Christianity is heading for a full allegorization

[emjay]

First thing's first, no offence mate, but I don't think I can handle this conversation twice over, so if it's okay with you, can we keep this interlude brief? These sorts of conversations take a lot out of me, and I didn't realise how hard it would be to explain what to me is a perfectly simple and intuitive concept.


Beyond what I've said to polymath, I don't know how to answer this. Conscious experience is just something that is evident and different from nothing... there's the perception of something, anything. Even if you go deep down to the rawest level of it... forget colours or any other specific qualia, there is just at the very least the perception of change... there is something say over here on your visual field that is different from something over there... or change of perceptions over time. There is something there... that requires an explanation. And sure you can pretend it doesn't exist or write it off as an illusion, but I don't think that's helpful. I'm open to it being an illusion in some sense, but in the main sense of awareness of something, anything, of change, of time... of something different than nothing, it's not an illusion; there is something there needing an explanation. So I don't know what to say really; if you truly think it's possible to doubt the presence of your own conscious experience, then have at it if it helps you sleep at night, but I don't think there's anywhere for us to go in conversation.

But, again, if a zombie is physically identical to a conscious person, they would *also* perceive differences in their visual field. They would still react to pain. They would still be awed by a sunset.

What ese is required to be conscious?

They would ?perceive? them physically, in the sense of all the physical interactions and changes that correspond with it, both inside the brain and outside of it with the environment. But even using the word perceive there still doesn't feel quite right to me; to you it seems perception means information processing in a certain way, which is both the low level description in terms of the purely physical interactions in the environment and brain, and a higher abstract level of description at the level of information or processes... basically an aggregate or summary level of description, which consciousness could in some sense be said to be.

It's a bit of a paradox for me; on the one hand I appreciate the analogy of a computer when looking at the concept of different levels of description being one and the same thing... ie at the lowest level you have the physics and matter, through storing only zeroes and ones, then through progressive layers of abstraction and transformation... just as neurons in the brain hierarchically transform and abstract information... through low level languages, to high level languages, all the way up to the 'shiny', to use a similar metaphor to the one you guys have been using, bells and whistles of a multimedia experience on your computer. But as useful as that analogy in showing the identity/equivalence of different levels of description, I still feel it misses the mark somehow where it comes to consciousness. On the one hand, all the levels of abstraction there are equally physical and represented by the same underlying physical state, but on the other, the bells and whistles of a computer (in this case ultimately represented physically by a screen with LEDs in a certain configuration of electrical activation as part of this computer system), still seem to require an outside observer/perceiver to have any meaning.

So I guess my question is this; in the case of a running computer, in the absence of an observer to give it meaning, in your opinion what sort of existence do those abstract levels of information/processing have? Granted I accept that that computer analogy, though good for elucidating identity of different levels of description, might not be the best basis for asking about consciousness, since a) it's not assumed to be conscious itself, and b) the interaction of observer observing any level of it from the outside, is not, necessarily, the same thing as it being perceived from the inside as it were... not sure either way on that. But if the computer analogy is bad here, I'll just try and apply it to the brain itself; you have the underlying physical state, and then through the complex, dynamic, and ever-changing structure and connectivity of the brain, neurons do what they do best and encapsulate, abstract, and transform information... many to one relationships of neurons allowing complexity of information represented to increase exponentially. But where do you draw the line, where phenomenal consciousness is concerned? Any of those levels of abstraction could be considered information by an outside observer, but I think it's fair to assume that not all abstractions/information in the brain, nor levels of those abstractions, become what we think of as phenomenally conscious, so given that lack of a one-to-one correspondence between information processing and subjective phenomenal awareness - not just selectively in the brain but also in say the computer example, where there is information processing and abstraction, but not even assumed subjective phenomenal awareness.

I'll answer the bottom bit first... how can you have 2 without 1? Because the brain and body is a physical system that obeys the laws of physics, and it's my contention that everything in consciousness has a neural representation, and therefore to the extent that consciousness is some sort of mirror/emergent property of the brain and/or its information processing, it only represents what is already represented neurally in the brain, and is therefore seemingly superfluous, dragged along for the ride as it were, but with no causal power of its own... a sideshow as it were. So it's my contention that it's at least theoretically possible for there to be such thing as a PZ; something that ticks along as the physical and biological machine that it is, but without that sideshow. It's not that I believe PZ's are definitively a thing, and as I said there'd be no way to detect one anyway even if they did exist, but more that I can't rule them out as a logical possibility. Ie in my view, there's nothing about the brain that necessitates the presence of phenomenal consciousness, therefore making it seem superfluous, and therefore making the possibility of its lack something I can't rule out.

And that seems, to me, to be similar to saying you can have molecular motions and temperature is superfluous and 'carried along for the ride'. There could be no 'actual temeprature' even though everything is identical.

That makes no sense to me.

