Consciousness Isn’t Self-Centered(nautil.us)
nautil.us
Consciousness Isn’t Self-Centered
http://nautil.us/issue/82/panpsychism/consciousness-isnt-self_centered
71 comments
Consciousness is made of primordial cheese, formed by an interaction of a lactic field permeating the universe with spontaneously occuring quantum fermeons - if Nautilus is interested in this idea I'll be happy to elaborate on it in long form, complete with references to David Chalmers as well as James McIntyre.
If anyone is interested in a framework that tries to put rigor into this otherwise very open-ended problem of defining consciousness, the integrated information theory (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Integrated_information_theor...) is one approach. Problem with a "traditional" philosophical approach to consciousness is that it's hard to prove and equally hard to disprove. And although integrated information theory starts with the assumption that "consciousness exists", and builds on top of that assumption, at least it's a step in a direction where the problem of consciousness is turned into a measurable property. After all, even the most rigorous of natural sciences rest on some axioms. And I am not claiming that integrated information theory is in any way correct (although it may be). But theorizing about consciousness without a tangible logical framework always feels like it's not going anywhere, so I welcome the pursuit for scientific advancement in said theory
This ties quite well with what Alan Watts says about the universal consciousness, its manifestations and the role of ego in all of this.
Sometimes its quite believable that two consciousnesses coming in close contact for a moment give rise to something quite new and bigger than the parts.
My argument against panpsychism (the principled form of animism, which is ancient) is that to perceive something you have to have a representation of it in memory. Ergo if you don't have a memory system you can't be conscious of anything. Rocks don't have RAM.
You could quite reasonably consider an excited electron to be a 1-bit memory of experiencing a photon recently. My understanding of panpsychism is that it doesn't require everything to have an equally sophisticated consciousness/experience as ours, just some. And sure, an excited electron decays, but so do your memory and bits in RAM.
Well I suspect a memory system, together with stable input/output hardware, are necessary but not sufficient. To be a conscious agent, said agent's memory must include a representation of itself. Otherwise it can't truthfully say, "I see a pebble."
Edit: it can't truthfully think, "I see a pebble."
Edit: it can't truthfully think, "I see a pebble."
When I think about my first-person experience, it's something that happens in the present instant. The awareness of a distant and recent past may simply be a result of memory stimuli being presented by the brain to the consciousness at the present instant.
In this model, if I went under anesthesia and the King Particle got knocked out of its orbit and got replaced by another, the new consciousness would believe it was a continuation of the earlier one, because it would receive the same stimuli that its predecessor would have, and part of that stimuli was evolved to elicit a sensation for the continuity of self.
What this gets at is, is consciousness stateless? Is its experience a pure function of what is fed into it, or is it stateful?
In this model, if I went under anesthesia and the King Particle got knocked out of its orbit and got replaced by another, the new consciousness would believe it was a continuation of the earlier one, because it would receive the same stimuli that its predecessor would have, and part of that stimuli was evolved to elicit a sensation for the continuity of self.
What this gets at is, is consciousness stateless? Is its experience a pure function of what is fed into it, or is it stateful?
Animals don’t have RAM either. An understanding of organic memory systems has never been established.
You're quite right. That last sentence was intended to be a catchy and rhetorical summary.
to perceive something you have to
have a representation of it in memory
You have to learn to see stuff, or recognise sounds, for example.
That might be your definition of conciousness. That a system has to match input to something it holds in ram to be conscious. But I don't think it is shared by many.
Is a computer running voice recognicion software a conscious being in your book?
Is a computer running voice recognicion software a conscious being in your book?
Well the reason I think it is that you can't just be conscious: you have to be conscious of something.
No, unless the software included a representation of the computer itself. Then it might be capable of consciousness, IDK. But being so capable it would then be a person rather than just an app.
No, unless the software included a representation of the computer itself. Then it might be capable of consciousness, IDK. But being so capable it would then be a person rather than just an app.
I think the confusion here is due to the fact that there are two arguable parts to the definition of consciousness.
1) awareness of objects, events and other stimuli and the ability to respond to those inputs with some output. This is the world acting upon a conscious agent and the agent acting upon the world.
