Hard consciousness: binary? cline? else?

[p0lka]

I tend to think that consciousness is not binary, but a continuum ranging from bacteria to humans, and I think that qualia is an artificial concept designed to make consciousness mysterious and dualistic.

Re the highlighted I am of the same opinion.
Other creatures seem to have an internal state like a consciousness, but as you look at creatures with less brain structure, that consciousness seems to be less.
I remember watching a wasp attacking another wasp as a different wasp was eating its arse.
If that wasp had any sort of complex internal consciousness it possibly would have reacted to being eaten from behind and reassessed it's priorities.

 

[William Parcher]

I remember watching a wasp attacking another wasp as a different wasp was eating its arse.

If that wasp had any sort of complex internal consciousness it possibly would have reacted to being eaten from behind and reassessed it's priorities.

That wasp "consciously knows" that its head is meaningfully more important than its ass.

I am not joking around.

 

[JeanTate]

Not just baryonic matter, they're including leptons as well.

How about positrons, do they have consciousness, or anti-consciousness?

Or photons? Gluons? Virtual particles? Black holes?

Strawson seems to nod to physics, but I feel his take-away and application to consciousness is, um, an ineffably hard problem.

 

[William Parcher]

How about positrons, do they have consciousness, or anti-consciousness?

Or photons? Gluons? Virtual particles? Black holes?

Strawson seems to nod to physics, but I feel his take-away and application to consciousness is, um, an ineffably hard problem.

Pro Tip: Be very careful when you are in the presence of Philosophers who are attempting to do the work of Scientists.

 

[The Great Zaganza]

Consciousness must operate on a sliding scale - even cyclical chemical reactions exhibit properties that make it seem that they are aware of their environment.
It seems to me that people often mix up Consciousness with Free Will;
I would argue that it is entirely possible to have the former without the latter, in whatever sense you want to use it.

 

[p0lka]

Consciousness must operate on a sliding scale - even cyclical chemical reactions exhibit properties that make it seem that they are aware of their environment.
It seems to me that people often mix up Consciousness with Free Will;
I would argue that it is entirely possible to have the former without the latter, in whatever sense you want to use it.

I agree with your consciousness free will statement.

As long as it feels like you have free will, actually having free will is irrelevant.

 

[William Parcher]

Consciousness must operate on a sliding scale - even cyclical chemical reactions exhibit properties that make it seem that they are aware of their environment.

The chemicals react to their environment, but we don't just grant them with our kind of mental awareness.

It seems to me that people often mix up Consciousness with Free Will;
I would argue that it is entirely possible to have the former without the latter, in whatever sense you want to use it.

No way. The mere existence of Free Will in any form causes Free Will to exist everywhere in the universe, or model of the universe, and on any scale.

 

[p0lka]

The chemicals react to their environment, but we don't just grant them with our kind of mental awareness.


No way. The mere existence of Free Will in any form causes Free Will to exist everywhere in the universe, or model of the universe, and on any scale.

Does free will exist? You claiming it does, doesn't mean that it does.

For instance, could you have chosen to post a different post than the one you posted?

 

[William Parcher]

Does free will exist? You claiming it does, doesn't mean that it does.

For instance, could you have chosen to post a different post than the one you posted?

You've got an apple in front of you. Choosing to eat it, or not, is a situation and an act which proves Free Will exists. We use our brain and our senses to provide the theater staging and motive(s) for Free Will.

Our Free Will is inherent in this universe.

 

[JeanTate]

Consciousness must operate on a sliding scale - even cyclical chemical reactions exhibit properties that make it seem that they are aware of their environment.
It seems to me that people often mix up Consciousness with Free Will;
I would argue that it is entirely possible to have the former without the latter, in whatever sense you want to use it.

So where, on the sliding scale (continuum, cline) do qualia occur?

Perhaps the existence of qualia, for an object/entity with consciousness, is also on a sliding scale: electrons have consciousness but no qualia, primates have both in spades, nematode worms have consciousness but just the hint of a quale or two, azaleas have consciousness but no qualia (that sort of thing)?

 

[JeanTate]

Pro Tip: Be very careful when you are in the presence of Philosophers who are attempting to do the work of Scientists.

