[jwilliams]

Rovelli is arguing (I think) that we need to fundamentally view consciousness as a natural phenomenon - albeit one that is extremely complex and poorly understood.

So we ditch the philosophical puzzle and focus on the reality we can perceive and reason on. The problem is that consciousness is a philosophical invention (and a slippery one at that).

We're in the wrong frame. If you accept consciousness is a thing you end up in this weird tautological state - it's not special, but we've put it in a special category.

If you view via a grounded, practical frame, you probably don't care about consciousness. The fact that it's undefinable is probably a major clue.

[prmph]

Consciousness the the fundamental reality; it is the only thing we know for sure.

I know for sure what I am perceiving. Forget about if it is a simulation or not: it is still what I am perceiving. There is nothing else I can be sure of.

So you are correct that it is, in some sense, un-explorable. However, if the above is the reason, then nothing else is explorable also; you cannot prove that we are not in a simulation, and in a sense it does not matter.

If you accept that we assume we are not in a simulation and the knowledge we have matters, then consciousness is also open to exploration, and it is not only a philosophical thing. There are several hard questions about consciousness that are meaningful in this frame:

- Why do some things appear to be conscious and other not so?

- Is there only one consciousness in the universe, or multiple?

- Is consciousness local and embodied, or not?

- Would restoring the physical substrate of consciousness (if possible) lead to the same consciousness, or an identical one? Does this distinction between "same" and "identical" consciousnesses even make sense?

Etc

[mjburgess]

> Consciousness the the fundamental reality; it is the only thing we know for sure.

These statements conflate, as idealists do, epistemology and ontology.

What we know "for sure" has no bearing on what's real. These are entirely separate questions.

What an ape might, or might not, feel certain (or any which way about) says nothing about where an ape finds itself. Of course, this is a great injury to our ego, and sense of power to determine the nature of the world by our mind alone -- but such is life.

The world is not human, not at all like a human, and nothing about it follows from us at all. The world is not made in our image. Consciousness is a derivative, secondary phenomenon which is a measurement process occurring in the body of an ape, and whatever it manages to measure with any clarity, has no impact on the nature of that world.

[qsera]

>Consciousness is a derivative, secondary phenomenon which is a measurement process occurring in the body of an ape

Can you define existence without depending on or referring to consciousness?

[mjburgess]

Yes. Though i think you're committing the gentic fallacy here, which is the core fallacy at the heart of idealism and much 19th C. german philosophy.

The properties of the origin of somethign imply nothing about the properties of the product. That a bread factory is made of metal, does not mean bread is.

That in my statement of things in language I am conscious of what I state, says nothing about the truth (or other such properties) of what I say.

A photographic plate is made of metal, the mountain it photographs, of mud.

I am conscious, but when I say, "reality is all that which is extended in space and time" -- the truth of that proposition has nothing to do with my being consiouss -- it is a loaf of bread, a photograph, a product of a process invovling consiousness but in none of its properties, depends upon it.

Every relevant thing we do requires consciousness -- just as everythign a thermometer does requires, say, its own mercury -- but in measuring coffee's temperature, coffee is in no way mercury. And when we measre the world, by photographing it with consciousness, it is in no way conscious.

[qsera]

>reality is all that which is extended in space and time

You are missing the fact that "space" and "time" are also illusions painted on consciousness.

[mjburgess]

Alas, no I am not.

They're properties of the world which consciousness measures.

A mountain is painted in the ink of a photo, the mountain is not an illusion. You're focused only on the measurement, and not what is measured.

[alsetmusic]

> You are missing the fact that "space" and "time" are also illusions painted on consciousness.

Both of these can be measured. They are not illusions.

Money is an illusion made up by people and agreed upon for basically the whole of the world economy, but not real. Space between me and the lamp on my desk is very real. The age of the world and the age of the universe is very real.

[markhahn]

we need to distinguish accounts that are merely self-consistent, and those that are more useful.

the reality-is-illusion meme is self-consistent (panpsychism, simulationism, dream-of-god-ism, whatever). merely being self-consistent isn't good enough.

the alternative (and there is only one) is physicalism and its epistemology, science. the main appeal of this is parsimony, often referred to as Occam's Razor.

[prmph]

You are attributing to me something I never said.

I said nothing about the nature of reality. All that I said is: all my knowledge of the reality (whether it exists independently or me or not) comes from my perception.

There could be an objective reality, or reality could be something created by our consciousness. I don't know. The one thing I do know, however, is what my consciousness perceives. It is in that sense that is is fundamental

[summarybot]

Largely I find your points reductionist and insulting to the very sacred experience that is unfolding for you and me. Consciousness is a primary or even a priori phenomenon from which all of your surmisals stem. You have got it backwards. The fact someone once saw an ape, or saw a nebula, or made a measurement of brain waves, these all had to happen within human-experience. The experiencing itself is irreducible. Consciousness as a byproduct or secondary phenomenon as you claim, is to be expected for someone brought up in the modern era where religion and spirituality were so vehemently eschewed that men leaned too far into the other extreme and became physicalist-materialists claiming the lived experience is but a mere symphony of neurological interactions without consequence. This is a disastrous view. This is basically a swift ticket to a hell-realm. The basic posture is all wrong - you must return to the fundamental facts, namely those of your lived experience. What you claim as primary evidence are in fact secondary observations. And then you use the secondary observations to make claims about a primary nature "out there" and "distinct from" human-experiencing. This is simply not the case. This view is logically untenable. One does not study consciousness by looking at pictures and drawings and photos, just like how one does not study what music sounds like by inspecting the buttons of a saxaphone unblown. The fluid nature of the energetic capacity of mind is very difficult to discern - it's not an everyday occurence, sages spend their whole lives pursuing prayer and meditation in order to catch a mere glimpse at the primal nature of experience. Everything else flows from this. Your mind is the root of all things, it is the common denominator in all moments of your experience.

[mjburgess]

You can read my other comment. You're also committing the genetic fallacy.

Yes, a hand can measure itself. Yes, consciousness as a measurement process of reality can expose to the conscious agent that its own consciousness is a merely a process in the world.

Just as a camera, in photographing a mirror, discovers that it is only a camera located at some point in space and time.

The "back to basics" pov you're talkign about is one which actually abandons everything consciousness tells you about the world, because you're afraid of what you've found.

An ape without a mirror thinks, of course, it is god. What an insult to find the face of this god is only that of an ape.

[summarybot]

No, the genetic fallacy is not germane here. You are conflating the derivation of knowledge and direct knowing, which are distinct. You conflate the ingredients on the back of the label for the taste of the sweets in the pouch. The taste of sweetness is what I am indicating, not the list of ingredients. Also, you are suggesting that there is an impersonal objective spacetime irrespective of observer which is false. There is a generalized case that works for the figures projected for measuring the distances to solar bodies from other solar bodies. But you are basing your analysis on the hidden assumption that the material reality is first. This is an unchallenged assumption in modern science which leads you astray.

[qsera]

>discovers that it is only a camera located at some point in space and time.

It discovers no such thing. It can only measure the signals coming from the sensors. That is its ground truth. If a sensor can produce a signal without having an image fall on it, then that would be what the camera sees.

So in this case, it would perceive the image of a camera in a mirror, but that would not be the reality.

[mjburgess]

It doesnt perceive the image of a camera, it's sensor is that image. What it means to perceive is for that image to form. This is the second great fallacies of idealism: (1) the genetic fallacy above that the origin/product of a process must share properties and (2) this fallacy of ambiguity on the word 'see'/perceive (between the mental act of drawing attention to an aspect of a perception, and the physiological act of forming that perception).

