[amanaplanacanal]

Everybody wants to argue about whether machines are conscious, without even deciding whether other mammals are conscious.

My sense is that the whole machine consciousness debate really kicked off since LLMs started being able to spew out a bunch of words in a row that sound like they make sense. Since only humans could do that before now, and humans are conscious, therefore...

I don't think language has anything to do with consciousness.

[criddell]

> I don't think language has anything to do with consciousness.

What do you think of the bicameral mind theory?

[amanaplanacanal]

The Julian Jaynes stuff? Absolutely fascinating but probably complete bullshit.

Now I'm sure some of the problem is about how you define consciousness. I would define it as the experience of qualia. My dog seems to be just as conscious as me, she just can't talk about it. All mammals seem to experience love, and fear, probably so that they will take care of their offspring and avoid getting eaten. Can you experience emotion but not be conscious? That doesn't make sense to me.

Other people define it differently, so it's hard to have conversations about this stuff.

[criddell]

Jaynes definition:

> Subjective conscious mind is an analogue of what is called the real world. It is built up with a vocabulary or lexical field whose terms are all metaphors or analogues of behaviour in the physical world. Its reality is of the same order as mathematics. It allows us to shortcut behavioural processes and arrive at more adequate decisions. Like mathematics, it is an operator rather than a thing or repository. And it is intimately bound up with volition and decision

So your dog has consciousness to some degree, but it’s going to be generally less rich than yours.

It’s interesting to think about what it means to think without language and everything that comes with language (metaphors, adjectives, etc...).