RE: Good read on consciousness
January 9, 2021 at 8:54 am
(This post was last modified: January 9, 2021 at 9:47 am by The Grand Nudger.)
o, no no no, phenomenological experience -is- the illusion, in illusionism. Somethings happening, sure, just not that. The trick is that, as in anything, when alot of these terms are used by any of the positions, they have a technical meaning. A representation of red does not have to be red any more than symbolic language denoting a car has to be a car. Similarly, a representation of phenomenological experience.
We absolutely do not have to have phenomenological experiences to report that we do, and be convinced that we do....we just strongly believe that we do have them. Redness, in the explanation, is not the apprehension of the color red, the mental content that denotes that a red thing is in our field of view.... that's "access consciousness" or "access cognition". Redness™ is what red feels like to us as an experience. OFC we don't expect our thought to be red, but that thought is maintained to be referent and accurate with respect to where and what it points at. Illusionists contend that, just like the actual thing...the thought... is not actually red, it is not actually experiencing redness.
Phenomenological experience, in this view, is a representation of a mental state, but the content of that representation that we have access to in what we presume to be our conscious mind is not accurate with respect to what it is and isn't doing - it's accurate..rather... with respect to what is and isn't useful for the function of the machine. A useful language for organizing thought, as it were. That's just one general example - like anything else, there are different views within the view.
I want to point out here, before we go too far saying that illusionism doesn't make sense..and mention that it is the only theory of mind that is a theory in the scientific sense (which could be and probably is an accident of a moment in time and no indication that it is -the- theory of human mind). Still, the only one with observational data and experimental support behind it. If it doesn't make sense, in some strong and meaningful sense..then perhaps the operation of an organ which evolved with no conscious oversight is confused. That wouldn't be super surprising. It's only a sense organ in the sense of the five senses, any sense making that it can do ala rational sense - an afterthought or an alternate use that we'd made for it.
Illusionists believe that their task is to explain the observational data. The observational data is not redness, which we can't find anywhere...but reports of redness. The report, not it's asserted accuracy, is what they hope to explain. To that effect, one explanation is control theory, and one potential outcome of control theory is that a non-conscious machine can and will report the same sorts of things we report, and will fail to report the same sorts of things we report. The machine, for it's part, will be equally convinced of the truth of it's many reports. In fact it can't be convinced of anything else, no matter whether something else is propositionally true. It accepts it's inputs as true as a matter of course and it's output reflects that. If "redness" is "ground" and the machine is not in redness, it will report that there is no ground below it as a fact, for example. It doesn't matter if the state of redness as a proposition is false, or if there is...in fact....ground beneath it.
Illusionists can (and do) liken the search for phenomenological experience to the search for pixies. "But, so many people report pixies and are genuinely convinced of them!", the pixiests say - "your theory makes no sense because it explains this without any reference to pixies!" it's detractors complain. Illusionism is simple and explanatory and matches our observations. We use it's asserted mechanics, already, to make machines that behave in an intelligent way in their environments. We stumble and search for reasons that it doesn't make sense for want of a reason to deny an explanation that seems to deny something important to us and deeply personal. Something that we cannot fail but believe to be true, regardless of whether or not it is. If we can explain a thing without ever once referring to the desired article..there's a very good chance that the desired article is either not present, or not part of the explanation for the matter being discussed.
(the author of that, btw, is trying to argue -against- illusionism, while acknowledging that the illusionists are on to something..which is pretty much sop for tom right now, but struggling for this reason described above, imo)
-great big walls o text, lol. I wanted to add that pseudo-consciousness is meaningfully different from consciousness, if we choose to use those semantics. A pseudo conscious thing presents itself for all the world as a conscious thing, but is not offering an accurate report -of that-. A pseudo snake looks like a snake, acts like a snake, and says it's snake - but it's not.
Illusionists are telling us that consciousness™ appears to be produced...without any consciousness involved. We are all, ofc, invited to find the consciousness for them, if it does indeed exist and is in fact a thing that is in there somewhere, doing something.
We absolutely do not have to have phenomenological experiences to report that we do, and be convinced that we do....we just strongly believe that we do have them. Redness, in the explanation, is not the apprehension of the color red, the mental content that denotes that a red thing is in our field of view.... that's "access consciousness" or "access cognition". Redness™ is what red feels like to us as an experience. OFC we don't expect our thought to be red, but that thought is maintained to be referent and accurate with respect to where and what it points at. Illusionists contend that, just like the actual thing...the thought... is not actually red, it is not actually experiencing redness.
Phenomenological experience, in this view, is a representation of a mental state, but the content of that representation that we have access to in what we presume to be our conscious mind is not accurate with respect to what it is and isn't doing - it's accurate..rather... with respect to what is and isn't useful for the function of the machine. A useful language for organizing thought, as it were. That's just one general example - like anything else, there are different views within the view.
I want to point out here, before we go too far saying that illusionism doesn't make sense..and mention that it is the only theory of mind that is a theory in the scientific sense (which could be and probably is an accident of a moment in time and no indication that it is -the- theory of human mind). Still, the only one with observational data and experimental support behind it. If it doesn't make sense, in some strong and meaningful sense..then perhaps the operation of an organ which evolved with no conscious oversight is confused. That wouldn't be super surprising. It's only a sense organ in the sense of the five senses, any sense making that it can do ala rational sense - an afterthought or an alternate use that we'd made for it.
Illusionists believe that their task is to explain the observational data. The observational data is not redness, which we can't find anywhere...but reports of redness. The report, not it's asserted accuracy, is what they hope to explain. To that effect, one explanation is control theory, and one potential outcome of control theory is that a non-conscious machine can and will report the same sorts of things we report, and will fail to report the same sorts of things we report. The machine, for it's part, will be equally convinced of the truth of it's many reports. In fact it can't be convinced of anything else, no matter whether something else is propositionally true. It accepts it's inputs as true as a matter of course and it's output reflects that. If "redness" is "ground" and the machine is not in redness, it will report that there is no ground below it as a fact, for example. It doesn't matter if the state of redness as a proposition is false, or if there is...in fact....ground beneath it.
Illusionists can (and do) liken the search for phenomenological experience to the search for pixies. "But, so many people report pixies and are genuinely convinced of them!", the pixiests say - "your theory makes no sense because it explains this without any reference to pixies!" it's detractors complain. Illusionism is simple and explanatory and matches our observations. We use it's asserted mechanics, already, to make machines that behave in an intelligent way in their environments. We stumble and search for reasons that it doesn't make sense for want of a reason to deny an explanation that seems to deny something important to us and deeply personal. Something that we cannot fail but believe to be true, regardless of whether or not it is. If we can explain a thing without ever once referring to the desired article..there's a very good chance that the desired article is either not present, or not part of the explanation for the matter being discussed.
(the author of that, btw, is trying to argue -against- illusionism, while acknowledging that the illusionists are on to something..which is pretty much sop for tom right now, but struggling for this reason described above, imo)
-great big walls o text, lol. I wanted to add that pseudo-consciousness is meaningfully different from consciousness, if we choose to use those semantics. A pseudo conscious thing presents itself for all the world as a conscious thing, but is not offering an accurate report -of that-. A pseudo snake looks like a snake, acts like a snake, and says it's snake - but it's not.
Illusionists are telling us that consciousness™ appears to be produced...without any consciousness involved. We are all, ofc, invited to find the consciousness for them, if it does indeed exist and is in fact a thing that is in there somewhere, doing something.
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