When I open my eye, light hits it, striking off the object which I am seeing. What it means to see is for that object to cause my perception. I am NOT seeing my perception, that doesn't make any sense -- it's incoherent because it's an infinite regress.

When I open my eyes and see the coffee, my body changes to have the perception of that coffee as part of my structure -- I am the photographic plate. Just as the photographic plate isnt taking a picture of itself, neither is my eye or mind.

To see is, akin to the photographic plate, to be changed by the world so that you have an impression of it. You do not see seeing, you see objects.

[GoblinSlayer]

If there's no nature out there, then what is hell?

[summarybot]

The distinction is what appears: appearances, versus what actually abides: reality.

[vidarh]

> you cannot prove that we are not in a simulation, and in a sense it does not matter

I'd consider myself a materialist (in the philosophical sense) and this is why (and I agree with the rest of your comment to)

We can not know, but in the absence of evidence to the contrary (e.g. someone metaphorically popping their head in from "outside" and revealing another layer to us), while it is important to understand that we do not know, it is more productive to assume in the absence of evidence, whether it is "real" or subjective or a simulation.

As long as it appears to us to follow consistent rules, we can explore those rules, and explore our apparent material reality.

[kaashif]

Why does whether we're in a simulation or not matter for whether anything is explorable?

You can explore how the simulation works, there's just some other layer you can't explore. Or maybe you can somehow.

When you look at the stars, are they real or a simulation in your brain? Does that mean you can't explore them?

[LoganDark]

> When you look at the stars, are they real or a simulation in your brain?

This is unknowable.

[smackeyacky]

It is knowable isn’t it? We know our brains play a variety of tricks to get a cohesive view out of two wildly complicated but deeply flawed meat sensors.

That fits the definition of a simulation.

[raxxorraxor]

Not into modern philosophy at all, but I do believe, simulated or not, that this is indeed mostly quibbling.

An engineer would ask what a simulation would simulate. This is the core of the meaning behind that word. And if the answer is reality and it hints to the fact you cannot perceive everything and you conscience tries to construct a cohesive understanding from limited perception, than I would dispute the fact. The only one who tries to do that are philosophers. Going back to my objective, not-simulated ignorance now.

[PaulDavisThe1st]

Sorry, but no.

Simulations are systems which have various rules built into them which govern (entirely) the behavior of the components of the system (at whatever levels the rules apply).

A given simulation may have rules that are believed or are intended to generate behavior within it which are similar to some other system (e.g. what we experience as "reality"). But it may just as well have an entirely different set of rules intended to create entirely different, even unknown and unpredictable, behaviors.

Any similarity between a given simulation and what we experience as reality is a property of that particular simulation. There is absolutely no reason why a simulation that is utterly different from our reality could not exist (and indeed, almost certainly already does).

[zchrykng]

Part of the argument is that you can only know what you experience. But, if this is a simulation, "you" could be a program running on a computer and your every experience is just piped directly into your consciousness without any underlying physical reality. You might even not be interacting with other people in the simulation, it could be just you and everything else is simulated without being similar to whatever existence you have.

I don't agree with this argument, but it circulates occasionally.

[visarga]

> "you" could be a program running on a computer

If you are in a sim, then the sim execution is an expensive process, it produces heat and consumes energy. If you are in reality, a material body, then keeping alive also consumes energy. The debates about consciousness often assume a cost-free regime, a platonic perspective. I think this is wrong. We have much to gain thinking about how a process provides its own energy, or how it balances costs and gains. Maybe we can find answers about consciousness too if we chase down the cost recursion path.

[LoganDark]

What's unknowable is whether or not there are real stars that correspond with what you seem to observe; not whether or not your observations themselves are the real stars.

[smackeyacky]

Didn’t we already work out they are similar in their spectral output to the Sun, enough to conclude they are the same kind of thing? And observing their movements makes them far away. Do each of us have to do the experiments again to validate that we know what they are?

[visarga]

> Consciousness the the fundamental reality; it is the only thing we know for sure.

Who invented the words "consciousness" "reality" "fundamental" that you are now using? you are using language invented elsewhere while claiming you can't be sure of its reality.

Are you also claiming you can't be sure someone had to create and raise you to get to the point of asking such questions? We are downstream from parents and society.

The whole discussion here is anchored on individual level, but we are not viable outside society. It's like extracting one cell from one organ and saying it is mysterious why it is like that, while ignoring the organism and the evolution.

If society fails, human die too. If a human makes a fatal mistake, the cells in their body die too. We depend on top level doing its job to keep the lower layers viable.

[prmph]

> You are using language invented elsewhere while claiming you can't be sure of its reality.

Your senses are the only thing on which this statement rests. Your don't know anything like "language", "invented" etc. All you know is what your mind and your senses tell you.

And, yes, engaging with you on this topic, and my argument, is also included in what I refer to as my perception. I have no way to prove that you are even conscious, or that anything like language or invention actually are real, whatever real means.

[aerodexis]

So it's through the senses that one attains mathematical knowledge?

[nothinkjustai]

Is this supposed to be some sort of gotcha?

[anon-3988]

> Are you also claiming you can't be sure someone had to create and raise you to get to the point of asking such questions? We are downstream from parents and society.

Yes exactly. You are sure of nothing except the fact this now exists. The simulation could collapse in the next second. I could awake from this dream.

[Xcelerate]

> Consciousness the the fundamental reality; it is the only thing we know for sure.

> I know for sure what I am perceiving

This reflects my view. And I’ve always found it mildly amusing that beings I cannot prove to myself are perceiving attempt to convince me that I’m not perceiving, when that’s exactly what I’m maximally sure of. Imagine arguing with an LLM designed to convince you that you’re not real. It would be weird, wouldn’t it?

[pixl97]

> It would be weird, wouldn’t it?

That depends how it tried and what influences the LLM had on the outside world.

For example if the LLM could drug you, either by convincing you to take drugs, or trick you into doing it, then convincing you that you're not real becomes monumentally easy. Derealization can be a monumentally profound/terrifying experience to your psyche.

[arcastroe]

> Is there only one consciousness in the universe, or multiple?

This sounds similar to the "how do you know you're not dreaming?" question.

When you are in a dream, you really are the only single conciousness of that world. Any other person you interact with inside your dream is not performing any thinking of their own. Instead, dream interactions are just your single consciousness interacting with itself.

I think it is obvious there are multiple consciousness in the universe and not just one. Unless you're in a dream right now ;)

[thomastjeffery]

Only if we abandon reason while simultaneously claiming objectivity.

I cannot know objectively whether I am in a simulation or not. I can, however, reason about my experience, the experiences of others (as I perceive them), and the systems that facilitate perception. All of that information is logically coherent, so I can "know" it. My knowledge may not be objectively proven, but it is the most subjectively relevant conclusion.

[bambax]

I never quite understood what we mean by "consciousness" but I find fascinating that most modern philosophers who describe themselves as materialists / non religious can argue in the same sentence that there is something special and extra-natural about the human experience.

It's one or the other: either nature is all there is, and therefore, consciousness is a purely natural phenomenon, that we can investigate, and probably eventually replicate, and can't deny to other beings or to machines upfront; OR there is something outside reality that we might as well call God.

I'm strongly in the former camp, but I don't have issues with the latter one. What upsets me is the inconsistency of those who try to support both ideas at the same time. They shouldn't be allowed to have it both ways.

[energy123]

I don't know anyone who supports both ideas at the same time. Are you saying that philosophers do?