I would say the difference is in perspective, like for that computer analogy above, you saying molecular motions and temperature are identical, just different levels of description of the same thing, makes perfect sense just as it does for that computer example... it makes sense for anything we can objectively observe in the physical world... but those assigned meanings come from an outside perspective looking in, which to me seems to be a categorically different thing from what we're trying to explain which is subjective phenomenal awareness. Ie using your example, the molecular motions would be the underlying physical state, and temperature or any other informational interpretations/abstractions, at any level of description, would be akin to the different types and levels of processing in a computer, but from the outside, none of them saying anything about, as Thomas Nagel would put it, what it's like to be any of those states. Indeed for most of them we don't think there is anything that it is like to be them... not temperature, not the different levels of informational processing in a normal computer... but for one thing in the entire universe, we do think there is something it is like to be it, and that is subjective phenomenal awareness... consciousness. Basically it just seems to be a different thing that 'mere' information processing/abstraction alone cannot encapsulate.

As to the experience of the PZ... for one thing it wouldn't have experience, but it would still have the same neural representations as one that did... so if you asked it a question, it would still receive the same audio signals and process them in the same way, just not hear them as a phenomenal experience of sound, it would still neurally trigger the same memories, just not experience them in the mind's eye, because it has no mind's eye, it would still trigger the same brain areas involved in say planning and language, and the motor neurons involved in turning all of that into the behaviour of speaking to reply. As to the purely unprompted introspective... if the conscious can do it, so should the PZ, and again I see no reason why not; the brain is basically a black box, deeper than just direct inputs and outputs... as the behaviourists (hopefully) learnt long ago... ie we have a whole mental life ticking along under the hood (daydreaming, planning etc), not directly conditioned by external stimuli... and I'd contend that those processes involved in that are no different... they have their own neural representations to be activated, and do not require phenomenal consciousness. So in my view the PZ would daydream in the sense that it activates all the relevant neural representations, but it would not daydream in the sense of actually experiencing the phenomena of a daydream.

OK, I simply don't see that as possible. If your brain daydreams, so do you.

I guess at this point, I see it as a reductio ad absurdum in about the same ways as solipsism is an absurdity. It isn't a *logical* absurdity: it is logically possible I am the only thing in the universe and everything else is an illusion.

But the concept is still absurd.

Is it logically possible that I am the only conscious thing in the universe and everyone else is a zombie? Yes. It is logically possible.

But it is still absurd.

Don't get me wrong, I wish I could see it as you... and presumably GN also... do, that phenomenal consciousness is the absolute and inextricable complement of certain underlying physical configurations of matter, ie the neural correlates of consciousness, as well as the different levels and types of information processing/abstraction it represents. In practice I certainly have a similar, identity- ie mirror- based view of the brain and consciousness, but I just cannot take the same leap that you guys have taken to consider them completely inseparable from each other, even conceptually/hypothetically. I accept that that may be largely due to 'dualist baggage' distorting my view, but I've said that from the start. Put it this way, I'm still having great trouble wrapping my head around the Buddhist idea of non-self... it's not the same thing as this I know but it does similarly require fighting against deep dualist intuitions about the nature of the self and consciousness. I guess maybe I have been arguing the 'zombie argument' against physicalism all along without realising it, inasmuch as having these dualist assumptions that there is something fundamentally different between subjective experience and physical reality, the seemingly immaterial and material to put it bluntly. I guess to you, there is no distinction; subjective experience is just as much a part of physics as material reality? It's food for thought for me, and always has been, so please don't think I don't respect your/that viewpoint, it's just something that let's say from a Buddhist point of view, requires 'deep penetration' to truly understand and internalise, something I have not yet done, but maybe in the future I'll come round to that viewpoint.

[The Grand Nudger]

I think attention seems non physical to us or at least some of us because it isn't collecting the necessary information about itself to inform us otherwise. It's job or function is to attend operations, it's not the body model - anfd in the process of doing that job and by reference to the information it does have access to it can seem very different from other things. We cn move it around inside of us, or even send it out into other places..real and imagined. We grasp (or most of us grasp) that we aren't actually going to those places, arent actually moving into our toes or moving into our fingertips. The body model "seems physical" though, huh? Here again, I think, on account of the fact that it is (and explicitly is) collecting that information.

I chuckle a little everytime I hear someone start talking about how, in future, we'll have simulated entities in our robots. Already one living rent free in my head. No matter what we are, and no matter how we are produced, and regardless of whether there's one stuff or two stuffs or just one but it's really the Other stuff.....we can already definitively say that consciousness is not exactly what it purports itself to be, and doesn't actually have the abilities it seems to.

[polymath257]

But, again, if a zombie is physically identical to a conscious person, they would *also* perceive differences in their visual field. They would still react to pain. They would still be awed by a sunset.

What ese is required to be conscious?

They would ?perceive? them physically, in the sense of all the physical interactions and changes that correspond with it, both inside the brain and outside of it with the environment. But even using the word perceive there still doesn't feel quite right to me; to you it seems perception means information processing in a certain way, which is both the low level description in terms of the purely physical interactions in the environment and brain, and a higher abstract level of description at the level of information or processes... basically an aggregate or summary level of description, which consciousness could in some sense be said to be.

