I think one should live authentically. Whether you are religious, spiritual, or philosophical. — Corra

What does that mean? That you're not a wannabe or that you don't conform to society when it conflicts with your personal views and feelings? Or that you're always honest with other people?

I've never gotten all this talk about the hard problem. Now that I've heard about the harder problem, I don't get it either. Nothing here seems particularly difficult to me. — T Clark

So Data wouldn't present a problem to you, because he could tell you he was conscious, and back that up with convincing behavior?

So the point of all this disagreement is the hard(er) problem. If we learn about our consciousness the same way we do other people, then it might not be a problem.

But I think our own case is special, because we experience our conscious states, and can only infer them about other people.

Consciousness, frustration, and anxiety are all mental experiences. — T Clark

I'm wondering why all your mental experiences aren't just being conscious? Feelings included. Are we using different terms? By consciousness, do you mean awareness of what you're experiencing, and that inner dialog is what makes us aware?

Really? When a baby cries for food, it's not because it is experiencing hunger? When a dog is injured, it doesn't experience pain and fear? Dogs and babies don't experience anything? That seems like a pretty radical claim to me. — T Clark

Which is not one I would make. Why wouldn't they be conscious?

Part of the problem here is that experience can mean behavior as well as consciousness, and I would rather restrict experience to consciousness, otherwise it's easy to slip between the two, resulting in arguing past one another in these debates.

If want to get down to it, a rock "experiences" the sun from a physical or informational point of view, but that's not what we mean at all when saying a baby experiences hunger.

don't remember ever having this kind of experience. I don't know how it fits in with our discussion — T Clark

You didn't think that dreams were experienced, only remembered. Well, I've had lucid dreams a few times. They are conscious experiences as much as perception is.

It is not necessary to consciously experience color, sound, pain in perception, memory, imagination, etc. — T Clark

Color, sound and pain only exist as consciousness. Otherwise, they become labels for something biological or physical. The world is not colored in. It doesn't look like anything, except to conscious viewers. It also doesn't feel like anything.

A p-zombie universe has no color. It's only a label for the ability to discriminate wavelengths of visible light, since there is no experience of color in that universe.

But I don't fully endorse the p-zombie argument. I think there couldn't be any phenomenal concepts in a p-zombie universe. Color wouldn't exist as a word. Nor would pain.

It is necessary to consciously experience color, sound, pain in perception, memory, imagination, etc. It's obviously possible to experience these without being consciously aware. — T Clark

I would say we aren't experiencing anything when we're not conscious. We're p-zombies in that regard. Experience is consciousness.

What does Grandin say about awareness vs. consciousness. — T Clark

I don't know, I just recall reading that she claims to think in pictures and translate those to language when communicating, and she suspects animals also think in pictures. She compared her visualization capabilities to a Holodeck on Star Trek.

Also, what was interesting is that when she thinks of a roof, she thinks of the set of all roofs she's ever seen, and not some abstract roof concept. Therefore, particulars and not universals, with the ability to translate to universals for the purpose of communication.

Yes. Again, I said this in the earlier post. The full quote was: "'Adding 2' is not identical in both instances, obviously. And it's not identical in two instances of a calculator (or two calculators) adding two, either. " — Terrapin Station

I don't know that I can agree with that. How would they functionally be different for such a simple case? You're saying that there can never be an exact duplicate function across different physical subtrates.

I agree with this, but would like to clarify that inner dialog is one aspect of HUMAN consciousness. Non-human animals (and non-verbal humans) probably don't have an inner dialog, but they arguably experience qualia. — Relativist

Probably not, but they might have an inner visual sequence or smell or sonar, which aids their thinking like inner dialog does ours.

I argue that we should use a comprehensive definition of consciousness that admits a wide set of mental behavior. If we get too specific, we become overly human-chauvinistic. — Relativist

Yes, something philosophers are sometimes prone too. Over relying on vision for making epistemological and ontological arguments, for example.

That would work maybe if the functionalist is positing multiple instances of something identical, so that they'd have to be realists on universals/types. But we could have a nominalist sort of functionalism, where we're calling x and y "F," even though it's not literally two identical instances of F. — Terrapin Station

That might work, but would you extend that to different computers performing addition?

Are dreams and meditative states consciousness? I don't think I think they are. Or I think I don't think they are. In my experience, becoming consciously aware of dreams is something that happens in memory after I wake up — T Clark

You've never had a lucid dream?

Now, back to our internal experience of consciousness. For me, and, as I understand it, others, the essence of the experience is internal speech. Talking to ourselves. Another essential aspect is that it allows us to stand back and observe ourselves objectively, as if from the outside, just the way we observe others. We judge ourselves conscious just as we judge others - based on our behavior. — T Clark

Here is where we fundamentally disagree. Inner dialog is just one more form of conscious experience. And it's not necessary to experience color, sound, pain in perception, memory, imagination, etc.