2) awareness of oneself and one's inner experience and self reflection and the ability to cause changes in oneself. This is the conscious agent acting on itself.
1 is generally agreed upon as the required part of the definition. 2 is subject to some argument. If you accept 1 alone then you leave open the question of the zombie problem usually given as every conscious agent except for yourself is just acting as if they have an inner life but really are just responding to outside stimulus by some unknown mechanism. This is really just behaviorism and I argue that it would also apply to an individual in that their inner experience may very well just be an illusion. This seems absurd (and I think it is) and that is why 2 is brought on as a further distinguishing factor, perhaps the distinguishing factor since you can now imagine a consciousness existing with only reference to itself. This seems to be where your argument kicks in since you would need some state in order to build such an inner world but I think the point of the article is that you could suppose that there is some aspect of consciousness that underpins the whole thing. We've removed the requirement of outside stimulus, so now remove the inner stimulus of memory. What remains? Is there some other source of a priori stimulus? A generative factor from which perturbations in consciousness arise? Is there nothing but consciousness of being conscious? Absent that, is there simply a feeling of existence? This is the root at which we strike.
1) awareness of objects, events and other stimuli and the ability to respond to those inputs with some output. This is the world acting upon a conscious agent and the agent acting upon the world.
2) awareness of oneself and one's inner experience and self reflection and the ability to cause changes in oneself. This is the conscious agent acting on itself.
1 is generally agreed upon as the required part of the definition. 2 is subject to some argument. If you accept 1 alone then you leave open the question of the zombie problem usually given as every conscious agent except for yourself is just acting as if they have an inner life but really are just responding to outside stimulus by some unknown mechanism. This is really just behaviorism and I argue that it would also apply to an individual in that their inner experience may very well just be an illusion. This seems absurd (and I think it is) and that is why 2 is brought on as a further distinguishing factor, perhaps the distinguishing factor since you can now imagine a consciousness existing with only reference to itself. This seems to be where your argument kicks in since you would need some state in order to build such an inner world but I think the point of the article is that you could suppose that there is some aspect of consciousness that underpins the whole thing. We've removed the requirement of outside stimulus, so now remove the inner stimulus of memory. What remains? Is there some other source of a priori stimulus? A generative factor from which perturbations in consciousness arise? Is there nothing but consciousness of being conscious? Absent that, is there simply a feeling of existence? This is the root at which we strike.
Thanks. It's possible to unconsciously interact with objects. My guess is that conscious perception requires both representations of oneself and the object, together with associated memories. e.g. a green ball has an associations with 'grass' and 'apple' among many other things.
We can imagine and create new things but their attributes are always recombinations of the attributes of old things we already know about.
>you would need some state in order to build such an inner world
This feels a bit like essentialism to me. As far as I'm concerned I just am that inner world. It is built from my memories and experiences.
It is true that the inner world is in a particular state at any given time. But it's not made out of some kind of 'state-iness' stuff, any more than a brick is built out of 'brickiness'. Please correct me here if I'm wrong.
>is there simply a feeling of existence?
I don't think there's a feeling of existence per se. However one does with experience become aware of subtle sensations from the body at rest, for example noise in the optical system (static or 'snow'). One can then dream or imagine or think about these things too.
We can imagine and create new things but their attributes are always recombinations of the attributes of old things we already know about.
>you would need some state in order to build such an inner world
This feels a bit like essentialism to me. As far as I'm concerned I just am that inner world. It is built from my memories and experiences.
It is true that the inner world is in a particular state at any given time. But it's not made out of some kind of 'state-iness' stuff, any more than a brick is built out of 'brickiness'. Please correct me here if I'm wrong.
>is there simply a feeling of existence?
I don't think there's a feeling of existence per se. However one does with experience become aware of subtle sensations from the body at rest, for example noise in the optical system (static or 'snow'). One can then dream or imagine or think about these things too.
Consciousness is just an emergent phenomenon caused by checksum errors in the filesystem/object store/younameit of the quantum foam storage of the akashic records.
There...
There...
Found some interesting reading:
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/mind-indian-buddhism/
Perhaps someone well versed in this can tell us how this article's theory relates to the non-self that Buddhists have been talking about for 2,000 years.
