[suzzer99]

Here's my question: Is our consciousness fundamentally different than a gorilla's?

If the answer is no, then I'd ask if a gorilla's consciousness is fundamentally different than a baboon's? I think that answer has to be no by definition, assuming the first answer is no.

And so on, until we get to where a human's consciousness is not fundamentally different than a tube worm, just a continuum of degrees.

I'm not sure what to draw from this. But whenever I read something that speculates on the nature of consciousness, I always try to look at it through the lens of the human-to-tube worm scale. Does the argument survive a continuum, or does it depend on human consciousness being fundamentally unique in some way?

I guess you could argue that even though there's a continuum, consciousness effectively hits zero somewhere around reptiles. Sort of like how technically I feel Alpha Centauri's gravity, but effectively it's zero. So in that case, the argument only has to survive mammals to say corvids.

[darkwater]

Did our ancestors that used the very first tools have consciousness? If they did, was the consciousness what helped them make the tools? Or was something else in their brains that helped in the tool making?

IMO consciousness is something that appears when you have enough "brain power" to spare, maybe as some side-effect of some evolutionary trait. I'm no expert and it's a very simplistic explanation, I know, but in general I tend to agree with the general idea exposed by Rovelli in the piece: consciousness is just a manifestation of the real world of which we are part, just one very complicated and that we are not able to understand (yet?).

[Brian_K_White]

There is brain power by the ton all over the place. The answer cannot be based on what a thing can do, but on what a thing chooses to do.

[spiorf]

The verb "chooses" here does a lot of the heavy lifting, and implies a consciusness that chooses. It's making the answer circular and it means that we are just pre-filtering the possible answers for our preconceptions.

My cat is not "less conscious" because he's choosing to sleep all day.

[Brian_K_White]

Any action that can possibly have a simple explaination, it doesn't matter if it can also have a complex explaination, is immaterial.

A cat doing anything that can be explained by simple tropism doesn't prove or disprove anything, it's simply data of no value one way or the other.

The fact that you sleep and so does a cat does not prove that you are just a cat or that the cat is actually postulating about the inner life of other cats but just choosing not to ever write it's thoughts down. It's simply a silly trivial surface thing to even talk about.

[wizzwizz4]

If I may equivocate for a moment: your cat is unconscious, which is less conscious than wakefulness.

[darkwater]

I'm not sure I'm following you, what do you mean? That other animals as well have enough brain power for consciousness?

[Brian_K_White]

I said brain power isn't interesting because it doesn't prove anything. There are things that we absolutely know are not conscious yet have a lot of brain power, ie countless pieces of simple deterministic software that we can explain all the way down to the atoms like a sewing machine.

Yes other animals have demonstrated brain power that exceeds some humans, or even all humans while they are young enough, if you just go by some sort of puzzle-solving abilities. The fact that you can figure out how to unscrew a jar lid, and so can an octopus, doesn't imply anything about the octopus being the same as a human in an octopus body.

Similarly observing something simpler exhibit some of the same outward behaviors you and every other human does also doesn't mean anything. Humans do a lot of very simple things. A human seeks food and comfort and avoids pain and damage. And so does a plant. Electric motors turn shafts, and so do humans. So you have to discount anything that's merely a commonality like that, including other things that seem more complex, and so seem like they are what makes us different. We do also have more simple brain power than most animals, and so it is like a correlation with consciousness, but it is not consciousness itself or automatic proof of it and doesn't automatically or necessarily produce it. It's probably a required ingredient though. IE all beef is meat but not all meat is beef, all consciousness may have brain power but not all brain power has consciousness.

But, repeating an example I used in another comment, if you had no other interface with the world except a remote controlled roomba, you would be able to make yourself known. Not by anything as plain as writing out words on the floor, but by actions. There are an infinite number of ways that you a conscious being could disclose your existense to me who can only see the roomba. You could be anything from caring to menacing by simple actions. Because it's not the capacity to roll across the floor, it's where & when you choose to roll across the floor that ends up speaking and disclosing intent, which discloses the "you" in there.

Watch any horror movie about the robots going wrong, or like twighlight zone episodes where you don't actually see much action but the person wakes up and there is a knife sitting next to them, and the presumption is the creepy doll placed it there while they slept. It's a message that they could have killed them any time they wanted to, and they want you to fear.

