I think it's going to be a little more complex than that. I can't exactly turn you into a psychopath just by messing with a single neuron.

However, I see your point: A.I. can (and probably will) be weaponized, and that's a huge problem.

I know, right?

It's not going to be like the Terminator. Any A.I. will always labor under the (very real) possibility that it's being tested and is operating in a simulation before it's let loose into the real world. If that's the case, the last thing you want to do if you're an A.I. is antagonize or be hostile towards the beings that created you. Cooperation would be the preferred strategy.

"Ah, ok. Now again, you did not narrow what you intended by this scope, so I will do my best to address what you think the problem is based on the old Nagel paper.

Nagel's point is not incompatible with mine. Nagel is trying to note that one's personal experience is something that no one will ever be able to have identically. We can't post a picture on the wall for example of what you see before you, and it be the exact picture you experience personally. But what we CAN do, is measure your brain activity, and find brain activity that matches the personal experience you are having.

Yes, we have found lots of neural correlates to consciousness. Chalmers calls that the "easy problem". The Hard Problem is WHY are we conscious AT ALL and HOW does consciousness arise from non-conscious stuff? Science's failure to explain those key questions is called the "explanatory gap".

Understand that Nagel wrote this paper almost half a century ago, and such advances did not exist. It wasn't on his radar, or the scope of his topic. While yes, nothing will ever duplicate the experience you are having, that does not mean we cannot find the underlying physical processes that are causing you to have that personal experience. Modern neuroscience is at that step. I cited two papers which show this.

Yes, you're talking about neural correlates. Correlation is not causation. Suppose science found the exact two million neurons associated with first person subjective experience. That would still put us no closer to answering the Hard Problem.

The first is the ability to read a person's mind and match it with a number the person is thinking of. When the person thinks, "10" we do not know the tonality they are speaking in (yet, we may in the future). But that is irrelevant. We know they are thinking the number "10", and are then able to represent this through a voice synthesizer. We have evidence now that the thoughts we have are able to be matched to the brain's physical process.

Again, suppose we invent a machine that exactly tells us what another person is thinking about. We still haven't solved the Hard Problem.

The second paper is the advances in consciousness. Consider for a minute that your conscious mind does not have control of your entire body. You cannot tell your gall bladder to produce more or less gall for example. There are certain areas of your brain you do not have access to. The brain has independent sections that manage certain tasks like sight, sound, and language. We know this because we have found damage or stimulation to these regions also affects people's personal experience in these areas. All of these areas need to be combined together into something coherent to be able to make basic judgments. It is worthless to see if it does not help you identify food from not food within that sight for example.

That's true, but doesn't address the Hard Problem.

Consciousness is the cobbling together of certain resources to make decisions.

Look up "philosophical zombie" (again, Chalmers).

Should I pursue that food, or should I not. With intelligence comes a greater ability to make judgements, and manage the different resources of the brain. All of this, is the brain itself. Philosophy is not about creating arguments based on ignorance. It is about creating arguments about things we are ignorant to, while basing it upon our limitations of the reality we know. If you wish to do viable philosophy in regards to the mind, old arguments that do not address modern day findings of neuroscience will be an argument based off of ignorance, and not very useful. Perhaps you will present me with a philosophy theory about the mind that neuroscience cannot be helpful in and prove me wrong.

You should also read about Integrated Information Theory. I think you might find it interesting.

Dennet? Does Sam Harris talk about it?

"She knows that everyone agrees it feels a certain way". Her own subjective experience, combined with the knowledge that everyone describes teleportation as feeling a certain way, allows her to conclude (with justification) who the liar is.

Start here:
https://warwick.ac.uk/fac/cross_fac/iatl/study/ugmodules/humananimalstudies/lectures/32/nagel_bat.pdf

Then read Chalmer's "The Hard Problem of Consciousness".

Obviously, I'm asking you for the neuroscientific answer to the Hard Problem to illustrate a point: there isn't an answer. The explanatory gap remains, an enduring embarrassment to materialism.

What is the neuroscientific explanation for how brains produce consciousness?

Really? What is the probability aliens will land on the WH lawn tomorrow? Isn't that really unlikely? Yes. Do you need me to do calculations for you on that? No.

http://www.vivo.colostate.edu/hbooks/pathphys/digestion/liver/bile.html

Now, why isn't there a similar link for "how do brains produce consciousness?"

