The Hard Problem of Gravity

[Nick227]

But we can explain consciousness with the physics we already know.

Not human consciousness. We have ideas and models but we can't account for all the aspects of human consciousness, nowhere near. This is why senior researchers like Bernard Baars say get back to us in 100 years. There are still big blocks. It is not just a case of dotting i's and crossing t's. There are still big areas where we just don't know.

Nick

 

[Belz...]

I certainly agree that there may be no possibility that science will ever discover any more about how consciousness arises.

Well, you certainly don't agree with me on that.

However, it remains the case that consciousness has not been explained.

Actually, it might have. You just choose not to accept the explanations thus far given. Presumably, your reason is "because it FEELS like it's more than that."

Behaviour is certainly not the only criterion for examining consciousness.

That's not what you said a short while ago:

It's the fact that we've learned ways to tell each other the contents of our minds that we have generally avoided solipsism and tend to assume that other people experience the world in a comparable way to us.

Personal experience remains accessible. That's the main reason why anyone is concerned with the issue.

I don't understand what you mean. Could you clarify ?

 

[Belz...]

Its statements like these that convince me that you're either disingenuous or severely impaired.

Of course! How else could he possibly disagree with you ?

 

[Belz...]

I want to get back to this:

Can you give an example of anything in the physical world that we don't experience indirectly? We get signals to our nerves that generate electrical impulses that create brain patterns. That's indirect.

No, it isn't. You aren't "brain", westprog. You are You. Every part of you is part of your consciousness. When you lean against a wall you feel the wall on your skin's nerve endings. You don't feel an image of the wall. That makes no sense. Your brain is part of you and it does most of the cognitive stuff but the rest of your body is part of the experience as well.

So, actually, nothing is experienced indirectly.

This goes back to Plato. This is pretty basic.

Just because the idea is old doesn't make it true.

 

[Belz...]

Everyone here, eh? Well, there was I thinking that accessing the consciousness of others was extremely difficult, but it seems you have the knack.

It was very, very clearly mentioned that rocks are NOT conscious because they don't process information and are not self-referential. Yet you -- dishonestly, I can only assume -- chose to lump them together with Thermostats, which the same people are claiming ARE conscious.

Isn't there a name for that fallacy ?

Rocks and thermostats may quite easily be distinguished, but they exhibit exactly the same degree of consiousness - that is, none.

Westprog, this is getting tiresome. You steadfastly refuse to accept the definition of consciousness that people have given, here, you claim that thermostats don't have it, but you can't define it.

If you can't define consciousness, then you can't say what has it or what doesn't. So this all comes back to defining the damn word. Can you do that, or not ? And if you can't, why do you persist in saying that a definition given by other people is wrong ? Feelings, again ?

There are no physical process taking place in a thermostat that don't take place in a rock, on a micro or macro scale.

If by "physical process" you mean "the four fundamental forces", then sure, but then it applies to humans, as well. But there is information processing in only one of the two.

 

[cyborg]

There are no physical process taking place in a thermostat that don't take place in a rock, on a micro or macro scale. There is no objective physical description of a rock that can't be applied to a thermostat and vice versa.

Ditto brains - this being the entire point.

And so it shall remain unless the posited "Consciousness Fields" are shown to be anything other than a hypothesis.

 

[westprog]

Ditto brains - this being the entire point.

And so it shall remain unless the posited "Consciousness Fields" are shown to be anything other than a hypothesis.

So we are relying on behaviour and experience. There's nothing about a rock or a thermostat to indicate consciousness. There is something about human beings to indicate consciousness.

 

[westprog]

It was very, very clearly mentioned that rocks are NOT conscious because they don't process information and are not self-referential. Yet you -- dishonestly, I can only assume -- chose to lump them together with Thermostats, which the same people are claiming ARE conscious.

Can you give a precise definition for "processing information" which includes thermostats and not rocks?

I'm not sure what you mean about the claim of dishonesty. I don't believe that thermostats are conscious. I do believe that they share the same physical characteristics of rocks.

Isn't there a name for that fallacy ?



Westprog, this is getting tiresome. You steadfastly refuse to accept the definition of consciousness that people have given, here, you claim that thermostats don't have it, but you can't define it.

If you can't define consciousness, then you can't say what has it or what doesn't. So this all comes back to defining the damn word. Can you do that, or not ? And if you can't, why do you persist in saying that a definition given by other people is wrong ? Feelings, again ?

I can define consciousness as meaning "purple cushion", but it wouldn't be helpful in any way. Describing consciousness as self-referential information processing is not a definition, it's a claim. It's also a claim that lacks evidence.

If by "physical process" you mean "the four fundamental forces", then sure, but then it applies to humans, as well. But there is information processing in only one of the two.

