Sam Harris On Defining Consciousness

[The Grand Nudger]

If you are trying to judge consciousness in others, then their behavior is your best bet, I guess, though there's that original "pragmatic" assumption always hiding behind the curtain like the Wizard of Oz-- that your observations are at least a reasonable representation of an underlying objective reality.  If you are trying to define what consciousness IS and why it exists, then none of that matters, unless you can see others' qualia.

Your own observations, of your own qualia, are in no better a shape.  They are that very -same- pragmatic assumption, made by that very same apparatus- whatever it is-.   

Demanding this criterion basically says, "Whatever is a mystery must be redefined so it no longer sounds like a mystery."  Redefinition for a science lab is great.  You can get your Conscio-matic 3000 to watch things and decide whether they are interacting with the environment.  But that has nothing to do with the philosophical point of interest, IMO.

Again, no redefinition has occurred.  When we say that something is conscious, we are saying that it is aware.  We determine that something is aware by response to it's environment.  Your point of interest is qualia.  In making a statement about consciousness, limited as I try to keep myself, I'm not, necessarily, making any statement about qualia, let alone the entirety of the human experience, as I make clear in every post.

 

It depends what you are aware of, and what you mean by awareness.  Is this just adding another word into the mix for the semantic shell-game?  I'd say that the awareness you are talking about still has an associate qualia: what it's like to be aware of things.

This is the definition I've used for conscious since the beginning, I'm adding no extra semantical anything Ben.  It's a definition you'll find if you google the word, and it's what we mean when we say that something is conscious.  Just -what- you are aware of is exactly why we have the terms conscious -and- self conscious.  A creature may be aware of it's environment, but not itself.  We use a mirror test to try to determine that.  It's crude, but it's something.  What it's like to be aware "from the inside" of any given creature, or how that presents itself as an experience to the "owner"...is qualia.  Three terms, already, because there is a distinction between each.  There are more.

But, if you insist that awareness and qualia cannot be separated, that there cannot be awareness without qualia, that if we see awareness there -must- be qualia.... I'll insist that this means that qualia is indeed demonstrable. I'll also insist that machine awareness then must also have machine qualia. That last bits a strange one for me, since I don't actually think that all machines which are aware of their environment are candidates for qualia...nor do you, if I recall....but in order to remain consistent.......

It's only evidence because you operationalize the definitions to allow what you can observe to serve as evidence.  That's not evidence of the actual capacity for experience that most people would call consciousness-- it is avoidance.

As opposed to what I -can't- observe being evidence?  We go with what we've got man.   

Okay, that was really a rhetorical statement.  The science of mind, of AI, of robots, etc. is very interesting.  And I understand that in that context, the word "conscious" as you define it is pragmatic.  But I won't stand by and allow that definition to be conflated with the kind of consciousness that humans (and presumably other living things) have, because while you certainly can watch both living and non-living things to see how they interact with the environment, it seems very likely to me that all non-living things that you say are conscious are philosophical zombies at best.

You don't have to stand by and watch anyone conflate that, and I certainly haven't been.  I am conscious, self conscious, sentient, sapient.  I experience qualia.....the list could go on and on, narrowing in on a fuller description of what it;s like to be a -human being-. The list of non-living things I would consider candidates for conscious -alone-...even without all the other stuff, is very, very short. It's comprised of only those things which satisfy the test we use to determine that a living thing is conscious. They may be philosophical zombies, but so may be many living things. What it's "like" to be an earthworm..may be nothing at all. That may sound strange, to you, as a creature with a sense of self, thinking "It's like this to be me. It's like this to experience awareness".....but an earthworm may not have any correlate to that. There are plenty of animals that might not. Very few pass the mirror test. That sort of "experience of awareness" might not be all that common, even though awareness itself seems to be.