Anyone else who doesn't accept that they are conscious?

Great Debates
81

It’s a hard problem not only because it’s difficult, but because no matter the answer it is not going to be satisfying. If consciousness (AKA qualia, a rich inner life, subjective experiences with actual heft beyond “there is heat damage to my hand”) actually exists then it’s going to be some crazy complicated computational system theory that won’t make any intuitive sense unless you’re among a select few math geniuses on the planet who can understand it. And even then it probably won’t make sense, it will just work for some reason – some sort of empirical evidence will be assembled and we will have to acknowledge it. Kinda like quantum mechanics.

The day will never come when a researcher runs a scan on someone and has an “aha!” moment. There are already tons of experiments where they show that people have internal image manipulation. That doesn’t prove the fact of subjective experiences for precisely this reason:

If the day comes when all the contents have been correlated to their respective systems and there’s no wild networking theory to explain qualia then either we’ve discovered magic or it’s an illusion. I’m going to dismiss magic, so that leaves illusion. Who’s being deceived? Isn’t the subjective feeling of being deceived qualia in and of itself?

Qualia may be a trick, but it’s a very, very persistent one. And being told that pain and pleasure are just an illusion is not satisfying. You can accept it, but it doesn’t sit right. Of course, the state of being satisfied would be an illusion as well. But at least you can slip the veil of free will and escape the illusion of the self. Good luck not experiencing qualia.

82

Too late to edit, but another possibility is that there is some networking theory waiting out there that explains consciousness but it’s beyond our intellectual grasp.

83

Unfortunately, I don’t know of an easy way to do it. I think you just have to copy paste the older quotes in, and add the appropriate nested “quote” tags.

Fair enough. I think the question of the relation between determinism and consciousness is an interesting one. I have this “instict” that somehow the qualia-laden nature of my experience is incompatible with determinism, and I think this is an “instinct” shared by many people, but I’ve never been able to come up with a good argument for it, and in fact, I don’t believe it. But the ubiquity of the “instinct” is itself interesting.

I don’t want to hijac the thread into a tangential discussion though so I won’t pursue that further here.

…why wouldn’t it be?

So now I think I don’t know what you mean when you say “conscious.” Of course, what you mean is just “what everyone means when they call us conscious” but… what do they mean?

I’d’ve called an ant conscious. It displays consciousness in all that it does. It shows awareness of other ants, of environmental factors, etc etc. That’s consciousness idn’t?

Maybe you mean what I’d call “self-consciousness”? But that’s just awareness of one’s own mental states. I’m aware of my mental states–as evidence, I point out that I am able to act intentionally with respect to their content.

What more is consciousness supposed to be than this kind of thing?

But that is not what I said you did. Rather, you cited as evidence that there is no consciousness studies that you described in a way that presumes there is consciousness.

Since you aren’t employing proof by contradiction, you’ve failed to show that what you did was logically sound.

Here’s a really silly argument that has the same problem:

Here’s how I know there are no stars. You can only see them when the sun is gone.

I’m not saying you’re argument is anywhere near that silly–I’m just using it as an example to illustrate the problem I’m talking about. The argument I just gave suffers from a few problems, and one of them is that the evidence given affirms the existence of the very thing the conclusion denies. (Note that a proof by contradiction doesn’t do this; it supposes the existence of something without thereby affirming it.

I’m not saying the problem is a fatal one. But I do think that the person advancing this argument needs to do some careful rewording in order both to make himself more clear to others and to himself.

So for example, I’d suggest to the star guy that he means:

“Here’s how I know there are stars. If there were stars, you’d be able to see them all the time. But we can only apparently see them when the sun is out.”

This at least is a valid argument! Now we can zero in on false premises and so on.

84

Except that you can do no such thing. Define the sensation of “blue” using equations, terms, symbols, wavelengths-you won’t be able to, because you can’t. And it isn’t a mere matter of cranking our dials and and our theories up to magnitude kazillion-qualia are inherently irreducible, and this state of affairs will remain such no matter how far the hard sciences go in attempting to explain them.

Chalmers uses the black-and-white room thought experiment to elucidate this. He has Mary, raised as a baby in a pure black and white room for her entire life (served by people in black and white suits who teach her and feed her, etc.). She eventually goes on to learn every last detail about how color vision works functionally-the cones, the rods, the electrical signals, the works.

At this point, can she predict/conceive/anticipate what the color blue will look like, to her, when she is finally allowed out of the black and white room and into the world of color for the first time? Chalmers says (and I agree 100%) that when she perceives blue for the first time, she acquires a new fact, one which is over-and-above all the purely physical facts about blue. “I knew blue has a wavelength of 450-495 nm, but I never knew it looked like that sky does! Wow!”