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/mind-indian-buddhism/
Perhaps someone well versed in this can tell us how this article's theory relates to the non-self that Buddhists have been talking about for 2,000 years.
The theory is pretty much standard Buddhism. Hinduism too for that matter (no pun intended.) "Atman is Paramatman"
> Is it possible that alongside the conscious experience of “me,” there is a much dimmer experience of each individual neuron?
No.
No.
Show your work.
If everything that exists is conscious, then consciousness ceases to be a useful concept and becomes nothing more than a synonym for existence. The concept of consciousness is only useful to distinguish things that are conscious from things that are not. Humans and apes are conscious. Rocks and individual neurons are not. One can have a legitimate debate about the status of computers, great apes, dogs, rats, perhaps even fruit flies, but not rocks, transistors, or individual neurons.
You're assuming consciousness is a single bit, when that's not even true in humans. How "conscious" are you when slowly waking up? It varies by circumstance, too, e.g. I'd say I'm certainly less explicitly self-aware when I'm walking a familiar route and not thinking about much than when pondering my place in the universe. It's easy to imagine a mind that only had the first kind of experience. We don't even need to consider easy cases of variable consciousness like sleep (maybe with lucid dreams), sedation, coma, etc.
Consciousness is a matter of degree, and there's no hard evidence about how low the scale goes.
Consciousness is a matter of degree, and there's no hard evidence about how low the scale goes.
> You're assuming consciousness is a single bit
No, I'm not. Consciousness is a continuum, not a dichotomy. There are nonetheless systems whose degree of consciousness is indistinguishable from zero.
> there's no hard evidence about how low the scale goes.
Of course there is. It goes down to zero. Rocks are not conscious. Dead people are not conscious. Even humans under general anesthesia are not conscious.
No, I'm not. Consciousness is a continuum, not a dichotomy. There are nonetheless systems whose degree of consciousness is indistinguishable from zero.
> there's no hard evidence about how low the scale goes.
Of course there is. It goes down to zero. Rocks are not conscious. Dead people are not conscious. Even humans under general anesthesia are not conscious.
Is anyone but you conscious? If so, how can you be certain?
> Is anyone but you conscious?
Yes.
> If so, how can you be certain?
I can't be absolutely certain of that nor of anything else. The philosophical-zombie hypothesis cannot be ruled out by evidence. But I observe others producing complex I/O behavior that is qualitatively similar to that which I produce and that I attribute to my own consciousness. I also see evidence that my consciousness supervenes on the operation of my brain, and I observe that other people have brains. The most parsimonious explanation for all that is that other humans are also conscious.
Yes.
> If so, how can you be certain?
I can't be absolutely certain of that nor of anything else. The philosophical-zombie hypothesis cannot be ruled out by evidence. But I observe others producing complex I/O behavior that is qualitatively similar to that which I produce and that I attribute to my own consciousness. I also see evidence that my consciousness supervenes on the operation of my brain, and I observe that other people have brains. The most parsimonious explanation for all that is that other humans are also conscious.
Do you have any sense of what the simplest conscious system looks like? Can we construct one from legos in an aircraft hangar?
> Do you have any sense of what the simplest conscious system looks like?
Nope.
> Can we construct one from legos in an aircraft hangar?
Almost certainly not. We can't even construct one on a silicon chip (yet).
Nope.
> Can we construct one from legos in an aircraft hangar?
Almost certainly not. We can't even construct one on a silicon chip (yet).
It wouldn’t make it a synonym with existence, only an aspect of it. If a fertilized egg is not conscious, when precisely does it emerge, and what does that transition entail?
> It wouldn’t make it a synonym with existence, only an aspect of it.
It would make "unconscious" a synonym for "non-existent".
> If a fertilized egg is not conscious, when precisely does it emerge, and what does that transition entail?
No one knows the answer to that. But it's pretty clear to me that consciousness supervenes on brains, so having a brain (or functional equivalent) is a necessary (though not sufficient) condition for being conscious.
It would make "unconscious" a synonym for "non-existent".
> If a fertilized egg is not conscious, when precisely does it emerge, and what does that transition entail?
