(January 3, 2019 at 6:52 am)Thoreauvian Wrote: Really?  You don't think that scientists have now proven, beyond a doubt, that brains generate consciousness?  You asked for specific scientific observations.  What about studies of how drugs affect consciousness, how brain injuries affect consciousness, how conscious states are correlated with brain states, and so on?  

I won't answer the rest of your very long post right now, because I don't want to provide too many distractions to a very simple question: how do you know that any physical system you are studying is conscious at all, without simply declaring it so by fiat? What scientific observations can you make which demonstrate that such a thing as subjective experience exists at all, in any form, in the Universe?

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(January 3, 2019 at 6:52 am)Thoreauvian Wrote: And I already answered: because biological creatures evolve in hostile or indifferent environments, they have to be self-motivated at a certain level of complexity.  Please notice my qualifier at the end.  I believe I used it twice or three times before already.  Little machines like viruses can indeed survive without consciousness.

You are putting the cart in front of the horse. We first need to establish:
1) That consciousness exists at all, in any form.
2) That subjective experience actually DOES add any additional functionality to a complex processing mechanism without it.

(January 3, 2019 at 8:44 am)Thoreauvian Wrote: What indicates to me that you have a problem with scientific consciousness studies is that you seem to be taking a reductionistic approach.  This is indicated by the way you frame your questions, like "How do electrochemical activities present themselves to us as experiences?"  In other words, you seem to want some simple answer to this question, when the answer must necessarily be very complex and discussed a bit at a time. You guys therefore seem impatient with a point-at-a-time approach.

Why do you think a complex answer will present itself? What bits can be assembled in a chain to lead us from electrochemical events to experiences? What point-at-a-time approach offers an answer to the question? 

We can find out various things about brain activity. We can find out various things about experience. Nobody's denying that. But the study of the realm of mental phenomena is not the study of electrochemical events in the brain. 

Quote:  Bennyboy especially keeps saying, "What does that have to do with anything?" in so many words.

That's because you continually wander away from the point and make unrelated arguments. 

Recently he has been saying something very simple: that from the "outside," we can't tell the difference between a clever automaton and a subject with mental experiences. Bringing up evolution in response to this point is irrelevant. 

Anyway, you seem to be coming around to the idea that neuroscience itself has nothing to tell us about poetry.

(January 3, 2019 at 6:52 am)Thoreauvian Wrote:

(January 2, 2019 at 3:02 pm)bennyboy Wrote: And this is based on what?  Your godlike understanding of the nature of consciousness?  A hunch?  What?  Since you are such a huge champion of scientific technique. .  . what particular scientific techniques have you applied in arriving at this deep understanding of the nature of subjective awareness?

Really?  You don't think that scientists have now proven, beyond a doubt, that brains generate consciousness?

Brain can simply be a transceiver. Inability of scientists to reproduce artificial subjective experience supports this idea.

Quote:

(January 2, 2019 at 3:02 pm)bennyboy Wrote: I believe you're making stuff up, and you do not in fact know the nature of consciousness, or what is required for it to exist.  You claim to be big on science, but you've supplied absolutely nothing but statement by fiat, which is the opposite of science.

But the specific question was about qualia.  Why did qualia evolve?  I offered a perfectly reasonable explanation: because only internal states could guide a complex creature toward survival.  A given creature would have to experience pleasures and pains, and prefer life over death, and so on.  You can build an awful lot on those basic components.

P-zombies would be just as good at survival as conscious humans. There is no evolutionary need for qualia/subjective experience.

Quote:You can actually ask people to report their subjective experiences.  This wouldn't count as data in physics

Which means that scientifically consciousness doesn't exist.

(January 2, 2019 at 11:49 pm)bennyboy Wrote: Well, it's a matter of how far I should take pragmatic assumptions.  Maybe someday, I'll be surrounded by nothing but robots, and my life won't make much sense unless I take them as actual existent, sentient beings.  That's kind of a creepy thought.

It wouldn't be much different than today, though, lol. 

Quote:I assume humans feel and think, because I do.  And because human behaviors evoke emotional responses in me, and I have an irrational sense that they are "just real," without being able to prove any of it, I act as though they do.

That's not the only reason.  We act like we do, as do many other creatures.  It's pointless to omit this huge range of observations, of so many creatures.  This thread has found a bunch of ways to assert that we can't "prove consciousness"...but that's not actually true.  We can prove that we're conscious to exactly the same degree and by the same standards as we can prove any other assertion about the world.  The proposition that we don't or may not think or feel, between the two, is the absurd one.  