Now, if you are saying, that, given the knowledge you have (of the sort described in the previous paragraph) of red and blue, that you could predict what purple will look like (“Hmm I predict it will be a subtle blending of both of the primary colors in question, looking kinda “blue-ish” with a “redd-ish” tint”), well that’s something different from predicting it solely from the wavelengths/cones etc. involved, as you are already predicting from your purely phenomenal base of knowledge-you already know what blue and red look like, unlike Mary, who can make no such prediction before she escapes her room.

“Supernatural” has such a huge weight of ontological baggage associated with it anymore that using it can taint any argument and direct it where you want it to go. But what if you were forced to abandon your attachment to pure reductive materialism based on your analysis of qualia/consciousness? I’ll point out that Chalmers did just that, albeit very reluctantly, but he felt he had no other choice.

85

This is not relevant to the point that I was making. For the purposes of that discussion, to “predict a thing’s color” just means to predict the pile that a person would sort the thing into.

But, for what it’s worth, I don’t agree that the “blind Mary” thought experiment implies that color is ineffable in the way that you describe. Here is what I think would happen with a real “blind Mary”, if Mary knew all about light frequencies and the human visual system, and her mind were sufficiently powerful. In this case, she would be able to simulate in her own mind a sighted person looking at colors. This simulation would be so rich that she would be able to experience what the simulated person would feel from the inside while looking at a red apple. (In fact, I would say that the simulated person in Mary’s mind would really be an actual person actually experiencing redness.) Then, if Mary gains her sight and looks at a red apple, she will have no new experience of redness. She will already know what the experience of looking at redness will be like.

86

To say that consciousness contradicts determinism is to say that the word “consciousness” has some meaning. Meaningless or tautological terms can’t contradict anything. So, what meaning are you assigning to consciousness?

Suppose, instead of saying “I have consciousness”, I said, “I have florbleness”. You ask me, “what is this florbleness?”. I answer, “My florble thoughts are the thoughts that possess gulumptive plizzience”.

The correct thing for you to say would be “I have no idea what those strings of syllables mean.” But suppose, instead, that you said, “But then this notion of florble thoughts clearly contradicts determinism. You can’t have both determinism and gulumptive plizzience.” A third-party listener would be justified in thinking, “Hmm, I have no clue what Tyrrell McAllister meant, but apparently iamnotbatman has some idea, because at least they could see that the existence of gulumptive plizzience, whatever that is, would contradict determinism.”

87

The sophistication of Alice doesn’t prove the machine is conscious - it just demonstrates that consciousness is not necessary for conversation.

Similarly, Deep Blue didn’t prove a computer knew how to play grandmaster-level chess - it just demonstrated that a human mind was not necessary for playing grandmaster-level chess.

88

Fair enough. Let me restate my position: I have no idea what those syllables mean.
When I say that consciousness contradicts determinism, what I mean is: “determinism implies that I have no idea what those syllables mean”. If the world were not deterministic, then I can imagine making sense of those syllables. Get it?

89

Now we’re getting somewhere (though I don’t know where).

Can you say something about the sense that “consciousness” might have in a non-deterministic world? Or do you just mean, “A non-deterministic world would be so crazy that I could imagine anything making sense, including ‘subjective experience’ or ‘gulumptive plizzience’ or whatever.”

90

While my reply was somewhat flippant, I think at heart we agree anyway.

The OP still seems to be asserting, to me, that determinism disproves consciousness, or at least makes it awfully unlikely; that the fact that physical matters interacts in a predictable manner in a human being doesn’t constitutes consciousness, and hence Point 3, as you have noted above.

The implication that I saw made several times was that, were we to accept the existence of non-deterministic free will, that in itself would shoot the argument down and would prove the existence of consciousness. However, according to the OP, there is no such evidence; determinism is fact. There is, therefore, no substantive difference between a human saying “I think, therefore I am,” and a computer that just runs

10 Print “I think therefore I am”
20 Print “No, really.”
30 Goto 10

But, as has been pointed out, even if we assume no divine spark, that’s just not a convincing argument. While we are all adrift in our own islands of consciousness, the bulk of the available evidence states that there is a huge, huge, huge gulf of difference between a human and a computer; that humans are self-aware to an astonishing complex degree. It’s that complex degree of self-awareness we define as “consciousness.”