No one knows the answer to that. But it's pretty clear to me that consciousness supervenes on brains, so having a brain (or functional equivalent) is a necessary (though not sufficient) condition for being conscious.
> It would make "unconscious" a synonym for "non-existent".
Maybe a synonym for “non-physical”, conceptual, or abstract. Why do you say that like it’s some kind of paradox?
> No one knows the answer to that.
Then how does one know it to be true?
> But it's pretty clear to me that consciousness supervenes on brains
Why? No one has ever borne that out.
Maybe a synonym for “non-physical”, conceptual, or abstract. Why do you say that like it’s some kind of paradox?
> No one knows the answer to that.
Then how does one know it to be true?
> But it's pretty clear to me that consciousness supervenes on brains
Why? No one has ever borne that out.
> Why do you say that like it’s some kind of paradox?
I'm not. I'm just saying it robs the word "conscious" of most of its utility. It no longer makes sense to say, for example, "That person is unconscious."
> Then how does one know it to be true?
How does one know what to be true?
> Why? No one has ever borne that out.
Then I propose we do the following experiment: let's surgically remove your brain and see if afterwards you still profess to be conscious.
I'm not. I'm just saying it robs the word "conscious" of most of its utility. It no longer makes sense to say, for example, "That person is unconscious."
> Then how does one know it to be true?
How does one know what to be true?
> Why? No one has ever borne that out.
Then I propose we do the following experiment: let's surgically remove your brain and see if afterwards you still profess to be conscious.
1000 and 2000 are big numbers. 10 and 20 are not.
One can have a legitimate debate about 48, 70 and 99 being big numbers. But not 30, 28 or 19.
One can have a legitimate debate about 48, 70 and 99 being big numbers. But not 30, 28 or 19.
"Big" and "small" are not properties, they are relations. 1000 is big relative to 0.001, but it is small relative to 100000000.
In common parlance, "big" and "small" are often used in context where the thing being related is implied, and usually taken to be a human being. Mountains are big (relative to humans) and ants are small (relative to humans). But ants are big relative to atoms and mountains are small relative to planets.
But "conscious" isn't a relation, it's a property. Normal humans are conscious. Rocks are not. This is not to say that consciousness might not be a continuous property rather than a dichotomy; it almost certainly is. Nonetheless, there is a point at which the degree of consciousness in a system is indistinguishable from zero, at which point it is no longer useful to say that the thing is conscious.
In common parlance, "big" and "small" are often used in context where the thing being related is implied, and usually taken to be a human being. Mountains are big (relative to humans) and ants are small (relative to humans). But ants are big relative to atoms and mountains are small relative to planets.
But "conscious" isn't a relation, it's a property. Normal humans are conscious. Rocks are not. This is not to say that consciousness might not be a continuous property rather than a dichotomy; it almost certainly is. Nonetheless, there is a point at which the degree of consciousness in a system is indistinguishable from zero, at which point it is no longer useful to say that the thing is conscious.
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"But, as Deepak Chopra taught us, quantum physics means anything can happen at any time for no reason."
- Professor Hubert Farnsworth
- Professor Hubert Farnsworth
When it comes to consciousness, I really like the ideas of Douglas Hofstadter [0]. This article feels like a step backwards from that.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_Am_a_Strange_Loop
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_Am_a_Strange_Loop
"Rather than consciousness arising when non-conscious matter behaves a particular way, is it possible that consciousness is an intrinsic property of matter—that it was there all along?"
Umm, really?
Sounds nice and touchy-feely new agey, but, I'm saying no.
More likely you just haven't tried to define consciousness clearly and non-circularly, and when you do, it just kind of goes away as a concept. If you can tell me, in any sort of scientific terms, why a self driving car isn't conscious but a human is, maybe we can get somewhere.
Umm, really?
Sounds nice and touchy-feely new agey, but, I'm saying no.
More likely you just haven't tried to define consciousness clearly and non-circularly, and when you do, it just kind of goes away as a concept. If you can tell me, in any sort of scientific terms, why a self driving car isn't conscious but a human is, maybe we can get somewhere.
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How is this circular? Physics has the notion of an observer, which is inherent to all matter. This is just saying observer effects happen everywhere all the time and your skull is just concentrating it.
