to the presence of qualia, that there is something rather than nothing, that the lights are on. ‘Reductive’ means the assumption that all phenomena reduce to what represent them in an external model or linguistic description. Science, language, and reason are fundamentally reductive. So in practice the reductive assumption is just denying that things have an existence which is not identical to our models of them. And since these are the respected modes of thought most people are unaware that they are committing to a non-trivial reductive assumption when reasoning about consciousness.
  - arde 1mo ago
    The problem with non-reductive definitions such as the one you just gave there is that they don't have much information at all. What are those "lights" that are on when you say there is consciousness, apart from the presence of consciousness itself, the same thing that should be defined by that phrase? The presence of qualia is only possible, by definition, when there is already a consciousness that experiments them, but what is this? What is that something that you contrast with nothing, and how is it different from any other somethings like rocks, if at all? That just avoids defining at all.