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How do you know other humans can truly experience "yellowness"? What if we're all just pretending and you're the only one? Let's not talk about realistic AI fo

by habitue 11y ago

How do you know other humans can truly experience "yellowness"? What if we're all just pretending and you're the only one? Let's not talk about realistic AI for a moment, let's talk about hypothetically building a human protein by protein (or whatever building block you're comfortable with saying doesn't have qualia on its own). We're going to write the computer program to build this human. Nanobots will carry it out, every part of the process is understood and nothing is left for biology to do for us. We're just putting together lego blocks and at the end is a human indistinguishable from any other human. Does this person experience qualia? How would you know? Apparently you can't just ask, since this isn't a valid thing to do with a computer (it's not really experiencing qualia! It's just saying that!). Let's just say you come up with some objective qualia test. Now we can build a slightly more deficient human protein by protein and test it for qualia. In fact, we can do a qualia binary search and... Once you take apart the argument like this, it's easy to see that arguments that computers can't experience qualia are arguments against materialism or reductionism, or are patent attempts to sneak souls and other woo into the discussion.

stelonix 11y ago
I believe his point is, such a process wouldn't ever be feasible if we can't "create" awareness. You'd have a sack of meat that would not interact. Or if it would, it'd be a vegetable capable of computation but little else (that's my random assumption). If you forget your fear of "soul" and other terms not ratified by science journals, you'll find out there are plenty of theories in metaphysics and spirituality on what it means to be and what awareness is. It requires you to at the very least read those philosophical/theological concepts instead of dismissing it as "woo". Cattle dwellers in India wrote many things about it eons ago. Joseph Campbell's work is a nice place to start.
- habitue 11y ago
  > you'll find out there are plenty of theories in metaphysics and spirituality on what it means to be and what awareness is I have encountered these theories. In the past I have been under the sway of them. They can be interesting to think about, but without any evidence for them there isn't any reason to give them particular consideration. (I am including rational, mathematical, or logical arguments based on experimental evidence as evidence here) Without evidence, how do we pick which of these myriad theories to believe? How do we decide what the actual answer is? Science and materialism have repeatedly produced predictions that pan out in experiments. Theories of souls and sprituality have repeatedly had to retreat from testable predictions. To take another tack, how did these spiritual theories come about? If they're true, then the ancient theorist must have seen some phenomena in the real world, and extrapolated correctly from that evidence. If that's the case, these ancient theorists were unparalleled geniuses, but we don't need to worry about ancient spiritual theories themselves, we'll rediscover them in time through our plodding (but safe) scientific method. If we don't rediscover them, then they were interesting theories that didn't pan out.
  - garyrob 11y ago
    "They can be interesting to think about, but without any evidence for them there isn't any reason to give them particular consideration. (I am including rational, mathematical, or logical arguments based on experimental evidence as evidence here)" I'm glad we're discussing this because you're an example of the kind of thinking that is a mystery to me. The fact that I have qualia when looking at, for example, the color yellow, is directly knowable by means of just a little introspection. This is not "rational, mathematical, or logical" or based on "experimental evidence". It is simply direct observation. Observation is where the scientific processes you name start. Observation does not depend on those processes. They depend on it and build from it. Observations are the most fundamental thing. From the direct observation of your experience of yellowness, which I think you must agree is something more than merely classifying the wavelength as being in a certain range, I would think you would know that qualia exist. That is enough evidence. "How do we decide what the actual answer is? Science and materialism have repeatedly produced