"Physics has the notion of an observer, which is inherent to all matter."
I have no idea what you mean by this.
As for circular, I saying it is impossible to define consciousness in a way that excludes man made machines (is my computer conscious because it is aware of other similar machines on the network, as well as its own place in the network? Is a self driving car conscious because it is aware of its position in space relative to other cars?), without simply using other words that have similar meaning.
People define "conscious" using words like "aware" or "feel" or "think", while being quick to assume that all words don't apply to machines. But they won't explain why not.
This goes into detail about circularity of definitions: http://www.karmatics.com/docs/dictionary.html
I have no idea what you mean by this.
As for circular, I saying it is impossible to define consciousness in a way that excludes man made machines (is my computer conscious because it is aware of other similar machines on the network, as well as its own place in the network? Is a self driving car conscious because it is aware of its position in space relative to other cars?), without simply using other words that have similar meaning.
People define "conscious" using words like "aware" or "feel" or "think", while being quick to assume that all words don't apply to machines. But they won't explain why not.
This goes into detail about circularity of definitions: http://www.karmatics.com/docs/dictionary.html
Why would I exclude man made machines?
"Observer" notion from physics (does not matter if we are talking about neutonian or QM or whatever) have nothing to do with consciousness. "Observer" in physics is just a description of a certain point of view within the system. The connection of that to consciousness is usually done by popular quasi-philosophy books loosely based on physics and using some of the same terms, they do not come from the physics itself.
Saying there is no connection is an unfalsifiable claim, so you’ve departed the realm of science with that one.
What I mean is, physics makes no claims about any such connection. I could have been more clear. People are free to explore any connection or lack thereof, but there isn't any claims to that coming from mainstream physics.
Have you done a literature review? Have you searched for quantum effects and cognition in the literature?
Well yeah, hence my statement. The word "observer" when used in physics usually refers to the instrumental measurement process, not to perception by a consciousness/human. There are of course outliers, scientists that will make the draw, but they are in a miniscule minority. There are also thought experiments that are common that will talk about this, but they almost always used in order to actually demonstrate the non-fitness of this line of reasoning for physical sciences.
The people who make these claims are usually woo-woo writers who make money by writing popular culture books related to a subset of quantum mechanics phenomena and to a limited understanding thereof.
This shouldn't be too hard to see either when you understand that consciousness is not well-defined yet by mainstream science, and so why would it study it using the well-defined methods like physics? That if anything would lead to unfalsifiable hypotheses, and mainstream physics luckily doesn't indulge in that so often.
The people who make these claims are usually woo-woo writers who make money by writing popular culture books related to a subset of quantum mechanics phenomena and to a limited understanding thereof.
This shouldn't be too hard to see either when you understand that consciousness is not well-defined yet by mainstream science, and so why would it study it using the well-defined methods like physics? That if anything would lead to unfalsifiable hypotheses, and mainstream physics luckily doesn't indulge in that so often.
Correct. "Observer" is just shorthand for "probability collapsing interaction".
You can't define consciousness, it's not a concept. It has no qualities, no parts, no shape, no sides nor extent. The only reason it's not utterly meaningless to talk about is your own subjective awareness.
"Consciousness", "you", "here", and "now" are all synonyms.
"Consciousness", "you", "here", and "now" are all synonyms.
Not sure what you mean by "it's not a concept."
I certainly don't see how "you", "here" and "now" are synonyms of consciousness, nor is the use of the terms indicative of consciousness.
Two simple machines that communicate with one another for some useful purpose could meaningfully and usefully use those terms (or equivalent symbols or codes), but that wouldn't make them conscious by the way most people use the word. Not seeing that at all, sorry.
And certainly the words aren't synonyms "consciousness," in that you could replace the word "consciousness" with "you" (etc)
I certainly don't see how "you", "here" and "now" are synonyms of consciousness, nor is the use of the terms indicative of consciousness.
Two simple machines that communicate with one another for some useful purpose could meaningfully and usefully use those terms (or equivalent symbols or codes), but that wouldn't make them conscious by the way most people use the word. Not seeing that at all, sorry.
