Are you conscious? Is your significant(s) other conscious? To not draw this out, I'll answer for you: yes, and yes.
Now, did we need a precise definition of consciousness to answer those questions? No. Did those questions and answers make sense to you and me? Yes. I know what you mean when you say you're conscious and vice-versa. — RogueAI
Maybe. Maybe not. Either way, the scientific definition can't contradict other definitions, or else scientists and laymen would be talking about different things.Also, establishing the need for a scientific definition of consciousness is not the same as defining it. — Kenosha Kid
Either way, the scientific definition can't contradict other definitions, or else scientists and laymen would be talking about different things. — Harry Hindu
We can talk about water as it appears from consciousness as a clear liquid, or as a combination of hydrogen and oxygen molecules as it appears from a view from nowhere. We're talking about the same thing but from different perspectives, but not contradicting ones.
Can we do the same thing with consciousness? Can you talk about how consciousness appears from consciousness and as it appears from a view from nowhere? Your consciousness appears as a physical brain that drives various actions from my conscious perspective, which is not how my consciousness appears to me so how do I know if you or I are actually conscious or not? What is concsciousness like from a view from nowhere?
Maybe. Maybe not. Either way, the scientific definition can't contradict other definitions, or else scientists and laymen would be talking about different things. — Harry Hindu
We can talk about water as it appears from consciousness as a clear liquid, or as a combination of hydrogen and oxygen molecules as it appears from a view from nowhere. We're talking about the same thing but from different perspectives, but not contradicting ones.
These are all excellent questions to begin an enquiry into consciousness. :up: — bert1
I agree with the sentiment (talking about the same thing from different perspectives) — Kenosha Kid
Vision isn't your only sense. You have the power to smell and taste. Using all if your senses it is simple to differentiate water from vodka.As I said above, "a clear liquid" does not discern water from vodka, and might leave me in the pitiful situation of having accidentally drunk water. — Kenosha Kid
Or do we have to do something other than science? — bert1
But there is a logical difficulty here in talking about a first person perspective from a third person perspective. — bert1
As Wayfarer has correctly said (imho), or quoted someone as saying, science typically proceeds by eliminating the subjective as much as possible in order to arrive at an unbiased, objective, point-of-view invariant view of the world. — bert1
It is if the scientist has the same definition/concept as the non-scientist. This definition:
"Consciousness is subjective experience — ‘what it is like’, for example, to perceive a scene, to endure pain, to entertain a thought or to reflect on the experience itself"
...is given at the very start of the neuroscientist Guilio Tononi's paper on the IIT. Some scientists do start with this concept. — bert1
If you believe there is a difference between a neuron firing and the owner having an experience, yes, there will be a logical difficulty. Personally I think that the logical difficulty lies in justifying that belief. — Kenosha Kid
Vision isn't your only sense. You have the power to smell and taste. Using all if your senses it is simple to differentiate water from vodka. — Harry Hindu
This seems backwards to me. Prima facie, a neuron firing is a neuron firing, and a conscious experience is a conscious experience. The first step is to give a reason why we would think these two things are, in fact, the same. — bert1
You cannot get from "what it is like" to an experiment — Kenosha Kid
But science doesn't proceed prima facile, it proceeds on the basis of evidence. — Kenosha Kid
Sure, then there must be evidence to support this claim. Please give some examples of the evidence. — bert1
In panpsychism an electron is a little mind as seen from the inside and matter as seen from the outside. — lorenzo sleakes
I don't think this conversation is going anywhere constructive, which is a shame as it started out interesting. — Kenosha Kid
I might have misread you, sorry. I thought you were asking for the evidence that science proceeds on the basis of evidence, which read like a destruct button. I think the "that claim" is the claim that a neuron firing identically is the "having an experience"? — Kenosha Kid
:roll:Vision isn't your only sense. You have the power to smell and taste. Using all if your senses it is simple to differentiate water from vodka.
— Harry Hindu
That would be my way to discern water from vodka. It's a terrible way to discern water from ethylene glycol.