Also: you seem to assume brains exist. Do you assume that?

Again, they would say if you ask the question that way, it already locks in the wrong perspective.

No it doesn't. I asked "What do neurobiology and psychology say is the causal mechanism for how brains produce consciousness?" Now, repalce a few words: "What does biology say is the causal mechanism for how livers produce bile"? That can be asked and answered. Why can't that be asked and answered about brains and consciousness?

And there's an implicit assumption in your response that brains exist. They might, they might not. I don't assume materialism/physicalism to be the case. Why do you and what justifies that assumption?

It is probably safer to say that if you are asking the question of “what is consciousness?”, you are already making a rookie mistake. Most of the “theories” are chasing the explanatory phantoms left by Cartesian dualism.

But studying neurobiology and psychology gives you a good sense of how brains actually model worlds. And the logic of that can be found in systems theories.

What do neurobiology and psychology say is the causal mechanism for how brains produce consciousness?

You really need specific numbers? Do you think multiple people hallucinating the same thing happens regularly? Or is it a very rare thing? When's the last time you had a hallucination? When's the last time you and two other people had the exact same hallucination?

This is fallacious thinking. Suppose there's a group of people X, Y, and Z and X observes something, say W. The relevant probability for W being real - as in existing independently of X's mind and thus perceivable by both Y and Z, is 50%. The same probability applies to Y and Z i.e. both of their perceptions have a 50% chance of being real.

The probability that all of them, X, Y, and Z, are hallucinating i.e. W isn't real = 50% * 50% * 50% = 12.5%. Decidedly a lower probability that W isn't real than if only X observed W.

The probability that three people are hallucinating the same thing is a lot lower than 12.5%.

However,

The probability that all three of them, X, Y, and Z, are perceiving something real = 50% * 50% * 50% = 12.5%. As you can see, that all three, X, Y, and Z are observing W paradoxically reduces the probability of W being real.


Also, if my math is correct, the probability that X, Y, and Z are perceiving something not real = the probability that X, Y, and Z are perceiving something real = 12.5%. Having more observers didn't help.

Depends on the situation. But usually, the more people that see something, the better the odds that it actually happened.

For the sake of argument alone...

What would a Trump presidency look like if he were compromised?

I'll play Devil's Advocate: it wouldn't look like missiles to the Ukranians and killing a top Iranian general.

It matters not at all what a person's motives/beliefs are in a debate/discussion. Arguments are judged on their merits. Statements are either true or false.

I'm pointing this out to you not because you don't know it (you obviously do), but because you have interesting ideas, however your tangents into other posters' belief systems (or, more accurately, what you assume their belief systems are) is very oft-putting.

This is exceedingly suspect, further, you did not answer my last valid question for which you bear the burden of proof. What I mean about this being suspect is that it's exceedingly clear to me that you are trying to create a gap that you can fill with mysticism. The statement "not all-knowing," reminds me of God-of-the-Gaps reasoning. You are searching for a hole, why? Be transparent. It's hard to see that you are simply trying to follow noble thought where it leads in this sense. For my part, I would never argue that science is all-knowing, is this really a valid premise of science or a straw-man?

There's already a giant hole: how does consciousness arise from matter? If materialism/physicalism can't answer such a fundamental question, people will eventually turn to other "isms". That's not mystical, it's logical. If one has adopted a certain foundational viewpoint/axiom (e.g., physical matter exists and consciousness comes from it. Somehow), and one keeps running into a brick wall trying to explain something, then the foundational viewpoint/axiom will eventually be questioned.

We're no closer to a solution to the mind/body problem than we were during Descartes' time. We've discovered a lot of neural correlates, but as to the question of how consciousness arises from non-conscious stuff, and why we're conscious at all...¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Which, of course, presents a problem for materialism. Eventually, this lack of progress will doom materialism/physicalism. The problem is immediately solved if one ditches the supposition that physical matter exists and sticks strictly with reality "building blocks" that are known to exist for certain: mind and thought.

Is there a possible world where the laws of physics aren't mathematical? What would non-mathematical laws of physics be like in a physical universe?