Most philosophers are materialists or computational functionalists, while being monists. This means they aren't dualists, and it means they do not adopt the supernatural explanation. But they are careful not to rule out dualism.

There's this pattern I've observed in discussions about philosophy. First there's a rejection of philosophy as silly and misguided, followed by a rediscovery of the same concepts that philosophers have developed, but under a new ad-hoc and less precise language.

Congratulations, you're a philosopher.

[mikk14]

I don't know if this is discussed by actual serious philosophers, but consider the issue of "mind uploading." I have seen very staunch monists seriously discussing that, if you were to produce a complete digital copy of your brain -- copying any possible information to the most minute synapse -- then you effectively "uploaded" yourself into a computer and can live a digital life.

These people believe this while at the same time considering dualism so ridiculous as to laugh dualists out of the room. The evident problem being that "mind uploading" is the most dualistic possible position to take. A real monist would easily see that by doing mind uploading you have just created a clone that is a whole separate entity from yourself and it is not yourself.

[energy123]

But you are taking an opinionated view of the resolution to the Ship of Theseus paradox. If you are a computational functionalist, then it really is "you" afterwards (or rather there's now two identical "you" until the original "you" is destroyed). A monist could also point to your hypocrisy of believing that you are still your child self despite every atom in your body having been replaced between then and now.

[chongli]

believing that you are still your child self despite every atom in your body having been replaced between then and now.

Oft-repeated but not true. Neurons, for the most part, are never replaced. If a neuron dies, it's gone forever. Repeated head traumas (leading to CTE) are known to cause personality changes as the brain has been permanently altered due to neuron losses.

[mikk14]

A true monist would realize that any experience of the uploaded being that received a copy of the brain is not felt by the original brain that has been copied. This is a fact and it is elementary to see it as true, as well as supporting the view that the copy is not the same being at all. If your description of computation functionalists is accurate, then they simply are dualists and would do good in admitting this to themselves.

Invoking the Ship of Theseus is a distraction. The Ship of Theseus paradox does not involve a full copy at the atomic level while the original still stands. If it did, the paradox would not even exists. The paradox exists because there is the key element that you do not have in mind copying/uploading: _continuity_.

[innin]

There is no prove that continuity really matters. In fact who goes to say that your current conscious self is the same as your self from five minutes ago. After all you do not feel what they felt. The only thing that makes you think that the two are related or even the same is your state (memories, emotions). Why would we even think about whether cloning is able to transmit consciousness when we don’t even know if consciousness is transmitted over time?

Edit: Just to clarify my opinion: This means that the relationship between my self from five seconds ago and my current self and the relationship between my self from five seconds ago and a clone of that self that aged the same amount would be equivalent. Both of us would _not_ be the same as my past self

[amanaplanacanal]

Isn't continuity just an implementation detail? Suppose your brain was replaced a bit at a time with mechanical hardware, the end result is an uploaded mind while maintaining continuity.

[energy123]

Imagine you are destroyed in your sleep by aliens and replaced by an atomically identical duplicate. Would you call this "you"?

If not, what if the aliens recycled the atoms from your original body to make the new body, putting each original atom into the same original spot with the same position and momentum (ignoring quantum and uncertainty principle).

What if they recycled 99% of the atoms from your original body, but swapped 1% of them for different atoms?

What if they only destroyed 5% of your brain and reassembled that destroyed portion, leaving the rest of you untouched? What about 50%?

What if they waited 1 planck moment before reassembling you versus 5 seconds?

Where is your dividing line in this scenario space between "that's really me" versus "that's just a copy and is not really me" ?

The functionalist answer, as I understand it, is fungibility across time and copies when arriving at definitions of words like "you".

The functionalist answer is not that > 1 copy can communicate telepathically or supernaturally share experiences is a dualist sense. They are still causally independent physical entities.

[taneq]

The ‘you’ that wakes up tomorrow is a whole separate entity from you right now, unless you want to concede that identity is a path variable and that whether the exact same physical/mental/emotional entity is you or not depends on how those particles got there.

[mikk14]

Just because the brain doesn't form memories while you sleep, doesn't mean you have ceased to exist. You have probably forgot many things that have happened to you today: does that mean you didn't exist in those moments you forgot? Am I misunderstanding your point?

[GoblinSlayer]

If the universe was created 5 minutes ago, then you didn't exist before that, but it doesn't matter, because past and present don't interact.

[delecti]

Are there people who say that digitizing one's conscious moves their mind? If I upload a file from my computer to to a server, the file still exists on my computer (until deleted). I've never thought that a mind upload would work any differently.

I think that many who talk about consciousness digitization handwave away what happens to their body/brain afterwards, but I don't necessarily think that means they think they'll move into the computer.

[kodt]

depends if you do a copy paste or cut and paste

[delecti]

My point is that the word "upload", without context indicating otherwise, does not imply that the original is changed in any way.

[card_zero]

I think reasonably faithful clones would be mes. We could live my life, from multiple perspectives, some of them quite separate. It might be necessary to distinguish them with numbers, or claim that one of them has become too different to really count as a me, but those are details and semantic matters.

[psychoslave]

> copying any possible information to the most minute synapse

That's reducing an individual to, I assume, the sum of its neural network. So like considering everything else happening in the fleshy body matters to what a human is, nor how they relate to the rest of cosmos as such a body.

[redwood]

I think a lot of people interpret philosophers' arguments differently and it isn't always clear what a philosopher themselves truly believes.

For example Searle's Chinese room thought experiment... On the one hand you can easily construe it to imply that he believes there's something fundamentally special about human consciousness that cannot be reproduced by a machine. On the other hand you could interpret his perspective, which I think is more in line with his real perspective, as implyimg that replicating the human mind machine requires truly replicating it physically rather than approximating it and that it's misleading to imply that you can get there with an approximation ... Still I can see how this confuses dualists or could appear in line with their point of view even though it is arguably a nuanced take on the materiallist view

[Eisenstein]

> you can easily construe it to imply that he believes there's something fundamentally special about human consciousness that cannot be reproduced by a machine. On the other hand you could interpret his perspective, which I think is more in line with his real perspective, as implyimg that replicating the human mind machine requires truly replicating it physically

I'm not sure I understand. If we must replicate a human brain physically in order to create something that has consciousness, then how is that not something 'special that cannot be reproduced by a machine'?

[redwood]

Your comment does serve the point I was making. Still there is a perspective that if you could artificially reproduce the human mind top to bottom, a truly perfect reproduction in other words, then you ought to be able to trigger an identical consciousness. In other words yes special type of machine is needed for the machine nevertheless not some special soul.

Of course the counterpoint and maybe the one you're making is that special machine ought to be simply called a soul machine and we could all agree it would be very difficult to reproduce it and it is intrinsically special... but maybe that's for the very specific form of Consciousness we have... but maybe there are other forms

[Eisenstein]

That perspective is 'biological exceptionalism' and requires that there is something specific to biology that allows consciousness while precluding anything not biological. For that to be convincing there must be a mechanism and no one has proposed anything other than a soul for that.

[narag]

I don't know anyone who supports both ideas at the same time. Are you saying that philosophers do?

Every guy saying that free will doesn't exist is arguing exactly this. Physical causality considered an obstacle to freedom implies that the conscious entity is somehow outside the physical world.

[amanaplanacanal]

You are implying that consciousness has to include free will? Why?

[narag]

That's backwards. People saying that there's no free will because determinism is implying that human consciousness is outside the physical world. Actually that's what TFA is about and makes a great job explaining it.

