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Explain consciousness to the layman.

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Jeff Corey said:
Cosciousness, thinking, picturing things mentally - these all exist. The fact is that they are private behaviors which cannot be scientifically studied.
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With an open mind, one can come up with scientific ways to study anything.

The hard question (sorry to repeat) is if we had a p-zombie who claimed to have full, internal, subjective, qualia-rich experiences, how could we tell it was lying?

I think robots and artificial intelligence really got us thinking about the nature of consciousness. Before, we just assumed we had that magic spark, being in god's image and all, so what's to debate? Once automatons appeared, we started wondering if we could be nothing more than spectacularly complicated machines. Comparing us with machines is like comparing us with animals, who were also assumed to have no souls (soul and consciousness are, to some, synonymous).

Ideas like the Golem seem very old. I'm also thinking of characters like the sphexish broomstick in Disney's Sorcerer's Apprentice.

The current state of AI and consciousness philosophy is fascinating, but I'm going to read about the history of the philosophy of consciousness in the next few days. Carry on, and thanks for the occasional LOL.
 
Mr. Scott said:
With an open mind, one can come up with scientific ways to study anything.

The hard question (sorry to repeat) is if we had a p-zombie who claimed to have full, internal, subjective, qualia-rich experiences, how could we tell it was lying?..
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I never was particulary impressed by this hypothetical being who had no private behaviors, like thinking, but could fake it enough to fool people.
 
I have little use for p-zombie-based arguments.

Then, again, I have little use for any of these arguments.
 
Jeff Corey said:
Yes, it's a visual illusion, most likely induced by lateral inhibition. We call them visual illusions because they are non-veridical percepts agreed upon by most observers.
Next?
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Well, the illusion is produced by a subjective, private behavior; and can be studied--the same way you study objective things.

But fair enough. Let's consider these specific kinds of subjective phenomena:
Jeff Corey said:
Cosciousness, thinking, picturing things mentally - these all exist. The fact is that they are private behaviors which cannot be scientifically studied.
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"Consciousness" is too broad and fuzzy for my tastes.

But thinking and picturing things mentally both seem to be subjects that are fairly easy to study scientifically. I can task a subject with problems, get and record results, get and record reports of how the subject reports he got the results, compare that to the problem space, and so on. As for picturing things mentally, I can perform like tests on problems that involve manipulation of visual data.

I suppose the idea is that because subjective behaviors are private, I cannot see them directly. That's not a problem--I observe the results of them indirectly. When I study electricity using the voltmeter, I'm doing the same thing--I cannot see the electricity directly; I can only observe the effects of it indirectly. I don't see any difference at all in principle.

So what would be the problem? Why can't I study private behaviors scientifically?
 
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OK, suppose I have a mental image of, say, my dog. Tell me how you can study that empirically.
 
We can start by comparing brain activity when you have a mental picture of your dog vs. having a mental picture of something else vs. being shown an actual picture of your dog. We can compare that with other people's brain activity under those different conditions.

Now, if you don't tell us what your mental picture is (or if you have one), we have less to go on, but we can still measure and compare your brain activity against activity recorded for known stimuli.

It's all physical activity; it can all be measured and explained. Private behaviours are just public behaviours viewed from an unfamiliar angle.
 
PixyMisa said:
We can start by comparing brain activity when you have a mental picture of your dog vs. having a mental picture of something else vs. being shown an actual picture of your dog. We can compare that with other people's brain activity under those different conditions.

Now, if you don't tell us what your mental picture is (or if you have one), we have less to go on, but we can still measure and compare your brain activity against activity recorded for known stimuli.

It's all physical activity; it can all be measured and explained. Private behaviours are just public behaviours viewed from an unfamiliar angle.
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I think that's beyond our capability right now. Possibly in the future it will be public behavior. Subvocal speech is another area of interest, since much of what we call thinking involves talking to ourselves.
 
Jeff Corey said:
I think that's beyond our capability right now. Possibly in the future it will be public behavior. Subvocal speech is another area of interest, since much of what we call thinking involves talking to ourselves.
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I am so glad I would be long dead by then :boggled:
 
Yes, one wonders what the science of morality would say about public access to our inner life?
 
One good thing would be that we would not have to wait for Pixy Misa to reveal to us how he feels when asked the question.

:-)
 
!Kaggen said:
Yes, one wonders what the science of morality would say about public access to our inner life?
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Did you see that movie.... Minority Report ? They arrested people who were going to commit a crime before they committed it.

Imagine making reading thoughts a MANDATORY measure in the hope of preventing crime before it occurs. So along with ID tags injected in our bodies at birth we will also have probes inserted to transmit our thoughts to a central thought monitoring agency (TMA).

Should someone make a movie about this? Has it already been done?

What about that movie called GATTACA.... I loved that one.
 
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The other question is.

Do we not already have access to others inner life through art?

Considering its gentle approach compared to the invasiveness of science I vote for this technique.

Now we just have to identify the objective part of art and voila we have a definition of consciousness.

Leumas that's what I think ;-)
 
Leumas said:
What was that movie.... Minority Report ... or something like that.

They arrested people who were going to commit a crime before they committed it.

Imagine making reading thoughts a MANDATORY measure in the hope of preventing crime before it occurs.

So along with ID tags injected at birth we will also have probes inserted to transmit our thoughts to a central thought monitoring agency (TMA).

Should someone make a movie about this? Has it already been done?

What about that movie called GATTACA.... I loved that one.
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Yes, Hollywood has already been there.

So who rules the nation the politicians or the script writers?
 
Leumas said:
Imagine making reading thoughts a MANDATORY measure in the hope of preventing crime before it occurs. So along with ID tags injected in our bodies at birth we will also have probes inserted to transmit our thoughts to a central thought monitoring agency (TMA).
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Or....:D.... Consciousness Investigation Agency ..... CIA.... :D


Or.... Thought Securing Agency..... TSA .... :p



!Kaggen said:
Yes, Hollywood has already been there.

So who rules the nation the politicians or the script writers?
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Do you remember the name of the movie?
 
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Jeff Corey said:
I think that's beyond our capability right now. Possibly in the future it will be public behavior. Subvocal speech is another area of interest, since much of what we call thinking involves talking to ourselves.
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We are approching this faster than one might think: "Mind-reading research could give a voice to coma and stroke patients"

With the developed computer model, they found they could take brain waves from patients and construct the word they were thinking about.
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