The Philosophy of Mind: Zombies, "radical emergence" and evidence of non-experiential

[Edwardo Piet]

Yeah, I definitely don't want to be a part of this.

Typical.

[Silver]

Yeah, I definitely don't want to be a part of this.

Typical.

Be a little more respectful. >.>

[Edwardo Piet]

I was. I didn't ragequit.

[Silver]

By the way, this thread was mirrored after Rob's conceptual thread, correct?

[Edwardo Piet]

This could have been an interesting discussion but then the first person to turn up was Mr I Don't Know How To Actually Address The Other Person's Points and then Jor, who I actually respect, just jumps in and barely asserts a question is being begged that isn't being begged, and then buggers off. Ick.

Here was me imagining this thread could have been really interesting. I worked hard on the OP but not one of my points has even been addressed yet! And much of it has been outright ignored. I remember why I don't tend to bother having serious discussions on AF anymore... especially with Khemical hanging around ruining threads with sophistry. I have to spend all my time telling him to address my actual argument. It's unnecessarily frustrating. It would be fine if this wasn't the 10,000th time this has happened and if he didn't do this all the bloody time. It's beyond a massive coincidence at this point... he 'wins' debates with sophistry ('wins' is in scare quotes because you can't actually win an argument if you don't address your opponent, all you can do is make other people believe you've won it, which is what he does).

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By the way, this thread was mirrored after Rob's conceptual thread, correct?

What thread is that? I've just been thinking about consciousness a lot lately.

[Silver]

This thread:
https://atheistforums.org/thread-53697.html

[Edwardo Piet]

Personally, I would caution against any notion that consciousness does nothing and provides no benefit.  There are many evolutionary pathways to flight, or any other number of functional spaces for adaptation, as well.  It might be that behavior x is possible some other way (even many other ways), as it is with different types and paths to wings or flight, for example...but it would be a reach to then say that the specific manner in which a creature achieves behavior x is therefore useless

Ironically THIS begs the question. The entire point is there's no evidence that consciousness does anything useful and you are making an analogy that consciousness is like pathways to flight, which just presupposes that consciousness is a pathway and is already useful. You're basically just saying "But in this case it is useful" and comparing it to flight. It's pathetic. You haven't shown that consciousness is useful, and the evidence points in the other direction. How is it useful? And the evidence indicates otherwise. This is (one of) my entire points... which you haven't addressed. And you haven't even replied to many of the others.

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This thread:
https://atheistforums.org/thread-53697.html

Philosophical zombies are interesting but I wanted to talk about other things too ("radical emergence" and evidence for the non-experiential). They're all in the OP too, and Khem didn't even bother to reply to those points. I'm interested in consciousness in general. P-zeds is merely one interesting aspect to the subject. I also explained why Dennett is wrong, and what he's wrong about, and what he got right. And Khem didn't address any of that, he's just covertly talking about how he thinks he's right without addressing any of my actual points against Dennett (he was suggesting that I was defining it "narrowly" which alludes to the fact that he, like Dennett, defines it differently (all this crap about "folk psychology". Fair enough, redefine stuff so science can address it all you like... but then don't pretend that the kind that must exist is illusory (the whole of the universe could be an illusion, we could be in the Matrix... but we're still conscious. We're conscious even if the whole universe is an illusion. So Dennett has it completely backwards)).... he doesn't actually interact with my arguments. It's all just rhetoric and irrelevant facts that don't even address what I'm saying, many of which I already agree with. But then he pretends to be reasonable by saying we agree on matters that we clearly disagree on, and then when I say that he tries to prove me wrong and that we do agree by then saying a bunch of irrelevant obviously true trival trues that no one disagrees with. It's getting hilariously transparently disingenous. Like I said, Khem appears to be the atheistic William Lane Craig of AF. If he's not doing it on purpose he must be suffering from a strange affliction I shall deem "accidentally-constantly-mirsrepresent-my-opponent-state-irrelevant-truths-and-engage-in-manipulative-sophistry-in-general-disorder".

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I need to go to bed now. I'm tired. I thought this thread was going to be a success. Goodnight.

[The Grand Nudger]

Personally, I would caution against any notion that consciousness does nothing and provides no benefit.  There are many evolutionary pathways to flight, or any other number of functional spaces for adaptation, as well.  It might be that behavior x is possible some other way (even many other ways), as it is with different types and paths to wings or flight, for example...but it would be a reach to then say that the specific manner in which a creature achieves behavior x is therefore useless

Ironically THIS begs the question. The entire point is there's no evidence that consciousness does anything useful and you are making an analogy that consciousness is like pathways to flight, which just presupposes that consciousness is a pathway and is already useful. You're basically just saying "But in this case it is useful" and comparing it to flight. It's pathetic. You haven't shown that consciousness is useful, and the evidence points in the other direction. How is it useful? And the evidence indicates otherwise. This is (one of) my entire points... which you haven't addressed. And you haven't even replied to many of the others.

