The Hard Problem of Gravity

[AkuManiMani]

You might come to that conclusion because people tend to conflate perspectives when they explain:

• from a 1st PP we are observing whereas from a 3rd PP we are inferring;
• from a 1st PP we are receiving whereas from a 3rd PP we are constructing.

We say "we observe" subjective experiences. It is nevertheless that same as "we infer" them.

We say, yeah but..., we are "feeling" them. But it is nevertheless the same as "constructing" them.

We say, yeah but..., we "have them". But it is nevertheless the same as "identifying" (i.e. constructing by inferring, including "we").

The thing is, a completely comatose individual cannot observe, experience, infer, or 'feel' any more than a rock can be said to. Computational processes can and do take place withing the context of conscious experience [these are what we call 'thoughts'] but outside this context there is no perception of such.

There cannot be any 3rd PP inference of entities unless there is a conscious subject inferring [i.e. has a 1st PP of consciousness]. In the case of social species like us, there is the ability to make logical inferences as to the consciousness of other individuals but there is also an innate capacity that most of us have to identify subjective experiences in others. This innate capacity is what we call 'empathy' and it is the fundamental basis for all social learning -- including the acquisition of language. In a sense, 'knowing' that other people are conscious is a basic instinct in humans; its as automatic as crying, laughing, or suckling.

But, again, all such considerations are moot unless there are conscious individuals who are capable of instinctually or rationally inferring about the conscious states of others.

 

[lupus_in_fabula]

The thing is, a completely comatose individual cannot observe, experience, infer, or 'feel' any more than a rock can be said to. Computational processes can and do take place withing the context of conscious experience [these are what we call 'thoughts'] but outside this context there is no perception of such.

There cannot be any 3rd PP inference of entities unless there is a conscious subject inferring [i.e. has a 1st PP of consciousness]. In the case of social species like us, there is the ability to make logical inferences as to the consciousness of other individuals but there is also an innate capacity that most of us have to identify subjective experiences in others. This innate capacity is what we call 'empathy' and it is the fundamental basis for all social learning -- including the acquisition of language. In a sense, 'knowing' that other people are conscious is a basic instinct in humans; its as automatic as crying, laughing, or suckling.

But, again, all such considerations are moot unless there are conscious individuals who are capable of instinctually or rationally inferring about the conscious states of others.

Philosophy can only take us so far. We have however a useful concept for this: re-cognizing. To escape the conceptual boundaries we can make it into a more illustrative one: re-re-re-re...cognizing. It is not infinite. We go to deep sleep each night and hopefully start a new day refreshed. And to use Rumi's words slightly differently: Eventually this constant running from silence ends when the organism dies.

 

[Darat]

You should try speaking English to a few real people some time. You'd be amazed at how much of what they say reduces to [undefined word] or [word defined in terms of undefined word]. And yet they communicate.

Maybe it isn't me with the problem.

You are the one making multiple claims about all these things that you can't define so sorry it is your problem if you wish to communicate what you mean to anyone else.

 

[H'ethetheth]

When "feel like" appears in the physics text books, we'll know we've explained "feel like". In the meantime we have to choose between something real yet unexplained, or something in some sense unreal.

So you don't think it's reasonable that information going around in your brain and body so your body can act on it would feel like something? My question is why, because I don't think it's an unreasonable thing to assume.

 

[westprog]

I would actually qualify that statement. Thus the whole previous discussion about inferring and observing in terms of timing issues. From a subjective point of view, everything is happening in the present moment (there's no past or future from a first person's experiential perspective). To simplify a bit: When we "look back" we draw from memory and re-construct it in the present moment. When we "look forward" we imagine it in the present moment. The simplification here because we never really remember exactly how it was.

Although objectively speaking: We can't really subjectively experience the present moment presently – it has to be registered by which it has already become something else, if ever so slightly.

The moment we experience something it is already the past for that experience, hence we must re-construct it in some way or another. Doing that enough times, and it certainly feels like we're "continuously" experiencing experience as one single experience, but we are of course inferring that.

Only from a third person perspective can we thus say that we experience experience. Observing that process "objectively" would look vastly different thou; it would look like we are constructing the experience of experience by inference.

