[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

[prmph]

In that case you don't exist, since there is no such thing as "current". Every moment in time is either past or future, assuming time is continuous. The reals are infinitely infinite.

[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.

[mikk14]

I admit that this is a troubling problem with the position that I stated, but I don't think it's a complete takedown.

The easiest rebuttal would be to simply say that continuity is not a mere implementation detail. If you give up continuity, you can make a copy without altering the original, you just have to read it.

But if you need to ensure continuity you have to alter the original. This seems to me a very fundamental part of the process, making it qualitatively different.

[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.

[mikk14]

None of these scenarios would result in "me" from a monist perspective. The destruction is a discontinuity point, I died there and then, and then the next planck moment a new being was created with all my memories. But "I" died.

The functionalist answer, as you understand it, is dualist. It says "something" survived the utter complete destruction of the physical body and was "put back in it" once it was reassembled. If "it" survived the complete physical destruction of the body, it must be somewhere else, detached from the body.

And, you know, there's really nothing wrong being dualist. I do not mean to denigrate that specific worldview. What is problematic is claiming to be a staunch monist while holding dualist positions.

[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.

[redwood]

This is where I would say that to defining that mechanism is the hard problem... it's a mischaracterization to call it the easy problem. But it doesn't require a soul

[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.

[narag]

They don't believe in consciousness... at all? I guess they don't recognize consciousness for some definition of it that includes agency.

[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.

[pixl97]

[citation needed]

[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.

[Eisenstein]

So are saying that if we made a computer out of neurons that it could be capable of consciousness whereas an electronic one could not?

[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.