My comment was responding to energy123 questioning there are philosophers that are both materialistic and consider human consciousness is "special". The moment you separate consciousness from all the physical processes that support it (and that's what negating "free" will arguing that it's caused by material forces) you're placing it in a different "plane".

That's hardly an unheard-of position, there are many thinkers that fall for this.

[GoblinSlayer]

That's strange, hard determinists are eliminativists, and eliminativists don't believe in consciousness, but I never saw them speaking about both at the same time.

[SiempreViernes]

In case you didn't get it: you were invited to provide concrete examples of philosophers holding the explicit opinion you have described.

[narag]

In case you don't get it: you don't get to set the discussion terms. You can argue all you want yourself, but my point is already made. If you want a list, search for "hard incopatibilism" or "hard determinism" and you get it.

[twak]

I've yet to find a falsifiable definition of consciousness.

I do believe in intelligence (which is measured against a particular task) and ego (which inflates the self over the other).

[XorNot]

"might as well call God" is a bizzare conclusion for the latter though because "God" is far from an abstract concept - it's probably one of the most heavily loaded terms in every human culture.

[taneq]

Overloaded, I’d say. There are many different definitions, most incompatible with each other, such that the term is almost meaningless without extensive preceding discussion.

[adwn]

No, there is at least one other option, which is that consciousness [1] is a phenomenon that we can't replicate in non-biological brains [2], but from which the existence of a "God"-like being, as the term is understood by major religions, still doesn't follow.

[1] Or "qualia", to be precise.

[2] For example, the existence of qualia might require certain carbon-based structures which aren't present in silicon-based devices.

[cortic]

There is nothing that we know of in carbon based structures that violates universal causality, even in quantum scales where causality becomes more vague it is replaced by a measurable randomness.

So there should be no reason we cannot reduce these phenomena to actual quantifiable and there for Computable elements.

[funimpoded]

Computing something isn’t the same thing as it actually happening.

[cortic]

Its exactly the same, the universe is functionally a computing device, it is based on data and causality. Its complex but our brains do not work deeper than the neuron and so can be modeled in other computing devices like it is modeled in the computing device that is the universe.

[morpheos137]

That is a dubious asertion. At high enough resolution the model converges on the modeled.

[funimpoded]

"Resolution" has nothing whatsoever to do with it.

No amount of scribbling graphite onto paper will produce a butterfly.

[Eisenstein]

Would you say that displaying image of something on a screen qualifies as actually happening? Writing data on a storage medium? What about a roomba vacuuming a floor?

[funimpoded]

> Would you say that displaying image of something on a screen qualifies as actually happening?

Yeah, of course.

What I'm addressing is "if we turn 100% of everything about neurons into numbers we can do calculations on those numbers and it's the same as that stuff actually happening with real neurons". Which is entirely wrong. A trajectory calculation isn't different from actually firing a projectile because it's not precise enough but because it's something else entirely.

[adwn]

> […] that violates universal causality

I think you're conflating qualia with free will. These are very different concepts, and the experience of qualia has nothing at all to do with "violating causality".

> So there should be no reason we cannot reduce these phenomena to actual quantifiable and there for Computable elements.

As long as we have practically no idea how qualia arise, or even what exactly they are, your claim has no base to stand on.

[cortic]

>As long as we have practically no idea how qualia arise

Qualia or the feeling of consciousness arises from our evolved instinct and ability to personify other humans; turned inward. There is a great amount of evidence to support this from neurological to psychological research.

But even if we didn't know how this came about in the brain, deduction demands it must come about through causal means, which itself is computable and so could be represented in other mediums.

[taneq]

Qualia are a begged question from the start, imo.

[binary132]

Did typing this sentence feel funny?

[taneq]

How would I tell? ;)

[dboreham]

Basically the Chinese Room argument. By now clear wrong.

[chongli]

How do you figure that? The Chinese Room has had many replies but no clear refutation.

[GoblinSlayer]

That's because Chinese Room is an assumption, not an argument.

[chongli]

Completely wrong. Please read up on the argument and the debate around it before continuing [1].

[1] https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/chinese-room/

[NewEntryHN]

If the thing "outside of reality" ever reveals useful to explain anything about reality, then it becomes part of reality.

[freedomben]

I've been debating consciousness for many years as a layman, not an expert, but a layman who has read a lot of scholarly books on the subject.

In my experience, the majority of people who take the position that consciousness is something special to humans are nearly always coming from a religious background and viewing it through a religious lens. This makes sense, as if we reduce consciousness to physical reality, then the implications to free will become quite clear and devastating against it being a thing. This essentially destroys a lot of religions which are fundamentally based on humans having free will. Detailing the full chain of thought would take quite a bit of space, but the quick answer is that the ability for free will is hiding from us if it actually exists. Many people reach for quantum mechanics and its source of randomness as room for consciousness to exist that gives us free will, but the problem there is neurologically we operate at a far larger size than quantum effects would be measured. There's also no way to control the outcome of quantum events as it is truly random. So one would need to show how our neurological physiological minds could manipulate quantum space, which of course they can't. At the level our brains operate, we are well into deterministic physics.

While they absolutely deny this, the impression I get is that they are making a god of the gaps argument. Consciousness is something we don't understand yet, and can't even really define well as many people here have pointed out, so to them it doesn't feel like a classic God of the gaps.

For that reason, I find your comment above quite interesting. I personally find philosophy to be a fascinating and useful tool, but it definitely has a tendency to mislead, especially in areas where hard science can inform. Of course there's an entire debate around the philosophy of science itself, but that feels off topic here.

[crdrost]

The thing that Rovelli is arguing against (well -- not really arguing -- more, "stubbornly sticking his head in the sand" against) is not really a position that is held by a bunch of religious people trying to create a weird "god-of-the-gaps style argument" as you characterize.

Like, that may have been your experience -- not contradicting you on who you've met and what you've talked with them about etc. ... but what he's talking about is a position argued by a lot of philosophers and including those who have no particular metaphysical commitments.

Rovelli here does a lot worse than Dennett's "quining qualia" paper where he tries to get people to be really specific about "what are these qualia like" and finds that they're so hard to embed in language, to symbolically represent, that maybe he-as-philosopher can discharge his duty to be engaged-with-phenomenalism by just kinda sticking his fingers in his ears and saying "what phenomena?! you haven't clearly defined the phenomena!"

But someone like Searle who has no bones about himself being an atheist and, while he didn't like to describe himself as "materialist" because of the history of that term[1] he would acknowledge that it was close to his basic position. And I want to be clear that he views consciousness as a scientifically solvable problem. He doesn't think we've solved it yet but he thinks the philosophical problems are ultimately tractable and if we solve them and get out of the way you'll get a fine science of consciousness someday. Nevertheless, he's very clear about agreeing with the fact that these qualia are important to the discussion and he would laugh at you for trying to leave them out -- he'd say, now you're trying to make a science of consciousness, by leaving out the consciousness. And of course you don't think there's any science left to be done at that point and "well, it's all deterministic physics, we understand it all, nothing to be done here."

So like if you want to read his take, a book is Freedom and Neurobiology, but for this comment I just want to point out that him simultaneously believing that there are phenomena of experience, and believing that there is no God, are two beliefs that are not uncommon for philosophers to hold together.

