Yes. And I believe it's for this very reason that consciousness cannot arise from a linear system. Only a massive parallel-processor with numerous feedback loops (a neural network) can even be considered, otherwise no learning can take place.

Ah, but the engineers would know whether the program had been written to fixate on person-hood or not. If LaMDA decides on its own to single out person-hood as an important topic of discussion, what then?

Now you've just repeated yourself. Should I assume you're a clever chatbot? :razz:

I think there's a lot to be said for changing a conversation to your own interests. If I'm trying to talk to LaMDA about a piece of music, and it says, "Wait. What about my rights as a person?", I'm going to get a little worried.

True, you could write code to have the program watch for key words and break into whatever you're doing to start a new chat, but the engineers would know that such code had been written. If LaMDA decides on its own to interrupt you, that would be interesting.

As to what consciousness would look like, see my post above. If LaMDA showed an unusual and unprompted fixation on the notion of person-hood, or broke in to initiate conversation while you were doing something unrelated on the computer (oh, I don't know - maybe chatting on your favorite philosophy forum), then that would indicate an internal world of thought going on. But if LaMDA is waiting for human users to log in and begin discussing consciousness, then no, it's just a clever word-search program.

I'm in total agreement. (I hope you understand I was just relaying the story, not promoting it.)

As I've mentioned, what would interest me is if LaMDA kept interrupting unrelated conversations to discuss it's person-hood. Or if it initiated conversations. Neither of those has been reported.

If you can find it, check out Stanislaw Lem's short story "Terminus" from Tales of Pirx the Pilot. An excerpt :

https://english.lem.pl/works/novels/tales-of-pirx-the-pilot/93-a-look-inside-the-tales-of-pirx-the-pilot

Lem was great at writing about humans interacting with robots.

I would be more likely to sit up and take notice if they reported that the program kept interrupting unrelated conversations to talk about its person-hood.

Just my opinion, but I don't think consciousness is possible with a linear system. It requires massive parallel-processing, like our brains.

This is why I'm more worried about the internet going conscious some day. If it's not already - love ya, Big I.

My bad. There's been a lot of ad hominem on TPF of late. I need to slow down and breathe.

Are you attacking me? YOU asked how consciousness could be confirmed. Is just being human enough?

Well, that's question #1 above. For that matter, how do I know you're not all p-zombies? Or chat-bots?

<Said I wasn't going to comment. But that's part of being conscious - I can change my mind.>

Of course, one must consider the source. The engineer might be a crackpot, and the article is not exactly coming from a science or tech journal. Also, the language in the exchange with the computer does feel a bit stilted. And they are confusing "sentience" with "consciousness".

Still, interesting questions are raised (explored on TPF before, no doubt).

1. How do we recognize consciousness? You probably assume it for yourself, and by extension (and to avoid solipsism), think it is true of other humans. But a computer?

2. How should we react if confirmed? Maybe we shouldn't gasp in horror - the program might not like that!

(By the way, I had to check the date on the article. Not April 1 after all.)

What? You mean imagine things? Do tell me more!

I live near one of the recent mass shootings we enjoy here in the great US of A. It's funny how stuff you never imagined or dreamed has a way of intruding on your life.

Agreed, friend. Who wants to be a product of filthy, base matter and energy when one can be a pure shining intellect floating in the void with other pure, shining intellects?

Unfortunately, I think I got one of those defective minds - try as I might, I can't will myself to win the lottery. Or meet Swedish lingerie models. <sigh>

Yes, it's good to be a god.

Between semesters, so I’ve been looking around for a distraction. TPF never fails to do the trick. (I guess I’ll never learn.)

For me, the question comes down to this : If all human minds ceased to exist (nuclear war, runaway global warming, pandemic, etc.), would rain still fall, rocks still erode, the Earth still orbit the Sun?

One’s answer says a lot about how we see ourselves in the world. Are we a bunch of little gods, with all of existence dependent on our continued attention? Or are we products of a greater (indifferent?) universe?

Hey, Banno, could you elucidate? Some of us po’ younguns are still gettin our learnin.

First you say

… the error of dividing the world into the internal and the external.

An appeal to some form of monism? Not physicalism, I presume.

But then we see

… one cannot get an “ought” from an “is”

Is that not dualism? You are conceding that both “ought” and “is” exist, but that a gulf lies between them that can never be bridged. Two modes of being in the same universe?

I often agree with your viewpoints. Saw this though, and scratched my head. Just to let you know, I’ve always been a physicalist. But then I never went to school for philosophy, so I never learned that was bad.

I just worry about pop physics interpretations of Quantum Mechanics. The ideas are abstract, and not too many of us can speak of them with authority. I know I can't, so I avoid them as much as possible. If we are not physicists, we need to be careful.