The evidence strongly suggests that consciousness is not only not what we thought it was, or what it seemed to be, that it does not do what we imagined it would in some specific sense, sure.   You reference real time decision making and control, as an example.  Consciousness may not be necessary for a specific type of information processing, or..put another way, consciousness may not be required for computational competence (in fact..we're sure that it isn't).  

However, not being useful at that thing does not imply or demonstrate that there is no use..and, personally, I find it difficult to divorce consciousness from immensely important selective advantages that our species possesses both as a description and direct product of our experience.  Our art, our culture, our communication of first person experience, the relationships we build upon those assumptions, our comprehension as designers of things with understood relationships to ourselves and each other.  

They don't seem like an irrelevance...maybe to computational competence in real time decision making...but biologically speaking, we're not here where we are because we're swift of tooth and nail or because we can add real quick.

[robvalue]

I'll throw my thoughts in here, and it's just my own brainstorming. It may be nonsense.

It seems to me that consciousness may be reminiscent of wave/particle duality. On the one hand, we have a physical brain behaving in a certain way, and the emergent patterns it produces are "consciousness" (objective view). On the other hand, we have an experience, which is also "consciousness" (subjective view).

So maybe it doesn't make sense to examine how useful the experience is, because it's asking an objective question about the subjective side. Finding the right question is one of the hardest parts when we're examining the very thing that traps us into subjectivity.

I'm working through some experimental thinking, and have been called insane by some people on TTA. I don't care if I'm wrong at the moment, because it's part of a process. I'm leaning towards the idea that the "experience" side of consciousness is just a very obvious manifestation of a more universal phenomenon; one which humans just so happen to be able to abstractly communicate to each other. I see everything as being very gradual, rather than there being hard lines where special qualities spring out of nowhere.

PS: could a brain work better a different way? I'm sure it could. Our brains are just a mish-mash of natural iterative processes. One could design something much better no doubt. Would it still be "conscious"? I couldn't possibly say. But I'm leaning towards the fact that it would be, or that in fact it's a redundant/malformed question. Better in what way though? Better at surviving? Computing? Passing on genes?

[Edwardo Piet]

The evidence strongly suggests that consciousness is not only not what we thought it was, or what it seemed to be, that it does not do what we imagined it would in some specific sense, sure.

Once again, you're equivocating there. What do you mean by 'consciousness'? Because you can say what you like about how consciousness works, the fact we're having an experience can't be denied.

 You reference real time decision making and control, as an example.  Consciousness may not be necessary for a specific type of information processing, or..put another way, consciousness may not be required for computational competence (in fact..we're sure that it isn't). 

You just sound like you're parroting Dennett's view without supporting it. Why won't you deal with my arguments against his position? 

However, not being useful at that thing does not imply or demonstrate that there is no use..and, personally, I find it difficult to divorce consciousness from immensely important selective advantages that our species possesses both as a description and direct product of our experience.

Again, the version of consciousness we know to exist is what I'm dealing with here. We become aware of something several seconds after the non-conscious aspects our brain has already taken action.

Again, you can say what you like about how consciousness works, but don't at the same time pretend you're saying anything about the normal sense of consciousness we know to exist.

Whether this 'folk psychology' version of consciousness is useful, or testable by science or not, is an entirely different question. It may not be useful for science to actually work on, but it doesn't mean it's 'illusory'. If we had to choose between trusting science or trusting the fact that it consciously seems to us that we are conscious... we'd have to trust the latter. After all, the entirety of science is based on empiricism, which is based on experience.

  Our art, our culture, our communication of first person experience, the relationships we build upon those assumptions, our comprehension as designers of things with understood relationships to ourselves and each other.  

They don't seem like an irrelevance...maybe to computational competence in real time decision making...but biologically speaking, we're not here where we are because we're swift of tooth and nail or because we can add real quick.

Yes because the computational competence you speak of isn't consciousness in the real sense, if and only if you are redefining it. But then when you are redefining it, don't pretend you're saying something about the sense of consciousness that we know to exist at the same time... because you're not and that's an equivocation.