Until you can give a precise definition for "information processing", then you will have to accept that rocks process information every bit as much as thermostats.

 

[Ichneumonwasp]

By 'defining out' of the problem I do not mean that they are providing more accurate definitions of consciousness. I mean that they are avoiding the issue by labeling unconscious processes as 'conscious'. Essentially, they're offering a non sequitur as a solution.

They are providing definitions for what was supposed to be the unexplainable part of human consciousness. That this does not cover all aspects of our mental life, nor all ways that we use the word consciousness simply means that the definition is incomplete, not that it is a non-sequitur. It is not a non-sequitur.

The issue I'm referring to is not whats separates human consciousness from other animals.

Yes, I know. I'm trying to tell you that you guys are arguing past one another. Pixy is addressing the old 'hard problem' that is the bit of our consciousness that supposedly separates us from other animals. You are adrressing the 'feeling of what happens' -- what has been identified as the new 'hard problem'.

What has not been properly explained is what physical process gives rise to consciousness. It is clear that simply processing information, self-referentially or otherwise, is not sufficient in and of itself to produce subjective experience. Merely processing information from light is not seeing light and merely processing information from chemicals is not smelling/tasting. I'm not so much concerned with specific qualitative experiences but how and why anything is experienced at all in any qualitative way.

What has not been properly explained is not what physical process gives rise to consciousness but what physical process gives rise to one aspect of consciousness -- the feeling of what happens. That feeling is not the sum total of consciousness, since self-reflection is also a large part of the whole picture of the many processes that we label 'consciousness'.

The reason that this issue has not been completely explained, again, is because no one has worked on it to any great degree (becasue, traditionally, it was considered unimportant, reason being the prime target of philosophy).

As to why anything is experienced at all? I think that has a simple, trivial explanation -- it's a way of providing value. Think about what it is when we speak of an 'experience'. What we mean is that the information being processed is accompanied by some form of value, not simply pain and pleasure but nuanced feeling that provides 'meaning' along with the percept. That is essentially what 'meaning' means -- that something has value in some sense, that it resonates with us.

That is the function of our 'feeling' systems -- emotion, mood, motivation. They run all the time in the background and give us a sense of what is valuable, what is not. We tend to recall those percepts that are associated with positive value (or highly negative value) and forget those that are associated with no particular value at all. You actually visually process stuff all the time that you place no value on, but you don't know it because that stuff never enters consciousness; this is the part of the world that is just on autopilot.

If we didn't have this system to value things, then we would never be able to order our lives -- there would be no sense in which we could decide to do one thing rather than another since nothing would matter.

We know that this is the function of these 'feeling' systems because the association of emotion, mood, motivation with thinking/planning can be disrupted. People with significant frontal lobe damage cannot order their lives because they cannot process value for future actions (they do not lack valuation in all aspects of life but only as it relates to future motor planning, so they are still conscious -- I am not using this example to show someon who is not conscious or robot-like).

 

[cyborg]

So we are relying on behaviour and experience. There's nothing about a rock or a thermostat to indicate consciousness. There is something about human beings to indicate consciousness.

No. What has been proposed is a definition of consciousness that says, "the level of 'consciousness' is proportional to the complexity of self-reasoning."

A rock does not perform any sort of reasoning.

A thermostat has limited reasoning but no self-reasoning.

A brain has complex reasoning and self-reasoning.

But you state:

"There are no physical process taking place in a thermostat that don't take place in a rock, on a micro or macro scale. There is no objective physical description of a rock that can't be applied to a thermostat and vice versa."

And I state:

"Ditto brains - this being the entire point."

And you haven't got anything to indicate that this isn't the case - other than a rejection of the definition based on it not "feeling" right. And since you haven't really proposed anything better saying "There is something about human beings to indicate consciousness," doesn't indicate anything that would contradict the above statement.

 

[westprog]

I want to get back to this:



No, it isn't. You aren't "brain", westprog. You are You. Every part of you is part of your consciousness. When you lean against a wall you feel the wall on your skin's nerve endings. You don't feel an image of the wall. That makes no sense. Your brain is part of you and it does most of the cognitive stuff but the rest of your body is part of the experience as well.

So, actually, nothing is experienced indirectly.

Even if the nerve impulse created by the heat is considered to be part of the conscious experience, it does not result in an experience until the brain patterns appear. And I'm being deliberately vague about the brain patterns because we don't know how exactly they result in the conscious experience. The experience is clearly not directly connected with the external event. It needs to be interpreted - indeed, to a great extent, it needs to be constructed. The image we "see" in our mind is not played on the inside of our skull like a tiny cinema - it's constructed from existing knowledge. We build an image of the world from tiny hints assembled over a lifetime. Our connection to reality is quite tenuous.

However, the emphasis on the physicality of consciousness is correct. It's not just a matter of shuffling bits.