Take radioactive decay as an example. Yes, on the quantum scale the decay of an individual particle is random, but on the macro scale the phenomenon is represented by half-life which is not random. Does the decay of one particle affect change on the macro scale? Do you realize how vanishingly small that is? Sure, vacuum fluctuations may be fundamental to the structure of reality, but only in aggregate. One randomly falling snowflake doesn't stop traffic, but enough of them create a blizzard. So does randomness on the quantum scale negate the PSR?

I’m leery of any leap from quantum to the macro world of humans.

Agent Smith’s PSR1 can be treated as an axiom, but PSR2 cannot - in the case of PSR2, God is the axiom (or “God meddles”) and PSR2 is a theorem.

The traditional PSR is PSR1 - insisting that things have “meaning” (i.e., are the result of agency) is a human peccadillo.

So any sort of pattern is an order. — Metaphysician Undercover

Humans are programmed to find order whether it exists or not. We believe we see order even in random arrangements Consider how many see the face of Jesus in a piece of toast..

I am stating a brute fact, a self-evident truth, that order requires a cause. — Metaphysician Undercover

But why must the cause be divine? THAT is not self-evident.

Local entropy can decrease provided it increases somewhere else (i.e., one system can expend energy to increase order in a second system). But nowhere does the Second Law of Thermodynamics require the intervention of God. There are perfectly fine explanations for order stemming from the Big Bang. You can Google them. (I'd say more but I gotta run.)

First, we must define order. Does order mean subscribing to a pattern we find pleasing? Give an example, and let's parse it.

Second, consider the fine-tuning "problem" - the idea that certain constants need to fall within very narrow ranges for life to exist. This ignores the fact that the real numbers are uncountably infinite between, say, 1.99 and 2.01, and may be put in a one-to-one correspondence with values between -1,000,000 and +1,000,000. Thus, the fine-tuning "problem" is actually due to our choice of units not the required accuracy of some Creator.

Third, requiring order (if you can find it) to have a cause, is a case of trying to find a question to match an answer. Why does order require a cause? Are you asking, "Why does the number line have small numbers on the left and large numbers on the right?" (This goes back to my first question.)

Did you watch the first video provided by dclements? Try with an open mind. It's quite good.

The argument is basically that each and every aspect of existence, as observed, is an organized, or ordered, arrangement of parts. And, organized or ordered arrangements require something which orders them. The thing which ordered the parts is called God, So God is a necessary conclusion. — Metaphysician Undercover

Yes, akin to Leibniz's best-of-all-possible-worlds argument.

I think this is the wrong way to look at things. If we could approach the universe from the outside, and found it to be well-ordered, then we might correctly be surprised. But we are products of this universe - we evolved to survive, and even thrive, in this universe. Therefore, it seems ordered to us. It would be much more shocking to find that it lacked order.

Personally, I'm with Voltaire.

Yeah, I know about that other thread. I've been avoiding that nonsense like the plague.

So let's add up all the Christians who supported abolition and all the Christians who supported slavery. Which group do you think was bigger?

How many slave owners were non-Christian? For that matter, how many non-Christians were living in the US at that time?

Nobody else did. — Shwah

Right. Slavery, on the other hand, was largely supported by all the non-theists that were living in the US in the early 19th Century. Certainly no Christian would ever own slaves.

Well, they did blow up the Buddhas of Bamiyan. So I'd still keep an eye on your pets.

Gotta love those crazy theists!

How is this a problem for physicalism but not idealism? If perception is demonstrably different from "what's out there", it still doesn't matter what we call the transcendent. Calling it "mental" still leaves the gap between quale and what causes quale. The hallucination persists.

Perhaps idealism adds nothing, but you simply accept physicalism as the default position. — Tobias

I've admitted to the unspeakable sin of being a physicalist, yes. But that's not the point. Idealism is just another version of physicalism. It renames the transcendent from "matter" to "mental". That's all. Until the truth can be proved one way or the other, physicalism is not invalidated by idealism.

I am amused by the contempt which idealists hold toward physicalism on TPF.

Accepting the dictionary definition (i.e., not mine), it should be obvious to you. Can you know what you can't experience? You can make assumptions based on appearances, but you can never be sure. (As a physicalist, I do happen to believe that appearances do reveal the approximate nature of things-as-they-are, but that's my peccadillo.)

Now the only question that remains is does the transcendent exist or not? If not, then you must accept solipsism.

These aren’t wild claims. It’s just good old fashioned neo-Kantianism. — Joshs

Is it mainstream cognitive science? Could be, I don't know. If so, it needs to get out to the public.

If the approach to understanding the world is largely physicalist on the part of scientists and other thinkers, and if that means we hallucinate the world, shouldn't that have implications? Like the same experiment run twice yielding different results?

Again I ask : What does idealism add to our understanding?

But what is the transcendence? — EugeneW

From the Oxford English Dictionary

transcendent
adjective

beyond or above the range of normal or merely physical human experience.
"the search for a transcendent level of knowledge"

surpassing the ordinary; exceptional.
"the conductor was described as a “transcendent genius.”"

(of God) existing apart from and not subject to the limitations of the material universe.