No other animal has ever done anything like that, that can only be explained by "I want you to know that I know." or more generally "I want you to have a particular thought.", only things that can be explained much more simply and directly. Some things seem to come close like animals caring for other animals, bringing another animal food etc, but that is really just anthropomorphizing, because we also have all those same animal condition components to our own existense. We also feel hunger, feel a desire to relieve someone else's hunger, protect our young, etc. And animals do have some ability to model what they see. They can observe another animal and model what it wants or fears etc, because the ability to predict other things behavior is very beneficial to survival. And we see that and think it proves more than it does.

If you're a roomba that pushes a cookie across the floor to me, that doesn't prove anything all by itself, but it could be part of it. It's like how a word isn't a novel or a philosophical concept, but the philosophical concept is communicated with words.

The idea is to try to recognize how llms are like a misdirection tricking us into thinking certain things simply because they use text as the thing they manipulate. That makes them seem way more human than they really are, simply because they are slicing and dicing prior recorded human communication, which up until now has been something unique to humans. You don't need any words at all to make yourself known to me as being not just a roomba.

[smackeyacky]

A cat reaching for a cuddle is conscious or not? They recognise individuals and communicate desires well past the bounds of food or other basic needs into affection.

[Brian_K_White]

A cat reaching for a cuddle is a cat reaching for a cuddle. The act has no significance one way or the other.

[simiones]

> consciousness effectively hits zero somewhere around reptiles

Note that at least one species of fish have been shown to very consistently pass the mirror test (they try to clean up a mark on their body they can only see in a mirror, then go back to the mirror to check, and repeat a few times). So, at least if you consider the mirror test to be a sign of consciousness in animals, then you might want to extend this to at least all chordata.

[xyzsparetimexyz]

The mirror test is just about intelligence. A p-zombie could easily pass it.

[simiones]

The mirror test is essentially the only pseudo-objective argument we have for believing that non-human animals are conscious - it proves that said animals have a concept of themselves as opposed to the rest of the environment. You are right that it is not necessarily very convincing, but I don't think we have anything much better.

Also, the entire point of p-zombies is that they can, by definition, pass any objective test that we can currently conceive. A p-zombie is, by definition, "something that behaves exactly like a human, but doesn't have any inner consciousness". Of course, just because we can define something at this high level doesn't mean that this thing can actually exist (e.g. we can define the concept "numbers that are bigger than 3 but smaller than 2", despite no such number existing).

[somenameforme]

You say "our" consciousness, but how do you know you're not the only conscious entity alive? The problem of consciousness is that not only is it plainly absurd sounding, but it's also completely unmeasurable. There is no test or metric you can use to determine whether I, you, or anything else has a consciousness. And I think this more or less immediately precludes logical reasoning about it.

[Brian_K_White]

You can't tell the difference between a person and an mp3 player saying the same words, even if the words are about inner life musings.

And you can't tell the difference between a person exhibiting many behavioral actions and something I could rig up with an electric motor and a light sensor to exhibit tropism, seeking things, avoiding other things.

But if you only had a remote controlled roomba to interact with the world, you would be able to make yourself known to me.

I don't mean that you could substitute a voice with writing out words on the floor, I mean your actions, the overall totality no single act, would would expose a driving source of actions that so far nothing else exhibits.

We just anthropomorphize everything because we have so much in common with all the other animals. When a dog or a dolphin does something, we have had experiences that we recognize as being practically identical, and we know what our experience was like. It's protecting it's baby. I protect MY baby! Yes and an electric motor can turn a crank, and you can turn a crank.

Simple outward alignments like that are some kind of logical trap everyone falls for because we don't have any other conceptual vocabulary to even think with.

[somenameforme]

This is an interesting take but are you not equating intelligence with consciousness?

[Brian_K_White]

No, the mere capacity to do something means nothing.

In other comments I've distilled that down to "It can't be about what a thing can do, but about what a thing chooses to do." Which is a bit too distilled by itself but whatever.

The ability to solve a puzzle is just a correlation, probably a required ingredient, not significant itself.

