Automatons

[westprog]

The entire world external to you would function identically if you were the only entity that possesed awareness, subjective experience, and qualia.

We don't know that. In order for that to be true, human beings would have had to evolve consciousness for no reason at all. Is it really plausible that something as fundamental as conscious experience is an accidental side-effect of complexity?

We can only start to evaluate whether this is, in fact, possible, when we produce automatons without qualia, and see if they possess similar capacities to human beings. Alternatively, if their functional capacity causes them to develop consciousness (as far as we can tell), that would also tell us something.

Until then, we don't know.

Doesn't that suggest something to you?

It can suggest any number of things. If I were to start with my mind firmly made up, then I would not be able to consider alternative possibilities - for example, that the universe is a simulation.

 

[Nick227]

No, I cannot see this. Neither can any true materialists -- which you are definitely not. You are merely a closet dualist pretending to be a materialist. And like a creationist pretending to be an evolutionist, you are screwing up all the arguments -- because you don't understand them -- and doing little besides making a fool of yourself.

All I can do is recommend you read Susan Blackmore or one of the other reputable researchers who have worked in this field. They will tell you as I am telling you - it looks weird. To begin to deconstruct selfhood and to conceptualise it as simply a brain process brings pretty much anyone into direct confrontation with the possibility that many deeply cherished beliefs about themselves are not valid. It's deeply counter-intuitive and it looks weird as hell.

Nick

 

[Nick227]

I am not dismissing anything. I am saying that you can investigate the experience of another all you want -- you can even get to the point of finding correlated structures and information flow in your own brain, and develop a strong understanding of how an information processing system can develop consciousness (which, btw, has been known for 20+ years) -- but that final step from "experience" to "subjective experience" is purely a question of identity.

David Chalmers said a very similar thing some years back.

BTW, it is all subjective if you look at it this way. It is only that data accrued from other individuals personal phenomenological reality corresponds with yours that allows objectivity to be postulated.

Nick

 

[Nick227]

And you wonder why nobody on these forums takes you seriously anymore?

Oh, did they before then?

So what? Again (how many times must I ask this) what is your point?

My point is that you are repeatedly mistaking a linguistically-created illusion for reality.

As I see it, that a lump of living flesh and bone behaves as a coherent, self-contained entity occurs largely because of a small number of brain processes taking place within a myriad other brain processes. The ability to create language is a big part of this. Language, the articulation of thinking, creates experience. Without language there is no experience. The human, as a machine, only packages its data-processing activities as "experiences" in order to communicate them. Without language there simply is no "I," neither spoken nor actually existing.

Without language there is no "I" and there is no "experience." These are simply "packaging tools" used to further social interaction.

Nick

 

[westprog]

What you seem to imply is that a phenomena which is causally reducible also has to be ontologically reducible. But that’s not necessarily the case at all. Solidity is causally reducible to how water molecules behave, but that doesn’t mean there must be a phenomenal essence to solidity that could (or must) be explained. The same could very well be true for subjective experience; i.e. it would be causally reducible to neuronal activity, but not ontologically. Hence from a third person perspective your subjective experience could be fully portrayed in terms of neuronal activity, but from a first person perspective the only way to explain it would be to be you having the experience. It’s almost like truism really.

I would be perfectly happy with an explanation of consciousness that operated on a similar level to the explanation of solidity. Solidity (or liquidity or gaseousness) are states that depend entirely on the interactions between atoms. There's a direct causal link between the structure of the atoms and the large scale state of matter.

It's precisely this causal link which I'm looking for in the explanation of how consciousness arises. I realise that this will be difficult to establish. So far, we have a trail that leads from stimulus to response, but no clear indication of what makes the organism conscious.

It's helpful to say that consciousness is associated with certain phenomena, but we need to know exactly how they create it.