It's a bit of a paradox for me; on the one hand I appreciate the analogy of a computer when looking at the concept of different levels of description being one and the same thing... ie at the lowest level you have the physics and matter, through storing only zeroes and ones, then through progressive layers of abstraction and transformation... just as neurons in the brain hierarchically transform and abstract information... through low level languages, to high level languages, all the way up to the 'shiny', to use a similar metaphor to the one you guys have been using, bells and whistles of a multimedia experience on your computer. But as useful as that analogy in showing the identity/equivalence of different levels of description, I still feel it misses the mark somehow where it comes to consciousness. On the one hand, all the levels of abstraction there are equally physical and represented by the same underlying physical state, but on the other, the bells and whistles of a computer (in this case ultimately represented physically by a screen with LEDs in a certain configuration of electrical activation as part of this computer system), still seem to require an outside observer/perceiver to have any meaning.

So I guess my question is this; in the case of a running computer, in the absence of an observer to give it meaning, in your opinion what sort of existence do those abstract levels of information/processing have? Granted I accept that that computer analogy, though good for elucidating identity of different levels of description, might not be the best basis for asking about consciousness, since a) it's not assumed to be conscious itself, and b) the interaction of observer observing any level of it from the outside, is not, necessarily, the same thing as it being perceived from the inside as it were... not sure either way on that. But if the computer analogy is bad here, I'll just try and apply it to the brain itself; you have the underlying physical state, and then through the complex, dynamic, and ever-changing structure and connectivity of the brain, neurons do what they do best and encapsulate, abstract, and transform information... many to one relationships of neurons allowing complexity of information represented to increase exponentially. But where do you draw the line, where phenomenal consciousness is concerned? Any of those levels of abstraction could be considered information by an outside observer, but I think it's fair to assume that not all abstractions/information in the brain, nor levels of those abstractions, become what we think of as phenomenally conscious, so given that lack of a one-to-one correspondence between information processing and subjective phenomenal awareness - not just selectively in the brain but also in say the computer example, where there is information processing and abstraction, but not even assumed subjective phenomenal awareness.

The computer analogy is bad mainly because a computer doesn't interact with the environment to meet conditions for survival.

Suppose instead that we have a robot that must supply itself with fuel found int he environment. It has to deal with challenges from that environment to do so and the computer
that is processing the data has to react to a wide variety of different situations.

Yes, at a certain level of complexity, I would say that robot is conscious. it has to get information from the environment, use that information to 'make decisions' and react appropriately.

When it comes across a piece of information that is relevant to its goal (getting fuel), that piece of information is *meaningful* to that robot.

This is in the same way that detection of a chemical is meaningful to a bacterium and it responds by moving closer or farther away from it.

It seems to me that the line is crossed into phenomenological consciousness when an internal state is compared to incoming information in a continuous way.

And that seems, to me, to be similar to saying you can have molecular motions and temperature is superfluous and 'carried along for the ride'. There could be no 'actual temeprature' even though everything is identical.

That makes no sense to me.

I would say the difference is in perspective, like for that computer analogy above, you saying molecular motions and temperature are identical, just different levels of description of the same thing, makes perfect sense just as it does for that computer example... it makes sense for anything we can objectively observe in the physical world... but those assigned meanings come from an outside perspective looking in, which to me seems to be a categorically different thing from what we're trying to explain which is subjective phenomenal awareness. Ie using your example, the molecular motions would be the underlying physical state, and temperature or any other informational interpretations/abstractions, at any level of description, would be akin to the different types and levels of processing in a computer, but from the outside, none of them saying anything about, as Thomas Nagel would put it, what it's like to be any of those states. Indeed for most of them we don't think there is anything that it is like to be them... not temperature, not the different levels of informational processing in a normal computer... but for one thing in the entire universe, we do think there is something it is like to be it, and that is subjective phenomenal awareness... consciousness. Basically it just seems to be a different thing that 'mere' information processing/abstraction alone cannot encapsulate.

Well, one of the reasons biological entities have 'goals' is that they are programmed for survival. That means they have to evaluate information from the environment and determine how it relates to survival (and reproduction). That is where meaning ultimately comes from  initially, I think.

As for the 'what it is like'; no single molecule has a temperature. The concept of temperature only makes sense in systems of molecules. In the same way, only certain types of neural networks would have the feedback necessary to maintain an analysis of an internal state. The evaluation of the internal state is 'what it is like' to be in that state.

So, for example, it is pretty clear that a bacterium doesn't maintain a subsystem modeling its internal state and using that model to determine what it does next. But, for example, a dog clearly does. So the dog is conscious and the bacterium is not.

Again, it seems like an information processing issue and not something beyond what is physical.

OK, I simply don't see that as possible. If your brain daydreams, so do you.

I guess at this point, I see it as a reductio ad absurdum in about the same ways as solipsism is an absurdity. It isn't a *logical* absurdity: it is logically possible I am the only thing in the universe and everything else is an illusion.