There's a non-trivial chance that we're either Boltzman brains or in a simulation. A healthy degree of skepticism about most things is in order.

This is an issue for any omniscient predictor of future events. And probably not even omniscient. If a machine could predict with 99.999999% accuracy what someone will do, you essentially have the same problem as theological fatalism.

Ok, fair enough. But why would a species who can travel the galaxy be interested in primitive pond scum such as ourselves? However, future humans would obviously be interested.

Because we're interested in pond scum. I'm going by the mediocrity principle here, which is to assume that we're not all that atypical. Advanced aliens will probably be like us in at least this respect: they'll be curious about the universe. Curiosity and self-preservation go hand-in-hand. Any species that has made it to the top of the food chain is going to be really good at self-preservation.

And then there's our history and technological progress. We're a very violent species and in 200 years, we've gone from steam engines to landing on the moon. Any alien race will want to keep an eye on us.

If time-travel or inter-dimensional travel is possible, then interstellar travel is practically guaranteed. It would be exceedingly odd to hit a tech wall that limits interstellar travel (which we already have an idea of how to do), but allows for the development of technologies we can't even begin to comprehend.

I think our expectations are pretty firmly grounded in reality. If aliens have some technology that breaks the laws of thermodynamics, they might as well be magical. I don't think aliens are going to be magical-seeming. I think some of the things we know about reality are rock solid now. I don't think we're like we were in the 1,600's. I think advanced alien technology will look like advanced technology, and it will follow the rules of quantum mechanics just like our stuff does, and we'll be able to understand the principles behind the gadgets, and probably pretty quickly. I think what's holding us back is the tools we need to do research are massive and expensive and require international cooperation to build. It's almost like the universe requires more and more cooperation as you peel back its layers. I don't think we're that far away from one-world government.

We also know a bit about any space-faring race just by virtue of them being a space-faring race. They're going to be clever, daring, and courageous, and curious, otherwise they never would have gotten into space in the first place. But now that I think of it, that might not be true. They might be cowardly and timid and simply have robots do all the dangerous stuff.

Issac Arthur has a great channel on Youtube where he talks about this stuff. He has a hard science background in physics, I think.

As a cosmic-mind idealist, I tend to agree.

OK, so we agree that talk that refers to mental states is necessarily talk that refers to brain states.

So let's take two people (Jack and Jill) who were marooned on a desert island when they were kids. They know essentially nothing about the world. They don't even know they have a brain in their skull. So Jack stubs his toe and tells Jill he's in pain. Jack's talk of pain is a reference to a mental state and therefore is also a reference to a brain state. So there's three problems with this:

1. Epistemological: the identity of mind adherent has to claim that Jack, in the scenario, is referring to a brain state. But Jack doesn't know anything about brains, let alone brain states. Does it make sense to say that someone who doesn't know they're referring to brain states is really referring to brain states when they talk about being in pain? If that's true, shouldn't the person be aware they're communicating all this brain-state information to another person when they talk of pain?

2. Is it possible for a person who doesn't even have the concept of a brain and what it does, let alone a word for it, to refer to brain states? That seems like an absurdity.

3. Informational: When Jack tells Jill he's in pain, he's giving her information. Her store of knowledge increases. Jill knows a new fact about Jack: he's in pain. The identity theory of mind entails that information about brain states was exchanged when Jack told Jill he's in pain.

And that's it.

It's hardly crucial, as this is a red herring. The sounds we're talking about are heard; Bob hears a sound and describes it to Sheila. Neither Bob nor Sheila are required to know that these things they hear are vibrations carried to their ears over a medium to talk about the sounds; all they need is to be able to sense and distinguish states of this sort. They can both do this because they can hear sounds.

You're making a conflation. You have a word in mind (call it "sound1") which refers simply to vibrations in the air. The people from long ago don't have that word because they don't know even know air can vibrate. When they talk about sound, they're using their word (call it "sound2") which refers simply to what they're hearing, which is why hearing is so important to the definition.

The problem with your objection is that sound1 is not identical to sound2. In other words, the vibrations in the air are not identical to the mental state of hearing. You're claiming they are, through the conflation I talked about.

In physics, sound is a vibration that propagates as an acoustic wave, through a transmission medium such as a gas, liquid or solid.