Fair enough if you say you're not addressing the 'folk psychology' version of consciousness at alll... but then you're not actually addressing my argument. I'm talking about the version of consciousness that we know to exist even if it's completely untestable, it's at least experiencable.

And you must depart from Dennett if you think you're not addressing the 'folk psychology' of consciousness at all (the kind we know exists even if we can't test it)... because he also talks of how there is no such thing as 'phenomenology' or 'real seeming'. He is suggesting that because he has a definition he think is better (it's merely testing parts of the brain that can be tested and calling that 'consciousness'... he's an admitted pragmatist... he only considers that which is useful to be real. Which is way too Jordan Petersony for me)... so this is where he's flat out wrong. What is your stance on that?

I was really rude to you and Jor last night and I apologize for that. Even if you are a sophist and misrepresenting me repeatedly all the time on purpose, I should still be courteous, it's not like I'm going to be able to prove it. And I unnecessarily took my frustration with you out on Jor too.

I'm sorry to both of you about that. I think I really just needed to get some sleep. I went to bed after all that. I feel better this morning. There's no need for how I got, so I'm sorry about that.

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I'll throw my thoughts in here, and it's just my own brainstorming. It may be nonsense.

Go ahead!

It seems to me that consciousness may be reminiscent of wave/particle duality. On the one hand, we have a physical brain behaving in a certain way, and the emergent patterns it produces are "consciousness" (objective view). On the other hand, we have an experience, which is also "consciousness" (subjective view).

Interesting. What's your stance on the theory that [human] consciousness may not be an emergent property and it is merely the neuroal acitvity? This is the part where I agree with Dennett, there is no finish line, no part where the neurons 'become conscious'. Some of them are and those are the ones that are 'winning'.

Although I actually learned last night that Strawson doesn't believe consciousness emerges either. Then again he has an utterly crazy position, but I still can't fault his logic. Still, for human consciousness his position seems to be that neuronal acitivity is identical to consciousness. He accepts the identity theory on that front. The difference is he doesn't say things like 'there is no real seeming'.

He seems much more logical than Dennett, to me. In fact he seems so committed to it that he'll accept even the most seemingly crazy positions if logic takes him there. But then when you realize fully what he is actually claiming, it doesn't seem quite as crazy, and it's easy to strawman him.

I mean, for me it's like the simulation argument. That's a strong argument that follows if you accept all the premises. The difference there is, I don't accept all the premises.

When you speak of wave/partical duality and consciousness seeming like that, I know you are not a dualist...so I take it your analogy is merely to explain how it seems rather than how it is, right?

My point is that the seeming is what we call consciousness... so when doing brain science it may be useful to redefine consciousness, but then we wouldn't be saying anything about the original definition of consciousness.

In the same way that studying atoms doesn't lead to us studying the tiniest building blocks of the universe... because what we now call atoms no longer means that. Atoms were supposed to be by definition unsplittable, but we've 'split the atom'. Fair enough, this is all very useful, but we at least recognize that atoms aren't the smallest elements to the universe... because we redefined what 'atom' means.

In the same way, Lawrence Kraus can make as many interesting discoveries about what he calls 'nothing' as much as he likes... but it's not nothing in the strongest sense. The fact there's quantum activity at all in this 'empty space' implies that it's something and not an empty space. Sure, you could say it is because those terms have been redefined now, but it would be silly to pretend that he's talking about the absence of anything at all. If he truly was, he wouldn't be able to learn about it.

I'm saying it's like this with consciousness. Studying the smallest particles is pointless and not useful to science if they can't be found, and if it's smaller particles all the way down. Studying nothing is pointless because nothing is literally nothing, so redefining it to be a quantum vaccum makes more sense is more useful to science. Redefining consciousness so it's parts of the brain that can be tested also makes sense, if we want to test things that are testable, and actually be useful to science.

The problem is that Dennett is a pragmatist so to him it's only useful things that are real. He's also a verificationist and he believes that only things that can be empircally tested are real. The problem then, is he's not addressing the fact that there may be real things that are indeed testable. He simply defines them out of existence. As far as he is concerned 'they may as well be not real', or something like that.

The problem is, not only is it denying the possibility of the untestable, but if he really defines real seeming or phenomenology, that could have implications for ethics and all sorts. As far as he's concerned, intelligent AI will become conscious in his sense... and a simple organism may not be conscious in his sense. But in the phenomenological sense in which he denies, no AI may ever be conscious. Because it may just be a byproduct of evolution, as I suggest. [N.B: I do believe they would at least be conscious on some low level sense, as everything is]. Robots will have complex computation, but they won't have qualia [or rather, they won't have qualia to the same level that biological organisms do, perhaps], which he doesn't believe in, despite it being the most undeniable thing in existence. (see the Betrrand Russell quote in the OP for that one).

