Good read on consciousness

[The Grand Nudger]

Are we clearly experiencing anything? The problems with any statement that rests on that assertion just jump right out, I'm sure.

Not a thing - in the sense relevant to the disagreement between realism and illusionism. Both positions agree that there is a matter which they are attempting to explain. Illusions are real and can, themselves, have great power. It is not that sense of not being a thing that separates the two positions.

Realists think that there's actually some-thing- in there doing what it says it's doing, that it's reports are a meaningfully accurate description of it..as a thing. Wetness™ is real and is somehow apprehended and then experienced by a somehow conscious observer...rather than being a report of symbolic language by an information processing machine which is distributed, not a unitary observer, and of which no part is conscious..for example.

Everyone wants the illusionists mechanics - nobody wants to use the word.

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-to be thorough, emergentism (in tom) is the notion that some-thing- as above, that is meaningfully like it's own reports, arose out of these illusionists interactions of non conscious elements, in which we see nothing of those reports occurring.

We say wetness alot, but we can't find we or wetness in there, or any eye to see either if they were, and it turns out that we don't need either to explain that we keep saying wetness alot (even if that's not the right answer, ultimately). If we're going to talk about a hard problem - I'd say that's the one...not the hard problem of "I can't find the thing I strongly believe exists". In many instances, there is a very simple reason for that state of affairs.

[GrandizerII]

Are we clearly experiencing anything?  The problems with any statement that rests on that assertion just jump right out, I'm sure.

Not a thing - in the sense relevant to the disagreement between realism and illusionism.  Both positions agree that there is a matter which they are attempting to explain.  Illusions are real and can, themselves, have great power.  It is not that sense of not being a thing that separates the two positions.

Realists think that there's actually some-thing- in there doing what it says it's doing, that it's reports are a meaningfully accurate description of it..as a thing.  Wetness™ is real and is somehow apprehended and then experienced by a somehow conscious observer...rather than being a report of symbolic language by an information processing machine which is distributed, not a unitary observer, and of which no part is conscious..for example.

Everyone wants the illusionists mechanics - nobody wants to use the word.

---

-to be thorough, emergentism (in tom) is the notion that some-thing- as above, that is meaningfully like it's own reports, arose out of these illusionists interactions of non conscious elements, in which we see nothing of those reports occurring.  

We say wetness alot, but we can't find we or wetness in there, or any eye to see either if they were, and it turns out that we don't need either to explain that we keep saying wetness alot (even if that's not the right answer, ultimately).  If we're going to talk about a hard problem - I'd say that's the one...not the hard problem of "I can't find the thing I strongly believe exists".  In many instances, there is a very simple reason for that state of affairs.

This is somewhat identical to the view expressed, and more clearly explained, here:
https://aeon.co/essays/what-if-your-cons...your-brain

However, this view makes no sense to me. The author acknowledges that we experience stuff, and yet they're not really real, just [mis]representations of what goes on in our brains. Pseudo-phenomenal as opposed to truly phenomenal, despite there being no meaningful difference.

Basically, it's an attempt to describe how the brain works in a way that is trivially true, while using the confusing term "illusion", and yet failing to consider the hard problem all along (how exactly do phenomenological experiences "we" have come about). Instead, it handwaves it away and states that those experiences "we" have, they're not ... really there ... even though we have them, lol.

And the matter of the self isn't that relevant. It doesn't matter what "we" is or whether consciousness is unified or disparate or whatever, the problem is still there.

Snippet from the link above:

Second, isn’t the very idea of illusionism confused? To be under the illusion of seeing an apple is to have an experience exactly like that of seeing an apple, even though there’s no apple present. How then could we be under the illusion of having an experience? If you are having an experience exactly like a pain experience, then you are having a pain experience. As the philosopher John Searle puts it in The Mystery of Consciousness (1997), when it comes to consciousness, the appearance is the reality. This looks like a serious objection, but in fact it is easily dealt with. Properties of experiences themselves cannot be illusory in the sense described, but they can be illusory in a very similar one. When illusionists say that phenomenal properties are illusory, they mean that we have introspective representations like those that we would have if our experiences had phenomenal properties. And we can have such representations even if our experiences don’t have phenomenal properties. Of course, this assumes that the representations themselves don’t have phenomenal properties. But, as I noted, representations needn’t possess the properties they represent. Representations of redness needn’t be red, and representations of phenomenal properties needn’t be phenomenal.

