The Hard Problem of Gravity

[Darat]

With all due respect, anyone who does not know they are conscious cannot be said to know anything. Just being aware is an implicit knowledge of one's own existence.'Conscious' is just the label I put on my experience. One's own awareness is the one thing each of us can know with certainty; its the epistemological base upon which we set all our knowledge.
...snip..

And it is just an assumption.

If that's true it seems the field of philosophy is littered with a bunch of archaic dilapidated concepts and needs a bit of an overhaul.

...snip...

Perhaps but why re-use a label that already has an established meaning in the field?

No wonder people've been so bogged down debating the same problems in the same way for so long. Its time to reformulate a lot of these old problems so there can be some progression of understanding. The HPC is a group of related questions, imposing necessary dualism on it is logically unjustified.

As I said you of course can re-define what HPC means but you are going to find yourself involved in more than a few misunderstandings in a thread like this, all of which could be avoided by you not trying to redefine the term HPC.

 

[Gate2501]

When the starting point is that the nature of consciousness is a vastly intractable problem, should we then be deciding exactly what solutions are to be presumed to be correct or wrong in advance?

It is a false starting point.

 

[Gate2501]

Never mind what the argument is for - is there any way to refute it beyond disliking solipsism?

Well, solipsism is useless and unfalsifiable. So... that.

 

[AkuManiMani]

How should the people at the cutting edge of the search behave differently? What should I, as an A.I. programmer, do to 1) remedy my cowardice and 2) work harder towards the single problem that I want to solve more than anything else in the world?

Just to point out rocketdodger, I'm on your side. I WANT you to succeed and I'm doing my best to help you. If you'd just step away from your stubborn pride you would see that.

I'm telling you as clearly as I can that you're handicapping yourself. If you keep approaching the problem with the assumptions you're currently operating under you're not going to make ANY progress toward accomplishing what you want to accomplish more than anything else in the world.

You've stuck yourself in a narrow conceptual impasse and I'm telling you that from my vantage point I can see that you're laboring down a dead end. There is much value in the approach you've taken so far and much can be accomplished in refining and building upon it -- but its not the whole story of consciousness.

I really, really, really want to see you succeed but I'm just frustrated be cause I see that you, and so many others like you, are stubbornly working down a vain path. What you've already found is valuable but its not enough. It may not be possible to completely solve the puzzle in our lifetimes, but atleast we can make some meaningful progress toward solving it. I'm just trying to help you brain storm here. Engage what I'm presenting to you and stop fighting me. I want to help

 

[AkuManiMani]

As I said you of course can re-define what HPC means but you are going to find yourself involved in more than a few misunderstandings in a thread like this, all of which could be avoided by you not trying to redefine the term HPC.

Very well. I hereby discard the HPC. In its place I put the Elusive Mystery of Awareness: EMA

 

[Darat]

...snip...

I'm telling you as clearly as I can that you're handicapping yourself. If you keep approaching the problem with the assumptions you're currently operating under you're not going to make ANY progress toward the accomplishing what you wan to accomplish more than anything else in the world.

...snip...

What assumptions are these?

...snip...

You've stuck yourself in a narrow conceptual impasse and I'm telling you that from my vantage point I can see that you're you're laboring down a dead end.

...snip...

To know that would have to mean you know the solution, so what is it?

...snip...
Theres a much value in the approach you've taken to far and much can be accomplished in refining and building upon it -- but its not the whole story of consciousness.

...snip...

Again how do you know this? And if you know it what is the answer?

 

[Gate2501]

Very well. I hereby discard the HPC. In its place I put the Elusive Mystery of Awareness: EMA

Ok..

After all of this discussion, I have come to a conclusion.

I think that you, AkuManiMani, are a "closet" dualist. Instead of coming out of the closet and telling everyone(including your parents!), that you are a dualist, you are redefining the terminology and the rules of the game, in order to pull them into the closet with you!

This is just my opinion, and I am, of course, a biased materialist scumbag.

 

[rocketdodger]

Just to point out rocketdodger, I'm on your side. I WANT you to succeed and I'm doing my best to help you. If you'd just step away from your stubborn pride you would see that.