And certainly the words aren't synonyms "consciousness," in that you could replace the word "consciousness" with "you" (etc)
> Not sure what you mean by "it's not a concept."
You said it yourself above, when you try to define consciousness clearly and non-circularly it just kind of goes away as a concept. That's because it's the inconceivable medium of concepts. Conceptualizing consciousness is like trying to play silence on an instrument. You can't do it except by leaving it alone.
> I certainly don't see how "you", "here" and "now" are synonyms of consciousness, nor is the use of the terms indicative of consciousness.
Well, work on it for a while.
You are that which is conscious. Everything else is content. You are always "here" and it is always "now". Subjective awareness. Even in dreams "you" are always "here" and it is always "now". Have you ever not been here? Or existed at a time that isn't now?
It's not something you can think out or solve, it's a matter of perception.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ramana_Maharshi#Self-enquiry
You said it yourself above, when you try to define consciousness clearly and non-circularly it just kind of goes away as a concept. That's because it's the inconceivable medium of concepts. Conceptualizing consciousness is like trying to play silence on an instrument. You can't do it except by leaving it alone.
> I certainly don't see how "you", "here" and "now" are synonyms of consciousness, nor is the use of the terms indicative of consciousness.
Well, work on it for a while.
You are that which is conscious. Everything else is content. You are always "here" and it is always "now". Subjective awareness. Even in dreams "you" are always "here" and it is always "now". Have you ever not been here? Or existed at a time that isn't now?
It's not something you can think out or solve, it's a matter of perception.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ramana_Maharshi#Self-enquiry
Ok well "you", "here", and "now" have meanings that don't depend on consciousness at all. Two software programs on a network could use the terms quite meaningfully. For instance, instead of sending the current timestamp, it could send the message "now" as a shorthand for it. Instead of sending a name/network id of the machine it is communicating with, it could send the message "you" as shorthand for it. Instead of sending the latitude and longitude of the location of where it is, it could send "here" as shorthand for "where you already know I am". There are advantages and disadvantages to this (for instance, network latency could affect the meaning of "now" vs. a timestamp).
If you are going to say it's "not a concept" you probably shouldn't then say it is synonomous with these other things. I would argue that it IS a concept, but it becomes an incoherent concept when analyzed closely. Or it becomes a very generalizable concept, one that applies perfectly well to manmade things like self driving cars and maybe even thermostats.
If you are going to say it's "not a concept" you probably shouldn't then say it is synonomous with these other things. I would argue that it IS a concept, but it becomes an incoherent concept when analyzed closely. Or it becomes a very generalizable concept, one that applies perfectly well to manmade things like self driving cars and maybe even thermostats.
The symbolic symbols "you", "here", and "now" do not have intrinsic meanings at all. "Meaning" is something that happens within a context. We know that cooperating mechanical agents can evolve a kind of language because experiments have been done where that actually happens.
It seems likely that something like this happened with humans: we evolved language including pronouns and time and place markers, etc.
However, the phenomenon of self awareness that those symbols "point to" is unitary.
Subjective awareness is you and you are always here and now.
That's the "one weird trick" that humans do: we are capable of noticing and meta-commenting on our own self-awareness, even though that's technically impossible.
You know how if you repeat a word over and over again it temporarily looses it's meaning as you become aware of the bizarre and arbitrary nature of the sounds you're making, yeah?
Try that with the word "I" and see what happens. YMMV good luck.
It seems likely that something like this happened with humans: we evolved language including pronouns and time and place markers, etc.
However, the phenomenon of self awareness that those symbols "point to" is unitary.
Subjective awareness is you and you are always here and now.
That's the "one weird trick" that humans do: we are capable of noticing and meta-commenting on our own self-awareness, even though that's technically impossible.
You know how if you repeat a word over and over again it temporarily looses it's meaning as you become aware of the bizarre and arbitrary nature of the sounds you're making, yeah?
Try that with the word "I" and see what happens. YMMV good luck.
> More likely you just haven't tried to define consciousness clearly and non-circularly, and when you do, it just kind of goes away as a concept.
Let me try: consciousness is that which makes you get up in the morning and get something to eat. In general, it's what makes you keep being alive in the complex world, reacting to the changes, adapting for survival. As a human survival entails being part of the human society and culture. This is a concrete, non-metaphysical definition.