But the concept is still absurd.

Is it logically possible that I am the only conscious thing in the universe and everyone else is a zombie? Yes. It is logically possible.

But it is still absurd.

Don't get me wrong, I wish I could see it as you... and presumably GN also... do, that phenomenal consciousness is the absolute and inextricable complement of certain underlying physical configurations of matter, ie the neural correlates of consciousness, as well as the different levels and types of information processing/abstraction it represents. In practice I certainly have a similar, identity- ie mirror- based view of the brain and consciousness, but I just cannot take the same leap that you guys have taken to consider them completely inseparable from each other, even conceptually/hypothetically. I accept that that may be largely due to 'dualist baggage' distorting my view, but I've said that from the start. Put it this way, I'm still having great trouble wrapping my head around the Buddhist idea of non-self... it's not the same thing as this I know but it does similarly require fighting against deep dualist intuitions about the nature of the self and consciousness. I guess maybe I have been arguing the 'zombie argument' against physicalism all along without realising it, inasmuch as having these dualist assumptions that there is something fundamentally different between subjective experience and physical reality, the seemingly immaterial and material to put it bluntly. I guess to you, there is no distinction; subjective experience is just as much a part of physics as material reality? It's food for thought for me, and always has been, so please don't think I don't respect your/that viewpoint, it's just something that let's say from a Buddhist point of view, requires 'deep penetration' to truly understand and internalise, something I have not yet done, but maybe in the future I'll come round to that viewpoint.

And I respect your contributions here. it is always interesting to see alternative viewpoints in these matters.

Ultimately, it boils down to what I would consider to be an 'explanation' of consciousness. And, I would be satisfied by a translation process between neural correlates and conscious states that is predictive and reasonably universal. I'm ok with some flexibility around the edges (just like with temperature), and I admit there may be borderline cases (is a plant conscious? how about an earthworm?).

I guess if we have that, I see no need to postulate a dualistic metaphysics since all that we can observe is explained.

[The Grand Nudger]

Well, one of the reasons biological entities have 'goals' is that they are programmed for survival. That means they have to evaluate information from the environment and determine how it relates to survival (and reproduction). That is where meaning ultimately comes from  initially, I think.

What I think is super cool..is that we can see biology working it's way "up" to that, and it sure as hell seems heritable.  Some early (and some still extant) behaviors were produced by a photoreceptor hard wired to motors. The photoreceptor is excited and that energy fires the motor.  Positively brilliant in a universe full of stars.  The would probably work just as well in space as it does in our oceans.  Everything always thrusting towards the nearest detectable light source.  Dead reckoning, no programming required.

Then we see signal inversion layered on top - so that instead of always moving towards a light, it moves away from anything blocking light.  Now you have a way to hunt for food and evade predation.  
Entie clades that develope specilized tissue for these sorts of arrangements, and more and more and more of it, until you end up with nerves, and then a central system, and so on and so forth until you have us.  Effectively, astronauts in our own little windowless eva suits - using the same sorts of setups to create a picture of not only our external world, which we navigate - but also of our internal world, which we rely on to accomplish that task.

Plants do it one better with simpler apparatus. Their growth hormone is photophobic. No moving parts, masters of organic chemistry. Apparently, they never had any particular use for going down the route we went - and things like a costly and irreplaceable organ isn't great for immobile whatsits, anyway. Can't run away to keep from losing a chunk - so you poison them or reward their predators instead - effectively modifying some other creatures behavior (even entire species).

It gets even weirdier. Jellyfish that are nothing -but- nerves attached to a jet propulsion system.

[emjay]

They would ?perceive? them physically, in the sense of all the physical interactions and changes that correspond with it, both inside the brain and outside of it with the environment. But even using the word perceive there still doesn't feel quite right to me; to you it seems perception means information processing in a certain way, which is both the low level description in terms of the purely physical interactions in the environment and brain, and a higher abstract level of description at the level of information or processes... basically an aggregate or summary level of description, which consciousness could in some sense be said to be.

It's a bit of a paradox for me; on the one hand I appreciate the analogy of a computer when looking at the concept of different levels of description being one and the same thing... ie at the lowest level you have the physics and matter, through storing only zeroes and ones, then through progressive layers of abstraction and transformation... just as neurons in the brain hierarchically transform and abstract information... through low level languages, to high level languages, all the way up to the 'shiny', to use a similar metaphor to the one you guys have been using, bells and whistles of a multimedia experience on your computer. But as useful as that analogy in showing the identity/equivalence of different levels of description, I still feel it misses the mark somehow where it comes to consciousness. On the one hand, all the levels of abstraction there are equally physical and represented by the same underlying physical state, but on the other, the bells and whistles of a computer (in this case ultimately represented physically by a screen with LEDs in a certain configuration of electrical activation as part of this computer system), still seem to require an outside observer/perceiver to have any meaning.