I don't think it matters when the experience takes place. The "now" of the experience is as it is experienced.

The experience may not be a faithful representation of the outside world - but it is a faithful representation of itself. How could it not be? It's the end of the line - there's nothing else that an experience can be.

 

[westprog]

So you don't think it's reasonable that information going around in your brain and body so your body can act on it would feel like something? My question is why, because I don't think it's an unreasonable thing to assume.

Why would you assume any such thing? There's nothing in physics which deals with subjective experience. There's not the vaguest shadow of a theory about it.

I'm pretty confident that the robot people of the Yarg cluster, who don't have subjective experience, would be unlikely to postulate it.

 

[Darat]

...snip... How could it not be? It's the end of the line - there's nothing else that an experience can be.

Another claim about this thing you can't actually provide a definition for....

 

[lupus_in_fabula]

I don't think it matters when the experience takes place. The "now" of the experience is as it is experienced.

The experience may not be a faithful representation of the outside world - but it is a faithful representation of itself. How could it not be? It's the end of the line - there's nothing else that an experience can be.

Which is exactly why it makes a difference when explaining the underlying principle of it.

 

[Belz...]

(Because you are the illusion.)

I can hear solipsists crying all over the world.

 

[Belz...]

You should try speaking English to a few real people some time. You'd be amazed at how much of what they say reduces to [undefined word] or [word defined in terms of undefined word]. And yet they communicate.

Not in science, they don't. We're trying to establish the reality of consciousness and its replicability. We NEED to define those words.

I'm pleased that you are acknowledging that gut feelings actually exist. Now it's a matter of figuring out where they come from.

We already know. But we need to see past our illusions and delusions to get to reality. Otherwise we'd still think the sun spins around the Earth.

No, because we don't directly experience ghosts or UFO's. We directly experience experience.

How does one experience something "indirectly" ?

How can a determinative program spontaneously assert consciousness?

You still haven't answered the question. What do you mean by "spontaneously" ?

If you mean "without prior programming" then you are wrong. Everything you do is either deterministic or random (IF, and only IF, quantum fluctuations can actually affect us at that level), so there is no room for free will in the old sense of the word. Everything we do is pre-programmed. A computer just needs to be able to rewrite its programming using new experiences in order to simulate this, and some programs already do that.

It's possible for the experience to reference something unreal. It is not possible for the experience itself to be unreal. All it can pretend to be is another experience.

So the solipsists claim. But they're wrong.

 

[Belz...]

*eyetwitch*

Okay...deep breath....


Cyborg, from your posting history it would seem that you're a reasonably intelligent guy. I would like you to tell me why I would say that unconscious processing is qualitatively different from conscious processing... -_-

See ? This is what I hate about some people when debating. Instead of answering a direct question, they simply say: "You can't be serious!", therefore allowing themselves to dodge the entire issue, presumably because they don't have an answer.

 

[Belz...]

My point is that no one -- including the strong AI proponents -- has devised a sufficient formal explanation as to why there is any conscious experience at all. There is currently no operational description of qualitative experience and that is my point!

I'm still fuzzy on what you mean by "qualitative experience". I experience stuff, period. I don't see what you mean by it.

And by "why", I assume you mean "how" ?

Define 'I've'. Define 'been'. Define 'reading'. Define 'the'. Define 'thread'. Define 'since'. Define 'first'. Define 'post'. Define 'and'. Define 'I'm'. Define 'yet'. Define 'to'. Define 'see'. Define 'definition'. Define 'of'. Define 'consciousness'. Define 'that'. Define 'isn't'. Define 'circular'.

Define all of these words without referencing the dictionary, since all it does is 'circularly' reference itself.

Thanks for proving my previous post. Instead of answering a question, dance around and wave your arms. That'll help.

 

[cyborg]

Cyborg, from your posting history it would seem that you're a reasonably intelligent guy. I would like you to tell me why I would say that unconscious processing is qualitatively different from conscious processing... -_-

Because by your tautology you have no ability to access what it "feels" like to unconsciously process something.

By the qualia argument this doesn't mean that the thing doing unconscious processing doesn't have a "quality" that it experiences - it just means "you" can't access it and therefore can't articulate that.