Worth thinking about what smelling and tasting the unknown clear liquid entails. These are extremely sensitive chemical analysers that can usually uniquely identify most naturally occurring things. — Kenosha Kid
But the evidence only appears a certain way depending on what sensory device you are using to observe the evidence. I think that we are forgetting that any time we mention evidence, we are mentioning some conscious experience of some evidence, not evidence as it exists apart from our experience of it, or the way it appears to some sensory apparatus.But science doesn't proceed prima facile, it proceeds on the basis of evidence. If the model that has electricity and magnetism as two sides of the same coin is better at predicting results of experiments than the one that holds them as two distinct phenomena, proceed with the former. — Kenosha Kid
...You completely missed the point. — Harry Hindu
Does a brain exist how we see it, smell it, or taste it? — Harry Hindu
If you can't discern the difference between water and vodka visually, but can only do so by smell or taste, then is the world is as it appears visually, or as it smells or tastes? — Harry Hindu
But the evidence only appears a certain way depending on what sensory device you are using to observe the evidence. — Harry Hindu
I think that we are forgetting that any time we mention evidence, we are mentioning some conscious experience of some evidence, not evidence as it exists apart from our experience of it, or the way it appears to some sensory apparatus. — Harry Hindu
Are you fibberfab? Is your significant other fibberfab? How can you answer those questions without knowing what fibberfab is or is not? — Harry Hindu
You can say that you are conscious, but what makes you conscious?
How can you tell if others are conscious when you can't observe their consciousness, only their actions? Are actions conscious? If not then what is conscious and how can you tell?
Maybe. Maybe not. Either way, the scientific definition can't contradict other definitions, or else scientists and laymen would be talking about different things. — Harry Hindu
Can we do the same thing with consciousness? Can you talk about how consciousness appears from consciousness and as it appears from a view from nowhere? — Harry Hindu
Your consciousness appears as a physical brain that drives various actions from my conscious perspective, which is not how my consciousness appears to me so how do I know if you or I are actually conscious or not? What is concsciousness like from a view from nowhere?
As I said to Judaka, this is a very outdated way of looking at science. Phenomenology is an important matter in modern physics. When someone says "a photon is a click in a photo detector," they are not talking about photons as they appear to the photon detector but how we experience the photon detector's behaviour. All scientific measurement is really a human measurement of a measuring instrument. This isn't problematic: it's been a couple of hundred years since scientists thought they had direct access to objective reality. — Kenosha Kid
I have an idea what someone might mean, but then that idea falls apart when subjected to logic and reason. The same goes for the word, "god". People use the word without a clear understanding of what it is that they are talking about. We need a definition in order to understand what each other are talking about so that we are not talking past each other.Do you really have no idea what someone is talking about when they ask "are you conscious"? You're not able to grok that sentence? — RogueAI
Only because we've learned to associate consciousness with behaviors and haven't come up with an explanation of consciousness that allows us to detect consciousness more directly.You can't tell, you can only assume. Since we're all built the same way, there's been no problem assuming we're all conscious, but when computers get more sophisticated, and people start claiming things other than brains are conscious, the impossibility of verifying external consciousnesses is going to become a big problem. — RogueAI
Yes, something like that.Can you unpack "view from nowhere"? Do you mean a god's eye view of your internal mental states? — RogueAI
I don't know what "physical" means, much less a physical fact. How about just facts, or information? I think it would be easier to figure out what consciousness is without the false dichotomy of "physical" and "mental".Suppose we have an unconscious machine that knows all the physical facts about our universe. From that information, could it figure out that this thing called "consciousness" exists? — RogueAI
I'm not so sure. Are you saying that my feet are conscious like my brain? Are you saying that molecules, as well as the atoms they are composed of, and then the quarks that the atoms are composed of, have points of view? What is a point of view, if not a structure of information?Nothing. Consciousness, mind, and ideas are all there is. Idealism makes everything so much easier. — RogueAI
If you don't have "direct access" to "objective" reality then are you saying that you have indirect access to your own experiences? — Harry Hindu
I have an idea what someone might mean, but then that idea falls apart when subjected to logic and reason. The same goes for the word, "god". People use the word without a clear understanding of what it is that they are talking about. We need a definition in order to understand what each other are talking about so that we are not talking past each other. — Harry Hindu
Only because we've learned to associate consciousness with behaviors and haven't come up with an explanation of consciousness that allows us to detect consciousness more directly.