The irony is that the guy (“PhysicistDave”) in that other discussion I referred to in my OP (you can torture dogs, but not azalea bushes or AIs) is as hard-bitten a physicist as you’ll ever meet!

 

[William Parcher]

The irony is that the guy (“PhysicistDave”) in that other discussion I referred to in my OP (you can torture dogs, but not azalea bushes or AIs) is as hard-bitten a physicist as you’ll ever meet!

Good. He is a Physicist.

Both dogs and azaleas are designed by natural selection to withstand various "tortures" inflicted upon them by various sources - with most sources being nonhuman or indirectly a human source.

He seems to have skipped right to the part where he needs the azaleas to not feel or experience psycho-physical pain or anxiety (or whatever other bad things) in ways that dogs or humans would. Even if he is correct, he shouldn't assume that his audience fully agrees.

Is he stating that this is a fact like the laws of physics? Does he mention or imply that his proclamations of fact are always provisional?

 

[JeanTate]

Good. He is a Physicist.

Both dogs and azaleas are designed by natural selection to withstand various "tortures" inflicted upon them by various sources - with most sources being nonhuman or indirectly a human source.

He seems to have skipped right to the part where he needs the azaleas to not feel or experience psycho-physical pain or anxiety (or whatever other bad things) in ways that dogs or humans would. Even if he is correct, he shouldn't assume that his audience fully agrees.

Is he stating that this is a fact like the laws of physics? Does he mention or imply that his proclamations of fact are always provisional?

As is often the case, it kinda snuck in. I’ll add a link later, but it’s in Sabine Hossenfelder’s blog, BackReAction, as a rather OT sub-thread in the comments on “Do we need a Theory of Everything?”. Currently both of the two people who were most active in that sub-thread have stopped posting to it.

ETA link: https://backreaction.blogspot.com/2020/07/do-we-need-theory-of-everything.html

 

[p0lka]

You've got an apple in front of you. Choosing to eat it, or not, is a situation and an act which proves Free Will exists.

As long as you had the option to choose differently, which is yet to be demonstrated

We use our brain and our senses to provide the theater staging and motive(s) for Free Will.

Our Free Will is inherent in this universe.

Feeling we had free will, whilst not having any free will, would be a distinction without a difference.

 

[steenkh]

So where, on the sliding scale (continuum, cline) do qualia occur?

If they exist. This is a matter of definition. I have yet to see a definition that is not assuming dualism.

You can also ask, what use has the term qualia, except to imply that consciousness is dualistic?

 

[The Great Zaganza]

The talk of qualia is, in my opinion, the result of insufficient understanding of how minds work.
We probably need better models and definitions of consciousness before a something like "Qualia" will become useful .

 

[The Great Zaganza]

The chemicals react to their environment, but we don't just grant them with our kind of mental awareness.

they react according to statistical probabilities even if we make the initial conditions as similar as possible, we still get minor variations on how the reactions occurs.
I would argue that processes in the brain similarly come down to probabilities.

 

[William Parcher]

The talk of qualia is, in my opinion, the result of insufficient understanding of how minds work.

We probably need better models and definitions of consciousness before a something like "Qualia" will become useful.

Oxford Dictionary has a decent definition...

Qualia (noun - from Philosophy): The internal and subjective component of sense perceptions, arising from stimulation of the senses by phenomena.

That seems good as it is, but the term seems to come from Philosophy rather than Science. We could go Full Science and choose a different term that means pretty much the same thing, but comes from Science.

For me, "Qualia" seems useful right away, regardless of whether it comes from Science or Philosophy.

 

[William Parcher]

As long as you had the option to choose differently, which is yet to be demonstrated

What part of the "apple choice situation" has not yet been demonstrated?

Feeling we had free will, whilst not having any free will, would be a distinction without a difference.

This isn't a trivial thing. The difference is huge and very meaningful.

 

[William Parcher]

they react according to statistical probabilities even if we make the initial conditions as similar as possible, we still get minor variations on how the reactions occurs.
I would argue that processes in the brain similarly come down to probabilities.

Go ahead and argue for that.

We use our brains to make critical decisions with enormous and permanent consequences. Our consciousness steers our decisions. The worst kind of conscious decision is what we call the Darwin Award. At its extreme, it's the full monty, and death is the result of the decision.

For your forthcoming argument, please try to use science instead of philosophy.