Why survival? It's the only self-reliant, self affirming reason.
If you think I am too reductive, maybe you haven't considered the wonderful complexities of reinforcement learning and genetic evolution. There is just as much or more to admire in them as in traditional spirituality and religion. But they have the advantage of being practical and not presupposing things that cannot be seen, including Chalmer's panpsychism and/or dualism.
PS: seems like I hit a nerve, but I am not sorry. Consciousness == eating is my way of crashing the high flying palace of consciousness philosophy into the dirt of the concrete world. Philosophers (armchair or not) need to take heed at the current scientific developments.
Let me try: consciousness is that which makes you get up in the morning and get something to eat. In general, it's what makes you keep being alive in the complex world, reacting to the changes, adapting for survival. As a human survival entails being part of the human society and culture. This is a concrete, non-metaphysical definition.
Why survival? It's the only self-reliant, self affirming reason.
If you think I am too reductive, maybe you haven't considered the wonderful complexities of reinforcement learning and genetic evolution. There is just as much or more to admire in them as in traditional spirituality and religion. But they have the advantage of being practical and not presupposing things that cannot be seen, including Chalmer's panpsychism and/or dualism.
PS: seems like I hit a nerve, but I am not sorry. Consciousness == eating is my way of crashing the high flying palace of consciousness philosophy into the dirt of the concrete world. Philosophers (armchair or not) need to take heed at the current scientific developments.
So if i program sdc to drive itself to a charging station when it’s low on battery it’s conscious now?
Does it have goals beyond a simple turn by turn? Can it make complex choices depending on a large number of different things it senses? (presumably weighting different criteria) For instance, is it aware that it is "bad" (i.e. something it should try to avoid) to crash into other cars or pedestrians? Is it aware of other cars on the road? Is it aware that it is also a car, but is different from the other cars in that it is in control of itself?
I'm not saying it is conscious, btw, I'm more likely to simply say that consciousness is a poorly defined term, unless you are simply using it to describe a "non-sleeping" state where input from the environment is actively being taken in and processed in a meaningful way. And for that, yeah, a self driving car can be conscious.
I'm not saying it is conscious, btw, I'm more likely to simply say that consciousness is a poorly defined term, unless you are simply using it to describe a "non-sleeping" state where input from the environment is actively being taken in and processed in a meaningful way. And for that, yeah, a self driving car can be conscious.
I am ok with your definition, but I am one to say that a self driving car can indeed be conscious.
I was thinking just this morning that I should write a book: Metaphysics
for Computer Nerds & Computers for Metaphysicians. I am lonely in the
intersection between mysticism and hard mathematical science.
> And the fact that the hard problem has persisted for so many decades, despite the advances in neuroscience, has caused some scientists to wonder if we’ve been thinking about the problem backward. Rather than consciousness arising when non-conscious matter behaves a particular way, is it possible that consciousness is an intrinsic property of matter—that it was there all along?
Why do folks present this idea like it's new and radical? It's literally thousands of years old.
Aldous Huxley wrote "The Perennial Philosophy" in 1945. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Perennial_Philosophy
> However, it seems to me that the obstacle one faces here isn’t a combination problem but the confusion of consciousness with the concept of a self. ... And this concept of the self is an illusion.
Recapitulate the basic finding of Buddhism, This has been known for thousands of years.
> it may be more accurate to instead talk about the content and quality of conscious experience at any given location in spacetime, determined by the matter present there.
Now we're gwtting somewhere...
> would two brains wired together produce a new, integrated mind?
In a word, yes. You don't even need to connect them with a corpus callosum, the bandwidth and latency of our built-in hardware is sufficient:
"Psychedelic experiences associated with a novel hypnotic procedure, mutual hypnosis." https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/6080106
- - - -
Gurdjieff presents a world system wherein (I am paraphrasing and condensing wildly and inaccurately here) the human isn't born with a soul but must construct one during it's mortal lifetime or "die like a dog" leaving nothing behind.
There are (in this world model) three kinds of matter: terrestrial matter (of the Earth), stellar matter (of the Sun and solar system) and interstellar matter (which is stable outside the Sun's heliopause.)