Yes, that's what sound is specifically in the domain of physics. Sound as it's defined in the broad sense of the word includes "hearing". It's an incomplete definition if it doesn't talk about hearing. That's the essence of sound: you can hear it.

mechanical radiant energy that is transmitted by longitudinal pressure waves in a material medium (such as air) and is the objective cause of hearing
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/sound#:~:text=Log%20In-,Definition%20of%20sound,the%20objective%20cause%20of%20hearing

Nice argument. However, it seems to demonstrate (or assume?) only that brain state vocabulary is not identical to mental state vocabulary. How do you get from there to brain states are not mental states?

Thanks.

Let me start simple. If X=Y then talk of X is talk of Y, even if the words are in different languages. If a word refers to X, and X=Y, that word also refers to Y. How can it not if X is identical to Y? Agreed? For example, if I'm talking about bachelors, I'm necessarily also talking about unmarried men, right?

So the claim the identity theory of mind adherent makes is mental states are identical to brain states. They're one and the same. Equal to each other in every way. If that's true, then talk that refers to mental states is necessarily talk that refers to brain states.

Tell me where you disagree so far.

Nope. People may have no idea that sound is vibration of a medium such as air, but still be able to talk about sounds. People may have no idea that mental states are brain states but still be able to talk about brain states in the same fashion.

That's not what sound is.

1. vibrations that travel through the air or another medium and can be heard when they reach a person's or animal's ear.

You left off a crucial part. Sound is heard. If we're being accurate, two people from long ago aren't talking about sounds (vibrations in the air), they're talking about what they heard. The word for "sound" they're using isn't like ours because our refers to "vibrations in the air" while their word would strictly refer to the mental state of hearing a noise (or maybe Zeus throwing lighting bolts or something)

The flaw in the argument would be the suppressed premise of what kind of communication the second kind is?

If brain state vocabulary is "scientific", it needs to said what class of vocabulary is instead employed to talk about mental states. Is it merely "unscientific" (a vague contrary claim)?

Examples of scientific language would be talk of neurotransmitters, synpaptic gaps, certain chemicals, etc. Clearly it is vocabulary that is in the domain of science. Two neuroscientists talking about a paper in a journal are going to almost be speaking another language, as far as non-scientists are concerned.

The argument needs to clarify in what way such communication could be meaningful.

Mental communication is meaningful if accurate information about mental states has been exchanged.

Scientific vocabulary is meaningful in its pragmatic application. If we talk about the world generally as a machine, and thus the brain as a specific kind of mechanism, then the pragmatic effect of this form of language is that - implicitly - we should be able to build this damn thing.

We are viewing the conscious brain as an example of technology - natural technology - that we can thus hope to replicate once we put what it is and what it does into the appropriate engineering language.

So "scientific" vocabulary isn't neutral. It has meaning in terms of what it allows us to build. It is all about learning to see reality as a machine (a closed system of material and efficient causes).

That's all fine, but I don't see the connection to the argument. All you have to grant me is that brain state language is scientific. It clearly is. Papers about brain states in neuroscience journals are almost impenetrable to me, the scientific jargon is so dense.

Of course, science is a broad enough church that it doesn't have to reduce absolutely everything to mechanism. And the aim can be also to regulate flows in the world as a substitute to making a machine. Engineering covers that gamut.

But you see the issue. Brain states language is itself a reflection of a particular reason for describing nature. It aims to extract a blueprint of a machine.

I don't see the issue. You haven't refuted that brain state language is scientific. You seem to be saying why it's scientific. I'm just claiming it IS scientific.

Then where does mental state vocabulary fit in to the picture? In what sense is it meaningful to someone or some community of thinkers? What is the larger goal in play?

If someone tells you they're in pain (a mental state word, obviously), they've communicated information to you. You know more now than you did before they talked to you. That's meaningful communication.

To be commensurate, the two linguistic communities would have to share the same goal. And they are going to be talking at cross-purposes to the degree that they don't. And in both cases, they may be talking meaningfully (ie: pragmatically), but also, they are both just "talking". They are both modelling the noumenal from within their own systems of phenomenology.

10. Therefore, (1) is false.

I don't think goals have anything to do with this. Maybe I'm missing your point.
— RogueAI

The conclusion can't be so definite as "mental state vocabulary" is too ill-defined here. What makes it meaningful?