So I guess my question is this; in the case of a running computer, in the absence of an observer to give it meaning, in your opinion what sort of existence do those abstract levels of information/processing have? Granted I accept that that computer analogy, though good for elucidating identity of different levels of description, might not be the best basis for asking about consciousness, since a) it's not assumed to be conscious itself, and b) the interaction of observer observing any level of it from the outside, is not, necessarily, the same thing as it being perceived from the inside as it were... not sure either way on that. But if the computer analogy is bad here, I'll just try and apply it to the brain itself; you have the underlying physical state, and then through the complex, dynamic, and ever-changing structure and connectivity of the brain, neurons do what they do best and encapsulate, abstract, and transform information... many to one relationships of neurons allowing complexity of information represented to increase exponentially. But where do you draw the line, where phenomenal consciousness is concerned? Any of those levels of abstraction could be considered information by an outside observer, but I think it's fair to assume that not all abstractions/information in the brain, nor levels of those abstractions, become what we think of as phenomenally conscious, so given that lack of a one-to-one correspondence between information processing and subjective phenomenal awareness - not just selectively in the brain but also in say the computer example, where there is information processing and abstraction, but not even assumed subjective phenomenal awareness.

The computer analogy is bad mainly because a computer doesn't interact with the environment to meet conditions for survival.

Suppose instead that we have a robot that must supply itself with fuel found int he environment. It has to deal with challenges from that environment to do so and the computer
that is processing the data has to react to a wide variety of different situations.

Yes, at a certain level of complexity, I would say that robot is conscious. it has to get information from the environment, use that information to 'make decisions' and react appropriately.

When it comes across a piece of information that is relevant to its goal (getting fuel), that piece of information is *meaningful* to that robot.

This is in the same way that detection of a chemical is meaningful to a bacterium and it responds by moving closer or farther away from it.

It seems to me that the line is crossed into phenomenological consciousness when an internal state is compared to incoming information in a continuous way.

I would say the difference is in perspective, like for that computer analogy above, you saying molecular motions and temperature are identical, just different levels of description of the same thing, makes perfect sense just as it does for that computer example... it makes sense for anything we can objectively observe in the physical world... but those assigned meanings come from an outside perspective looking in, which to me seems to be a categorically different thing from what we're trying to explain which is subjective phenomenal awareness. Ie using your example, the molecular motions would be the underlying physical state, and temperature or any other informational interpretations/abstractions, at any level of description, would be akin to the different types and levels of processing in a computer, but from the outside, none of them saying anything about, as Thomas Nagel would put it, what it's like to be any of those states. Indeed for most of them we don't think there is anything that it is like to be them... not temperature, not the different levels of informational processing in a normal computer... but for one thing in the entire universe, we do think there is something it is like to be it, and that is subjective phenomenal awareness... consciousness. Basically it just seems to be a different thing that 'mere' information processing/abstraction alone cannot encapsulate.

Well, one of the reasons biological entities have 'goals' is that they are programmed for survival. That means they have to evaluate information from the environment and determine how it relates to survival (and reproduction). That is where meaning ultimately comes from  initially, I think.

As for the 'what it is like'; no single molecule has a temperature. The concept of temperature only makes sense in systems of molecules. In the same way, only certain types of neural networks would have the feedback necessary to maintain an analysis of an internal state. The evaluation of the internal state is 'what it is like' to be in that state.

So, for example, it is pretty clear that a bacterium doesn't maintain a subsystem modeling its internal state and using that model to determine what it does next. But, for example, a dog clearly does. So the dog is conscious and the bacterium is not.

Again, it seems like an information processing issue and not something beyond what is physical.

Don't get me wrong, I wish I could see it as you... and presumably GN also... do, that phenomenal consciousness is the absolute and inextricable complement of certain underlying physical configurations of matter, ie the neural correlates of consciousness, as well as the different levels and types of information processing/abstraction it represents. In practice I certainly have a similar, identity- ie mirror- based view of the brain and consciousness, but I just cannot take the same leap that you guys have taken to consider them completely inseparable from each other, even conceptually/hypothetically. I accept that that may be largely due to 'dualist baggage' distorting my view, but I've said that from the start. Put it this way, I'm still having great trouble wrapping my head around the Buddhist idea of non-self... it's not the same thing as this I know but it does similarly require fighting against deep dualist intuitions about the nature of the self and consciousness. I guess maybe I have been arguing the 'zombie argument' against physicalism all along without realising it, inasmuch as having these dualist assumptions that there is something fundamentally different between subjective experience and physical reality, the seemingly immaterial and material to put it bluntly. I guess to you, there is no distinction; subjective experience is just as much a part of physics as material reality? It's food for thought for me, and always has been, so please don't think I don't respect your/that viewpoint, it's just something that let's say from a Buddhist point of view, requires 'deep penetration' to truly understand and internalise, something I have not yet done, but maybe in the future I'll come round to that viewpoint.

And I respect your contributions here. it is always interesting to see alternative viewpoints in these matters.

Ultimately, it boils down to what I would consider to be an 'explanation' of consciousness. And, I would be satisfied by a translation process between neural correlates and conscious states that is predictive and reasonably universal. I'm ok with some flexibility around the edges (just like with temperature), and I admit there may be borderline cases (is a plant conscious? how about an earthworm?).