 

[westprog]

I am not dismissing anything. I am saying that you can investigate the experience of another all you want -- you can even get to the point of finding correlated structures and information flow in your own brain, and develop a strong understanding of how an information processing system can develop consciousness (which, btw, has been known for 20+ years)

I very much doubt that. It hasn't even been established that an information processing system can develop consciousness, at any scale. I'm sure that it's been strongly asserted. When it's demonstrated, we can look
again.

-- but that final step from "experience" to "subjective experience" is purely a question of identity.

There is nothing magical or difficult about it. It is the definition of subjective !! Experience + identity = subjective experience.

The problem with this concept is that I don't see how it is possible to have experience which isn't subjective. Hence it's impossible to have the experience without the identity. To describe what happens to something without identity as "experience" doesn't mean anything.

So in order to explain subjective experience, we have to understand how identity arises. (Or, for Nick, the illusion of identity).

 

[Nick227]

It's precisely this causal link which I'm looking for in the explanation of how consciousness arises. I realise that this will be difficult to establish. So far, we have a trail that leads from stimulus to response, but no clear indication of what makes the organism conscious.

Maybe there's a "breakthrough potential" at which data streams change their behaviour. This was evolutionarily favoured and developed, over the aeons, into what we now regard as "conscious experience."

What creates the HPC is that we mistake "experience" and "selfhood" as implicit. People can become so attached to "their experiences" they overlook mechanistic explanations for their arisal from simple data-processing.

Nick

 

[Nick227]

The problem with this concept is that I don't see how it is possible to have experience which isn't subjective. Hence it's impossible to have the experience without the identity. To describe what happens to something without identity as "experience" doesn't mean anything.

So in order to explain subjective experience, we have to understand how identity arises. (Or, for Nick, the illusion of identity).

As I see it, this is what Ramachandran is suggesting in the earlier link. Subjectivity, selfhood, and language are so inter-related that it is not possible to examine one in isolation of the others.

Nick

 

[rocketdodger]

We don't know that. In order for that to be true, human beings would have had to evolve consciousness for no reason at all. Is it really plausible that something as fundamental as conscious experience is an accidental side-effect of complexity?

Or, consciousness could simply be what it is like to be a certain type of complexity. Not a side effect -- the effect. Which is what I am arguing.

We can only start to evaluate whether this is, in fact, possible, when we produce automatons without qualia, and see if they possess similar capacities to human beings. Alternatively, if their functional capacity causes them to develop consciousness (as far as we can tell), that would also tell us something.

Until then, we don't know.

I agree with all of this. I am just saying that the "we don't know" isn't "we have no clue at all," it is more along the lines of "we have very promising leads and so far all the empirical evidence confirms that we are on the right track."

 

[rocketdodger]

All I can do is recommend you read Susan Blackmore or one of the other reputable researchers who have worked in this field. They will tell you as I am telling you - it looks weird. To begin to deconstruct selfhood and to conceptualise it as simply a brain process brings pretty much anyone into direct confrontation with the possibility that many deeply cherished beliefs about themselves are not valid. It's deeply counter-intuitive and it looks weird as hell.

Nick

No Nick, you are simply Wrong. And this is why I say you don't know what you are talking about.

The material worldview doesn't invalidate any deeply cherished beliefs. It simply sheds new light on them. If selfhood is simply a brain process, then.... then nothing. It is still selfhood. I am still me. "I" and "me" are still completely valid notions. "Self" is still completely valid. It just means that I -- the entity that is typing this sentence -- am a complex biological robot made of elementary particles. So what? WHAT IS YOUR POINT?

 

[rocketdodger]

My point is that you are repeatedly mistaking a linguistically-created illusion for reality.

According to your posts so far, everything in human language is a linguistically created illusion. What is your point?

Without language there is no "I" and there is no "experience." These are simply "packaging tools" used to further social interaction.

So is "snow," "water," "stone," "red," "hot," and "computer."

WHAT IS YOUR POINT NICK

 

[rocketdodger]

What creates the HPC is that we mistake "experience" and "selfhood" as implicit. People can become so attached to "their experiences" they overlook mechanistic explanations for their arisal from simple data-processing.

