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this would require us to still be baffled by consciousness after knowing everything about neurophysiology that might be relevant - until then, the keys to unloc

by smarf 1mo ago

this would require us to still be baffled by consciousness after knowing everything about neurophysiology that might be relevant - until then, the keys to unlocking its secrets could still be hidden in our wetware behind a veil of ignorance

RajT88 1mo ago
I recall reading that some thought that simple electrical signals could not fully explain our nervous system and there may be some quantum effects in the mix.
qarl2 1mo ago
This is the question of qualia - and it's surprisingly intractable. Realize that in this context, I can't be sure that you are conscious, either. Arguments here will crash into solipsism in the end: you guys can never prove you're not just one of my dreams. I think that was the ultimate point of the Turing test. We can't know for certain - so the best we can do is just ask.
GPerson 1mo ago
It will still be baffling that there is consciousness. Maybe if you start messing with parts of my brain so I can become familiar with the third person correlates of consciousness (which in my usage refers entirely to the first person part) then I could learn something, but I could never learn why or how the first person exists. It just does. If we perfectly reduce the brain to some scientific model, and I don’t doubt we will, we’ll be able to predict what I will say, but not understand why I’m observing it being said.
- alexashka 1mo ago
  Can you learn anything about 'why 8?' or 'how 7?'. If you pose an incoherent question, the answer is 'that's not a valid question', rather than 'oh wow, how baffling'. The baffling is coming from forming what seem to be valid questions that aren't. Another example of it is that famous who cuts the barber's hair (Russell's paradox): The barber is the "one who shaves all those, and those only, who do not shave themselves". The question is, does the barber shave himself? Here's an LLM explaining it: the philosophical/logical lesson is: sometimes a description that sounds grammatically fine does not actually describe a possible thing. The contradiction is in the premise, not in our failure to find the right barber. --- For clarity, consciousness is like free will - if you invent a thing that doesn't exist and proceed to ask questions about it, the problem is you having invented a thing, not that you are then having difficulty answering questions about it.
  - GPerson 1mo ago
    Denying that consciousness exists is pretty bold. It’s obviously completely wrong since it’s the only thing we can actually know exists, but I’ll give you that it’s bold.
    - alexashka 1mo ago
      It's only bold if you don't know anything about the subject matter. How many books one would purchase from the philosophy section of a book store have you read multiple times and what were they?
      - GPerson 1mo ago
        I purchased 712 books and I read each of them 357 times.
  - th-emerald 1mo ago
    > For clarity, consciousness is like free will - if you invent a thing that doesn't exist and proceed to ask questions about it, the problem is you having invented a thing, not that you are then having difficulty answering questions about it. Doesn't that prove too much? Suppose I claim that there is no objective world - i.e. standard solipsism. You may make various claims about the world being coherent to you and existing even in my absence, but these are first-person accounts, just like accounts of qualia and the existence of first-person consciousness are. I can claim that all that I'm observing is something generated by me that contains a part that argues that the world is objective, but that your failure to conclusively prove to me that objective reality exists is a consequence of the concept of an objective world being incoherent. The claim, "you invent[ed] a thing that doesn't exist", seems to be just as useful to a solipsist to respond to someone arguing for objective reality as it is to a materialist to respond to someone arguing for first-person consciousness. Yet it's considered uncontroversial to assume (without direct proof) that an external consistent world exists.
    - alexashka 1mo ago
      > Doesn't that prove too much? No :) Philosophy departments are like economics departments. They engage in long, complex, useless theoretical discussions that have nothing to do with reality whilst pretending that they are connected to reality. This has caused a lot of people to waste years of their lives trying to understand what the hell is going on and many to mindlessly propagate idiotic, harmful ideas these departments 'teach'. Anyone that talks of 'consciousness' and how it's baffling is in the midst of being misled by philosophy and/or neuro-'science' departments, much like anyone who even mentions free markets is being misled by economics departments.
- layer8 1mo ago
  I’m pretty sure people’s perspective will change when they understand the process in detail, and that the “I” isn’t a singular thing, but an interplay of parts, where some observe the processing of others. For me it’s already non-baffling now. In any case, there is a wide variety of views here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hard_problem_of_consciousness#Philosophical_responses https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hard_problem_of_consciousness#...
  - GPerson 1mo ago
    Reducing it further into parts does not and I believe cannot explain why there is qualia. Denying qualia is just proudly ignoring reality. There is absolutely no reason to believe all aspects of reality are reducible to their parts and equivalent to representations of them. You can say you are not baffled but I’m baffled by that because it’s like saying you’re not baffled about understanding how there is something and not nothing. “Why should there be nothing?” does not dissolve the mystery.

by smarf 1mo ago

RajT88 1mo ago

I recall reading that some thought that simple electrical signals could not fully explain our nervous system and there may be some quantum effects in the mix.

qarl2 1mo ago

This is the question of qualia - and it's surprisingly intractable. Realize that in this context, I can't be sure that you are conscious, either. Arguments here will crash into solipsism in the end: you guys can never prove you're not just one of my dreams. I think that was the ultimate point of the Turing test. We can't know for certain - so the best we can do is just ask.