I'm telling you as clearly as I can that you're handicapping yourself. If you keep approaching the problem with the assumptions you're currently operating under you're not going to make ANY progress toward accomplishing what you want to accomplish more than anything else in the world.

You've stuck yourself in a narrow conceptual impasse and I'm telling you that from my vantage point I can see that you're laboring down a dead end. There is much value in the approach you've taken so far and much can be accomplished in refining and building upon it -- but its not the whole story of consciousness.

I really, really, really want to see you succeed but I'm just frustrated be cause I see that you, and so many others like you, are stubbornly working down a vain path. What you've already found is valuable but its not enough. It may not be possible to completely solve the puzzle in our lifetimes, but atleast we can make some meaningful progress toward solving it. I'm just trying to help you brain storm here. Engage what I'm presenting to you and stop fighting me. I want to help

This is all fine and dandy but like I said, unless you can give researchers actual examples of something they did incorrectly that they think is correct I.E. where they are wrong then your words don't really help.

You might be the brightest human ever but I am reminded of an episode of Star Trek TNG when Q, stripped of his powers, tells the crew how to save a planet by changing the local gravitational constant. When asked how, he says "you just do it."

You are basically saying "just stop being wrong." Ok....

 

[Third Eye Open]

Precisely right.



"Useful" in what way? How does labelling certain behaviour as exhibiting consciousness help us in understanding the behaviour?

The only advantage of the behavioural model is that it allows us to ignore the question of subjective experience, which is at the heart of the HPOC. But it's not a scientific approach - it's a cargo-cult version of science, where two things that behave the same are considered to have identical internal states as a matter of convenience.

'Useful' as a word in the English language. 'Useful' for describing things, in conversation. As it stands now, 'conscious' might as well be synonymous with 'me'.

How the hell are we going to understand the behavior if we refuse to label it as such? A more useful thing to do would be to decide what behavior you want to explain, gather all the things that exhibit that behavior, and then study them to find what they have in common.

You could label this things that exhibit said behavior as 'conscious'.

That would be a useful definition.

 

[rocketdodger]

Now you want to argue that its a fallacy to say that humans have the capacity to "think beyond any formal system" just because they've shown the capacity to "think beyond any given formal system". If I didn't know any better I'd say you're shoving both feet in your mouth.

You still don't understand.

Generating a statement that is beyond a given formal system is not equivalent to thinking beyond a given formal system.

You can generate godel numbers all you want and you still aren't thinking beyond a given formal system, you are simply generating a number that is outside a given formal system.

I can write a program that will generate a godel number for any formal system you can give it. So what? Does that mean the program is "thinking" beyond that system?

There are some formal systems that humans can think beyond. There are also formal systems that computers can think beyond. There are many formal systems that neither humans nor computers can think beyond. The Epimenides paradox, for example, and all similar self-referential paradoxes stated in human languages, demonstrate our inability to think "beyond" the limitations of human logic. Yet, we can generate statements (that we can't really wrap our brains around) beyond human logic -- such as the Epimenides statement.

Translation of you post:

"I don't need any help because I already know all there is to know about consciousness. My assumptions are just fine and you pointing out possible flaws in them isn't helpful to my delusion that my understanding is adequate.

Everything you've told me to do differently is wrong because I don't like some stranger on a keyboard telling me I'm wrong. Until you stop disagreeing with me I'm not going to take any of your feedback seriously."

 

[AkuManiMani]

What assumptions are these?

There are probably many -- and I doubt I could uncover them all in one sitting -- but some of the most apparent are ontological. I'll try to cover the two most pressing ones I can think of off the top of my head:

-Assumption 1: Logical structure [e.g. syntax, symbols, etc] is synonymous with subjective meaning [e.g. understanding, semantics, etc]

Its very clear that there's been a lot of progress in studying the systemic architecture of intelligence and developing intelligent systems. At most, this is a good way to simulate and model some of the possible functions of conscious entities. In the same way that taxonomy is just a description of instances of life rather than a theory of life, so this approach is just a description of the object of study and not a true theory of it. Subjective experience -- consciousness -- is the thing IAOI that we're trying to understand. Describing instances of cognitive function, while invaluable to the pursuit, shouldn't be mistaken for the summation of the pursuit.