Nick

You mean people like you?

 

[rocketdodger]

So in order to explain subjective experience, we have to understand how identity arises. (Or, for Nick, the illusion of identity).

Um... you can't -- it is an axiom. 1 == 1. A == A. There is nothing to understand. It just is.

 

[Nick227]

No Nick, you are simply Wrong. And this is why I say you don't know what you are talking about.

The material worldview doesn't invalidate any deeply cherished beliefs. It simply sheds new light on them. If selfhood is simply a brain process, then.... then nothing. It is still selfhood. I am still me. "I" and "me" are still completely valid notions. "Self" is still completely valid. It just means that I -- the entity that is typing this sentence -- am a complex biological robot made of elementary particles. So what? WHAT IS YOUR POINT?

Well, there are a couple of points.

For a start, yes, selfhood can be considered completely valid at the level of a functioning self-contained organism embedded within its environment. It's valid, no doubt about it. I wouldn't get too far in communicating, or life in general, if I didn't accept this.

However, if you want to investigate the nature of consciousness, if you are attracted to doing this, then I think it's also valid, if not actually necessary, to start to examine some of the neural processes that create our daily "experience" and take them apart a bit, seeing how reality can be modelled with or without them. To me this is simply an aspect of the scientific endeavour.

Secondarily, if you are interested, and you don't apply a full range of scientific techniques, including reductionist analysis, to your investigation, then you don't know what you might miss. If you shut the door on certain avenues of exploration then you simply have no idea what goes on down those paths. It could be that there is a far more profound and deeper reality awaiting you. It could be that there is not. But if you don't look you don't know. Anyway, for me, I think that if the subject of your investigation is this thing we call "consciousness" then I don't think you're going to get much of a rounded perspective without looking.

Consider, by way of example, your perspective on experience. The model you subscribe to drives you to conclude that all that exists experiences. I guess you're happy with this conclusion. I would not be.

You can consider the behaviour of organisms. You can consider the behaviour of particles. There are whole other levels between.

Nick

 

[westprog]

Triple post. Deja vu all over again.

 

[Nick227]

According to your posts so far, everything in human language is a linguistically created illusion. What is your point?

So is "snow," "water," "stone," "red," "hot," and "computer."

WHAT IS YOUR POINT NICK

My point is that the linguistically-created illusion "I" is the basis of subjectivity and of experience. Thus these phenomena, which you are apparently asserting to be somehow implicit in all that exists, can clearly be seen not to be.

Nick

 

[rocketdodger]

My point is that the linguistically-created illusion "I" is the basis of subjectivity and of experience.

My point is that "I" is not an illusion, for reasons I have given, and reasons you have failed to invalidate.

This is what happens when a dualist pretends to be a materialist, Nick. Go back to dualism.

Thus these phenomena, which you are apparently asserting to be somehow implicit in all that exists, can clearly be seen not to be.

Nick

Oh really? You have evidence that a water molecule does not experience?

No, of course you don't. No more than you have evidence that a dog, or a mouse, or a cricket, or a calculator does not experience.

What you have evidence of is that these things don't experience like a human. So what? Or are you asserting that experience == human experience?

 

[six7s]

Or are you [Nick227] asserting that experience == human experience?

This is a question that occurred to me, also

My point is that the linguistically-created illusion "I" is the basis of subjectivity and of experience

Are you asserting that, for example, dogs have no (relevant) concept of 'self'?

 

[westprog]

Double post. Not my fault, honest.

 

[westprog]

Oh really? You have evidence that a water molecule does not experience?

No, of course you don't. No more than you have evidence that a dog, or a mouse, or a cricket, or a calculator does not experience.

What you have evidence of is that these things don't experience like a human. So what? Or are you asserting that experience == human experience?

I have no evidence that a water molecule doesn't scream with agony when the kettle nears boiling point. However, there's no evidence for any such thing - nor for any kind of experience for inanimate objects.

The burden of proof seems fairly clear in this case.