I guess if we have that, I see no need to postulate a dualistic metaphysics since all that we can observe is explained.

This seems like a natural stopping point for the conversation if that's okay with you? In these long conversations I'm just not very good at either disengaging or pacing myself, so just in the space of writing in this thread over the last few days, I've managed to get myself totally out of sync and barely sleeping, so I really need to disengage, relax, and chill... just go back to reading rather than partaking... til the next time.

But I think we're at the point where we understand each other now, and as I said I appreciate your viewpoint as expressed, especially in this post, but also throughout our conversation, and also like I said, it's definitely food for thought. I really mean that. So yeah, thanks for the chat and the insight

[polymath257]

The computer analogy is bad mainly because a computer doesn't interact with the environment to meet conditions for survival.

Suppose instead that we have a robot that must supply itself with fuel found int he environment. It has to deal with challenges from that environment to do so and the computer
that is processing the data has to react to a wide variety of different situations.

Yes, at a certain level of complexity, I would say that robot is conscious. it has to get information from the environment, use that information to 'make decisions' and react appropriately.

When it comes across a piece of information that is relevant to its goal (getting fuel), that piece of information is *meaningful* to that robot.

This is in the same way that detection of a chemical is meaningful to a bacterium and it responds by moving closer or farther away from it.

It seems to me that the line is crossed into phenomenological consciousness when an internal state is compared to incoming information in a continuous way.

Well, one of the reasons biological entities have 'goals' is that they are programmed for survival. That means they have to evaluate information from the environment and determine how it relates to survival (and reproduction). That is where meaning ultimately comes from  initially, I think.

As for the 'what it is like'; no single molecule has a temperature. The concept of temperature only makes sense in systems of molecules. In the same way, only certain types of neural networks would have the feedback necessary to maintain an analysis of an internal state. The evaluation of the internal state is 'what it is like' to be in that state.

So, for example, it is pretty clear that a bacterium doesn't maintain a subsystem modeling its internal state and using that model to determine what it does next. But, for example, a dog clearly does. So the dog is conscious and the bacterium is not.

Again, it seems like an information processing issue and not something beyond what is physical.


And I respect your contributions here. it is always interesting to see alternative viewpoints in these matters.

Ultimately, it boils down to what I would consider to be an 'explanation' of consciousness. And, I would be satisfied by a translation process between neural correlates and conscious states that is predictive and reasonably universal. I'm ok with some flexibility around the edges (just like with temperature), and I admit there may be borderline cases (is a plant conscious? how about an earthworm?).

I guess if we have that, I see no need to postulate a dualistic metaphysics since all that we can observe is explained.

This seems like a natural stopping point for the conversation if that's okay with you? In these long conversations I'm just not very good at either disengaging or pacing myself, so just in the space of writing in this thread over the last few days, I've managed to get myself totally out of sync and barely sleeping, so I really need to disengage, relax, and chill... just go back to reading rather than partaking... til the next time.

But I think we're at the point where we understand each other now, and as I said I appreciate your viewpoint as expressed, especially in this post, but also throughout our conversation, and also like I said, it's definitely food for thought. I really mean that. So yeah, thanks for the chat and the insight

And thank you. It was interesting.

[Ferrocyanide]

Consciousness entails:

1) Awareness of "now" experience.
2) Imagining potential or past experiences.
3) Awareness of making choices.
4) A sense of self, to keep the self living.

Where does the self "awareness" come from?  One could imaging a p-zombie making predictions and making choices.  Trained AI does it all the time.

Consciousness exists because it is likely the only way nature could come up with to do the above 4 things.  It likely requires a particular mode of operation.  If we can understand the mode of operation, it would be possible to replicate.  Then, our AI robot would also be conscious.

One could create an AI that doesn't have this mode of operation, yet still does some tasks very well.  I would argue that it likely wouldn't have a sense of self, or be as flexible in its thinking.

I was thinking about the Evolution side as well. How did it come about? Is it useful?
For example, if a dog doesn't have the same level of consciousness as we do, then our consciousness isn't unnecessary.
Same situation for an insect.
As for bacteria, yeast, plants, they don't have consciousness.

(**I imagine that a dog has a consciousness that is very close to ours.
Insects would be a very low order of consciousness.
Something like that. I'm not 100% sure how to define consciousness).

I imagine that nature came up with it as an accident. It did not interfere with the operation of the animal. Maybe there were some benefits attached to consciousness such as good visual and audio processing, good memory access and remembering past problems and solutions.

For example, some people are really good at composing poetry and music. It's not really useful for survival but it is a byproduct.
Humans are just using their thought patterns to create entertainment. Maybe they do it to impress themselves and to impress others but it is mostly a waste of joules.



Some science documentaries have said that maybe the universe created us to understand itself.
I say, no. It is just a byproduct of curiosity. Curiosity can help the creature to look around for food, it makes a mental 3D map of its environment, it remembers where his home is.