predictions that pan out in experiments. Theories of souls and sprituality have repeatedly had to retreat from testable predictions." So, let's not have a theory of souls or spirituality at this point. We don't know enough. That doesn't mean that those things don't exist, it only means we don't understand them. Suppose a cave man-level creature on another planet encounters an iPhone because we somehow send one there. This cave man creature knows how to build fires and has used reasoning to make weapons, etc. In doing those things, he probably tried different ideas about how best to make fires and rejected the ones that didn't work well. In other words, he has a rudimentary understanding of the scientific method. Now he tries to figure out how an iPhone works. He constructs theories based on what he knows. The theories are all shown, over hundreds of years, to be wrong. Therefore, he is told, iPhones don't exist because when he constructs theories about them, they are wrong. But he directly observes the existence of the iPhone because he holds it in his hand. He knows they exist. He doesn't need a scientific theory to prove that they exist. Maybe, eventually, he will have a correct scientific theory as to how they work; it will just take more time. Or maybe he never will. Either way, iPhones exist. Awareness is, in my view, exactly the same, and it is mystifying to me that people such as yourself come to a different conclusion.
    - habitue 11y ago
- dragonwriter 11y ago
  > If you forget your fear of "soul" and other terms not ratified by science journals, you'll find out there are plenty of theories in metaphysics and spirituality on what it means to be and what awareness is. It requires you to at the very least read those philosophical/theological concepts instead of dismissing it as "woo". I've read them. They are, from a scientific point-of-view, all woo. Almost by definition. They necessarily appeal -- if they can be epistemologically justified at all -- to a non-utilitarian epistemology. Science is based on a radically utilitarian epistemology: claims are justified to the extent that they are demonstrably useful in explaining and predicting observed phenomena. Theories -- in the non-scientific sense, obviously -- that involve entities that produce results in the physical universe but which are not governed by physical law or controlled by physical events as they are conjectured to be outside of the physical universe -- are non-utilitarian. They are irrelevant to any predictive model of observed behavior, and it is impossible to distinguish by observation between the existence of such non-physical, uncaused causes and processes that are purely physical. Either (a) there exists an adequate scientific model of the process, in which case the model being an accurate model of an underlying physical process is indistinguishable from the uncaused cause merely mimicking the behavior of the model at the times it has been observed, or (b) there exists no adequate scientific model, in which case the physical process not yet being discovered is indistinguishable from a non-physical cause. That's not to say that such conjectures cannot be true, just that they can never be validated or distinguished from either known or unknown physical processes. Say we create a machine that behaves like a human to all outward measures. There is no way to distinguish between: (1) Human and machine alike being purely physical, (2) Humans having metaphysical features like a "soul" and internal awareness and machine simply mimicking behavior, (3) Humans and machines alike having metaphysical features like a "soul" (perhaps because God chose to reward human ingenuity by creating a "soul" for the machine.)
  - eli_gottlieb 11y ago
    I think you meant "Pragmatist" epistemology, rather than "utilitarian", which is a moral theory.
    - dragonwriter 11y ago
EGreg 11y ago
And yet there is something unbelievably fascinating about being conscious. Many of our words, even existence itself, are predicated on it. Consider this - if conscious observers didn't exist, in what sense would anything else exist? If I told you that right now there is a universe out there which you can never detect nor deduce its existence from any evidence in the one you're exposed to. You won't be able to verify its existence in your lifetime. But, I tell you, it EXISTS! What doss that mean? If you say it's meaningless, you'd be onto something. Furthermore if I told you that, if you wash your hands you'll be killing 10 innocent little bunnies in that universe. Will you stop washing your hands? No. You will err on the side of that undetectabld universe and bunnies not existing - after all how have I come to possess this knowledge if you don't? If anything, you'd say that universe can only exist in the sense that some conscious observer in the future will VERIFY ITS EXISTENCE. Now, if you subscribe to atheism, then in order to even build a machine, you need an intelligent animal that arose organically. So, in what sense would OUR universe exist if humans never arose? YOU SEE even the concept of existence is tied into our subjective experience! It is the dual of it and equally mysterious. Why is there something rather than nothing, indeed?