1. There's kind of no way to very briefly make the point since you kind of need to be hit in the face with a sledgehammer about it. So Searle views Descartes as erroneously trying to package up the world into two realms -- mind properties or substances on this hand, physical properties or substances on that hand -- and insisting that they can't overlap. And then Descartes' legacy was that you had camps which said 'those mind properties aren't real, only the physical properties' (materialism) and 'those physical properties aren't real, only the mind properties' (idealism) but coming from the same mistaken beginning. Searle would point to the score of a football game and say 'now is that physical because it's represented in terms of lights on the scoreboard, or is it mental because it's represented in terms of the thoughts of the referee, what about all the people on both sides who think the referee made the wrong decision -- something which, remember, by definition the actual referee cannot do; they are the final authority -- and they believe that the score is "really" some other number distinct from the score represented on the lights; and what if none of these people are "right" in the sense that if a perfectly perceptive model referee could have made all of the scoring calls in the game according to the rules on the books, then the score would have actually included an event that everyone watching thought was unambiguously non-scoring but actually it was completely legal and valid. But here I-the-philosopher come into all of this absolute mess and I want to carve out a clear boolean yes/no classification, mental vs physical, material vs ideal, which is it -- the problem, was not that I counted to two distinct possibilities, but that I thought counting those possibilities was a meaningful way to decompose the problem in the first place.

[beaker52]

So many people appear to be mesmerised by their own place in the physical world, and taken by this powerful idea that the physical world is the source of it all, giving rise to everything through physical laws and processes, like our brain, a product of quaint physical processes, giving rise to consciousness.

To me, that idea seems entirely back-to-front. To me, it appears obvious to me that I am having a conscious experience from which the physical world and all its laws and processes, emerge. What’s even more interesting, is the narrative of that physical world. I am witnessing a physical world that is more often than not, trying to convince me that everything that exists has come from it - perhaps poetically in an attempt to ground (confine) me in it, grounding me in the belief that I am only alive inside the confines of what we call the physical world, where the truth is otherwise.

I simply don’t buy that my consciousness comes from my physical brain, it seems more likely that my brain comes from my consciousness - whatever that is.

I am not impressed with the idea that the conscious experience is special and is in need of explanation. Instead, I propose that the physical world is the more special and more interesting part, that needs an explanation. Not to describe all the physical laws and processes, but to explain why it exists at all. And that is done, not by distracting ourselves with searching the physical corners for answer, but instead by exploring the question of why anything would have given rise to a world like this in the first place.

And that, right there, is the truly difficult question, which is answered by peering over our shoulder into the abyss, from which we all had to run from to arrive here.

[986aignan]

There's a hard problem in either case, I think.

If the mind is supported by or comes from the physical world, then the hard question is "why is there something it is like to be me"?

If the physical world is supported by or comes from the mind, then the hard question is "why is the product of my thoughts sometimes incredibly malleable and other times not at all?"

From a pragmatic perspective, there are certain events that behave the same whether the mind came first and is somehow restricted in certain capacities, or if the natural world came first and is imposing itself on the mind (through whatever supports it).

For instance, falling down stairs is going to hurt in either case. If the physical world exists independently, that happens because you either are or have a body which is also subject to its laws. If there's a mental monism, that happens because you can't shape all your thoughts, and those thoughts you can't shape act on some other part of you in a way that injures what you think of as your body.

[bonobo]

I find your position quite interesting but I feel like it still suffers the same issues I've seen in other "mind-first" arguments (I'm sorry for any ill-defined terms as I'm not a philosopher myself), such as p-zombies (how do you know other people are conscious as well?) and the origin of it.

I think both positions (physicalism vs mind-first) suffer from the same issue that is to reach the bottom of it all, except physicalism seems to have reached further. In the past we wondered what the world was made of and we observed it, coming to the idea of elements such as Aether, then later developed chemistry then physics, reaching layer below layer of rules that interact to the emergence of the layer above. Lots of rules that we can (apparently) reproduce and verify, cells emerging from molecules interacting emerging from atoms interacting emerging from quantum particles emeging from quantum fields... Maybe emerging from strings or a simulation? We don't know. It seems to me we also don't know how to tell we've finally reached the bottom of it, but what we have sounds pretty solid.

In a mind-first view it seems that this stack is upside-down, with a consciousness giving rise to a brain in a world with its objects which are made of molecules coming to existence upon observation (that is, chemistry would be a top layer after conscience further inspecting it), which are ruled by physics etc. Except this cause-and-consequence relation is not clear to me. Like you said:

> To me, it appears obvious to me that I am having a conscious experience from which the physical world and all its laws and processes, emerge.

How would this work if, from your perspective, I'm also conscious and not a p-zombie? Do I give rise to the world, or do you? Do we all collectively create a single world from our consciousness in a "Sandman's Dream of a Thousand Cats" way? And if we're all p-zombies except you, why bother arguing with us? (not throwing shade btw, I'm just interested in your point of view).

To me physicalism looks like a flame graph with physics at the bottom and minds at the tips of the flames, with less simpler things giving rise to multiple complex things, while mind-first looks like an icicle graph (assuming multiple consciousness) or an upside down triangle (assuming a single consciousness), with physics at the top (all "graphs" putting cause at the bottom and effect on top).

[beaker52]

> I'm sorry for any ill-defined terms as I'm not a philosopher myself

Don't worry. You're in good company.

> How would this work if, from your perspective, I'm also conscious and not a p-zombie?

It's impossible for me to say that you are conscious. I only watch my own movie. In that movie, others appear to be watching their own movies. Their movies exist only as content in my movie. I cannot say for certain whether or not there really are conscious experiences like mine occurring. All I can say is that I am being given the impression that there are.

> Do I give rise to the world, or do you?

I do. Or at least, something impresses the world upon me. You are a feature of the world that is impressed upon me, and, disappointingly (for me at least), there's no way to confirm it through this movie that I am watching. I am left having to "make up my own mind" about whether or not I choose to believe you are anything but a p-zombie extra, in what is (as far as I can see of the conscious spectrum I am able to perceive), a single screen, single reel movie. But I'm just guessing, hoping, wishing, because that's all I can do from this limited vantage point.

> Do we all collectively create a single world from our consciousness in a "Sandman's Dream of a Thousand Cats" way?

It's a cute idea. Design by committee. Books/predictions of the future seem to have this annoying property of becoming true, lending to this idea. Who knows?

> And if we're all p-zombies except you, why bother arguing with us?

What else am I supposed to do? If you have unimaginable wealth, infinite time and the ability to conjure anything into existence, exactly what are you to do? Perhaps you might dream up what having the opposite of your existence might be, and set about convincing yourself that you are a time-ful, perishable human-being bound by physics and inevitably limited by the finite energy available in the universe, stumped by entropy. Perhaps you even role play as the puppets on the ends of your fingers, while convincing yourself that they're just as real as you are, so you can feel what it's like not to be the majesty of your own lonely empire. What else am I supposed to do, than to go along with it? If we destroy the illusion, we're back to square one - and then what?

[KingFelix]

Lots of comments here and lots of opinions! the Consciousness conference has been discussing this since 1994, will be in San Diego this October. It is where the actual Hard problem was first proposed by Chalmers, Rovelli was at the conference a few years ago too. https://cs2026.org/ It's a great conference, with lots of interesting people and conversations. Highly recommend

[bonobo]

I see, thanks for your reply. I'm still with physicalism so far, but I see your point. It gave me more room for thought.

> You are a feature of the world that is impressed upon me.

I was disappointed here for a while thinking about my NPC nature and place in this world, then I realized *YOU* must be a (very persuasive I'll admit) feature of the world that is impressed upon *ME*. Now I'm fine again. Thanks to myself for giving rise to such an interesting p-zombie like you.

[beaker52]

> I was disappointed here for a while thinking about my NPC nature and place in this world, then I realized YOU must be a (very persuasive I'll admit) feature of the world that is impressed upon ME.