Addressing the last statement in this paragraph, representations (in this context) of phenomenal properties do have to be phenomenal. The redness analogy is a bad analogy because representations of red aren't demanded by definition to be really red. Actually, maybe they are "red" by necessity, but regardless, it doesn't support the author's pov imo.

[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)

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-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.

[HappySkeptic]

Pseudo-consciousness is likely what we will create in our most advanced AI. However, we probably will be able to generate real consciousness in machines, once we understand how consciousness operates.

I largely agree with the essay. Illusionists are on to something. I am not sure about all their thoughts, despite you describing them quite well.

The hard-problem is not a problem, IMO -- it is an error in describing the issue. Yes, phenomenological zombies might be able to mimic much of what it is to be conscious. But, consciousness is a process that specifically creates a sense of self, the flow of time, imagining of the future. Consciousness is not an end in itself -- it is the tool that the brain uses to allow this mass of cells to make the most intelligent choices for our survival. We could design an AI that doesn't need consciousness. Or, we could design an AI that is conscious, and then allow its consciousness to learn. We really don't want that last one, I would guess. The conscious AI would either make mistakes (like humans), or would learn at a rate that would far surpass us. I'm not sure with is worse. (there may also be different forms of consciousness that have so far never evolved)

What is the "us" that is conscious? I guess an illusion is a valid idea. But consciousness is a process. A conscious mind perceives its own reality, because that is what the consciousness process does -- it is a watcher of itself. The qualia we perceive are high level abstractions that are the phenomenological inputs to our consciousness.

Why is there a persistent sense of self if consciousness is just a process? Well, I believe our sense of self is both real and an illusion.

It is real in the sense that our memories and previous brain wiring preserve a continuity that we see as a continuous self. There is a real brain and it produces one consciousness.

It is an illlusion in the sense that our mind is really many subsystems that, through filtering, are merged into one cohesive sense of self. Also, if we were to completely lose our memories (but not our abilities) every few minutes, could we still say that we are the same person we were yesterday? I don't think so. In fact, I'm not sure I'm that same person as yesterday in that my brain has changed since then through new experiences (and even reading this forum). Do I own this consciousness? Well, I am this consciousness so I absolutely own it in this moment, but I am not the owner of tomorrow's consciousness -- tomorrow's consciousness is.

This point of view has led me to a slightly mystical philosophy, which I won't get into in this post.

[The Grand Nudger]

Why is there a persistent sense of self if consciousness is just a process?  Well, I believe our sense of self is both real and an illusion.  

Could a persistent self exist purely because it has utility, regardless of whether it's reported contents are real or illusory? 

Could an inaccurate report of an illusory consciousness possess more utility or selective advantage for a set of tasks x or environment y, than an accurate report of a real brains operation? Could this utility be in the form of an accurate record of the environments effect on an organism - rather than an accurate record of the second by second calculations or states of it's physical system?

[GrandizerII]

Given illusionism, the issue I care most about is how does this "inaccurate report of an illusory consciousness process" (which is pretty much phenomenological, no matter how illusionists want to spin it as something else) come about via physical processes happening in the CNS? The hard problem is still there.

But the other difficulty with illusionism is that it doesn't appear to be coherent. I'm all for counterintuitive views, but this isn't just simply a violation of intuition.

You're all familiar by now with what Galen Strawson had to say about this, but if not, here's a link to his well-known article on this topic (note, behind paywall, though):
https://www.nybooks.com/daily/2018/03/13...s-deniers/

[The Grand Nudger]

Illusionism may be wrong...but it's not incoherent. In attention schema theory, it's hypothesized that the thing we call consciousness might come about in a machine or organism in the same manner and for the same reasons that a body control schema would.

It's value, in the case of organisms it's selective advantage, is not in the accuracy of the report-as-fact, but in the ability of the report to produce beneficial outcomes. IE, not die and the like. It doesn't have to be a true report of an actual state of a discreet organ or region, in order to be truly useful.

