For me it means something like the logging to memory of sensory inputs. — Isaac
That's not the point. Your argument is that science cannot say what it says about consciousness — Isaac
Describing means to put into other words to make more clear. At the moment we've been give 'subjective experience which is no more clear. — Isaac
So my computer logging the keyboard inputs into temporary memory then reproducing them on the screen makes it conscious? — khaled
if someone lost the ability to store short/long term memories that makes him unconscious? — khaled
We don't have evidence it ONLY arises when certain biological processes are present — khaled
I've already told you that consciousness and "subjective experience" are things you can't define further. I ask you to define the word "Shape" for example. — khaled
But we never actually see it working, because we're never outside of it - we only ever look through it, and with it, but not at it.
We don't notice that, and we don't usually need to notice that - but when we're discussing 'philosophy of mind' (as distinct from cognitive science or even psychology) then we had better notice it - otherwise we're not really coming to grips with the nature of the subject. — Wayfarer
Please see my response to Coben above to save me rewriting the same response. I'm getting lazy writing out the full description of what I take conciousness to mean and have ended up confusing people. My apologies for that. — Isaac
but this doesn't mean that something non-physical is going on, nor that we can't generalise. — Isaac
we can't determine that it is not also causally correlated with some other thing. Not without having tested all things. — Isaac
But it's easy to define 'shape' — Isaac
I use the word in a consistent enough set of real word circumstances for you to understand the 'rule' about what the word does — Isaac
It's you here who is trying to use the word 'consciousness' outside of an actual need to describe something. — Isaac
Are you saying that we cannot notice it? If we can notice it, how would we know we are really noticing it and what would noticing that tell us? — Janus
If we want to know why consciousness arose, and by 'why' mean to find a necessary and sufficient set of causes, then we must look to physical chains of events and eliminate each until the phenomena is no longer present. That is an empirical investigation, not a philosophical one. — Isaac
Everything objective, extended, active, and hence everything material, is regarded by materialism as so solid a basis for its explanations that a reduction to this...can leave nothing to be desired. But all this is something that is given only very indirectly and conditionally, and is therefore only relatively present, for it has passed through the machinery and fabrication of the brain, and hence has entered the forms of time, space, and causality, by virtue of which it is first of all presented as extended in space and operating in time. — Arthur Schopenhauer
Not without having tested all things. — Isaac
Despite the convenient shorthand, we don't really have a 'memory' like a hard drive part of our brain, but rather memory is like the strengthening or weakening of neural networks, such that certain inputs are more likely to trigger certain responses next time. We usually experience this as recollection.
So if I made a self teaching AI that keeps strengthening the chances it does a certain action based on a past history of whether or not that action succeeded that AI is conscious?
So all deep learning AI is conscious? — khaled
But in other areas of the sciences we have tested MANY MANY things before we said something is necessary for something. In the case of consciousness, we haven’t tested anything — khaled
But it's easy to define 'shape' — Isaac
Could you please do so then? — khaled
I am describing the property of having subjective experiences... I don’t get why you keep accusing everyone who disagrees with you with implying something mystical or sublime or anything like that. — khaled
You and I both know what subjective experiences are. You contend that they ARE the logging of memory which I very much disagree with. — khaled
I find most people talk about neural networks and it seems to be at least a lay assumption that it is in these that consciousness arises or that consciousness is a facet of these. — Coben
Sometimes it is thought that consciousness is one function of brains (often neuronal networks). But perhaps it is not a function. — Coben
I think we should be cautious about assuming we know where consciousness arises and does not, cautious about the conflate of cognitive functions and consciousness, and cautious about assuming that complexity is necessary for consciousness. — Coben
Is it to have a series of peer-reviewed controlled trials testing each aspect with strictly defined correlates to see which show some statistically significant link? — Isaac
Brain processes, like ink marks, sound waves, the motion of water molecules, electrical current, and any other physical phenomenon you can think of, seem clearly devoid of any inherent meaning. By themselves they are simply meaningless patterns of electrochemical activity. Yet our thoughts do have inherent meaning – that’s how they are able to impart it to otherwise meaningless ink marks, sound waves, etc. In that case, though, it seems that our thoughts cannot possibly be identified with any physical processes in the brain. In short: Thoughts and the like possess inherent meaning or intentionality; brain processes, like ink marks, sound waves, and the like, are utterly devoid of any inherent meaning or intentionality; so thoughts and the like cannot possibly be identified with brain processes.