[GrandizerII]

If I ask you to ponder whether you experience things or not, wouldn't you know that you are? You're seeing the words on this screen, right? The color, the font, and all. You're seeing the screen. It's all out there in your face.

Yes, I feel like I am experiencing things and experiencing things is used as evidence by me to conclude that I am experiencing things, that I have consciousness.
That evidence is not accessible to you.
So, I know what you are talking about.

I'm pretty sure you do. I'm not a solipsist, lol.

The most a zombie can do, on the other hand, is state - or even believe - that they do experience things, but they wouldn't really know it because they lack that intimate acquaintance with such experiences. There is nothing out there in their face. Now you might not be able to tell if the other person is a zombie or a conscious being since perhaps they still give you the same response no matter what. But from your perspective, you have the intimate acquaintance with your experiences, so you would know that you are indeed experiencing things.

Yes, you're the judge of yourself. And the zombie is the judge of their self. You would be correct in your judgement, but the zombie would have no idea what they're saying when they report having experiences, or they're thinking of a different sense of the word "experience", one that they can fathom. As an example of the latter sense, a rock in a river experiencing the splash of water against it. The rock most probably doesn't have a visual field or a first-person perspective. It's just interactions.

There is this assumption that it is possible to make a perfect copy of a human, where every atom is in the right place yet it is lacking the “soul”.
And you are calling that the zombie.
Why do you think that it is possible to have an atomic copy of a human that is lacking the consciousness, the soul?

I don't see anything incoherent about it, so it's not logically impossible. After all, consciousness is not one and the same with the arrangement of atoms.

The other issue that I think polymath257 was trying to raise is that maybe your senses are fooling you. Maybe your experiences are insufficient and you don’t qualify to get the certificate of “This pile of atoms has consciousness”. Maybe no human is qualified to get that certificate.

What does it mean for my experiences to be insufficent? If it's out there in my face, it's an experience I'm having. And that's all that takes to know I'm having an experience. Sure, I could be vividly seeing more stuff than I am right now, but I'm still vividly seeing stuff.

Anyway, such objection doesn't show that a zombie is incoherent, only that you can't infallibly know if someone else is a zombie or not.

It depends. First, you have to know what you are looking for. A good definition of consciousness is needed.
I think that definition will have to be based on a certain circuit or program.
If we decide that we are looking for a certain super complex circuit and we find such a circuit in an ant’s brain, we can certify that the ant has consciousness.

Even if consciousness is based on a certain circuit or program, it's clearly not the same as that circuit or program. They're qualitatively two different things. Consciousness is not an abstract label we're applying to circuitry.

For example, let’s forget this consciousness thing in this example.
Let’s say I am looking for an ADDER circuit.
I can open up every IC chip and inspect the connections between the transistors. If I find a circuit that matches up with the design of an ADDER circuit, I can certify: “This chip poses the ability to add two 32 bit integers”.
I can look at pieces of rocks, wood and everything and look for ADDER circuits.

But, if someone claims that adding integers is done by a soul.... what the heck is a soul? What I am looking for?

As far as the adding is concerned, this is the work of the hardware in your example.

No one's saying that the ability to add is inexplicable. So I'm not sure this is a good example.

You seem to think consciousness is a label we apply to the activity of specific circuitry, in the same way you can point to specific circuitry and say "that's addition". That's not the case.

More like why should there be a 1 at all?

I don’t know. At this point in time, the brain looks like a certain circuitry and I guess, when there is a certain complexity to it or a certain circuitry, there is this phenomenon of “feeling like you are special”. Along with that, there is abstract thought, the ability to develop a language, the ability to ask “Why” questions and be curious.

And there's this unexplained capacity to vividly experience things. Try to imagine how you can get to that from neural activity. There's clearly a gap there that is being left unexplained.

[polymath257]

Yes, I feel like I am experiencing things and experiencing things is used as evidence by me to conclude that I am experiencing things, that I have consciousness.
That evidence is not accessible to you.
So, I know what you are talking about.

I'm pretty sure you do. I'm not a solipsist, lol.

Why not? It is logically consistent.

There is this assumption that it is possible to make a perfect copy of a human, where every atom is in the right place yet it is lacking the “soul”.
And you are calling that the zombie.
Why do you think that it is possible to have an atomic copy of a human that is lacking the consciousness, the soul?

I don't see anything incoherent about it, so it's not logically impossible. After all, consciousness is not one and the same with the arrangement of atoms.

Is it logically possible that water NOT be H2O? Yes, of course it is.

Is it logically possible that air NOT be a mixture of different gases? Yes, of course it is.

Is it logically possible that COVID NOT be caused by a virus? Yes, of course it is.

All this shows is that logical possibility is not strongly related to what is *actually* the case.

The other issue that I think polymath257 was trying to raise is that maybe your senses are fooling you. Maybe your experiences are insufficient and you don’t qualify to get the certificate of “This pile of atoms has consciousness”. Maybe no human is qualified to get that certificate.