Just because the idea is old doesn't make it true.

Nor does it make it false.

 

[westprog]

No. What has been proposed is a definition of consciousness that says, "the level of 'consciousness' is proportional to the complexity of self-reasoning."

A rock does not perform any sort of reasoning.

A thermostat has limited reasoning but no self-reasoning.

A brain has complex reasoning and self-reasoning.

But you state:

"There are no physical process taking place in a thermostat that don't take place in a rock, on a micro or macro scale. There is no objective physical description of a rock that can't be applied to a thermostat and vice versa."

And I state:

"Ditto brains - this being the entire point."

And you haven't got anything to indicate that this isn't the case - other than a rejection of the definition based on it not "feeling" right. And since you haven't really proposed anything better saying "There is something about human beings to indicate consciousness," doesn't indicate anything that would contradict the above statement.

I suppose we come back to definitions again. How do you define the word "reasoning" to include what a thermostat does? As far as I can tell, a thermostat expands and contracts due to heat, as does a rock. Where does the "reasoning" come in? Does it leak in from the human being who made it?

As far as I can tell, there is no physical meaning for the term. But I remain to be convinced.

 

[cyborg]

Does it leak in from the human being who made it?

Probably through the consciousness field.

(These separations are arbitrary and for illustrative purposes only. All physical interactions can be modelled as computations and hence as reasoning. Abstractions can be applied at many levels of concrete application).

Now can we have some indication of the objective physical description that does not apply to rocks and thermostats but does apply to brains?

If you can't appeal to anything other than beahviour then why on Earth are you arguing this point when you can't disagree with us?

 

[Ichneumonwasp]

I suppose we come back to definitions again. How do you define the word "reasoning" to include what a thermostat does? As far as I can tell, a thermostat expands and contracts due to heat, as does a rock. Where does the "reasoning" come in? Does it leak in from the human being who made it?

As far as I can tell, there is no physical meaning for the term. But I remain to be convinced.

At its most basic level reasoning consists of stimulus-response, meaning behavioral response based on environmental change. In the case of the thermostat, the stimulus-response is fixed and very simple, so we are inclined not to use the word "reasoning" since most of our "reasoned actions" require more complex processing. Remove the complexity, however, and you'll still see stimulus-response even in the human.

Yes, it is humans who determine that thermostats respond to their environment. But we do not self-create; something else -- namely the universe -- determines our stimulus-response cycles.

 

[AkuManiMani]

Its statements like these that convince me that you're either disingenuous or severely impaired.

Of course! How else could he possibly disagree with you ?

Its not Pixy's disagreement that's irking me. Posters like Ichneumonwasp and lupus_in_fabula disagree with me on many points yet I respect them and their input immensely. What aggravates me about Pixy is that he is willing to outright lie about what has and has not been said. He also relies more on fiat declarations, obtuse stonewalling, and appeals to authority than actual reasoned argumentation.

This leaves me in a bit of a bind. Either I can assume that hes doing this willfully, in which case his integrity and character are in question. Or, I can give him the benefit of the doubt and assume that his behavior is not deliberate, in which case I have to assume that he has severe cognitive shortcomings. Either way his behavior does not reflect on him positively.

 

[AkuManiMani]

They are providing definitions for what was supposed to be the unexplainable part of human consciousness. That this does not cover all aspects of our mental life, nor all ways that we use the word consciousness simply means that the definition is incomplete, not that it is a non-sequitur. It is not a non-sequitur.

Yes, I know. I'm trying to tell you that you guys are arguing past one another. Pixy is addressing the old 'hard problem' that is the bit of our consciousness that supposedly separates us from other animals. You are adrressing the 'feeling of what happens' -- what has been identified as the new 'hard problem'.

What has not been properly explained is not what physical process gives rise to consciousness but what physical process gives rise to one aspect of consciousness -- the feeling of what happens. That feeling is not the sum total of consciousness, since self-reflection is also a large part of the whole picture of the many processes that we label 'consciousness'.

The reason that this issue has not been completely explained, again, is because no one has worked on it to any great degree (becasue, traditionally, it was considered unimportant, reason being the prime target of philosophy).

If that is the case, then Pixy oughta get with the program and realize that the question hes addressing is not the one being discussed.

I agree with you that we are arguing passed each other but the difference between me and Pixy is that, while I implicitly understand where hes coming from and what hes referring to [I held pretty much held the same position as a kid], he is entirely missing what I'm saying. Whether this is deliberate on his part or not, is hard to tell. The more this discussion rolls along tho, the more I suspect that hes simply intellectually dishonest.