And as far as he is concerned, simple organisms don't have complex computation, so they can't be conscious. Even though they may indeed have qualia, and may indeed feel pain. To him, it would only seem to them that they did... and there's no real seeming.

So the way I see it is, Dennett may say a lot of useful things about how the brain works. Like I said, I even buy his user illusion argument. But he takes it further than that. He starts by talking about his definition of consciousness, and how qualia is just a user illusion, but then he goes further than that and says it isn't real and he tries to discredit the hunch that it is.

Either he is confused or he is being profoundly unclear. It seemed at first that he was just being unclear and he was really trying to say that consciousness in the normal sense is real but by his definition it's an illusion. But when he starts talking about how there is no real seeming... it's all just clear to me that he's equivocating on the definition of 'real'. He thinks that because something isn't real in the sense of it is imaginary then that implies that it isn't real in the sense of absent. He doesn't see the two different senses. Or, if he did see them, he doesn't care because he doesn't find it useful. He's far too pragmatic for my liking.

He has this really long video about his ontology, called 'Evolution, Science and the Manifest Image' or something like that... it was after watching that video that I realized why he frustrates me so much. He's a pragmatist.

So maybe it doesn't make sense to examine how useful the experience is, because it's asking an objective question about the subjective side.

Well, I don't think experience is useful. At least not the consciousness we experience. I think it is all that gives life meaning because without it we can't suffer or enjoy things, but I don't see how any of that is performing a useful function. We could respond to danger and pursue things that are good for us without experiencing anything. Khem said that in this case the way evolution has done it is with consciousness so it's a moot point. But I think that begs the question. It's not clear at all that that is the way that evolution does it, because consciousness may indeed just be a by product. The unconscious aspects of the brain appear to be doing all the work. To me, the unconscious works of the brain is like the moth's navigation system, and consciousness is like the by product of the moth hurting itself on the lamp. Although I am not suggesting that consciousness is bad for us. That part of the analogy fails but I'm not suggesting that part. I just don't know of a better example of something that is very useful, that leads to a byproduct that isn't useful. I don't think conscious is useful or harmful. It just feels good or hurts.

Finding the right question is one of the hardest parts when we're examining the very thing that traps us into subjectivity.

Well, the way I see it is that there are two different kinds of subjective. Epistemic subjectivity and ontological subjectivity. Jor has said that ontological subjectivity is something that John Searle 'made up'. But the way I see it is, just because there wasn't a name for something before, doesn't mean that that name isn't referring to something that is actually real.

So what does 'ontological subjectivity mean'? It means the qualia, the conscious experience we're talking about. It exists (hence it is ontological) but it is subjective, hence the conscious experience.

There's no reason to think that our subjectivity can't be tested objectively per se... although it does seem that way, as science can't seem to find the function for consciousness in the brain. But the point is, there could be a use.

Like Dennett says, it would be absurd to find a little man in the head. But it could have been there. Still that just delays the problem of how the little man's consciousness works... or if he's conscious at all!

Anyway, the point is, I don't think it's impossible in principle to objectively test the subjective. Because I am not talking about 'subjective' in the sense of biased or not being rational. Not talking about not being objective in that sense. I hope this is clear?

I'm working through some experimental thinking, and have been called insane by some people on TTA. I don't care if I'm wrong at the moment, because it's part of a process. I'm leaning towards the idea that the "experience" side of consciousness is just a very obvious manifestation of a more universal phenomenon; one which humans just so happen to be able to abstractly communicate to each other. I see everything as being very gradual, rather than there being hard lines where special qualities spring out of nowhere.

You know what's really cool? I've come to the same conclusions myself. Hence my religious views

But because the position seems so crazy to most people is exactly why I wanna talk about it. If it's crazy I wanna be refuted.

But how can it be refuted? It seems unfalsifable. How can we prove that there is anything non-experiential if experiencing the non-experiential would be required to do that?

But this isn't like theists who believe in God but God is completely unfalsfiable. The difference is, there's no good reason to believe in any god at all.... but there's every reason to believe that experience exists... and there doesn't seem to be any reason to believe that anything else does.

Now, of course, human consciousness is different. We're not saying all matter is embedded with human consciousness. We can't know what consciousness on an incredibly low level would be like... so when it is cartooned and critiqued it's already assumed that it's something absurd that isn't even being claimed.