The absence of any little man, or any insistence that consciousness must be so and so, is a strnegth of the view, not a weakness...provided we're trying to explain something by what observations and data we have, first. It can't be said enough. We can't find the little man. We can't find the Other Stuff. We can't even find a unified controlling structure. Theres no cpu. The most fundamental things about this report are simply false - even if something meaningful about the report, which would make illusionism false, were true.

None of it seems to work like it feels, whatever it is, and the way it feels to be is what phenomenology is supposed to be about, what phenomenological consciousness (as opposed to access consciousness) is defined as.

[GrandizerII]

Illusionism may be wrong...but it's not incoherent.  In attention schema theory, it's hypothesized that the thing we call consciousness might come about in a machine or organism in the same manner and for the same reasons that a body control schema would.

Hypothesized, but how would you even demonstrate that, given the difficulty of doing so with other human beings?

It's value, in the case of organisms it's selective advantage, is not in the accuracy of the report-as-fact, but in the ability of the report to produce beneficial outcomes. IE, not die and the like.  It doesn't have to be a true report of an actual state of a discreet organ or region, in order to be truly useful.

Again, the problem isn't with value or practicality, it's with whether or not illusionism makes sense. My understanding so far is that illusionism states that the qualia we experience isn't real, it's a trick of the brain. If this is a proper description, then this is stupid, because the fact that we experience it is what makes it real. It may not be real in the sense that physical objects are real (whereby we're able to see those from a second/third-person-perspective), but it is real in the sense that we can each directly experience our respective consciousness from first-person-perspective, and it is real in a way that is different from how physical objects are real.

The absence of any little man, or any insistence that consciousness must be so and so, is a strnegth of the view, not a weakness...provided we're trying to explain something by what observations and data we have, first.  It can't be said enough.  We can't find the little man.  We can't find the Other Stuff.  We can't even find a unified controlling structure.  Theres no cpu.  The most fundamental things about this report are simply false - even if something meaningful about the report, which would make illusionism false, were true.

There's no "little man" to see. You experience the qualia, you don't see it. Unless you're a p-zombie, of course.

[Jehanne]

That our brains create our minds (hence, no brain, no mind) is the simplest explanation of reality.

Perhaps so, but this view nevertheless does not deal with the hard problem very well, and so despite explanatory strengths that may come with the emergentist view, the fact that this view has no conceivable (atm) solution for the hard problem while other views regarding the mind do (apparently) suggests that perhaps we may need to reconsider the soundness of this view.

In my opinion, the hard problem is like a Cosmos that had no beginning.  It's a paradox, and one that may simply be unknown and unknowable, but, nevertheless, at the same time it's reality.  I cannot comprehend Broca's Aphasia, and yet, numerous examples of such are occurring each and every day.  One cannot experience the loss of language while at the same time articulate what it feels like not being able to speak or comprehend speech.

[The Grand Nudger]

Illusionism may be wrong...but it's not incoherent.  In attention schema theory, it's hypothesized that the thing we call consciousness might come about in a machine or organism in the same manner and for the same reasons that a body control schema would.

Hypothesized, but how would you even demonstrate that, given the difficulty of doing so with other human beings?

Demonstrating existent and evolved control schemas in organisms (and human organisms) is trivially easy.  That part isn't hypothesis, it's an observed feature that drives well understood behaviors which we build into machines for commercial application.  We try all sorts of things to figure this stuff out.  Mind altering substances and stimuli, physical interruption (ie, snip snip until someone wholly loses the experience of x), mental interference (attention exhaustion tests).  As I mentioned before - this thing that you think makes no sense has observational data and experimental support.  ASTm specifically, is an evolutionary theory of the mechanics of the report - and it's maintained by some that if the mechanics can be described without ever finding or needing to refer to this phenomenological experience stuff...maybe it's not there, no matter how much we insist.  Assuming we did find that tomorrow and some other explanation became available - it would still be a valid and productive theory for how a non conscious machine could appear to observers and to the machine itself, to be conscious, as well as how lower organism™ without that thing we find manage to produce similar behaviors.