-Assumption 2: Acknowledging the distinction between cognition and awareness is tantamount to invoking Cartesian dualism or, at worse, invoking magic of some kind.

I think that this is among the most crippling of the assumptions and the one that, in all likelihood, inspired the OP. I won't go into all the details here but I will once again link to some posts [here and here] where I do elaborate more on where I'm coming from on this issue. I'll simply state here that materialism/idealism and Cartesian dualism aren't the only options when considering ways of looking at this problem.

To know that would have to mean you know the solution, so what is it?

I don't know THE solution to the EMA but I do see the nature of the current impasse on the issue and some very likely routes around it.

Theres a much value in the approach you've taken to far and much can be accomplished in refining and building upon it -- but its not the whole story of consciousness.

Again how do you know this? And if you know it what is the answer?

For the reasons I've stated above, it believe that many researchers working on the problem are merely chasing shadows of consciousness while avoiding serious consideration of consciousness IAOI. I strongly suspect that the question of consciousness is fundamentally related -- if not identical -- to the question of just what is life. I don't mean this merely in the superficial sense that consciousness is a distinct part of some biological entities but that in solving the EMA, we will not only have a theory of the human mind, but the first steps to developing a unified theory of life itself.

Again, I won't go into all the details of why I suspect this is so in this one post but I will state that I believe that what we call consciousness is most likely a field or field like phenomenon generated by the brain and that all biological processes and entities are based on similar fields.

 

[yy2bggggs]

The Epimenides paradox, for example, and all similar self-referential paradoxes stated in human languages, demonstrate our inability to think "beyond" the limitations of human logic.

Uhm... those aren't even hard to understand, much less demonstrative of things "beyond the limitations of human logic". They're no more beyond human logic than NOT gates with their output hooked to their input are beyond the laws of physics.

In fact, they're very simple systems. You simply make a statement about itself, and make it affirm its negation. It's no more surprising than if you asked me to pick droughts or crosses, and told me what I was going to pick, and I never pick it. I simply make my choice dependent on yours such that you can never be right. The only difference is that you use the "magical" (but not really all that shocking) powers of self reference to make the statement itself pick the opposite result from its assigned truth value.

Slightly confusing to some, but not even close to beyond human reasoning. I don't have much of an issue with Epimenides, and I'm pretty sure it's too mundane to qualify me for a free cup of coffee, much less some Nobel prize.

I now return you to your thread.

 

[dv82matt]

No, not by definition actually.

By fiat then?

What we refer to as consciousness is, when you examine it, self-referential information processing. And that's all it is.

First how do you know this? Second even if it is true that does not mean it is a sufficient explanation. e.g. What we refer to as life is, when you examine it, matter. And that's all it is.

Give me an example.

How about something basic like awareness? Feel free to choose a different example.

That's just wonderful.

You don't know, so you assert that I don't know.

You need to back up your claim of knowledge with evidence and sound reasoning.

You don't have a counter-argument, you're just saying If I can't understand it, nobody can understand it!

Not at all. I'm simply not convinced you understand it.

It's self-referential. It's an assertion of consciousness. Its assertion of consciousness is based upon its self-reference. Therefore it says exactly what I said it said.

It is self-referential but its meaning does not depend on that fact. To see this more clearly simply rephrase it to remove the self-reference. ie "She thinks therefore she is."

Because - and this is blindingly obvious - I didn't say we understood anything because we understood consciousness. I didn't say, for example, that we understood human brain function. We just understand consciousness.

How does that work exactly? I'm not being blithe I really want to know.

Fail, again.

Fail, yet again.

Saying fail over and over doesn't prove anything.

Then name one!

Name one thing that people attribute to consciousness that is not accounted for by this explanation.

Language. But that's a difficult one and particular to human consciousness. Feel free to explain a different attribute if you like.

An argument isn't just contradiction.

Now, that depends on what the argument is, doesn't it?

Argument is an intellectual process. Contradiction is just the automatic gainsaying of any statement the other person makes.

