On Consciousness

[Beelzebuddy]

Hey, I started this thread and decided what it's about. Read post #1 and the attached survey to find out what this thread is actually about.

I spun it off from the thread "Define consciousness for the layman," so I consider arguing the definition of conscious to be a derail. We are assuming the term to be adequately defined for the expert, but just not fully explained, since there's a prevailing intuition that it has supernatural or noncomputational basis.

I don't believe you can make that assumption. Experts don't use the term except in the general sense, and never when it might actually be applied to something. There is no definition that even they can agree on, as annnoid's copypasta states. That's why the term "correlates of consciousness" is so popular, it gets to talk about stuff kinda generally related to consciousness without actually having to precisely define it.

As for your attached paper, it's just the usual qualia ****. By its logic, I can solder a resistor onto my thermostat, label it "emotion" and my thermostat will be conscious. Which is fine, since it's just a setup for showing off the neural network architecture. If I were on his thesis committee I'd be a bit disappointed in the lack of practical results, but it is just a thesis. If I were given to baseless conjecture, I suspect the guy's probably already spent years working on this thing, he knows his stuff in that regard, it'd be unfair to deny him just because he got pulled into his advisor's big damn bloated software architecture.

[ETA] I should mention that I don't think "consciousness" implies anything supernatural or noncomputational, it's just vague. Defining it is like nailing a cloud to a wall.

 

[Zeuzzz]

Seems your posts are about (primarily) taking substances.

Seems your brain is equally made of similar substances which give rise to your conscious experience. It's called neurochemistry^WP.

 

[Zeuzzz]

[ETA] I should mention that I don't think "consciousness" implies anything supernatural or noncomputational, it's just vague. Defining it is like nailing a cloud to a wall.

Seconded, apart form the non computational part maybe.

I can't see how creativity can be computational or programmable.

I've written music that has not come from logical deductions. I don't think that from deductive logic alone you can explain the creative and conscious dimension of the universe. Give science one free axiom or assumed miracle and sure it can roll the dice from that point forward, from the birth of time to the crack of doom. But there is always that initial unprovable assumption somewhere along the line.

 

[Zeuzzz]

since there's a prevailing intuition that it has supernatural or noncomputational basis.

The biggest intuition active in this thread seems to me to be a scientism^WP based intuition that consciousness is nothing more than a logical number crunching machine.

 

[Mr. Scott]

As for your attached paper, it's just the usual qualia ****. By its logic, I can solder a resistor onto my thermostat, label it "emotion" and my thermostat will be conscious.

I'm not sure what you mean by "the usual qualia ***." What's the usual, and why is it wrong?

[ETA] I should mention that I don't think "consciousness" implies anything supernatural or noncomputational, it's just vague. Defining it is like nailing a cloud to a wall.

We're talking about the internal subjective experience. Do you think a machine can be made to achieve that? Why, or why not?

We're also talking about capabilities our brains/minds have that some believe are impossible to mechanize. What's your position on that?

 

[dlorde]

... I challenge you to find a person that is a well known public speaker that has a vocabulary as diverse as Terrence Mckenna, since you are arguing against language from psychedelics.

Terrence McKenna is a well known public speaker? Well known among his fans, perhaps.

And your claim is that his vocabulary is somehow evidence that experience of psychedelics gives a 'tremendous advantage' to language evolution?

He literally runs loops around syntactical language, and ties it up in a succinct knot at the end of most of what he says.

That's not a bad description - he does tend to circumvent syntax and tie himself in linguistic knots. I know his material - I even have a copy of 'True Hallucinations'. It's an easy-reading style, but not particularly good writing.
[not literally]

I am simply asking that you listen to him speak and post your conclusions about what he says here, in the spirit of the forum.

To be frank, I think he's really gone downhill. It was an intensely dull, highly fanciful talk, given in a halting monotone. I nearly fell asleep. Surely you're not holding that up as an example of good public speaking?

 

[Zeuzzz]

H

To be frank, I think he's really gone downhill.

He's more than gone downhill. He's dead. Has been for over a decade.

You implied that psychedelic use would not be good for language yet I can supply an example of a person with a vocabulary and knowledge base far wider than most people here, was the point.

I can supply more. But I am not really sure what your argument about language is, which is why I warned of sample bias before I mentioned a specific person.

 

[quarky]

Damn.

dead for more than a decade really is down hill.

When people die, they tend to lose a lot of credibility, in my book.
The more dead they are, the less credible.

 

[quarky]

Zombies are in their own category.

 

[PixyMisa]

We're talking about the internal subjective experience. Do you think a machine can be made to achieve that?

Machines do achieve that.

[quote[We're also talking about capabilities our brains/minds have that some believe are impossible to mechanize. What's your position on that?[/QUOTE]
Those people are ignorant and/or delusional.

 

[Mr. Scott]

Machines do achieve that.

How do you know that machines we've built achieved internal subjective experiences?

 

[PixyMisa]

Sorry about the messed up quoting. I blame either the flu or the flu medicine, whichever was having the greater effect on my system at the time.