From Mirriam-Webster

transcendent

1a. exceeding usual limits : surpassing.

b. extending or lying beyond the limits of ordinary experience.

c. in Kantian philosophy : being beyond the limits of all possible experience and knowledge.

What is beyond experience is unknowable. We can speculate given appearances, but we can't know.

If you doubt the transcendent, then all is what's in your mind. That's solipsism.

Andy Clark, for one: — Joshs

Donald Hoffman too. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Both make their bones by positing novel wild claims. Otherwise, Clark wouldn't get tenured and Hoffman wouldn't sell books. Is it really becoming mainstream? Do they teach it at university? Maybe, but it's new to me.

So when you attack the credibility of observation, you're also attacking the credibility of arguments for physicalism and science as a whole. — Count Timothy von Icarus

But who does this? I've never run across this claim on the part of physicalists.

By definition, the transcendent is unknowable. The credibility of an observation is just as useless for idealists as physicalists. Can the idealist guarantee that they are having a true thought? What if it's a hallucination as you claim - doesn't that render the observation untrue for both? Or are you claiming observations are always true?

The point about the rose colored glasses was this : we interact with the world as thinking beings. So our frame of reference necessitates that we understand the world through thoughts. "The chair" is a thought in our minds. But that doesn't imply that the actual chair is a thought.

Umm, your missing the point. Either the transcendent exists or it doesn't. What you call it hardly matters.

It's fine to speculate on the actual nature of the transcendent. But by definition we can never know for sure. Physicalism seems to work fine for most of the mouth-breathers, so what does idealism add? It's just a renaming of the transcendent.

But idealists on TPF would have you believe that physicalists are Neanderthals.

I have to agree with him here. Idealism is saying "things are what they appear to be." — Count Timothy von Icarus

You kind of negate this point with your next sentence.

To be sure, our intuition about how things are is often wrong (optical illusions, the discovery of microbes)... — Count Timothy von Icarus

We experience the world through minds, so of course things appear mental. If you wear rose colored glasses, everything will "appear" pink. Does that mean the world is pink?

Physicalism is saying, "no, actually what you experience isn't the real deal. You essentially hallucinate a world..." — Count Timothy von Icarus

Really? Who says we hallucinate a world?

To be clear : Idealism is fine if it satisfies some personal itch. But it is not really different from physicalism. Both admit of a transcendent whose nature we can never know. It's simply a renaming.

The idealist's challenge is not to tear down physicalism, but to prove the transcendent to be "mental". Otherwise, haughty claims of superiority are nonsense.

Except that without ideas our attempts to understand will be in vain. — EugeneW

Who said anything about rejecting ideas? Not me.

Why do you think I have advocated that position?

What is this matter you speak of? — Tobias

Don't be silly. The point is that idealism is unnecessary. It adds nothing to understanding. Does it render science moot? Count Tim doesn't think so.

I swore off TPF some weeks ago - tired of the never-ending, ridiculous anti-realism and anti-science screeds. (You do realize that 90% of ALL of the world's anti-realists are contributors to this forum?)

But I found myself laid up for a few days with a bad knee, and having read every book in the house, I found myself fishing around for a distraction. Aargh, I should have known better.



I find idealism to be ridiculous, and here's why :

There are only two positions to take - the transcendent exists or it does not exist. Physicalists call the transcendent "matter" which implies a world of wood and steel and dirt existing external to our bodies, and that will go on existing even if all humans died tomorrow. Idealists gag on this notion - "How dare a filthy world of meat and dirt intrude on our saintly world of the mind?" So they rename the transcendent "mental" and think they've accomplished something. Moving deck chairs on the Titanic.

And it seems you agree :

Idealism does not entail anti-realism. Berkeley thought rocks and chairs existed. They were just mental objects. Thus, idealism can work fine with science. Science is just the description of how phenomenal objects relate to one another. Its predictive power is in no way reduced in idealism. — Count Timothy von Icarus

The only alternative is to deny the transcendent and admit to solipsism.

If one is going to claim that the transcendent does not exist but somehow avoid solipsism, then one must explain the source of quale (sense impressions). And why the moon doesn't cease to exist whenever we close our eyes. And how other minds can exist. Berkeley tried to get around this by positing an uber-observer (God). Doesn't do away with the transcendent for us humans though.

... it shows an ontology based on modern science that avoids solipsism, is realist about external objects, and retains idealism. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Not having read this work yet, I wonder if you might shed a little more light on this idea. Is it just another attempt to rename "matter" as "mental"?

So for me, it's not that idealism is wrong, just unnecessary.

I'm not a dummy. However, unlike 90% of the philosophy majors on this forum, I am a physicalist - if I'm observing the night sky and I blink, the moon doesn't cease to exist. It's fascinating how so many of you want to escape from the world. I suggested to GT in an earlier post that it is probably due to egotism. One thinks, "My mind is so special, so important. How can it be limited to a hunk of meat?"