If you would back up your assertions with evidence and sound reasoning we wouldn't be in this jam. Just because someone contradicts you that doesn't mean you're right.

 

[AkuManiMani]

You still don't understand.

Generating a statement that is beyond a given formal system is not equivalent to thinking beyond a given formal system.

You can generate godel numbers all you want and you still aren't thinking beyond a given formal system, you are simply generating a number that is outside a given formal system.

I can write a program that will generate a godel number for any formal system you can give it. So what? Does that mean the program is "thinking" beyond that system?

There are some formal systems that humans can think beyond. There are also formal systems that computers can think beyond. There are many formal systems that neither humans nor computers can think beyond. The Epimenides paradox, for example, and all similar self-referential paradoxes stated in human languages, demonstrate our inability to think "beyond" the limitations of human logic. Yet, we can generate statements (that we can't really wrap our brains around) beyond human logic -- such as the Epimenides statement.

Okay, before I attempt to respond let me see if I'm getting the essence of what you're saying.

What you're saying is that while humans can think beyond a specific set of formal systems they can only think within the domain of human cognition -- which is just the the thing that you're trying to formally define, yes?

 

[AkuManiMani]

With all due respect, anyone who does not know they are conscious cannot be said to know anything. Just being aware is an implicit knowledge of one's own existence.'Conscious' is just the label I put on my experience. One's own awareness is the one thing each of us can know with certainty; its the epistemological base upon which we set all our knowledge.

And it is just an assumption.

No. Its a conclusion that necessarily arises from the premise that one is aware. Logically, one cannot know anything unless they have awareness. Therefore awareness is the basis of all knowledge.

 

[Third Eye Open]

No. Its a conclusion that necessarily arises from the premise that one is aware. Logically, one cannot know anything unless they have awareness. Therefore awareness is the basis of all knowledge.

Hooray! Now we also have a useless definition of 'know'! By this definition I am the only one that knows anything.

What is knowledge if not information? What is 'to know' if not 'to contain information'?

 

[AkuManiMani]

Hooray! Now we also have a useless definition of 'know'! By this definition I am the only one that knows anything.

What is knowledge if not information? What is 'to know' if not 'to contain information'?

Oh?

A book contains information but does it know the information it contains?

A child is born with all the information required to make a baby but does that mean the child consciously knows biology?

Ofcourse not, on both counts. So what, specifically, does it mean to 'know' something then?

Knowledge is the conscious apprehension of information in some form or another.

 

[Third Eye Open]

Oh?

A book contains information but does it know the information it contains?

A child is born with all the information required to make a baby but does that mean the child consciously knows biology?

Ofcourse not, on both counts. So what, specifically, does it mean to 'know' something then?

Knowledge is the conscious apprehension of information in some form or another.

So then 'know' 'conscious' 'aware', all these words are in a special category that only applies to the way a human stores information.

Well then, this whole argument is silly! We already know what makes you aware, being human does! We know how something is conscious, being human makes you conscious! We know how something can 'know' things, being human means you can.

Useless.

 

[Third Eye Open]

Oh?

A book contains information but does it know the information it contains?

A[/U]

Yes, 'know' should not mean just 'contains information' that is no good.

I should have said contains and can act on the information it contains.

 

[AkuManiMani]

So then 'know' 'conscious' 'aware', all these words are in a special category that only applies to the way a human stores information.

Well then, this whole argument is silly! We already know what makes you aware, being human does! We know how something is conscious, being human makes you conscious! We know how something can 'know' things, being human means you can.

Useless.

Oh c'mon, you're being downright silly. You don't even need three eyes to see what I'm saying

There is no compelling reason to assume that other animals aren't conscious [i.e. aware]. I dunno why you felt the need to invoke a tautology, that I never stated or implied, or assume that consciousness must be human specific.

An elephant can know a good location to find a water hole during a drought. A frog can know that one particular sense impression [that we humans might call an 'earthworm'] is tasty to eat when feeling hungry, and that another sense impression [we humans might call it an 'ant'] tends to be very unpleasant to eat and so avoid it.

Also, simply 'being a human' is not sufficient to make one aware. An individual human may be sleep, comatose, or dead.