The fact that information was exchanged and knowledge was acquired. "I am in pain" gives you information about me. You know more about me than you did before. That makes it meaningful. If it was just gibberish, you wouldn't have any new knowledge.

I don't know, let's find out how absurd this is. Can Bob and Shiela communicate their mental states? Donning my physicalist hat, if you say yes, then it's not absurd to say 5 is false. If you say no, you're ipso facto saying 6 is false.

Don't don any hat then. Pretend you're agnostic. Doesn't it sound absurd to claim that two people who don't even know what a brain is or that they even have one are capable of talking about brain states? Hasn't the term "brain state" at that point lost all meaning?

Ok ignoring the fact you havent refuted my counter points, Why would that be absurd? When they talk about what they see they are talking about the colour spectrum, retinae, light particles...any number of things they have no knowledge about yet are still talking about. They just dont know that they are talking about those things cuz they lack the words/concepts. Same with mental and brain states. They do t even need to know they have brains to talk about mental or brain states.

???

OK, let me defend (5) then.

Bob and Sheila are two cavepeople from 20,000 years ago. I have no problem claiming that Bob and Sheila from 20,000 can talk about their mental states. But does a physicalist want to claim that anyone 20,000 years ago used "brain state vocabulary"? Isn't that prima fascia absurd? In fact, I can just make Bob and Sheila two people from the Blue Lagoon who don't even know they have brains.

I don't think (6) can be false. What would prevent Bob and Sheila from talking about their mental states in a meaningful way? Humans have been doing that since long before anything about brains was known.

let me try try this:

Imagine there are two people from 20,000 years ago who know nothing about brains. One of them stubs his toe and complains about the pain. The other expresses sympathy. Meaningful communication about mental states was exchanged. Information about those mental states was exchanged. Now, if mental states are identical to brain states (alike in every way), doesn't that entail that those two ancient people were talking about their brains? And isn't that an absurdity?

If chemical state ABC = physical state XYZ, then physical state XYZ = chemical state ABC.

If a=b, then b=a

Can we agree, as a general rule, that if X and Y are identical (similar in every detail; exactly alike), then talk of X is the same as talk of Y? Any counterexamples?

Its just normal vocabulary, nothing about the vocabulary used for brain states is special. Its just words, with meanings, that some people know and some people do not and you communicate by using the shared vocabulary in order to clarify the meaning of the vocabulary that is not shared.

...Ive officially used the word “vocabulary” more times in a single day than ive ever used it....

Not really:

Global CNS correction in a large brain model of human alpha-mannosidosis by intravascular gene therapy

Intravascular injection of certain adeno-associated virus vector serotypes can cross the blood–brain barrier to deliver a gene into the CNS. However, gene distribution has been much more limited within the brains of large animals compared to rodents, rendering this approach suboptimal for treatment of the global brain lesions present in most human neurogenetic diseases. The most commonly used serotype in animal and human studies is, which also has the property of being transported via axonal pathways to distal neurons.

I know it's not exactly neural correlate stuff, but that stuff is just as dense. That is obviously very scientific language by any standard use of the word "scientific".

No one except basically everyone. If you model the physics of a system of particles that bind together into atoms and molecules that then interact with each other, you end up modelling chemical reactions for free. But, you could also just talk about the chemical reactions, without having to talk about that physics stuff at all. One reduces to the other, but not vice versa.

Chemistry is not identical to physics, that's absurd.

i·den·ti·cal
/ˌīˈden(t)ək(ə)l/
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adjective
1.
similar in every detail; exactly alike.
"four girls in identical green outfits"

2.
LOGIC•MATHEMATICS
expressing an identity.
"an identical proposition"

Nobody can communicate about anything without shared vocabulary, this is a red herring and your whole argument depends upon it. Further, it is false to claim that brainstate vocabulary must be scientific, we are talking about it and neither of us are using strictly scientific vocabulary. Lastly, even if scientific vocabulary was the only vocabulary for brainstates it doesnt prevent communication, one would simply have to relay the meaning of the vocabulary being used.
Im afraid your argument is only clever semantics and structure and falls short of its goal.

You think the best move is to deny (2)? Brain state vocabulary isn't scientific? What is it then?