You can look at this as just a “puzzle” for materialism – one which might be solved by developing a complex functional analysis of mental states, or by framing materialism in terms of the concept of “supervenience” rather than identity or reduction, or whatever. Or you can see it as a very simple and straightforward statement of an objection that, while it can also be formulated in much more sophisticated and technical terms and in a way that takes account of and preempts the various objections materialists might try to raise against it, nevertheless goes to the core of the problem with materialism, and indeed shows why materialism cannot be true. — Ed Feser
To presume that you can identify a causal link between neurological activity and rational thought, already presumes a certain philosophical stance. — Wayfarer
These arguments are not 'lay arguments' — Wayfarer
The specialist has to say what these patterns mean, and that act of interpretation is not an empirical judgement, but a rational argument. — Wayfarer
one thing that can be done is for people to take with a huge grain of salt assumptions, even amongst scientists, that fit with biases we have known to be there for a while in science. Paradigmatic biases. — Coben
Ignore each other and hope we go away? — Isaac
Where's your evidence that 'meaning' is a rational judgment? — Isaac
"has a property which I personally feel but which cannot be measured in others" — Isaac
By that definition we can't possibly know if a computer is conscious — Isaac
using the extremely common definition of consciousness that is something like "responds to stimuli in such a way as to give the impression that the response itself is being sensed, rather than just the initial sensation" — Isaac
Not all definitions are verbal — Isaac
It has not worked with 'subjective experience' or consciousness' — Isaac
You are describing something which you claim cannot be measured — Isaac
You've just contradicted yourself literally with neighbouring sentences. — Isaac
You've yet to respond to (as distinct from merely dismiss) anything I've presented. — Wayfarer
What else could it be? Can your dog do 'brain science'? Can a cow? An elephant? — Wayfarer
Your condescension is amusing. It's as if you naturally know that whatever kind of question this is, then it *must* be a scientific question - otherwise, how can it even be taken seriously? How could philosophy presume to put forward an argument that a scientist couldn't analyse? There must be something wrong with the argument! The hide of them, to think they could entertain a perspective that empiricism can't comprehend! :wink: — Wayfarer
Consider the amount of work Kant had to do, to arrive at his conception of 'the nature of reason'. A great deal of that work was in determining, by reason, the constituents of conscious experience, which as we both know, entails a great deal of detailed and demanding argumentation, and which hitherto had never really been stated or made explicit in the Western philosophical tradition. — Wayfarer
Something similar could also be said about Husserl's phenomenology 'which is based on the premise that reality consists of objects and events ("phenomena") as they are perceived or understood in the human consciousness, and not of anything independent of human consciousness.' — Wayfarer
Whereas, most modern realists presume that the reality is already existing or present in the so-called 'external domain' and that we are merely the consequence of some physical process that exists within it. — Wayfarer
So, you haven't answered the question: can we notice the working of intelligence at all, or is it just that we can notice that we cannot notice the working of intelligence? — Janus
Right. It is precisely to explore ideas and even up to and including speculating is and should be a part of what we do. — Coben
Of course you will "leave it there": everyone and everything that doesn't agree with you has a "blind spot"; I get that, I really do! — Janus
It's a short step from there to discussing consciousness in terms of inputs and processing. — Wayfarer
The physicalist philosophers are not as stupid as you think they are; — Janus
If you think Husserl claimed that reality "consists of objects and events ("phenomena") as they are understood in the human consciousness, and not of anything independent of human consciousness" then you have totally failed to understand what Husserl was on about. — Janus
Phenomenology is the study of structures of consciousness as experienced from the first-person point of view. The central structure of an experience is its intentionality, its being directed toward something, as it is an experience of or about some object. An experience is directed toward an object by virtue of its content or meaning (which represents the object) together with appropriate enabling conditions.
In this thread, I have been responding to a position which says that. You're only reading half the conversation. Read what I was responding to. — Wayfarer
Which is exactly how I understand it, and the basis on which I'm arguing. — Wayfarer
A position which says what? I have read the whole conversation; what part do you think I have missed? — Janus
If we want to know why consciousness arose, and by 'why' mean to find a necessary and sufficient set of causes, then we must look to physical chains of events and eliminate each until the phenomena is no longer present. That is an empirical investigation, not a philosophical one. — Isaac
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