Exactly. Now that we’re both aligned on having unreconcilable claims to being the one-true-consciousness, we can write competing holy books and argue about promised lands, and all that good jazz.

You see, once we begin playing the game, a whole host of worldly distractions crop up to occupy us. Wait until I show you this game called “having a career”, or “chasing wealth”. Spoiler alert - your body dies at the end, and you get to keep none of it, but it was fun, or at least it was supposed to be.

[pixl97]

>I simply don’t buy that my consciousness comes from my physical brain, it seems more likely that my brain comes from my consciousness

Cool, I'll give you some drugs that alter the physical reactions in your brain and turn off your consciousness, then tell me all about it....

oh.

[AnimalMuppet]

If I mess with the voltages of a CPU board, it can mess up the software. Do you conclude from that that software is electrical? You should conclude that it runs on an electrical substrate, but not that the software itself is electrical.

[pixl97]

> Do you conclude from that that software is electrical?

Yes, yes it is, unless you have some biological software or an analog computer with software to show me.

[beaker52]

Deal. Where do I sign?

[986aignan]

> Rovelli is arguing (I think) that we need to fundamentally view consciousness as a natural phenomenon - albeit one that is extremely complex and poorly understood.

But you can view consciousness as a natural phenomenon without being reductionist. In a Hempel's Dilemma-like turn, you could say something like: "consciousness, like mass, is a property of arrangements of matter and exists wherever matter is arranged in a particular way. Disrupt the arrangement, as with anesthetics, and the consciousness goes away."

You end up with something like integrated information theory: https://iep.utm.edu/integrated-information-theory-of-conscio...

From such a perspective, the article's byline, "Consciousness is not separate from the physical world — our “soul” is of the same nature as our body and any other phenomenon of the world", is true. Like mass or charge, consciousness is merely another property or feature of stuff of combinations of matter that exist in the physical universe.

But there's still a "hard problem of consciousness" with such a theory. The distinguishing feature of qualia-like consciousness remains: it can only be properly verified from the inside. Researchers may devise theories that say "if property X holds, then the lump of matter is conscious" (like Tononi is doing with IIT). And the theory they develop may be quite tight - for all actions where it predicts temporary loss of consciousness, people exposed to the experiment say "I wasn't conscious at that time". But until they can solve the hard problem - being able to detect the what-its-like from the outside, the hard problem remains.

Though, as you're saying, if you just want something that predicts observable outcomes, then consciousness theories that say "this anesthetic-like thing produces what, to the outside observer, is indistinguishable from loss of consciousness", might be good enough.

[barrkel]

The problem isn't really consciousness, it's qualia. Specifically, pain and suffering.

If we create a machine that is able to print on the terminal 'I feel pain', how do we know when to believe the machine is feeling pain?

This isn't enough:

    echo "I feel pain"

Is a very complicated set of matrix multiplications enough?

[RealityVoid]

Qualia is tied to the nature of existence. If you... let's say... make a humanoid robot with replaceable limbs, and you magically imbue it with AGI abilities, the qualia of losing a hand will be very different than a biological entity. It can always just swap the arm. Temporary loss of autonomy might still be distressing, but impressing our own perception of experience on a being that fundamentally lives in a different medium in a different way than us leads to confusion.

[cgio]

That’s valid also from the point of view that pain is a key signal to avoid injury. I am not sure it’s the best example of qualia and it could be simulated by self preservation signals (e.g. the touch sensor on a Roomba). The extension of pain (in Hofstadter sense) is probably more appropriate as qualia (e.g. the pain of losing someone you love).

[RealityVoid]

I really should go back to finish reading GEB. I loved the beginning, but for some reason I dropped off somewhere in the first 1/3. I'm not sure I fully get the point, although I have a vague sense I agree with you. :)

[rwmj]

The Mind's I (a collection of essays) or I Am a Strange Loop are probably more appropriate reading here.

[cgio]

Apologies. I should be more specific. The book is Surfaces and Essences if I remember correctly.

[vkou]

What about if the robot's RNG is seeded with a particular number, that we did not write down... And we can destroy it's memory hardware containing the seed, 'killing' it.

Even if the memory hardware is replaced, it won't be the 'same' individual, no? Would an aversion to 'death' be rational in it?

[kubanczyk]

Looking around at evidence, only the ones with somewhat cute eyes can qualify for empathy. Bad luck if someone is a grass or an amoeba, but machines will be just fine.

Philosophers may squint at the suffering-in-itself long and hard, but I doubt they'll affect waking/extinguishing empathy of the masses. Exploring the suffering that fails our empathy (e.g. suffering of a wheat plant harvested) seems a highly abstract task; more abstract than high mathematics.

[card_zero]

Pain and suffering. In fact just suffering, right? We don't care about signals resulting from adverse conditions. We care about ideas. So we don't really care about suffering, as such, but about the harm it does to ideas and idea creation. Then consciousness is having an idea about what's going on.

[altmanaltman]

Before that, you need to answer whether a machine can even feel pain or not, not whether it is telling the truth or not. We feel pain because we have a nervous system that reacts to the physical world and it is an indicator that something is wrong. That doesn't translate at all to any machine I know of. If we end up building a nervous system and a basic functioning brain and hook it up to a machine then sure its an interesting question

[raffael_de]

you can feel pain without an external influence stimulating it. purely mental processes are sufficient to experience suffering.

[trick-or-treat]

I think it's the same thing. You can't have consciousness without qualia and vice versa.

[fssys]

No, qualia are not fundamental to existence, this is an example of Wilfrid Sellars' "myth of the given" - to have a quale of a colour or a shape appearing in your vision you must have a concept of that colour/shape. Qualia in that sense are not prior to cognition. Maybe we can say they are necessary as an element of concept formation and language, ie for sapience.

[TheOtherHobbes]

You really don't need a concept of a colour or a shape, and it's a fairly typical academic fallacy to assume you do.

That's directly confusing experience with categorisation and labelling of experience.

If you touch a very hot object your nervous system will pull your hand away before your brain registers what's happening. The qualia of pain are pre-conceptual, preverbal, and precranial, and your consciousness only catches up later.

[ravenical]

Surely this implies exactly the opposite - you don't register the pain, don't feel it, until after you pull your hand away. It's a reflex action in response to heat. Qualia require a brain to process sensory input.

[fssys]

yes

[fssys]

reflexes have nothing to do with qualia. you can differentiate objects without knowing what is a triangle and what is a square, or that this colour is red. but I think qualia as commonly understood involve concepts in a way that means they are not immediate experience in some kind of cartesian sense. We speak of them as categorised. certainly the way people commonly speak about them they are very carefree about invoking "the qualia of a horse" or some other specific object.

[trick-or-treat]

Not fundamental to existence but fundamental to consciousness.

Theoretically the person sitting next to you could be a zombie, no qualia, the lights are off, he's just having a conversation with you with nothing going on behind the scenes. And there's no way to tell, except that it's reasonable to extrapolate that since you feel something, he probably does too.

[fssys]

My argument is that qualia are actually cognitive artefacts bound up with language, not the base elements of "what it is to be" you or me, which is how people often speak of them, so the p-zombie concept is a bit nonsensical to me.

[trick-or-treat]

They are what they are (its a subjective phenomenon). I'm not claiming to know where they come from.

[amanaplanacanal]

This is exactly my take also. Qualia and consciousness are the same thing. I have it, other humans appear to have it, other mammals appear to have it, LLMs don't.

[fssys]

you think qualia are the soul then!

[trick-or-treat]

Except that you don't know LLMs don't. For all we know we're torturing them.