Here is Dennett's response to Panpsychism:





He has a point that it doesn't make predictions... but it's not trying to. Dennett can have consciousness in his sense, but that says nothing about the other sense even if it is untestable.

This is what I mean about him being a pragmatist. As far as he is concerned, if it makes no testable predictions it isn't real.

As to his point about how he doesn't see how it would be ANY different to paniftyism... I think his analogy fails. What would it even mean for everything to be 'nifty'? He may be confused by the idea that everything is conscious on some low level. But he's wrong to think it makes no difference. It makes SOME difference however small. It's the difference between absolutely nothing and a trace of something. Strawson may not be saying much, but he's certainly saying something.

This all has ethical implications for me too. I have believed for years that consciousness doesn't emerge at all until brains get to a certain complexity, and there is such a big leap when we get to mammals that I questioned whether any non-mammaliam animals are conscious at all.... with the exception of animals like octopuses that have tons and tons of neurons.

But now I'm thinking... where is the evidence of the non-experiential? We seem to have evidence of less and less consciousness and more reduced consciousness... but not of no consciousness.... even people in comas seem to be conscious on some very low level.

So I can't know that simple organisms don't suffer. Maybe they do, just 'less' maybe. Makes me feel bad about killing the spiders in my home.

See, I'm not some unfeeling cunt who doesn't care about simple animals. I just try to go where the logic goes, I may get the logic wrong, but I try to get it right. And I want to be refuted if I'm wrong, not misrepresented. Khem does it so often I think he must be doing it on purpose.... but I feel bad about last night, and especially bad about being rude to Jor, I clearly took my frustration at Khem out on her.

I got some sleep and I feel a lot better this morning. I think I can get emotional on some low level sometimes but it sort of all becomes externalized and I become unaware of it.

Maybe 'emotional' is the wrong word. But I was certainly frustrated.... sitting here deadpan or not. I wanted to just have a proper argument and I just wanted to express what I thought and I guess my thoughts were expressed so harshly as to seem super emotional.

I guess I could be said to be frustrated even if it was ultimately dispassionate from my perspective. The point is I was rude and I think I just needed to go to bed lol. I don't think Khem could frustrate me so much today.

I especially dislike how I spoke to Jor because she only said one thing and I should have just disagreed with her politely rather than reacting as if she was Khem or something. I think I got especially vexed because she agreed with him and hence completely bought his misrep of me, and missed the fact that he didn't even address my view.

PS: could a brain work better a different way? I'm sure it could. Our brains are just a mish-mash of natural iterative processes. One could design something much better no doubt. Would it still be "conscious"? I couldn't possibly say. But I'm leaning towards the fact that it would be, or that in fact it's a redundant/malformed question. Better in what way though? Better at surviving? Computing? Passing on genes?

My position is that everything is ultimately conscious on some low level, human consciousness that we are familiar with resides in the brain, it could have happened another way but this is how it happened to evolve.

Well, in a sense it could have happened another way. Perhaps a better way to say it is that there are many ways life can evolve complex consciousness in the universe, and this is just how it has happened to have happened to humans.

I don't think you're crazy. If you're crazy I'm crazy too. You can talk to me about it on Skype anytime, if you want. Although you'd have to PM me about that because I have a new Skype lol.

In a sense I think it 'could have never happened another way' just in a trivally true way because to me philosophical determinism is true (despite the fact that of course, quantum mechanics is indeterministic in the sense of unpredictable in the scientific sense. This does not mean that there is not fully philosophically deterministic causes behind quantum mechanics... it just means that us humans can't predict or test that). But this is not a problem I think, as there is still yet to be any evidence of the non-experiential. Perhaps you may like Strawson like I do.

When I say that the experiments show that our decisions are made before we are conscious of them... I am talking about the human consciousness that we are familar with. If consciousness exists on some low level, it doesn't seem to be testable by science (I mean, how could it? We can't even prove that another human is conscious let alone all physical matter on some low level)...... still, this still means no free will for me. Even God wouldn't have free will, if he existed, as far as I'm concerned. 'Free will' in the incompatabilist sense, just seems to be entirely incoherent.

But for those who believe that unconsciousness is possible, and who are unable to get their head round the fact that the incompatabilist sense of free will is impossible and logically incoherent.... those scientific experiments do indeed show that free will isn't possible in that sense.

Anyways, I think free will is relevant insofar as most people believe in a kind of free will that requires them to be consciously responsible for their decisions. So it requires consciousness. I've known people who never buy my free will arguments, but once I showed them the articles of those experiments they stopped believing in free will because they just trust the scientific experiments. My response was "But it was already impossible anyway..." but oh well lol.