Suspicion confirmed. I'm not claiming there's a possible world where consciousness can arise from rocks.
That's correct. Are octopuses conscious? Does that question involve whether computers are conscious or not? No. So the question is not about computers (although a perfectly good example). — Kenosha Kid
And my point was that you don't need a scientific description of consciousness to tell whether something is conscious or not. In order for a scientist to discover scientifically what water is, yes, she needs a definition of water. If she doesn't know what water is, she can't tell you what's in the glass. Even if she knows what water looks like, she needs to be able to differentiate it from alcohol, or any other transparent liquid. As it happens, you don't need to know _much_ about water to be able to distinguish it perfectly well from not-water (it's appearance, fluidity, taste, lack of smell). This is the extent to which the definition of consciousness also needs to be precise: to distinguish it from unconscious things.
You're arguing my point: you don't need to know _much_ about consciousness to be able to distinguish it perfectly well from non-consciousness. We don't need a rigorous definition of consciousness to determine whether that computer that just passed the Turing Test is conscious or not. We don't need to "know much" about consciousness to pose that question. Our basic understanding of consciousness is sufficient to make sense of the question: is that computer conscious or not? Just like we don't need to know much about water to measure how much is in the glass.
Agreed? — RogueAI
Absolutely not. We have no common "basic understanding" of consciousness. On this site alone you'll find a new one for every thread on the subject. — Kenosha Kid
Are you conscious? Is your significant(s) other conscious? To not draw this out, I'll answer for you: yes, and yes. — RogueAI
We all have a basic understanding of consciousness. — RogueAI
There are also some outstanding questions you haven't answered:
- Is it possible to get consciousness from rocks, yes/no? — RogueAI
We should NOT assume that consciousness can arise from rocks. — Kenosha Kid
- Is it possible to simulate consciousness, yes/no? — RogueAI
- Is consciousness substrate independent, yes/no? — RogueAI
That sort of wishy-washy 'well, I know what I mean' way of communicating is no good for answering questions about consciousness in a scientific way. — Kenosha Kid
Do you have a definition in mind when discussing consciousness? When you discuss consciousness, what is it you are discussing? — bert1
But the consciousness discussed by neurologists afaik is along the lines of: cognitive awareness of one's environment and one's cognitive awareness of that environment. — Kenosha Kid
In more detail, (human, at least) consciousness is a process comprised of multiple components such as awareness, alertness, motivation, perception and memory that together give an integrated picture of one's environment and how one relates to it.
And these are presumably measurable in some way? If so, they would need to be functionally defined. You input something into the person, look at the output (how the person behaves, a reading from some kind of direct brain scan), and then the degree of awareness of the environment is observed. Is that the idea? — bert1
Is this sense of 'consciousness' a collective term for a number of related cognitive faculties? — bert1
"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"
Would that do as a starting point for a scientific investigation? — bert1
When scientists investigate well-defined observable functions, and philosophers talk about hard problems and 'what it's likeness,' are they talking past each other? They both use the word 'consciousness'. Has one or other misused the word? Or are there genuinely different meanings? — bert1
The Nagel/Chalmers type of approach does this. It treats What it's like as a simple thing, separable to having a bat's body, including it's brain, a bat's needs, a bat's habitat, a bat's social structure, a bat's senses, a bat's memories, all the tiny things that individually and in conjunction produce what it's like to be a bat. And, worse, tells you that because you don't have a bat's body, a bat's brain, a bat's habitat, a bat's social structure, a bat's senses, a bat's memories, you cannot imagine what it's like to be a bat (true), and that this is somehow proof of an irreducible quintessence of batness that will be left over if and when you have as complete a scientific account of the third person view of a bat as is possible. It doesn't deal with the precise elements of what it is talking about at all. — Kenosha Kid
I think there's tension between the claim that matter can produce consciousness, but not vice-versa — RogueAI
Are you conscious? Is your significant(s) other conscious? To not draw this out, I'll answer for you: yes, and yes.
— RogueAI
This is precisely what I was talking about before. That sort of wishy-washy 'well, I know what I mean' way of communicating is no good for answering questions about consciousness in a scientific way. — Kenosha Kid
I find the phrase 'what it is like to be' an awkward expression. — Wayfarer
And beings are not objects, in that they're conscious agents. This is precisely what is denied by reductionism, as reductionism has no category which corresponds with the notion of 'being'. — Wayfarer
But you can't provide a purely objective account of a subjective state of being. That's really all there is to it. — Wayfarer
There's no contradiction between being an object and being a conscious agent: we're just objects with higher order properties of consciousness and agency. — Kenosha Kid
No, the scientist can't prove a computer is conscious because it's impossible to verify the existence of other consciousnesses. — RogueAI
The scientific world-picture vouchsafes a very complete understanding of all that happens — it makes it just a little too understandable. It allows you to imagine the total display as that of a mechanical clockwork which, for all that science knows, could go on just the same as it does, without there being consciousness, will, endeavor, pain and delight and responsibility connected with it — though they actually are. And the reason for this disconcerting situation is just this: that for the purpose of constructing the picture of the external world, we have used the greatly simplifying device of cutting our own personality out, removing it; hence it is gone, it has evaporated, it is ostensibly not needed. — Erwin Schrodinger, Nature and the Greeks
If I can ask "Are you, Kenosha Kid, conscious???" in a meaningful way and get a meaningful answer (which I can), without defining consciousness in a scientific way, why can't I ask a scientist, "Hey, is that machine over there conscious? You say it is. Can it feel pain? Can it be happy? Sad? What is it like to be that machine?" The scientist has to answer those questions. Those aren't questions that are being asked "in a scientific way". Those are ground level questions that a small child can understand. — RogueAI
No, the scientist can't prove a computer is conscious because it's impossible to verify the existence of other consciousnesses. — RogueAI
Nope. Not true. 'Oranges are really carpentry tools, they just lack the handles.' — Wayfarer
Asking a conscious person if they are conscious is not comparable to asking a scientist if a machine is conscious. — Kenosha Kid
Most branches of philosophy have an explicit or tacit focus on the human level of thought, language, and behavior. Phenomenology has historically focused explicitly on the subjective conscious experience of the human individual. For many years I have found it instructive to explore phenomena from a broader and more elementary evolutionary and physical law-based point of view, defining it as those subjective events that appear to the simplest individual self as functional. At the cell level function cannot be precisely defined because what is functional ultimately depends on the course of evolution. Functional phenomena occur at all levels in evolution and are not limited to conscious awareness. — Pattee
I deleted that expression before you quoted it. Perhaps you might adjust your response accordingly. — Wayfarer
So I said, on a whim, and before I went back and deleted it, that it’s like comparing two wildly different kinds of things - oranges and carpentry tools - and denying that there’s any real difference between them. — Wayfarer
Object is a class. Conscious being is a class. Even if you object to the specific claim that the latter is a subclass of the the former, there'll always be some superclass you can define that includes conscious beings and oranges. — Kenosha Kid
some thinkers take 'consciousness' to mean a set of observable functions or behaviours etc. That's fine if it's useful, say for a paramedic. But I don't take these as theories of consciousness as I understand it. They are definitions by fiat, and philosophically uninteresting. — bert1
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