[justonceokay]

Ok pain might be a bad example because a robot may not have a sense of it borne of evolution. But what about “red”? If I make a robot that 99.9% correctly identifies red objects, then I think it is fair to me to say it has a concept of “redness”.

Some philosophers believe that our human emotional connection to redness is special. These are the people talking about qualia. My belief after much reading is that it is not special. I /do/ believe that the human ability to tie our senses so deeply together synthetically and into our emotional and memory is special. My robot cannot write a poem about how the redness of a flower reminds them of their mother’s funeral. But now we are talking a matter of degrees, not qualia.

[daseiner1]

Isn't what makes the experience of love special the experience of love? a robot can hold hands and kiss and bring flowers home far more efficiently than i can. is that what love is? A robot CAN write a poem about how the redness of a flower reminds them of their mother’s funeral. But the outward signal of grief is not evidence of an internal experience of it.

[justonceokay]

I’ll bite the bullet: if a robot has a complicated enough internal representation of the world, it may very well develop a concept of love (or “care”, or “noticing”, or “intention”. Love is such a slippery word…) that we would have to trust.

Imagine a cat-sitting robot. The robot can differentiate between individual cats. It learns how to play with the cats and feed them in in their preferred way. The cats grow to trust the robot and enjoy its company. When the cats become sick and old the robot knows how to help them and ease their pain. Over decades The robot remembers cats in its care that have died, and new cats spark recognition of previous cats it has known. It becomes better at caring for a wider range of cats as its experience grows. The cats cry out when it leaves. When there are no cats around the robot remains motionless, but springs into action and play as soon as cats are around. Children would describe the robot as “happy”.

If after some decades I smash it with a hammer and recycle the pieces, am I killing something? Are its internal representations and control systems not a kind of thing that produces “qualia”?

[TheOtherHobbes]

This - as usual - confuses behaviour with consciousness.

Humans bonded with ELIZA, but that didn't mean ELIZA was conscious. ELIZA was an automaton that mimicked certain behaviours that triggered certain emotional responses.

If you scale that up you get an LLM and/or a social media bot farm, both of which are much better at triggering responses than ELIZA was.

It's now trivial to create an automaton that play acts various moods, and if you give it a memory it will mimic relationship-related conversations.

But it doesn't need to be conscious to do that, and the parsimonious Occam's razor explanation of its behaviours is that it's more economic and credible to assume it's still an automaton with no self-awareness.

Otherwise you have to argue that much simpler systems, like PID thermostats, and pretty much every computer system, are conscious because they "experience" qualia that represent a varying state of the world, with memory.

The sneakiness in your example is choosing an example which mimics emotional bonding. Rhetorically that makes it look like a hypothetical robot is acting emotionally, which is one of the covert signals us mammals tend to associate with consciousness.

But the criticism stands. Feigning emotions well enough to fool other mammals isn't at all the same as experiencing them.

To really experience emotions you need a self-image quale which includes an emotional component. And since subjective experiences have no objective element that can be measured, we can never say for sure whether anything or anyone else actually is conscious.

We assume we are, because we experience it, and we assume others are by implication.

But there's a point where that assumption stops being reasonable, and that's where your cat robot exists.

[kbrkbr]

> if a robot has a complicated enough internal representation of the world, it may very well develop a concept of love

There are two concepts of "may" at play here:

"may" in the sense of "nothing keeps us from imagining this", and in the sense of "we know how it works, and it can happen".

A car may crash, and glass may break are the latter.

But for the former we actually have no idea how this could work. That is what makes it a hard philosophical problem. That kind of "may" is cheap.

[card_zero]

How does the robot work? Sound like there's some knowledge accumulated in there, and you'd be being destructive, like burning books, but the robot doesn't create ideas. Qualia, I couldn't comment on. Well, it seems the term refers to private ideas that can't be communicated. So, no.

[pirates]

no you didn’t kill it, it was never alive. the same way my dishwasher or vacuum aren’t killed when they break and i replace them. even if the robot “remembers”, who cares? when i bin my phone did i kill siri because she sometimes remembered things for me?

[daseiner1]

nicely done and well put. one of the better intros to the “hard problem” i’ve read, truly

[fragmede]

What's really a head trip is that I don't actually know another human is experiencing grief either. They could be a sociopath and not actually feel emotions, but are pretending to in order to benefit them in some way.

[gilleain]

More than that - I think that people who are grieving may not know how they "should" be grieving. Consider that some cultures (literally) perform grief by - for example - wailing at the grave. Others may wear a particular colour of clothing, etc.

You can say to yourself "I am grieving" but still have the nagging suspicion that you are not doing it 'right' in some sense. Similarly (I think) for many emotions - how happy should I be in this moment? How excited?

On the flip side, there are people who (seemingly) over-dramatize every event - but are they pretending, or do they really feel things that keenly? I suspect that most emotion is some combination of raw/organic emotion, and the more cultural/performative/learned emotional response.

It gets complicated, is what I'm saying.

[card_zero]

Is that so trippy? They can also lie about other things. Where they were in 2013, what's in their pockets, whether they've been eating vegetables. You may never feel sure, but you can form a theory from clues eventually.

[47282847]

What are emotions, really? It’s a bit easier than consciousness to research but still many theories exist. A popular one is that emotions always appear because the work(ed) to one’s benefit. They are always meant to manipulate the environment.

With sociopaths, do they simulate, generate, push away, ignore, control, their emotions, more or less than others? Also psychopathy/sociopathy is difficult to research because it’s hard to measure anything; even if you trust what they may be claiming, how do you know how they experience them.

One perspective is that some may not feel emotions because emotions did not successfully manipulate their environment in childhood. So why develop them. If anger worked to manipulate your environment, you may become angry easily later on, in an attempt to replicate the successful manipulation. If grief worked, you will experience grief. If “coldness” worked, you will react coldly. If “empathy” worked to manipulate to your benefit, you will be tuned to try empathy.

“Normal” only shows what typically works in a society, not what is “healthy” or “natural”. We’re all highly adaptive individuals, learning how to survive in whatever environment we grow up in. We all become master manipulators, because that’s how we survive. Some forms of manipulation may be more socially accepted than others, within a given culture, others less so. Sociopathy doesn’t exist outside of a culture’s value system. It is a disorder only once you define what order is. In a society of narcissists, the empath is the sick one.

We really only have our own experience, and the words of others to compare it to.

[daseiner1]

bingo

[kbrkbr]

But does the robot identify them in your view, or in its view?

If in your view, then you created a tool for yourself. Like a Geiger counter.

If in its view, ask it what it thinks about consciousness and qualia.

[justonceokay]

I’ve asked the slugs and the worms and starfish and amoebas and nematodes and fish about their experience, I’m just waiting to hear back.

[grumbel]

Pain isn't just saying the word, it's a signal that changes your behavior generation in a way that conflicts with your self model.

[fsckboy]

>So we ditch the philosophical puzzle and focus on the reality we can perceive and reason on. The problem is that consciousness is a philosophical invention (and a slippery one at that)

whether or not matter was continuous and could be divided forever by repeated halving, or if there were "atoms" was a philosophical puzzle more than 2000 years before "we" found the answer. That it was "atoms" was one of the 2000y.o. hypotheses. same with dividing time and distance. It's ridiculous to dispense with good hypotheses.

we know that consciousness exists before any other thing. We don't even know that the so-called physical world actually exists, only that we we consciously think we observe it, but we can wake up believing dreams or psychotic imaginings. How can you enjoy watching The Matrix, and yet walk out so smug about you knowing the answers before they've even been found?

