Consciousness: freaky shit or nbd

if we can get to the point where you can "replay" some ineffable experience by some mechanical means, and also reliably reproduce that experience in others, then yes why wouldn't some of the magic be gone?

i don't think introspection can give us meaningful information about the big questions of consciousness, sadly. fortunately, it's still lots of fun ^_^

this is the paradox that "does it" for me. looking backwards at human evolution, we can rewind far back enough to a point where we weren't conscious. that's uncontroversial, right? in that case, you either have 2 options, one that allows for "consciousness" and the other that doesn't. the former requires some kind of discontinuity: a conscious mutant daughter born to non-conscious mother. this is really hard for me to believe, and implies all kinds of silly ideas about consciousness that dennett has lots of good smackdowns for. (otoh, you can apply the same argument to life, which definitely does exist, so maybe nature is just crazier than we think and these discontinuities arise all the time.) the alternative is you invoke, like, intermediate value theorem: if we started at not conscious, we're either still not conscious or at some point we passed through the critical value, below which is non-consciousness and above consciousness. but in that case, the "most conscious" non-conscious human would be an epsilon away from the "least conscious" conscious human, so they'd be basically indistinguishable and consciousness becomes meaningless. therefore we must still be not conscious.

using consciousness here as like, different from just some deterministic complex physical process

(<3 this entire thread)

Consciousness is an expression of a functional dynamic system

Would you say there is some degree of complexity at which consciousness arises? That seems no less magical, and more arbitrary, than saying it's a fundamental feature of the universe. Is a nematode worm conscious? Or a vastly more complex computer - let's say the Google car, which exists in and responds to a complex and dynamic environment? (Not that I'm advocating meatism... my own intuitions pull in different directions here, but that's intuitions for you.)

do you find it equally unlikely that science can ever fully account for these emotions

Yep!

seems like a 'grains of sand on the beach' kind of question: we know there *is* an answer, but we can't count it exactly, and our ways of mapping and estimating it are always approximate

There isn't any approximation that I can see. The phenomena in need of explanation seem to be entirely orthogonal to the phenomena proposed as an explanation.

How is a sensation not just a word for the way the brain uses its tools to read physical information?

There are plenty of human-constructed tools that read physical information. Do they have sensations?

looking backwards at human evolution, we can rewind far back enough to a point where we weren't conscious. that's uncontroversial, right?

Not if you're a panpsychist, yo!

Would you say there is some degree of complexity at which consciousness arises? That seems no less magical, and more arbitrary, than saying it's a fundamental feature of the universe. Is a nematode worm conscious? Or a vastly more complex computer - let's say the Google car, which exists in and responds to a complex and dynamic environment? (Not that I'm advocating meatism... my own intuitions pull in different directions here, but that's intuitions for you.)

Yes maybe there are thresholds where consciousness arises where it was not there before. But even in that case there would still be gradations between the thresholds, so even if a worm did not qualify for Grade A Consciousness he could maybe score somewhere along the graph. A Google Car is not conscious because I draw the line between organic and mechanic systems for a number of reasons. An organic being is comprised of vast communities and ecosystems of other smaller beings that are in turn vastly complex, and whether those smaller parts have consciousness (if we can even measure that) it seems like they contribute or are in some large way related to the consciousness of the macro Human Being.

A mechanic being is comprised of vast communities and mechosystems of other smaller beings that are in turn vastly complex, and whether those smaller parts have consciousness (if we can even measure that) it seems like they contribute or are in some large way related to the consciousness of the maco Mechanic. All things are made up of smaller things. The smallest things that make up everything are even the same things.

face it, consciousness is just a bunch of complex mechanical reactions that hubristic humans have invented a mythology to describe not unlike believing the sun circles the earth, or that god exists.

right, no evidence for anything weird going on here except maybe the primary content of experience

but hey

"the primary content of experience"

elaborate?

but when the time comes when that experience can be deconstructed as easily as a gastropub can deconstruct a BLT sandwich...

why would you deconstruct a perfectly good BLT

A machine's individual parts only do one thing, they are built for a single function, to fulfill the centralized goal. A conscious or organic being's parts all seem interconnected, self-aware (self-repairing, self-replicating), decentralized. A living being is able to withstand and address malfunctions from within but a machine requires the technical skills of the operator or engineer.