GPerson 1mo ago

It will still be baffling that there is consciousness. Maybe if you start messing with parts of my brain so I can become familiar with the third person correlates of consciousness (which in my usage refers entirely to the first person part) then I could learn something, but I could never learn why or how the first person exists. It just does. If we perfectly reduce the brain to some scientific model, and I don’t doubt we will, we’ll be able to predict what I will say, but not understand why I’m observing it being said.

alexashka 1mo ago
Can you learn anything about 'why 8?' or 'how 7?'. If you pose an incoherent question, the answer is 'that's not a valid question', rather than 'oh wow, how baffling'. The baffling is coming from forming what seem to be valid questions that aren't. Another example of it is that famous who cuts the barber's hair (Russell's paradox): The barber is the "one who shaves all those, and those only, who do not shave themselves". The question is, does the barber shave himself? Here's an LLM explaining it: the philosophical/logical lesson is: sometimes a description that sounds grammatically fine does not actually describe a possible thing. The contradiction is in the premise, not in our failure to find the right barber. --- For clarity, consciousness is like free will - if you invent a thing that doesn't exist and proceed to ask questions about it, the problem is you having invented a thing, not that you are then having difficulty answering questions about it.
- GPerson 1mo ago
  Denying that consciousness exists is pretty bold. It’s obviously completely wrong since it’s the only thing we can actually know exists, but I’ll give you that it’s bold.
  - alexashka 1mo ago
    It's only bold if you don't know anything about the subject matter. How many books one would purchase from the philosophy section of a book store have you read multiple times and what were they?
    - GPerson 1mo ago
      I purchased 712 books and I read each of them 357 times.
- th-emerald 1mo ago
  > For clarity, consciousness is like free will - if you invent a thing that doesn't exist and proceed to ask questions about it, the problem is you having invented a thing, not that you are then having difficulty answering questions about it. Doesn't that prove too much? Suppose I claim that there is no objective world - i.e. standard solipsism. You may make various claims about the world being coherent to you and existing even in my absence, but these are first-person accounts, just like accounts of qualia and the existence of first-person consciousness are. I can claim that all that I'm observing is something generated by me that contains a part that argues that the world is objective, but that your failure to conclusively prove to me that objective reality exists is a consequence of the concept of an objective world being incoherent. The claim, "you invent[ed] a thing that doesn't exist", seems to be just as useful to a solipsist to respond to someone arguing for objective reality as it is to a materialist to respond to someone arguing for first-person consciousness. Yet it's considered uncontroversial to assume (without direct proof) that an external consistent world exists.
  - alexashka 1mo ago
    > Doesn't that prove too much? No :) Philosophy departments are like economics departments. They engage in long, complex, useless theoretical discussions that have nothing to do with reality whilst pretending that they are connected to reality. This has caused a lot of people to waste years of their lives trying to understand what the hell is going on and many to mindlessly propagate idiotic, harmful ideas these departments 'teach'. Anyone that talks of 'consciousness' and how it's baffling is in the midst of being misled by philosophy and/or neuro-'science' departments, much like anyone who even mentions free markets is being misled by economics departments.
layer8 1mo ago
I’m pretty sure people’s perspective will change when they understand the process in detail, and that the “I” isn’t a singular thing, but an interplay of parts, where some observe the processing of others. For me it’s already non-baffling now. In any case, there is a wide variety of views here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hard_problem_of_consciousness#Philosophical_responses https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hard_problem_of_consciousness#...
- GPerson 1mo ago
  Reducing it further into parts does not and I believe cannot explain why there is qualia. Denying qualia is just proudly ignoring reality. There is absolutely no reason to believe all aspects of reality are reducible to their parts and equivalent to representations of them. You can say you are not baffled but I’m baffled by that because it’s like saying you’re not baffled about understanding how there is something and not nothing. “Why should there be nothing?” does not dissolve the mystery.