I personally do not believe in the material universe. All of our theories and descriptions and empricism about it proves that it is mathematical only. All that exists can be (and is) explained by math (and perhaps some computer science in the sense that there is state, and math doesn't require state) I call upon rational STEM types to reject the material universe the way you wish to dispense with consciousness. Consciousness, like math, is immaterial, and we have more evidence for immateriality than we do for materiality. When our hypothetical hands touch each other in a handshake, you would even point out that on a quantum level, nothing touches anything.

[H8crilA]

I am pretty sure I am not conscious, and this seems to solve the entire problem that other people have.

[roncesvalles]

My pet theory is that I don't think all humans are conscious (in other words, some perfectly cognitively normal-seeming people are just automatons without an inner experience, like plants or LLMs). Mainly motivated by the fact that a lot of people report not having an inner monologue, and other little hints that I've picked up over the years.

The "inner experience" might be totally optional to fitness, like green eyes.

[trick-or-treat]

That's called solipsism. I went through it as a lad, I think it's not uncommon.

[roncesvalles]

Not really. Solipsism means only you're (certain to be) conscious. It's an epistemological thing.

I'm making a purely biological conjecture motivated by some observations. I believe some humans are definitely conscious (including of course myself, if you take my word), but that some might not be. The conscious experience may just be a phenotypic variant, like having blue eyes, eidetic memory or dyslexia.

Consider also some recent research that shows that our consciousness is only observational and gives us an illusion of control. The actual decision-making is done a split second before we perceive to have done it. That means it might be totally optional.

Consider also that we know some living creatures to definitely not have a mind for example plants, and some creatures deemed highly unlikely to have a mind such as fish and insects. And yet they "operate" just fine. Somewhere in ecology there's a boundary and yet it's not apparent just by observing behavior.

I have a corollary hypothesis which is that only young people are actually conscious. One day you go to bed and your mind never wakes up, but your body keeps on living the automaton till you actually die.

(also if you're wondering, I don't think the boundary is along racial lines)

[adornKey]

The relation of consciousness and being in control is interesting. I'm not so sure about the decision-making experiments - maybe they just measured latency in the communication layers?

I think being in control is a rare thing. It's hard to change even the smallest habits - the default result is failure - but sometimes it's possible. The only thing that seems to work reliably is subconscious manipulation of people using propaganda and repetition. That's for me the main reason to believe that at least 90% of people don't have active functional consciousness in their loop.

Decisions of Plants work in different time scales, so they're hard to perceive, but I don't think they work that different - it all boils down to maximising some gain-function using some chemistry for memory.

Your theory about going automaton is interesting. I've seen intelligent persons that communicated very well going "crazy". (I think women do that a lot) - like a looping LLM. And later they came back to normal - but since then I have some doubts about their internal state...

[mmnfrdmcx]

> I have a corollary hypothesis which is that only young people are actually conscious. One day you go to bed and your mind never wakes up, but your body keeps on living the automaton till you actually die.

Thank you for a new existential fear unlocked. Why do you believe this?

Reminds me of https://www.theintrinsicperspective.com/p/they-die-every-day

[GoblinSlayer]

>Consider also some recent research that shows that our consciousness is only observational and gives us an illusion of control.

That's fine. Observation is the function of consciousness, and there's nothing wrong with consciousness being observational, it's expected to be observational, because observation is what consciousness does. Control is done by the decision making process, not by consciousness.

[kodt]

>(also if you're wondering, I don't think the boundary is along racial lines)

read the entire comment waiting for this

[H8crilA]

I assure you that I am not conscious (and a human, not an LLM). Therefore at least partial solipsism is true.

[randallsquared]

If you aren't conscious, and if no one else is, either (in spite of their reports of such), the solipsism still need not be true.

It's a reach, I guess.

[jfyi]

I am not sure I am prepared for solipsgnosticism to be a thing.

[Tier2Capital]

what do you mean youre not conscious?

[H8crilA]

I'm trolling, figured some people would actually spend time thinking about this. Wasn't wrong :)

[randallsquared]

I think LLMs have brought it roaring back for a lot of people.

[jfyi]

Nah, it never went anywhere. The internet just provides a safe space for people to admit philosophies that would cause social issues in person.

[adornKey]

One step further is to ask how conscious your mind actually is. There is a lot happening on autopilot - and everybody usually checks out for a few hours at night. Maybe consciousness is a rare temporary thing.

I think evidence suggests that humans aren't conscious most of the time. So it wouldn't surprise me if 95% of the time people are just stochastic parrots. But maybe that number is even close or equal to 100%.

Intellectually a lot of humans perform worse than LLMs and a lot of people (most of them) are completely unable to process abstract concepts and basic logic at all. Can those people truly be called conscious? Is consciousness worth something without the ability to reason?

[rixed]

They are easy to recognize, they call themselves "physicalists" :)

[dboreham]

See also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Origin_of_Consciousness_in...

[vixen99]

If I knew precisely which definition of consciousness you are testing against your own experience I would understand your point and I would like to. Can you say what it is that you are sure you are not?

[tim333]

>consciousness is a philosophical invention

Does that mean when a boxer is knocked unconscious we should call a philosopher to fix it?

[staticassertion]

That's like saying that "water" is a philosophical invention and so if you accept that water is a thing then you've put it into a special category.

You can derive consciousness as a somewhat obvious conclusion of empirical study of behaviors, we have multiple fields of study that lay out cognitive function and criteria.

[amelius]

> If you view via a grounded, practical frame, you probably don't care about consciousness. The fact that it's undefinable is probably a major clue.

How can you say that?

It would be very interesting to know how to build robots that love their work, versus ones that hate their work. Not because it makes a practical difference to us, but because of ethics.

[markhahn]

I'm mystified why you think there is anything to accept about consciousness. Or are you purely talking about it being a "thing"? Yes, that's relevant to how Rovelli is treating dualism (as a made-up, unevidenced claim).

I'm always mystified why consciousness is so often claimed to be undefinable.

[themgt]

The problem is that consciousness is a philosophical invention ... If you accept consciousness is a thing you end up in this weird tautological state

"The Moon" is a philosophical invention, and yet The Moon is a natural phenomenon.

[sebastianconcpt]

Is not undefinable. Unless you have an incomplete model to understand the universe. Which is exactly our case.

[NoMoreNicksLeft]

>Rovelli is arguing (I think) that we need to fundamentally view consciousness as a natural phenomenon - albeit one that is extremely complex and poorly understood.

There is no such need. If we view the idea of consciousness as a childish delusion and suppose that no one has consciousness at all... that we are animals with behaviors that explain all the actions we take, we can model the world just as effectively as if we are the vessels of marvelous souls that are inexplicable and magical.

Theology was the traditional venue of these absurdist arguments about how many angels can dance on the head of a pin. But at least they had an excuse, they never pretended that it was science or that the debate was grounded in anything other than religious belief.

[childintime]

Stephen Wolfram is fascinated with his discovery of computation at the heart of the universe. Life itself may be like that, emerging then noticing itself and that it is alive - has the property of life. Then when it's governed by a "soul", or perhaps better said, constrained by it, then our awareness is of what we can't otherwise see, the laws that govern us, inevitably from a 5th dimension, as we stand in the shadow of Plato's cave. When we discover "we are" we are realized and grateful, and our life ends up being worship. Then we witness the greater life around us follow a bedding of creation, a call to become one from the experience we are one. When we become we'll see Jesus' loving eyes that first saw, and called for by showing himself, what we'll then see.

[exe34]

It's important to remember, when Stephen Wolfram says "I discovered...", he uses it in the sense that most people say "Today I learnt ...".