As to why anything is experienced at all? I think that has a simple, trivial explanation -- it's a way of providing value. Think about what it is when we speak of an 'experience'. What we mean is that the information being processed is accompanied by some form of value, not simply pain and pleasure but nuanced feeling that provides 'meaning' along with the percept. That is essentially what 'meaning' means -- that something has value in some sense, that it resonates with us.

That is the function of our 'feeling' systems -- emotion, mood, motivation. They run all the time in the background and give us a sense of what is valuable, what is not. We tend to recall those percepts that are associated with positive value (or highly negative value) and forget those that are associated with no particular value at all. You actually visually process stuff all the time that you place no value on, but you don't know it because that stuff never enters consciousness; this is the part of the world that is just on autopilot.

If we didn't have this system to value things, then we would never be able to order our lives -- there would be no sense in which we could decide to do one thing rather than another since nothing would matter.

We know that this is the function of these 'feeling' systems because the association of emotion, mood, motivation with thinking/planning can be disrupted. People with significant frontal lobe damage cannot order their lives because they cannot process value for future actions (they do not lack valuation in all aspects of life but only as it relates to future motor planning, so they are still conscious -- I am not using this example to show someone who is not conscious or robot-like).

Oh, I think we can pretty much agree on the functional why of subjective evaluations -- atleast in the case of emotions and pain/pleasure responses. The somewhat trickier question is the causal how of the generation of such experiences. Given our current knowledge, it is more than possible to create artificial systems that simulate outward behavioral responses that such sensations elicit in actual organisms. What is currently beyond our kin is what the exact physical nature of subjective experiences [what you call 'feeling']. Once we understand the physical process of how they're generated we can more confidently attempt to reproduce the actual phenomenon artificially.

 

[westprog]

They are providing definitions for what was supposed to be the unexplainable part of human consciousness. That this does not cover all aspects of our mental life, nor all ways that we use the word consciousness simply means that the definition is incomplete, not that it is a non-sequitur. It is not a non-sequitur.
Yes, I know. I'm trying to tell you that you guys are arguing past one another. Pixy is addressing the old 'hard problem' that is the bit of our consciousness that supposedly separates us from other animals. You are adrressing the 'feeling of what happens' -- what has been identified as the new 'hard problem'.



What has not been properly explained is not what physical process gives rise to consciousness but what physical process gives rise to one aspect of consciousness -- the feeling of what happens. That feeling is not the sum total of consciousness, since self-reflection is also a large part of the whole picture of the many processes that we label 'consciousness'.

I'm very far from accepting the idea that self-referential devices have as yet been created. The ability of a program to modify its own code is trivial. I've done it many times by accident, as have most programmers. The ability to recognise its own code seems to be lacking.

What a human being means by "self" is also not the same as the mental process. We have a mental model of a physical body which we regard as the same thing. "Self" is a construct, not data processing looking at its own workings. Indeed, as Mercutio has pointed out, we are not good at examining our own mental processes. Our brains don't feel.

 

[AkuManiMani]

At its most basic level reasoning consists of stimulus-response, meaning behavioral response based on environmental change. In the case of the thermostat, the stimulus-response is fixed and very simple, so we are inclined not to use the word "reasoning" since most of our "reasoned actions" require more complex processing. Remove the complexity, however, and you'll still see stimulus-response even in the human.

Yes, it is humans who determine that thermostats respond to their environment. But we do not self-create; something else -- namely the universe -- determines our stimulus-response cycles.

What westprog is saying is that all objects, 'conscious' or not, and regardless of complexity, exhibit stimulus-response to physical interaction. Its is clear from this fact that simply processing/responding to information is not sufficient to generate the subjective experience of said information. There must be an undefined physical process that gives rise to such experiences. The explanations being put forward by the S-AI proponents just don't foot the bill.

 

[cyborg]

The ability to recognise its own code seems to be lacking.

I don't recognise my own neurons.

 

[westprog]

At its most basic level reasoning consists of stimulus-response, meaning behavioral response based on environmental change. In the case of the thermostat, the stimulus-response is fixed and very simple, so we are inclined not to use the word "reasoning" since most of our "reasoned actions" require more complex processing. Remove the complexity, however, and you'll still see stimulus-response even in the human.

Yes, it is humans who determine that thermostats respond to their environment. But we do not self-create; something else -- namely the universe -- determines our stimulus-response cycles.

I don't mind toying with the concept that reasoning is stimulus-response - though I don't actually agree with it. It's simply that such stimulus response is so universal that we must accept that if it's reasoning, then the whole world is doing it. There's nothing going on in the thermostat that isn't going on in the rock. There's stimulus-response going on at every level. There are feedback systems.

It seems to me a first step to a physical theory that if the claim is that reasoning equates to stimulus-response, we have to be clear just what a stimulus-response system consists of. And if we look at the universe, at almost any scale, we have galaxies attracting one another, and electrons repelling one another, and everything in between.