2 ms·
It claims that there is no objective fact about whether something is conscious. From the second paragraph: >Consciousness is, in other words, a model or a beli
by fasterik 1mo ago
It claims that there is no objective fact about whether something is conscious. From the second paragraph:
>Consciousness is, in other words, a model or a belief, not an inherent property. It is a belief about what kinds of entities have beliefs, experiences, feelings, intentions and agency.
- jptlnk 1mo agoUnless I'm misunderstanding you, the existence of an objective "consciousness" property is a hotly debated question philosophically. Many great thinkers have written and discussed this question at length, and as of now the jury is very much out.
- fasterik 1mo agoSure, but staking a claim in that debate is taking a position on what is and isn't conscious.
- jampekka 1mo agoI read "consciousness" in there meaning attribution of consciousness, not as an ontological claim about what is conscious. The article seems to use this switching of the definition as a bit of a rhetorical device, which does muddy the point.
- lnenad 1mo agoBut there isn't? What does it factually mean to be conscious? How can we claim other living beings aren't are conscious?
- fasterik 1mo agoWe don't know yet because we don't have a fundamental theory of consciousness. My money is on that it's an objective property of the structure of computation happening in the brain.
- ryanSrich 1mo agoConsciousness can factually exist even though another being’s subjective experience is not directly observable. we can measure its behavioral and neural correlates and infer consciousness from them but we cannot directly observe the experience itself or conclusively prove its absence in another being. I don't think we'll ever get to a point where subjective experience in another is directly observable. But I don't think we need that to happen to prove consciousness factually exists.
- applicative 1mo agoThat a thing is /red/ is directly observable (by people with good eyesight etc) but what the OP was ineptly driving at presumably holds of redness.
- jampekka 1mo agoCorrelates to what exactly? To behavior or processes we assume subjective experience is present in?
- applicative 1mo agoThe two quoted sentences are inept but in the way ‘red is an idea in us not an inherent property of things; red is a sensation of things etc etc’ is inept. There are a million better formulations that will fall short of writing red into the laws of physics.