If inner dialog were all there was to conscious experience, it would still present a hard problem. Also, not everyone has inner dialog. See Temple Grandin and visual thinking.

I judge myself to be conscious because I am conscious, not because I behave as if I am. I judge other people on behavior AND biology, because I don't experience what they do, but I have no reason for supposing they would be lacking, since they're human beings like me.

ou cannot be serious ! :rage: — Amity

To quote the great Homer Simpson:

Life is one crushing disappointment after another, until you just wish Ned Flanders was dead.

I cannot seriously suppose that I am at this moment dreaming. Someone who, dreaming says: “I am dreaming,” even if he speaks audibly in doing so, is no more right than if he said in his dream “it is raining,” while it was in fact raining. — On Certainty 676

Meh, I've realized I was dreaming before and recall even saying so "out loud" to a a dream person.

Secondly, even if we suppose in your scenario that you can "talk to people in both worlds in different languages" then you must be talking to someone else in a public language that you and the people you are conversing with share (albeit in your dreams). Otherwise, you are not really talking to anyone else at all. — Luke

That would be the position of the solipsist. So the question is whether solipsism can be defeated by saying the solipsist is not really talking to anyone. Which is true, but the solipsist can just say they have an experience of talking to people, just like in a dream, and that's all it is.

The point is that a private language is impossible. Therefore, as you say, "nobody in existence could call any language private". — Luke

Is it, though? A BIV has experiences of language with other people, but that language experience is fed to them by the vat. For the impossibility claim to work, you have to assume other people exist. It's not a defeater if you're willing to engage in radical skepticism.

Do you think there is a certain kind of humour which can only germinate or grow in misery ? — Amity

There's a certain kind of humor that goes with having lived long enough as a typical human being. Maybe the Elon Musks and Roger Federers of the world are not privy to such humor.

The ending seems a bit warped...
Is he saying they are missing out in not enjoying failure ? Because that is what feeds us...?
Guess I am not in tune with his wit...
Or does he mean that enjoying success so early - It's not such a great thing ? — Amity

I think he's saying that for most of us, we learn not to expect too much from life, but a 15 year old having amazing success might have different expectations. Which may not be how life turns out, because often there are disappointments, tragedies, and failures.

That being said, I would take the success at 15, if I could have been that good at something.

Interesting. Steam has it and it has some phenomenal reviews. Might give it a try. — Wallows

Me as well. Glad I saw this thread.

With all due respect to Alex and Coco, there’s sometimes something to be said for getting your disappointments in early. — John Crace

I love that statement! Maybe I'm just a lazy underachiever, but life's early disappointments certainly temper one's expectations a bit.

With all complex abstractions being leaky, this process inevitably, — alcontali

Ah, the leaky abstraction, which is itself a leaky metaphor. I understand it to mean that abstractions sometimes fail to perfectly hide the complexity, allowing it to occasionally leak through, creating difficulties in understanding.

So if a computer program has a leaky abstraction, that means the low level details matter in some way that might be unknown to the programmer, who's trying to figure out why their program isn't working as expected.

Which makes me wander about the role of metaphor in conceptual schemas and whether Aristotle took that into account. Plato clearly uses a metaphor for sense impressions being shadows on the wall of the cave, and the forms being the objects clearly seen outside. But all that is a non-literal use of visual imagery, and could potentially mislead us.

Can a metaphor be a platonic form? Are platonic forms leaky metaphors, hiding the messy physical details, while sometimes letting them through? Didn't Plato have difficulty deciding whether some things had forms, like mud?

I am guessing that few here would say that Google translation understands the meaning of the texts it uses. It works on information at the level of syntax. — Banno

I would never say that. I'm sympathetic to Searle's argument. Syntax is not meaning. Google and Siri don't converse.

That's all that is needed for moving information about. Using language is far more than that, which again shows the poverty of the conduit model.

Language is not moving information about. — Banno

So computers move information about, but language is something more. It's fundamentally a social enterprise where we participate in these language games for all sorts of reasons.

That's a good point that Data does not eat, so he lacks anything functional related to hunger or digestion. But note that Odo from Deep Space 9 also does not eat, but he's biological. We would also have even more reason for thinking Odo is conscious, but we wouldn't know what it's like to be able to shape-shift, or link together with other Changelings.

Odo clearly has feelings and his people have their own biases and wage war in response to past mistreatment. Now the Borg would be a very interesting compromise between Data and biology.