A BLT has components with their own integrity, yet do we not agree that the constructed BLT is an entity in its own right?

"but a machine requires the technical skills of the operator or engineer."

this is only due to our current limits with technology

like a doctor? xxp

Yes w the onward march of technology the lines will get blurry and are already starting to. As for doctors it is only in the past couple hundred years that they have been helpful in a practical way, and for the most part medical success lies in keeping the body/wound clean from infection and able to do it's own self-repairing functions. If the doctor prescribes a medicine to take internally, it is the body that takes in that medicine and applies it, not the doctor.

As for doctors it is only in the past couple hundred years that they have been helpful in a practical way

hahah what

right, no evidence for anything weird going on here except maybe the primary content of experience

this primary content of experience argument is exactly the same as the explanation my father gives for how he knows there is a god. it's just obviously so.

what if we found a tribe somewhere that said that this condition of thinking abstractly about things is a function of unflageit which is something all humans share and it travels between all ppl linking their consciousness together like stretchy string. We would rightly be skeptical and ask them to show us the physical properties of this string. But consciousness has the same problems. It doesn't explain the problems of experience it purports to solve, it isn't measurable or detectable, etc. it's just a mythological model to account for some sensations that humans made up.

consciousness doesn't account for anything. precisely the point of the hard problem is that consciousness describes a set of experiences which seem to be common to almost all human beings, but we have no mechanistic model that accounts for these experiences and not much idea of how a mechanistic model might account for these experiences.

i agree that this is seems relatable to e.g. the concept of religious faith, but consciousness seems to be near-universal in a way that no definition of religious faith can be claimed to be.

i also agree that one of the answers to the hard problem might be "well we are all very mistaken about the nature of consciousness is", but at this point i think you're arguing that abstract data tell us more about what it is to be alive than the experience of being alive does. and that, at least, is a tough sell.

excuse shonky typos

Well I don't think the world is about to stop believing in divinity either so our discussion really shouldn't be predicated on what ppl are likely to agree w

not because it matters whether people are right or wrong so much as because a model for explaining consciousness ought to be convincing, if it's going to explain consciousness. we can imagine that you could conclusively prove that Deity X doesn't exist without destroying the notion or experience of faith per se.

it's also perfectly possible that such a model or such an understanding might be impossible. it's not that anything urgently hangs on understanding what consciousness is, it's just that the dogmatic answers we have now are at the very best unsupportable guesswork. (tbf i'd say much the same of dogmatic theological arguments)

or maybe i wdn't, maybe i would argue that in both cases most arguments are applications of the wrong kinds of ideas to the wrong subjects

I cannot help but wonder whether a physical explanation of consciousness is valuable for anything besides confirming the worldview of those who already expect that consciousness is a physical phenomenon. The major accomplishment would be to increase the conviction of materialists that they are smarter than dualists.

Does anyone think that the inability to imagine thoroughly not existing after death plays a part in forming arguments that say consciousness is much more complex and mysterious than simply the result of the vast and complex physical network of the mind? Like saying "How can all of these layered thoughts/memories/experiences and the resulting personality just vanish?" is similar to saying "consciousness cannot just be the result of mundane physical parts, that doesn't account for how multilayered it is" etc while using the lack of a full scientific understanding of the process to reinforce.

I cannot help but wonder whether a physical explanation of consciousness is valuable for anything besides confirming the worldview of those who already expect that consciousness is a physical phenomenon. The major accomplishment would be to increase the conviction of materialists that they are smarter than dualists.