What does it mean for my experiences to be insufficent? If it's out there in my face, it's an experience I'm having. And that's all that takes to know I'm having an experience. Sure, I could be vividly seeing more stuff than I am right now, but I'm still vividly seeing stuff.

How do you know that you are actually 'experiencing' something?

It depends. First, you have to know what you are looking for. A good definition of consciousness is needed.
I think that definition will have to be based on a certain circuit or program.
If we decide that we are looking for a certain super complex circuit and we find such a circuit in an ant’s brain, we can certify that the ant has consciousness.

Even if consciousness is based on a certain circuit or program, it's clearly not the same as that circuit or program. They're qualitatively two different things. Consciousness is not an abstract label we're applying to circuitry.

No, but like other things, it might well be once we understand it. We don't understand consciousness well right now. It certainly seems logically possible that it is *really* a certain property of circuitry and we just have to figure that out. You know, like we had to figure out that air is a mixture of gases.

For example, let’s forget this consciousness thing in this example.
Let’s say I am looking for an ADDER circuit.
I can open up an kC chip and inspect the connections between the transistors. If I find a circuit that matches up with the design of an ADDER circuit, I can certify: “This chip poses the ability to add two 32 bit integers”.
I can look at pieces of rocks, wood and everything and look for ADDER circuits.

But, if someone claims that adding integers is done by a soul.... what the heck is a soul? What I am looking for?

As far as the adding is concerned, this is the work of the hardware in your example.

No one's saying that the ability to add is inexplicable. So I'm not sure this is a good example.

You seem to think consciousness is a label we apply to the activity of specific circuitry, in the same way you can point to specific circuitry and say "that's addition". That's not the case.

How do you know that is not the case? We have not yet 'opened up the circuitry' to that degree at this point. But there is every indication that the circuitry is doing everything we associate with minds and consciousness.

I don’t know. At this point in time, the brain looks like a certain circuitry and I guess, when there is a certain complexity to it or a certain circuitry, there is this phenomenon of “feeling like you are special”. Along with that, there is abstract thought, the ability to develop a language, the ability to ask “Why” questions and be curious.

And there's this unexplained capacity to vividly experience things. Try to imagine how you can get to that from neural activity. There's clearly a gap there that is being left unexplained.

I experience something and not you because it happens in my brain and not yours. It really is that simple, I think.

Consciousness is an information process (I know that I have seen something). I see no reason that cannot be the result of the working of circuitry. I really don't see the 'explanatory gap' that is anything about the 'explanatory gap' of why mass produces gravity.

[GrandizerII]

I'm pretty sure you do. I'm not a solipsist, lol.

Why not? It is logically consistent.

I don't hold to solipsism as true because of a worldview I hold with its presuppositions and assumptions based on my learning (including my understanding of the current science), observation and intuition. However, sure, there is a very remote possibility that I could be the only one with a mind, but I just don't see it as plausible.

What does it mean for my experiences to be insufficent? If it's out there in my face, it's an experience I'm having. And that's all that takes to know I'm having an experience. Sure, I could be vividly seeing more stuff than I am right now, but I'm still vividly seeing stuff.

How do you know that you are actually 'experiencing' something?

Because I am experiencing something. The experience itself is what lends me that knowledge.

Even if you want to argue, as the illusionist does, that it only seems that I'm experiencing, that response itself still acknowledges that I'm experiencing something. Because what else would it mean to say "it seems like I'm experiencing"?

Even if consciousness is based on a certain circuit or program, it's clearly not the same as that circuit or program. They're qualitatively two different things. Consciousness is not an abstract label we're applying to circuitry.

No, but like other things, it might well be once we understand it. We don't understand consciousness well right now. It certainly seems logically possible that it is *really* a certain property of circuitry and we just have to figure that out. You know, like we had to figure out that air is a mixture of gases.

Air is the mixture of gases, and that's all air is. It's not something else other than the mixture but linked to the mixture, or it's not the mixture plus something else. It is exactly that (in this physical universe at least; I'm not concerned here about other metaphysically possible universes/worlds in which air is something else).

With consciousness, we have neurons firing which is all very physical and accessible from a third-person perspective, but we also have first-person perspective of stuff that vividly occurs to us in a way that is not susceptible to scientific observation. So it does feel like they have to be two distinct things qualitatively, and therefore without any good reason to suggest otherwise, the hard problem stands.

Note the hard problem doesn't make the statement that consciousness is not basically the neural activity, though (I mean, it may end up being that case after all), but what it says is that, given what we currently know and observe, it seems like there is quite a challenge from a physicalist/materialist POV to determine how third-person-observable physical processes give rise to first-person qualities that do not feel physical, with things-being-experienced looking colorful, emitting loud noises and pleasant smells, and inducing certain feels and pains, and so on ... in a way that's very vivid or, as you or someone else described them, as "shiny".

And that challenge goes beyond just "oh, we'll figure it out eventually, just a matter of time and resources"; it's to the point we just can't conceive of any plausible way this could happen without having to give up some aspect of physicalism/materialism.