In essence you don't know that your "unconscious" parts of the brain don't experience things like your "conscious" part but you assert that they don't based on limited introspection anyway.

 

[AkuManiMani]

See ? This is what I hate about some people when debating. Instead of answering a direct question, they simply say: "You can't be serious!", therefore allowing themselves to dodge the entire issue, presumably because they don't have an answer.

Oh, I have the answer to his question. The thing is, he also has the answer if he would actually take just a few seconds to seriously think about it before asking it. At this point in the discussion, I'm a bit weary of people asking me to spoon-feed the obvious only to have them complain that I never provided the answer as they just let it dribble down their chins.

 

[PixyMisa]

See ? This is what I hate about some people when debating. Instead of answering a direct question, they simply say: "You can't be serious!", therefore allowing themselves to dodge the entire issue, presumably because they don't have an answer.

I can understand not having an answer. What bothers me is when people don't seem to have a question.

 

[Darat]

I can understand not having an answer. What bothers me is when people don't seem to have a question.

But they have got a feeling!

 

[PixyMisa]

Bunnies, bunnies, it must be bunnies!!

 

[Mercutio]

But they have got a feeling!

I think they may actually be hooked on this alleged feeling....



(ooga chakka)

 

[AkuManiMani]

Because by your tautology you have no ability to access what it "feels" like to unconsciously process something.

By the qualia argument this doesn't mean that the thing doing unconscious processing doesn't have a "quality" that it experiences - it just means "you" can't access it and therefore can't articulate that.

Okay. Finally, you're showing some thinking

The problem is, these processing functions are operationally linked with one's field of consciousness. There are volumes of information being processed by a person's brain that directly affect one's conscious experience but are, themselves, not experienced consciously. A very clear instance of this is in cases of blind-sightedness; the subject's brain takes in and processes visual information but the subject does not experience that sensory information consciously. Considering this operational linkage between conscious and unconscious processes in the brain, we still don't understand how, or why, some portions of these processes are experienced and others aren't. Then there is the fact that the very same sensory information can be qualitatively experienced in such a vast variety of ways. At present, there is no quantitative understanding of qualitative experience.

As westprog has pointed out, the 'hard problem' of consciousness is more a biophysics question than a simple issue of computer science. Yes, there are computational processes going on in the brain and body [heck, there are computational processes going on in and between ever elementary particle]. But, the only way we're going to get cogent, meaningful answers about this issue is to understand the physical causes and correlates of qualitative experience.

In essence you don't know that your "unconscious" parts of the brain don't experience things like your "conscious" part but you assert that they don't based on limited introspection anyway.

You could use that same argument to claim that our limited introspection cannot tell us whether or not a rock or a burning candle experiences things. The problem is, that if you're going to go that route, whats to keep you from assuming that idealism is true and that the entire universe is conscious?

At present, there is no evidence that the 'unconscious' parts of us subjectively experience anything, and we damn sure don't experience anything when we ourselves are unconscious. The most sensible thing to do at this stage of the game is to understand instances that we unequivocally know are conscious [i.e. our conscious selves] and then apply that knowledge to judging how and whether other entities are conscious. Until we have a solid grasp of our starting frame of reference there isn't much that can be said ye, nay, or wherefore regarding other instances -- including, but not limited to, AI systems.

 

[AkuManiMani]

Define 'I've'. Define 'been'. Define 'reading'. Define 'the'. Define 'thread'. Define 'since'. Define 'first'. Define 'post'. Define 'and'. Define 'I'm'. Define 'yet'. Define 'to'. Define 'see'. Define 'definition'. Define 'of'. Define 'consciousness'. Define 'that'. Define 'isn't'. Define 'circular'.

Define all of these words without referencing the dictionary, since all it does is 'circularly' reference itself.

Thanks for proving my previous post. Instead of answering a question, dance around and wave your arms. That'll help.

It would help if you bothered trying to comprehend plain spoken English as words rather than hand gestures. Since you can't seem to grasp explicit and direct explanations I'm trying to get you to take the conceptual walk yourself to understand what is being said.

Again, I'm going to ask you:

Define the above listed words without 'circular' reference to other synonymous words. There is a stark point being made here and its clear that you're not putting two and two together. Try again, please.