― Giant Purple Wakerobin (Aimless), Friday, April 10, 2015 2:12 PM (18 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Isn't having an understanding of anything valuable beyond rubbing it in the face of those who had different theories???

i don't know, you tell me

how is it valuable beyond ideological production

How about helping to advance medical understanding? It's ridiculous to say that striving to learn how the universe works in any way holds no value other than to prove someone else wrong.

if it's all mechanistic then no problem, it'll happen when it's supposed to

Perhaps value is not something you create yourself but something created in collaboration with others. A brick of gold on its own is worthless without a market in which is spend it.

you could construct novel forms of consciousness the same way BLT has been enhanced by sriracha and aioli

Usually the benefit of greater understanding works its way into the betterment of society for all sorts of reasons.

OK. How might a physical explanation of consciousness work for the betterment of society?

Consciousness itself seems to me to be partly built in collaboration. Just as we seem to need other minds to create a theory of mind as a child, we need to learn how to introspect about our feelings and shape our understanding of qualia.

Just having nameless undefinable impulses happening to you in a stream (as, say, a baby does) seems a very basic form of consciousness, at least. And it seems plausible that the interaction we know children need is also a necessary part of the creation of more adult consciousness.

This still leaves me thinking of consciousness (or at least free will, which I know is a separate argument) as a kind of epiphenomenon, though.

As I said, deeper medical understanding. Nobody researching the subject is specifically trying to find out whether it is physical or not, with a thumbs up once they get an answer. They're simply researching how it all works.

xp

as vague and naive as any religious belief i've ever heard.

reliably putting people in hypnotic states would be awesome for eliminating anesthesia issues.

true but i don't think it would solve the problem of billions of people being able to afford it.

a $5 machine would probably be more affordable than a trained anesthesiologist

good 2 know

OK. How might a physical explanation of consciousness work for the betterment of society?

― Giant Purple Wakerobin (Aimless), Friday, April 10, 2015 2:53 PM (4 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Obviously conjecturing here but I think a physical explanation would be describing the underlying lattice that drives the life of the conscious being. Not the physical matter itself, but in the process that drives it, sustains it, repairs it, regulates it, sees everything working in concert together on the job of Life. For a conscious, living entity to successfully exist over a sustained period of time, each part must work for the good of the whole, at least to a large extent. This kind of selflessness, scaled up on a macro level, could be a huge benefit to society.

also sleeping pills, SSRIs etc... all eliminated by some gysin machine that actually works is totally worth destroying whatever privileged impenetrability of consciousness anyone holds dear.

May I suggest that any ability to reliably manipulate and control the consciousness of others will raise a sufficient number of deeply troubling problems that the possible benefits could not be separated from the potentially severe drawbacks?

Among other things, it would bring new meaning to the idea of owning someone else.

when you're the same collective consciousness that issue goes away.

as vague and naive as any religious belief i've ever heard.

― Epic Verry (mattresslessness), Friday, April 10, 2015 3:00 PM (11 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Greater scientific understanding in general has resulted in all of the medical equipment and practices we have today. Are you and Aimless saying that we shouldn't try to... learn anything anymore?

If we get to the point where consciousness is understandable and scientifically controllable and ego is a fluid concept not tied to any local geography then what purpose would "ownership" have at all?

It doesn't explain the problems of experience it purports to solve, it isn't measurable or detectable, etc. it's just a mythological model to account for some sensations that humans made up.

the point of the philosophical zombies argument is that imagining a human being without qualia is inherently weird/unacceptable (because it violates universally shared experiences.)

the difference to me between that and the existence of god is that even for those people (like my mom) who believe in god because of some claimed direct experience, that experience of god is not the primary experience and basis for _every_ experience that person has ever had, or ever will have. that's what makes qualia distinctive for me.

Understanding how consciousness works doesn't necessarily mean we'll be able to control people. That's one sci-fi horror worst case scenario, sure.