- habitue 11y ago
  > if conscious observers didn't exist, in what sense would anything else exist? > [A] universe can only exist in the sense that some conscious observer in the future will VERIFY ITS EXISTENCE. > So, in what sense would OUR universe exist if humans never arose? I think things exist independently of whether anyone is observing them. That's because "observing" is just a description of a bunch of particles interacting with each other. Some of those particles are part of a larger pattern of particles we call human brains. There's nothing particularly unique about our brains in terms of physics. At a higher level, we can look at the interactions between our brains and the environment and think about brains as a different kind of thing. A pattern recognizer, a prediction maker, an effective evolutionary adaptation that leads to the propagation of the genes that create it. But there's no reason to suspect it creates universes. I absolutely agree that a lot about our brains is mysterious and there are a lot of questions that need answers. The next few decades are going to be very interesting as we discover many of those secrets. I just don't think we'll discover that among those secrets is the ability to make universes real or not. Certainly, we can only observe the universe we are in and phenomena that are within our light cone. But that's a limitation on us, not on universes.
garyrob 11y ago
"How do you know other humans can truly experience "yellowness"? What if we're all just pretending and you're the only one?" To me, that's kind of a silly question. Yes, it might be true. Of course, it might be that there are no other human beings and I'm just a brain in a vat. I just find that hypothesis to be too unlikely to care about. "We're just putting together lego blocks and at the end is a human indistinguishable from any other human. Does this person experience qualia?" I would guess so. "How would you know?" For me, this is a little like your first question. I wouldn't necessarily know. But if this entity is physically indistinguishable from a human at even the most infinitesimal level of physical reality, I'd assume it experiences. But, I may be wrong here, because it might be that there is something non-physical called a "soul" that resides in humans, and a physically identical entity might not be provided with one by God or whoever/whatever the soul-provider is. That's not what I tend to assume, but I have no evidence either way. Your question "How would you know" is an interesting one because it assumes that it matters whether or not an observer knows. Maybe some entities have awareness and others don't, and an observer can't tell the difference. So what? That wouldn't imply, in any way, that the phenomenon of awareness doesn't exist. "Once you take apart the argument like this, it's easy to see that arguments that computers can't experience qualia are arguments against materialism or reductionism, or are patent attempts to sneak souls and other woo into the discussion." That doesn't mean that such arguments/hypotheses aren't true. It just means they may not be testable using the scientific method. Much as many people don't like the multiverse theory because it may not be testable using the scientific method. But that merely means that there are limits to the truths that can be discovered by the scientific method; it doesn't change the reality of what is true. It's a bit reminiscent of Godel's completeness theorem. Many great mathematicians assumed that there were no truths that weren't provable within the systems they were studying; Godel proved that such assumptions were simply wrong.
- habitue 11y ago
  I think we're on the same page here. Usually qualia are brought out as a proof that there is some kind of ineffable quality that can't be replicated by machines, but can only be experienced first-hand by truly conscious beings. I see now that that was not your argument, and you're interested in an answer to what produces the feeling of qualia.