Otoh, insisting that a description is wrong because it doesn't include some asserted thing, rather than for it being an inaccurate description of the process which generates the effect, is wrong headed. The famous "I see you've left no place for god in your model" quote comes to mind. The illusionists are suggesting that they don't need the ghost to explain why we think it exists, no more than a magician needs magic to explain pulling a rabbit from a hat. Hence, illusionism. That it is one thing with a very real set of properties a, inaccurately representing itself as another thing with an illusory set of properties b.

Again, the problem isn't with value or practicality, it's with whether or not illusionism makes sense. My understanding so far is that illusionism states that the qualia we experience isn't real, it's a trick of the brain. If this is a proper description, then this is stupid, because the fact that we experience it is what makes it real. It may not be real in the sense that physical objects are real (whereby we're able to see those from a second/third-person-perspective), but it is real in the sense that we can each directly experience our respective consciousness from first-person-perspective, and it is real in a way that is different from how physical objects are real.

Then there's no problem, because it does make sense. If it's not real in the sense that physical objects are real, then all forms of realism are false and illusionism is true by fiat. First person perspetive, part of the illusion. There's no person in there to posess a perspective, and feel what it;s like to have perspective - though there very much is a perspective apparatus in access cognition that swirls around the instantiation of the associated sense organs. We see from "our eyes" the kinds of things our eyes would see (and things that aren't there, and sometimes we fail to see the kinds of things we normally would which are), not another persons eyes, for fairly obvious reasons.

There's no "little man" to see. You experience the qualia, you don't see it. Unless you're a p-zombie, of course.

The "you", is the little man™, and you invoked it a few words after you said there wasn't one.  That, doesn't make sense.  Ultimately, though, this may boil down to problems with semantics and how talking about these things with words based on folklore in ignorance of the operation of the brain creates the appearance of issues where none exist. There is nothing wrong with suggesting that our brains are unconscious machines from start to finish. Illusionism doesn't change anything about you. Knowing how the sausage is made doesn't change the sausage or stop us from eating it. Rather than insisting that it doesn't make sense, or that it cannot possibly be true because reports of consciousness just must be [insert your anecdotal report of the operation of your own brain here]...can you explain why you think that even if it did make sense and is possible..it isn't true?

Any assertion that leans on a you experiencing something would first need to provide the you - and it would be an additional step to show that whatever this you was were actually capable of the full list of phenomenological experiences it reports. Let me ask you this, suppose that we fnd something even remotely close and..for the most part, things are real and do work as described - but we find a few reports of phenomenological experience that we have reason to believe the organism would be incapable of genuinely reporting? Which is to say..sure, real us, with real experiences, but we physically -couldn't- be having this set of experiences that we, nevertheless, report. What then? Would we just say.."well..it's just the one, or two, or twenty, or profligate billions. These others are still legit and we don't suspect them at all."

I'd just love to push this over the "does it make sense" hump, you know? That way we can say what we think about an idea x isn't or may not be true. For example, within realism, between emergentism and dualism - I think that dualism is false..because we can't find any other stuff, haven't needed any other stuff as of yet, and would include whatever stuff could interact with brain stuff as The Same Stuff even if it were new unknown stuff (at present).

Between emergentism and pan-psychism, a much finer distinction than the above, I trend towards emergentism - I do believe that any organization of matter which is meaningfully and functionally equivalent to a brain should be able to do brain stuff, no matter what kind of stuff it is - but I note that not all arrangements of matter are equivalent in ability or potential function. I don't think that it's possible for a dust cloud to be conscious, no matter how many gajillions of particles of dirt are arranged in a complex pattern (or incredibly useful arbitrary). I would personally expect to find consciousness wherever it could exist - for it to be relatively common - if it's a natural phenomenon - but not ubiquitous.

As for illusionism - I'll criticize AST specifically. If reports of consciousness are a matter of useful illusions - and if we should expect to find them because we should expect to find utility in the cognition of successful organisms - then I can think of a whole hell of alot more useful delusions than any of us possess. Why don't we find those? I know, to some extent, that proponents of the theory can point to novel mental states and strange outliers that would satisfy - but as an evolutionary theory centered on the utility of the very thing, we're either just at the dawn of consciousness on this planet on a wider scale (with a baseline assembled but many useful states still the sole possession of particular genetic line not well represented in the popultion as of yet).....or...something is amiss.