The process of constructing a soul proceeds in two stages. First one "coats" the physical body through and through with a stellar matter to make the "second being-body", and then again with interstellar matter to make the "third being-body" or soul. This third body is stable beyond the solar system and, importantly, beyond the death of the original physical body. The second being-body is not stable on it's own without the first or third bodies.
I bring this up because it's a fascinating (IMO) third concept besides "humans do not have souls" and "humans do have souls": "humans are born w/o souls and must make them themselves before death".
It also makes a kind of sense that, in order for your human consciousness to survive the death of the body, the material matrix within which and through which your human experience carries on, you need another nearly-identical body made out of more durable stuff.
> And the fact that the hard problem has persisted for so many decades, despite the advances in neuroscience, has caused some scientists to wonder if we’ve been thinking about the problem backward. Rather than consciousness arising when non-conscious matter behaves a particular way, is it possible that consciousness is an intrinsic property of matter—that it was there all along?
Why do folks present this idea like it's new and radical? It's literally thousands of years old.
Aldous Huxley wrote "The Perennial Philosophy" in 1945. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Perennial_Philosophy
> However, it seems to me that the obstacle one faces here isn’t a combination problem but the confusion of consciousness with the concept of a self. ... And this concept of the self is an illusion.
Recapitulate the basic finding of Buddhism, This has been known for thousands of years.
> it may be more accurate to instead talk about the content and quality of conscious experience at any given location in spacetime, determined by the matter present there.
Now we're gwtting somewhere...
> would two brains wired together produce a new, integrated mind?
In a word, yes. You don't even need to connect them with a corpus callosum, the bandwidth and latency of our built-in hardware is sufficient:
"Psychedelic experiences associated with a novel hypnotic procedure, mutual hypnosis." https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/6080106
- - - -
Gurdjieff presents a world system wherein (I am paraphrasing and condensing wildly and inaccurately here) the human isn't born with a soul but must construct one during it's mortal lifetime or "die like a dog" leaving nothing behind.
There are (in this world model) three kinds of matter: terrestrial matter (of the Earth), stellar matter (of the Sun and solar system) and interstellar matter (which is stable outside the Sun's heliopause.)
The process of constructing a soul proceeds in two stages. First one "coats" the physical body through and through with a stellar matter to make the "second being-body", and then again with interstellar matter to make the "third being-body" or soul. This third body is stable beyond the solar system and, importantly, beyond the death of the original physical body. The second being-body is not stable on it's own without the first or third bodies.
I bring this up because it's a fascinating (IMO) third concept besides "humans do not have souls" and "humans do have souls": "humans are born w/o souls and must make them themselves before death".
It also makes a kind of sense that, in order for your human consciousness to survive the death of the body, the material matrix within which and through which your human experience carries on, you need another nearly-identical body made out of more durable stuff.
maybe it's a wave between avatarial representations of other before us
Nautilus articles seem to frontpage on average once a weekend. The weird thing is the articles have very low engagement on HN in terms of comments. Given the weekly cadence and low engagement on every article this may mean Nautilus is running an internal upvote campaign.
31 pts 26 comments now.
It's things like these:
https://twitter.com/rmartinledo/status/1233388613490139136
That make you wonder how vast consciousness really is.
And how self centered we are still as species. Eating other animals for 'pleasure'. It's sad.
https://twitter.com/rmartinledo/status/1233388613490139136
That make you wonder how vast consciousness really is.
And how self centered we are still as species. Eating other animals for 'pleasure'. It's sad.
Could you explain why that particular video makes you think about that? I mean, do you consider the creatures on the picture as having a consciousness? Those look far from being conscious to me, they are just small creatures with a couple of functions like moving, finding food and eating...
I would argue humans are like this too, biologically speaking.
I only see simple biochemical machines in that video.
Here’s what they look like when you zoom in a bit more: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=9RUHJhskW00&t=16
It’s literally chemical bonds breaking and forming, stochastically.
Here’s what they look like when you zoom in a bit more: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=9RUHJhskW00&t=16
It’s literally chemical bonds breaking and forming, stochastically.
That's fascinating. Thanks for the video.
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