by habitue 11y ago

stelonix 11y ago

I believe his point is, such a process wouldn't ever be feasible if we can't "create" awareness. You'd have a sack of meat that would not interact. Or if it would, it'd be a vegetable capable of computation but little else (that's my random assumption). If you forget your fear of "soul" and other terms not ratified by science journals, you'll find out there are plenty of theories in metaphysics and spirituality on what it means to be and what awareness is. It requires you to at the very least read those philosophical/theological concepts instead of dismissing it as "woo". Cattle dwellers in India wrote many things about it eons ago. Joseph Campbell's work is a nice place to start.

habitue 11y ago
> you'll find out there are plenty of theories in metaphysics and spirituality on what it means to be and what awareness is I have encountered these theories. In the past I have been under the sway of them. They can be interesting to think about, but without any evidence for them there isn't any reason to give them particular consideration. (I am including rational, mathematical, or logical arguments based on experimental evidence as evidence here) Without evidence, how do we pick which of these myriad theories to believe? How do we decide what the actual answer is? Science and materialism have repeatedly produced predictions that pan out in experiments. Theories of souls and sprituality have repeatedly had to retreat from testable predictions. To take another tack, how did these spiritual theories come about? If they're true, then the ancient theorist must have seen some phenomena in the real world, and extrapolated correctly from that evidence. If that's the case, these ancient theorists were unparalleled geniuses, but we don't need to worry about ancient spiritual theories themselves, we'll rediscover them in time through our plodding (but safe) scientific method. If we don't rediscover them, then they were interesting theories that didn't pan out.
- garyrob 11y ago
  "They can be interesting to think about, but without any evidence for them there isn't any reason to give them particular consideration. (I am including rational, mathematical, or logical arguments based on experimental evidence as evidence here)" I'm glad we're discussing this because you're an example of the kind of thinking that is a mystery to me. The fact that I have qualia when looking at, for example, the color yellow, is directly knowable by means of just a little introspection. This is not "rational, mathematical, or logical" or based on "experimental evidence". It is simply direct observation. Observation is where the scientific processes you name start. Observation does not depend on those processes. They depend on it and build from it. Observations are the most fundamental thing. From the direct observation of your experience of yellowness, which I think you must agree is something more than merely classifying the wavelength as being in a certain range, I would think you would know that qualia exist. That is enough evidence. "How do we decide what the actual answer is? Science and materialism have repeatedly produced predictions that pan out in experiments. Theories of souls and sprituality have repeatedly had to retreat from testable predictions." So, let's not have a theory of souls or spirituality at this point. We don't know enough. That doesn't mean that those things don't exist, it only means we don't understand them. Suppose a cave man-level creature on another planet encounters an iPhone because we somehow send one there. This cave man creature knows how to build fires and has used reasoning to make weapons, etc. In doing those things, he probably tried different ideas about how best to make fires and rejected the ones that didn't work well. In other words, he has a rudimentary understanding of the scientific method. Now he tries to figure out how an iPhone works. He constructs theories based on what he knows. The theories are all shown, over hundreds of years, to be wrong. Therefore, he is told, iPhones don't exist because when he constructs theories about them, they are wrong. But he directly observes the existence of the iPhone because he holds it in his hand. He knows they exist. He doesn't need a scientific theory to prove that they exist. Maybe, eventually, he will have a correct scientific theory as to how they work; it will just take more time. Or maybe he never will. Either way, iPhones exist. Awareness is, in my view, exactly the same, and it is mystifying to me that people such as yourself come to a different conclusion.
  - habitue 11y ago
dragonwriter 11y ago
> If you forget your fear of "soul" and other terms not ratified by science journals, you'll find out there are plenty of theories in metaphysics and spirituality on what it means to be and what awareness is. It requires you to at the very least read those philosophical/theological concepts instead of dismissing it as "woo". I've read them. They are, from a scientific point-of-view, all woo. Almost by definition. They necessarily appeal -- if they can be epistemologically justified at all -- to a non-utilitarian epistemology. Science is based on a radically utilitarian epistemology: claims are justified to the extent that they are demonstrably useful in explaining and predicting observed phenomena. Theories -- in the non-scientific sense, obviously -- that involve entities that produce results in the physical universe but which are not governed by physical law or controlled by physical events as they are conjectured to be outside of the physical universe -- are non-utilitarian. They are irrelevant to any predictive model of observed behavior, and it is impossible to distinguish by observation between the existence of such non-physical, uncaused causes and processes that are purely physical. Either (a) there exists an adequate scientific model of the process, in which case the model being an accurate model of an underlying physical process is indistinguishable from the uncaused cause merely mimicking the behavior of the model at the times it has been observed, or (b) there exists no adequate scientific model, in which case the physical process not yet being discovered is indistinguishable from a non-physical cause. That's not to say that such conjectures cannot be true, just that they can never be validated or distinguished from either known or unknown physical processes. Say we create a machine that behaves like a human to all outward measures. There is no way to distinguish between: (1) Human and machine alike being purely physical, (2) Humans having metaphysical features like a "soul" and internal awareness and machine simply mimicking behavior, (3) Humans and machines alike having metaphysical features like a "soul" (perhaps because God chose to reward human ingenuity by creating a "soul" for the machine.)
- eli_gottlieb 11y ago
  I think you meant "Pragmatist" epistemology, rather than "utilitarian", which is a moral theory.
  - dragonwriter 11y ago