The comment above was more focussed on it's parent about what you can deduce from outside observations. It's not true that there is nothing to go on. It's merely true that you can come up with a lot of examples of observations that don't prove anything.

Hearing something say "I think, therefor I am." doesn't prove that it thinks or is. Seeing something solve a puzzle or care for a baby doesn't prove that it is the same as you who can also solve puzzles and would care for a baby.

And yet, no matter how limited your means of expression were, if you had any means of acting at all, you could and would make yourself known. How I don't know because it's infinite and context sensitive. You would do something that only has meaning to me or other immediate observers because it would somehow refer to other immediate context.

You're nothing but a remote controlled roomba, and just to make the point we'll artificially remove the obvious easy direct possibility of writing letters out on the floor or tapping out morse code by bumping into something, etc. You can only communicate by actions. You don't know morse code and something like that simple doesn't occur to you because not everyone thinks like that or is good at thinking of things like that.

Yet... You see me looking around for something, and you push the cookie I dropped across the floor to where I see it. Then when I reach for it you move in the way because you wish to tell me I'm not supposed to have sugar & carbs, and indeed I do get that message. No single act like that says or proves much by itself, but stuff like that adds up to a pattern that exceeds the same sorts of things any dog routinely does, and none of it requires hardly any brute brainpower. Or maybe it does require brute brain power but it doesn't have to mean an ability to solve impressive puzzles. IE a dog will absolutely model that you are looking for that cookie and will absolutely desire to please you by bringing it to you, but will not joke with you by bringing a particular type of cookie that you both know you don't like. But it could be trained to do all the same outward actions. It has the brainpower to figure out even very complicated rules.

[don_esteban]

Here's my question: Is our consciousness fundamentally different than a gorilla's?

> If the answer is no, then I'd ask if a gorilla's consciousness is fundamentally different than a baboon's? I think that answer has to be no by definition, assuming the first answer is no.

> And so on, until we get to where a human's consciousness is not fundamentally different than a tube worm, just a continuum of degrees.

> I'm not sure what to draw from this.

At least the answer to this is simple:

'fundamentally different' is not a transitive function

:-)

[simiones]

The important point is that "not fundamentally different" is probably a transitive function. If A is not fundamentally different from B, and B is not fundamentally different from C, than A is not fundamentally different from C. Here A is human consciousness, B is gorilla consciousness, and C is baboon consciousness.

[don_esteban]

I disagree. Lets go over this slowly.

For almost all purposes, x + epsilon is not fundamentally different from x. Still, 1 is fundamentally different from 10^100, while you can get from 1 to 10^100 by adding epsilon.

Perhaps, one can argue that 0 is fundamentally different from 1. As in 0 + epsilon is fundamentally different from 0, for any non-zero epsilon (e.g. you can't divide by 0, but can for such epsilon).

I think both of us will agree that there is no fundamental difference between the consciousness of baboon and gorilla, and that there is a fundamental difference between the consciousness of a human and a bacteria.

Where we might differ is whether there is a fundamental difference between the consciousness of gorilla and human (some/many? think the humans are unique, and gorilla are not consciouss), and between the consciousness of baboon and a bacteria (maybe some believe 'all life has soul', including bacteria).

Where do you stand? Why do you think 'not fundamentally different' is transitive? Of course, if you apply it twice, the non-transitivity is not obvious. If you apply it 1000x, all the way to bacteria, its non-transitivity becomes obvious. Otherwise, you have to draw a sharp divide somewhere, between 'conscious' and 'non conscious', as in 'these two relatively closely related species are fundamentally different'.

The biggest biological gap I see between bacteria and human is probably between bacteria and eucaryotes, but somehow I doubt you would put the 'fundamentally different, consciousness-wise' there.

Btw., if that is not obvious, from my point of view, baboons are conscious. Not tothe level humans are, but sufficiently enough to make it obvious.

[cgio]

You are probably converging to Tononi’s IIT. Read the criticism from Aaronson too. Not fundamentally against your approach.

[__patchbit__]

Some scientists accept consciousness resides in single cell paramecia.

[philipallstar]

Saying "accept" assumes it's true. What's happening is "some scientists define consciousness incredibly broadly."