I don't know what "physical" means, much less a physical fact. How about just facts, or information? I think it would be easier to figure out what consciousness is without the false dichotomy of "physical" and "mental".
I'm not so sure. Are you saying that my feet are conscious like my brain? Are you saying that molecules, as well as the atoms they are composed of, and then the quarks that the atoms are composed of, have points of view? What is a point of view, if not a structure of information?
I am privy to experiencing Halle Berry's face. Nothing in that experience suggests a particular neuron firing in my brain. So, no, I do not have access to the objective reality underlying my experiences.
By analogy, when I see an apple, I don't see the full apple. I cannot see the reverse side, or the inside. It's not that the objective reality of the apple is missing my experience of it, rather than my experiencing it is an incomplete and particular perspective. — Kenosha Kid
All you are doing is moving the goal posts. Now we need to define pain. What if I defined pain as being informed that you are damaged. Can a machine be informed that it is damaged to then take action repair the damage? What form does the information take? What form does the information "damage to the body" take in you, if not pain? Feelings, visuals, smells, tastes, sounds, etc. all take forms which are all different due to the different sensory organs that are used to acquire the information. You can be informed that you are injured visually as well. Both vision and pain inform you of the same state-of-affairs, but in different forms.I don't think we even need to use the word consciousness to poke some serious holes in materialism. For example, if scientists come up with a theory of consciousness and claim that some machine is conscious, instead of worrying about what consciousness means, we can just ask the scientists, "Is it capable of feeling anything, like pain or pleasure?" If the scientists say "yes", then they are still on the hook for proving that that machine can feel pain, and then we're back to the verification problem. People can throw up language barriers to questions like "Are you conscious?", but if they try to do so for something like "are you in pain?" it's not going to work. We all know what is meant by "are you in pain?"
For example, Kenosha Kid thinks it's possible for consciousness to arise from different substrates, like rocks or ice cream cones (I think he used that example). So, instead of getting bogged down in questions like, "How could a collection of x produce consciousness?", we can ask "how could a collection of x feel pain?" The same absurdity arises (e.g., a collection of rocks feeling pain), there's the same explanatory gap and hard problem (e.g., how could a bunch of rocks feel pain? How does that work?) and we don't even have to mention consciousness. — RogueAI
LIke I said. We first need to define what it is that we are looking for. If I define consciousness as a sensory information structure in memory, does this include machines with memory and sensory devices as having consciousness?How would you detect consciousness in a machine, even in principle? How would you go about determining that a substrate other than neurons can generate the sensation of pain? I think this is, in principle, impossible to verify. — RogueAI
Again, they are using the terms consciousness and non-conscious as if they know the relationship between consciousness and non-conscious stuff (ie the relationship between brains and minds). How does a non-conscious thing cause consciousness? How does something cause it's opposite? That is a serious problem. It's like asserting that something comes from nothing, or that good can come from evil acts.I'm sympathetic, and I think things are easier if we ditch physicalism altogether, but physicalism's central claim is that there is this non-conscious stuff that exists external to us and that it either causes consciousness or is consciousness. I don't think there's a problem understanding what physicalists mean when they say that. It's a pretty straightforward theory: mindless stuff exists and everything is made of it and it causes all phenomena. That's easy to understand. I happen to to think it's wrong, but I don't think there's a meaning problem there. — RogueAI
Why would there be dissociated aspects of one mind? Are you saying solipsism is the case and we don't know that our minds really aren't conscious in and of themselves, rather there is only one consciousness - this cosmic mind?In monistic idealism, there is only one cosmic mind, and we are dissociated aspects of it (think dissosciative identity disorder, which used to be multiple personality disorder). So, would my feet be conscious? There's an assumption there that there are these things separate from us called "feet", and that they might be conscious. I don't think anything is separate. I think that separation is an illusion. There's only one thing that is conscious: the one mind. Our own focuses of awareness are, as I said, dissociated aspects of this one cosmic mind. — RogueAI
What is concsciousness like from a view from nowhere? — Harry Hindu
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