How do you know that machines we've built achieved internal subjective experiences?

There are two ways we know this. Three. Four ways. Maybe more. (Flu!)

1. We ask them.
2. We open them up and look.
3. We design them specifically for this.
4. We are machines with subjective experiences.

 

[Anders Lindman]

"A human being is a part of the whole, called by us, "Universe," a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings as something separated from the rest -- a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness." -- Albert Einstein

 

[Mr. Scott]

Sorry about the messed up quoting. I blame either the flu or the flu medicine, whichever was having the greater effect on my system at the time.


There are two ways we know this. Three. Four ways. Maybe more. (Flu!)

1. We ask them.
2. We open them up and look.
3. We design them specifically for this.
4. We are machines with subjective experiences.

I should have specified a machine built by humans.

I was hoping you'd be specific about the machine -- who built it, where it is, and how they determined it had subjective experiences.

1. If we ask them, how do we know they answer honestly?
2. If we open them up and look, how do we recognize it?
3. If we design them specifically for this, how do we know we succeeded?
4. We are machines with subjective experiences. (I know. I was asking about machines we've made.)

 

[quarky]

I may as well play my hunch. Hunch is a sub-hypothesis. I'm not a believer in a background state that is consciousness. Its my hunch, based on a very powerful experience; described somewhat, in the recent 'meditation' thread.

The default perceptual mental state has no agenda.It just is. Energy and bliss. No name. No face. No stairway.

Yet, when aware without thought, one stumbles into the still pool from which impulses radiate from. The ripples create a thought, eventually. But it is we that provide the impulse to generate a thought, and so forth, until, next thing you know, there's a city or a farm.

Observing this background field, it came with its own information that was not my own thought.
It announced its immutable aspect.
Not as a being.
It may as well have been a physics experiment I was doing in my brain.

Yet, of course, hopelessly subjective.
Similar tales have been told all over the world.
If I was influenced by them in my quest, it was pretty vague. I was in no group.
Yet the gush that came upon that last realization was too extraordinary to ignore.
It was like having the opposite of a heart attack.

I bathed in it for hours.
Glad to discover this.

No need to remain right now; work to do, etc, eventually allow thought impulses to reinstate their authority, and follow them out, back into the world of things.

 

[blobru]

Sounds like panpsychism^WP (sort of: pan-happy-psychism).

Its most recent, well-known academic, proponent is Galen Strawson. Brief youtube intro; more detailed paper [doc format].

 

[quarky]

I wonder if I can call upon the spirit of Helen?

I was cleaning out my shelves, and dumped my poem-like old writings on her, and one of them was the description of the event I have tried to describe.

It begins something like "Rings of disturbance emmanate from their origin"
And ends with something like "3 become one; immutable spirit, aware of bliss"

dorky, but its the best way i could report back to myself at the time.

 

[quarky]

Sounds like panpsychism^WP (sort of: pan-happy-psychism).

Its most recent, well-known academic, proponent is Galen Strawson. Brief youtube intro; more detailed paper [doc format].

Thanks for the links. I just read the first one.
Seems compatible, mostly, with what I experienced. A few hours of stillness of thought, accompanied by a blasting awareness that had no purpose beyond being. A background state, perhaps akin to an inner, or non-parallel universe, except it only had one feature. There was nothing to explore. It was more like a bath. Fabulous bath. It was all that there was left, upon tracing back from what we are thinking.

Actually doing that is quite arduous, I must say. It's amazingly challenging to experience a thoughtless state, even with claims of mindless day-dreaming and what not. I should mention that I was 2 weeks into a fast when I had my samahdi experience.

More grounds for dismissal, I suppose.

edit:
Just watched the Strawson vid.
He's got weird scientist type hair.
Not presidential. Too wild.
Reminds me of my hair.

Our paths are likely confined by the type of hair we are dealt.
Anyway, seemed like a decent bloke, regardless of relative delusion in respect to more physicalist perspectives.

 

[Helen]

I wonder if I can call upon the spirit of Helen?

riding thought waves
following impulses
to their core

waves yield to ripples
rings of disturbances
emanate from their origin

the pond is finally still
full of liquid light
golden pure

the trinity appears
container, contained
and beyond

the vessel shatters
like a snowflake
and dissolves

the warm liquid
love light
spills out, filling the void

three become one
immutable spirit
aware of bliss

 

[quarky]

riding thought waves
following impulses
to their core

waves yield to ripples
rings of disturbances
emanate from their origin

the pond is finally still
full of liquid light
golden pure

the trinity appears
container, contained
and beyond

the vessel shatters
like a snowflake
and dissolves

the warm liquid
love light
spills out, filling the void

three become one
immutable spirit
aware of bliss

Yeah, that's the one.
That was amazingly fast of you, considering the weird heap of crap I dumped on you. And English being your not native lingo, gringo.

I owe you one, sugar.
Even though, now that I see it again, it's all sort of humiliating, and I fear the more pedantic of the atheists will beat me up, and I can't even tell my mom.