What Putnam et al are arguing is false. The state of adding 2 would be identical to the electronic state for the electronic device as it adds 2, and it would be identical to the brain state as the brain (as someone mentally) adds 2. — Terrapin Station

I don't think we're doing exactly the same thing as a calculator/computer when we add two, because two has an import conceptual component for us. It's an abstract concept that stands in for any set of two things. That's why we have debates over platonism.

Also, because we learn the rules for arithmetic and memorize basic results, which i doubt very much is performing the same function as a CPU making the calculation. Maybe computing a complicated sum with pen and paper is functionally the same?

However, I think the argument is that functionalism is a kind of dualism, because it's something additional to the physical substrate.

Simulating consciousness is consciousness. Consciousness is a behavioral feature, not a physiological or neurological one. — T Clark

it's not behavior. I can pretend to be in pain or feel sad. i can also hide my pain (within reason) or sadness. When you dream at night, usually your body is paralyzed so you don't move around in response to your dreams. You can sit perfectly still and meditate.

And there are many times we really don't know what someone else is thinking or feeling from their behavior.

Also, we can fake behavior up to a point mechanically and with computers. Siri sometimes tells me, "Brrrr, it's 20 degrees, cold outside." I have no reason to suppose my phone feels cold. It's just programmed to say that for certain temperature ranges.

Data could certainly pass the Turing test if he wanted to. — T Clark

On the show, Data is always puzzled by some feature of common human behavior. Maybe he could convince someone he's autistic, except the can perform calculation and recitation of facts at a superhuman level if asked, and he usually does so unless told not to.

Now his brother Lore could pass. He's a good liar. It helps being evil.

Can you reiterate this for me? What makes neurons special as a carrier of chemical messengers, sodium/potassium gates, and so on? — schopenhauer1

Searle just says we know in the case of humans we know that we're conscious, so it must be tied to our biology, since we don't have any other explanation.

You resurrected a really old thread. But I enjoyed re-reading it after all this time, for the first few pages. But then it fell apart. I take issue with the direct realists in this argument on two issues.

1. They fail to properly deal with TGW's hallucination/dream argument that direct realism has no way of determining whether perception is ever veridical if hallucinations and dreams can be phenomenologically indistinguishable. The counter argument was that the distinction would lose it's meaning if everything was a hallucination or dream.

But consider BIVs, the Matrix, Inception, Boltzman Brains and a version of the Simulation argument (just the brain and inputs). What matters here is that there is never any actual perception, only the experience of perception. The direct realist needs to argue these scenarios are impossible, because otherwise they have no means of saying whether they are directly perceiving the world or are in one of these scenarios. And I don't think we know enough to conclusively discount them.

2. The direct realists attempt to defend the realism of colors, smells, sounds, tastes and feels as objective properties of objects to defend against Michael's argument for indirect realism. And I'm pretty sure problems discovered in ancient philosophy disposed with such naive realism, let alone modern science. And thus TGW's ultimate frustration with where the argument ended.

So ... knowledge is when words are used to put information to work?

And information can be understood as Shannon entropy... — Banno

Well, that brings up the question of whether information exists independent of minds, and minds are just acting on the information already there in the environment, because that's why minds/bodies could successfully evolve.

Alternatively, minds generate the information when interacting with the environment based on what is useful to those minds. If information is a subset of language games, which themselves are made up, then information doesn't exist without language users?

o, if there are other boxes, doesn't there have to be a larger container? — Bitter Crank

Yeah, if the multiverse lies along the 11th dimension, them our universe would have a location in that dimension. Also, if there is an upside down Stranger Things universe, then our universe is located right side up. And if it's the Marvel multiverse, then our our heroes are typically located on Earth-616.

So the answer is that our universe can have a location if it's in some sort of spatial relation to other universes.

No, information does not travel through the air. If it did we’d know every language just by hearing it. First we must have the tools to decipher the language. We know the meaning by learning the meaning. — NOS4A2

Radio and microwaves travel through the air transmitting a boatload of information from satellites, radios and cell towers.

What sort of things can be moved? How about all of the things that have a spatiotemporal location? — creativesoul

Does information have a spatiotemporal location? We often say a file is moved from one computer to another. It might be uploaded, downloaded, synched to the cloud or what not.

We could say any instance of some piece of digital information, such as your banking number, is on a particular machine. But is it on the hard drive, in memory, inside the processor cache? Do the bytes that make up the file reside on one location, or in various ones that change as the operating system or whatever program moves bits around?

Or what if we just think in general about the capital of Australia. Does that information reside on Earth?

It's doing things with words. — Banno

But sometimes doing things with words results in moving information from one head to another.

Why else would the talking heads on Fox News be on 24 hours a day?