This is propped up by intuitively pleasing arguments that are, themselves, fundamentally flawed.  We posit, by way of asserting exactly what we wish to conclude, that there are robots "faking it", for example.  Acting like we do.  To a person who wishes to make this sort of point that seems like a dead ringer, but it's not.  We're silently assuming that what the robot is doing is different in kind, not just in type. 

What we do know of the subject, regardless of what we don't.......strongly suggests that this just isn't the case.  

If we wish to posit a robot that convincingly acts like us, what follows is not that we can;t prove consciousness, but that we must allow for at least some sort of rudimentary experience in their case. That they have an internal world. Maybe not an internal world exactly as ours is, but an internal world by any rational description nonetheless. We already posit this in the case of other creatures that act this or that way...and, to be blunt, it's highly unlikely that my internal experience is exactly like yours anyway. There's disparity between our prime subjects, even.

Quote:I have moments of philosophical crisis when I seriously doubt that anyone exists, myself included, in anything resembling the way in which they seem to.  But then I get bored of quivering under the covers with my blanket over my head and I go out and play existential dress-up until I forget that I had doubts at all, if just for a short while.  Rinse and repeat, tbh, with pretty heavy moments of either solipsistic confidence or a suicidal sense of cosmic alienation interspersed.  I'm deep like that.

Doubting that we exist in the way that we think we do is just good practice..but it's not exactly the same as doubting that we exist - and the same is true of thinking and feeling.  I mean hell, we already know that we don't think or feel the way that we thought we did.  There's more robot "faking it" than little man behind the eyes, up in here.

[quote='Gae Bolga' pid='1874622' dateline='1546528559']
If we wish to posit a robot that convincingly acts like us, what follows is not that we can;t prove consciousness, but that we must allow for at least some sort of rudimentary experience in their case.  That they have an internal world.  Maybe not an internal world exactly as ours is, but an internal world by any rational description nonetheless.  We already posit this in the case of other creatures that act this or that way...and, to be blunt, it's highly unlikely that my internal experience is exactly like yours anyway.  There's disparity between our prime subjects, even.  
[quote]

The problem is one we've talked about many times-- it depends what ABOUT the brain, specifically, allows for consciousness. If it's the ability to form an internal representation of external states, process them, and act on them, then I'm not so sure that a robot wouldn't be conscious, pretty much as I am.

If it's something specific to certain kinds of chemistry, then that might not be the case.

(January 3, 2019 at 11:33 am)bennyboy Wrote:

(January 3, 2019 at 11:15 am)Gae Bolga Wrote: If we wish to posit a robot that convincingly acts like us, what follows is not that we can;t prove consciousness, but that we must allow for at least some sort of rudimentary experience in their case.  That they have an internal world.  Maybe not an internal world exactly as ours is, but an internal world by any rational description nonetheless.  We already posit this in the case of other creatures that act this or that way...and, to be blunt, it's highly unlikely that my internal experience is exactly like yours anyway.  There's disparity between our prime subjects, even.  

Quote:The problem is one we've talked about many times-- it depends what ABOUT the brain, specifically, allows for consciousness.  If it's the ability to form an internal representation of external states, process them, and act on them, then I'm not so sure that a robot wouldn't be conscious, pretty much as I am.

If it's something specific to certain kinds of chemistry, then that might not be the case.

Well, the way that you(we) are -is- specific to a certain chemistry.  This much we already know.  There's an entire market full of drugs that establish this point dose by dose..day in and day out.  Consciousness itself is probably better described by the former. You(we) are not consciousness, it's something that we possess, but we also possess a whole bunch of other complicating shit, and we were designed by committee...so...lol.

(January 3, 2019 at 11:39 am)Gae Bolga Wrote: Well, the way that you(we) are -is- specific to a certain chemistry.  This much we already know.  There's an entire market full of drugs that establish this point dose by dose..day in and day out.  Consciousness itself is probably better described by the former.  You(we) are not consciousness, it's something that we possess, but we also possess a whole bunch of other complicating shit, and we were designed by committee...so...lol.

I mentioned earlier the impulse for suicide, and that wasn't just tongue-in-cheek. There's this struggle between the sense of unity of all, i.e. of the self-as-part, and the sense of solipsism-- that in some absurd way, whatever is "out there," your experience of it is really just an expression of some element of the "self" which you can't identify with because you don't have conscious access to it. I cannot decide which hypothetical state is more dehumanizing (by which I mean more disillusioning of the human egocentric narrative) than the other. In general, I'd say that philosophical consideration must almost necessarily result in an experience of invalidation of the world view, and in extreme cases, whether you can bring yourself to swallow the hemlock or not, there's nevertheless a symbolic death that comes with awareness of the dialectic you are talking about.