EGreg 11y ago

And yet there is something unbelievably fascinating about being conscious. Many of our words, even existence itself, are predicated on it. Consider this - if conscious observers didn't exist, in what sense would anything else exist? If I told you that right now there is a universe out there which you can never detect nor deduce its existence from any evidence in the one you're exposed to. You won't be able to verify its existence in your lifetime. But, I tell you, it EXISTS! What doss that mean? If you say it's meaningless, you'd be onto something. Furthermore if I told you that, if you wash your hands you'll be killing 10 innocent little bunnies in that universe. Will you stop washing your hands? No. You will err on the side of that undetectabld universe and bunnies not existing - after all how have I come to possess this knowledge if you don't? If anything, you'd say that universe can only exist in the sense that some conscious observer in the future will VERIFY ITS EXISTENCE. Now, if you subscribe to atheism, then in order to even build a machine, you need an intelligent animal that arose organically. So, in what sense would OUR universe exist if humans never arose? YOU SEE even the concept of existence is tied into our subjective experience! It is the dual of it and equally mysterious. Why is there something rather than nothing, indeed?

habitue 11y ago
> if conscious observers didn't exist, in what sense would anything else exist? > [A] universe can only exist in the sense that some conscious observer in the future will VERIFY ITS EXISTENCE. > So, in what sense would OUR universe exist if humans never arose? I think things exist independently of whether anyone is observing them. That's because "observing" is just a description of a bunch of particles interacting with each other. Some of those particles are part of a larger pattern of particles we call human brains. There's nothing particularly unique about our brains in terms of physics. At a higher level, we can look at the interactions between our brains and the environment and think about brains as a different kind of thing. A pattern recognizer, a prediction maker, an effective evolutionary adaptation that leads to the propagation of the genes that create it. But there's no reason to suspect it creates universes. I absolutely agree that a lot about our brains is mysterious and there are a lot of questions that need answers. The next few decades are going to be very interesting as we discover many of those secrets. I just don't think we'll discover that among those secrets is the ability to make universes real or not. Certainly, we can only observe the universe we are in and phenomena that are within our light cone. But that's a limitation on us, not on universes.

garyrob 11y ago

"How do you know other humans can truly experience "yellowness"? What if we're all just pretending and you're the only one?" To me, that's kind of a silly question. Yes, it might be true. Of course, it might be that there are no other human beings and I'm just a brain in a vat. I just find that hypothesis to be too unlikely to care about. "We're just putting together lego blocks and at the end is a human indistinguishable from any other human. Does this person experience qualia?" I would guess so. "How would you know?" For me, this is a little like your first question. I wouldn't necessarily know. But if this entity is physically indistinguishable from a human at even the most infinitesimal level of physical reality, I'd assume it experiences. But, I may be wrong here, because it might be that there is something non-physical called a "soul" that resides in humans, and a physically identical entity might not be provided with one by God or whoever/whatever the soul-provider is. That's not what I tend to assume, but I have no evidence either way. Your question "How would you know" is an interesting one because it assumes that it matters whether or not an observer knows. Maybe some entities have awareness and others don't, and an observer can't tell the difference. So what? That wouldn't imply, in any way, that the phenomenon of awareness doesn't exist. "Once you take apart the argument like this, it's easy to see that arguments that computers can't experience qualia are arguments against materialism or reductionism, or are patent attempts to sneak souls and other woo into the discussion." That doesn't mean that such arguments/hypotheses aren't true. It just means they may not be testable using the scientific method. Much as many people don't like the multiverse theory because it may not be testable using the scientific method. But that merely means that there are limits to the truths that can be discovered by the scientific method; it doesn't change the reality of what is true. It's a bit reminiscent of Godel's completeness theorem. Many great mathematicians assumed that there were no truths that weren't provable within the systems they were studying; Godel proved that such assumptions were simply wrong.

habitue 11y ago
I think we're on the same page here. Usually qualia are brought out as a proof that there is some kind of ineffable quality that can't be replicated by machines, but can only be experienced first-hand by truly conscious beings. I see now that that was not your argument, and you're interested in an answer to what produces the feeling of qualia.