Stick a pin in your arm and see if you still think that pain is an illusion. — Banno

The argument I'm opposing in the OP is that since consciousness experiences such as pain don't fit into a scientific understanding of the universe, at least when philosophers start discussing what it's like to be in pain, therefore consciousness must be a sort of illusion caused by some hidden (from introspection) mechanism in the brain which neuroscience will reveal in good time.

But that's just wrong. A misuse of words.

Hm. Odd, again, that folk can't see this. — Banno

By folks, do you mean Daniel Dennett and Keith Frankish? They're the ones advancing the view that consciousness is an illusion — a magic show or simulation caused by some hidden mechanism in the brain neuroscience will reveal.

But we don't perceive "appearances" or qualia. They are ghostly objects that arise from invalid philosophical distinctions. — Andrew M

If we perceive the world as colored in, and science explains it without the coloring in, then the appearance of color needs to be explained. It doesn't matter whether we call colors relational, qualia, secondary qualities, representations, mental paint or whatever. Changing the language use isn't going to help.

One might think that neuroscience or biology would be of help here, but the coloring in isn't found in explanations of neuronal activity or biological systems either. This is why we have questions about whether other animals, infants, people in comas, robots and uploaded simulations are or could be conscious (experience a coloring in in their relation to the environment). We can ask what or whether it's like anything to be a bat or a robot using different terms, and the same issue arises.

I have no idea what "strong emergentism" is — Harry Hindu

Strong emergentism means something truly novel that couldn't have been predicted beforehand with perfect knowledge comes into existence when the right physical configuration occurs.

Some people also call it spooky emergentism. I think it falls under the title of non-reductive materialism. I consider it be a kind of dualism, because its emergence can't be predicted by knowing all the physical facts before hand. It's a new addition to the universe. One can easily imagine physically identical universes lacking strong emergence. It's a tacked on feature, basically. Kind of like God saying, let there be consciousness (or universals or whatever) when matter is arranged a certain way.

They will say that we are mere machines that process light waves and reliably spit out true beliefs. — PossibleAaran

Or not so reliably, since this is accompanied with an illusion of color resulting in much ink spilled over the hard problem and also, the problem of perception (given other illusions such as optical, hallucinations, and perceptual relativity).

I'm only familiar with Locke's primary/secondary qualities distinction which is a philosophical distinction. I'm not aware that science makes any use of it, or why it would be useful. — Andrew M

Science is an objective, third person enterprise that abstracts away from individual perception to formulate equations, models and laws. This is fundamentally based on the realization that properties such as extension, shape, mass, composition and number belong to objects, allowing us to systematically investigate the world and form predictable explanations.

The false picture is, for example, that only one's perception of the stop sign is red (or some variant such as sense data or phenomena), and not that the stop sign is red. — Andrew M

It's not a false picture at all because the color red is what we experience given the kind of visual system we have. The scientific explanation is that packets of electromagnetic energy of certain wavelengths are reflected off molecular surfaces into our eyes where cones are excited to send electrical signals to the visual cortex, where neuronal activity performs whatever functions result in an experience of seeing a red colored object. The experience is a correlation and not part of the explanation for molecular bonds, optics or neuroscience.

find that hard to parse. Do you mean we don't perceive the room? But we can feel the hardness of the walls when we touch them, or the coolness of the air. And that can be investigated scientifically. — Andrew M

No, I mean that our perception of room temperature is a creature dependent experience. Notice how one person can feel hot, another cold and third just right in the same room. This sort of perceptual relativity was noticed in ancient philosophy, leading to skepticism of external objects. If the honey tastes sweet for me and bitter for you, who is to say that sweetness belongs to the honey? Instead, I am sweetened or I am whitened was the preferred formulation of the Cyrenaics, similar to how we sometimes say I'm cold. If I kick a rock and feel pain, the rock feels nothing. Pain is my experience of kicking a rock.

The physical explanation is not an experience of heat or cold, but rather the combined energy of all the molecules in motion, which we don't experience directly (or we would have known about atoms and chemistry from the start).

It's also not clear what the "objectively" qualifier is adding if not just to say that such perceptions are beyond the province of scientific investigation. Which is just a reassertion of the hard problem. — Andrew M

It's just a realization that naive realism is untenable, and we experience the world a certain way based on the kinds of bodies we have. Science is our best attempt to get beyond how the world appears to us to explain how it really is (however incomplete it may be).

it's pretty obvious when we discover that solid objects are mostly empty space and the the visible light we see is only a small part of the EM spectrum. It's clear we don't experience the world as it is, thus the distinction between appearance and reality.

agree, and is why computer-brained robots with sensory devices like cameras, microphones, and tactile pressure points where information comes together into a working memory would have "experiences", or a point-of-view. — Harry Hindu

This sounds like the integrated information theory of consciousness. I'm unclear as to where that is a property dualism, strong emergentism or some form of identity theory.