I cannot say that I AM consciousness, because there's not enough coherence in consciousness as ideas and sensations flit from moment to moment, to really identify it as something permanent or at least persistent. Nor can I say I'm other than that (a committee of brain functions, say), because addressing that kind of mechanistic democracy in the guise of individual agency seems absurd. At best, there's some recognition of a formless spark, the "light of consciousness" if you will.

It seems to me that both the sense of consciousness, and the sense of self, are a kind of supervenient narrative-- a spontaneous mythology if you will: "Benjamin" is a conglomerate of ideas attached to a name, and while not nearly as pure as the Jesus idea or pagan god ideas, isn't really more representative of anything real than those are.

(January 3, 2019 at 12:19 pm)bennyboy Wrote: It seems to me that both the sense of consciousness, and the sense of self, are a kind of supervenient narrative-- a spontaneous mythology if you will: "Benjamin" is a conglomerate of ideas attached to a name, and while not nearly as pure as the Jesus idea or pagan god ideas, isn't really more representative of anything real than those are.

-and if that's what consciousness is, you possess that.  The multiple drafts model posits exactly this. You're not actually experiencing things in the way that the cartesian model posits (no more than the robot is)...it's a story about what happened. You, are a story about what's happened. It wouldn't be difficult for a machine to possess an aar lik this (they already do)..and that aar would/could be what it used to respond so convincingly.

(January 3, 2019 at 4:25 pm)Gae Bolga Wrote:

(January 3, 2019 at 12:19 pm)bennyboy Wrote: It seems to me that both the sense of consciousness, and the sense of self, are a kind of supervenient narrative-- a spontaneous mythology if you will: "Benjamin" is a conglomerate of ideas attached to a name, and while not nearly as pure as the Jesus idea or pagan god ideas, isn't really more representative of anything real than those are.

-and if that's what consciousness is, you possess that.  The multiple drafts model posits exactly this.  You're not actually experiencing things in the way that the cartesian model posits (no more than the robot is)...it's a story about what happened.  You, are a story about what's happened.  It wouldn't be difficult for a machine to possess an aar lik this (they already do)..and that aar would/could be what it used to respond so convincingly.

Maybe.  If so, then suicide is literally just the ending of a bad narrative-- an unwillingness to play out a fairy tale that's gone irrevocably wrong for some reason (I'm never going to be prima ballerina after all, and I can't unfuck my dog!).  Those are pretty high stakes, though.  It would be nice to have something other than an arbitrary philosophical position upon which to base that decision.

Why do suicidal people go through with it?  Is it because they are irrational, and do no have access to the obvious truths revealed by objective observations?  Are they blinded to all the joys that life offers in recompense for their suffering?  Or do they just understand that permafucked is permafucked, and that the entire fairy tale was never real to begin with?

I'm beginning to suspect that material success may contribute greatly to suicide for this reason-- people get to the top of their personal Everest, whatever it is, and say, "Meh. . . just a bunch of clouds, really. And fuck, I'm cold!"

(January 3, 2019 at 5:30 pm)bennyboy Wrote: Maybe.  If so, then suicide is literally just the ending of a bad narrative-- an unwillingness to play out a fairy tale that's gone irrevocably wrong for some reason (I'm never going to be prima ballerina after all, and I can't unfuck my dog!).  Those are pretty high stakes, though.  It would be nice to have something other than an arbitrary philosophical position upon which to base that decision.

Eveything we do is high stakes.  Earth goes hard! 

Quote:Why do suicidal people go through with it?  Is it because they are irrational, and do no have access to the obvious truths revealed by objective observations?  Are they blinded to all the joys that life offers in recompense for their suffering?  Or do they just understand that permafucked is permafucked, and that the entire fairy tale was never real to begin with?

Because they're depressed, in most cases, at least.  Yes, depression causes us to act irrationally, yes..depression amplifies our suffering and minimizes our joy, but depression is almost always treatable...so there's no such thing as "permafucked".  

Folks don't kill themselves because they fucked their dog, to use that one..they kill themselves later on account of how they feel. Changing the latter changes the outcome..even if we can't unfuck a dog.

Quote:I'm beginning to suspect that material success may contribute greatly to suicide for this reason-- people get to the top of their personal Everest, whatever it is, and say, "Meh. . . just a bunch of clouds, really.  And fuck, I'm cold!"

Material failure correlates with increased suicide risk, not success. Oddly enough, once you've topped out at the ceiling of poverty, increased success doesn't seem to correlate strongly with decreased risk. You'd think that a person with a million bucks would be a million bucks happier..but they're probably no happier than a person with 40k.