If that high degree of self-awareness is not consciousness, then what is? Well, obviously, nothing could be. Once you’ve dismissed the existence of souls or God there’s nowhere else to go. So in effect, the OP has argued “consciousness” right out of the dictionary. If you dismiss as tautological the argument the “consciousness” constitutes “the experiential phenomenon of being me, which likely is similar to what other humans feel” AND you dismiss the existence of a divine spark, then the word means nothing at all (well, I guess it still has a medical definition, but, you know.) You have in effect stated that you don’t like the definition of the word and it should mean something that doesn’t exist.

So to my mind it still boils down to Websterism; the OP’s point hinges on the argument that consciousness is free will, at least in part.

91

Actually as Bertrand Russell pointed out in his discussion of Descartes, we are most certain about the subjective things. I don’t know with absolute certainty whether red exists or not, I do know that I perceive the color red. (Strictly speaking, I don’t know whether I perceive that color, only that a subjective perception of that color exists.)

The OP turns Descartes on his head.

92

Well, this is a silly semantic misunderstanding. When I hear “consciousness” it brings to mind all of the debates about the uniqueness of consciousness in humans, ie subjective awareness of self. Generally I find the term discussed very differently from how you seem to want to use it.

I’m sorry, but I think I clearly explained in my last post that you could have easily gathered from the context that the term consciousness was being used by researchers with a particular definition that in no way contradicts anything I have discussed. The term ‘conscious’ is a loaded term in this discussion, and when I said “consciously aware” I should have just said “aware” to have avoided the loaded term under consideration. Please don’t be a pedant. I’m sorry if there was any confusion.

Please quote something that I have said that is logically unsound (aside from what is already discussed about). I very well admit I may have been sloppy in my wording somewhere, but I can’t recall anything tantamount to the example you give. I brought up proof by contradiction because it is the prototypical exemplification of the fact that in general (you have to be careful) there is nothing logically unsound about using something you are arguing against inside of your argument. Many of the sentences I have written in this thread fall under that category: for example “consciousness contradicts determinism” – if my argument is correct for some definition of consciousness that is taken seriously then it is proof by contradiction, if the term is accepted to be faulty to begin with, then the argument is moot – my point is won anyways.

93

In a non-deterministic world, consciousness could be accepted as a naturalistic feature of the world, as a soul might be, separate from matter or anything obeying codifiable laws. Also, basically, yes: “A non-deterministic world would be so crazy that I could imagine anything making sense, including ‘subjective experience’ or ‘gulumptive plizzience’ or whatever”

94

With respect, iamnotbatman, when you make a philosophical claim on this board, calls for precision are to be expected. Indeed, that was one of the earliest discoveries by ancient Greek philosophers: things that we take for granted often turn out to have rather flimsy support when subjected to scrutiny. And consciousness is one of the least understood aspects of humanity, so precision becomes that much more important. No worries: this topic is after all very hard.

95

People who talk about the uniqueness of consciousness in humans (this is not that many people, at least among those who think really carefully about it) are usually talking about some kind of ability to have immediate awareness of one’s own mental states and/or experiences. (Some think we can have the former but not the latter.)

That’s probably the same thing as what you mean by “subjective experience of self,” right?

But how can you deny that we have immediate awareness of our own mental states? Are you saying that actually we have only mediate awareness of them? Are you saying we have no awareness of them? Are you saying we don’t have mental states (or experiences, if that’s your focus) at all?

There have been thinkers taking each of these positions, so you’d be in good company in each case.

If that’s true, then you should be affirming the existence of consciousness, or at least allowing for its possibility, while correcting not people’s belief in its existence but rather their misunderstanding of its nature.

Apparently, you’re telling me, neuroscientists have a going definition of consciousness which you find unobjectionable. The best bet, then, is to say “consciousness probably exists, but it isn’t what you think it is–it’s what these neuroscientists say it is.”

I’m not being a pedant. I genuinely don’t understand you–and suspect many people think they understand you when they actually do not.

You have clarified now that you mean to accept the existence of consciousness in those neuroscientists’ sense. So you weren’t making the mistake I thought you were making.

96

[ASSHOLE HAT] please provide an example of what I’ve said so we can look at and correct the sloppiness you are referring to [/ASSHOLE HAT]

I’ll try to be more precise, but in a discussion like this it is impossible to be precise enough for everyone. To a certain extent you have to hope that people can give each other a reasonable benefit of the doubt and intelligently parse what is meant. I’m sure I’ve make some hastily written sloppy errors here, but parsed through my own filter, I can’t see any fatal flaws in anything I’ve written.

97

People seem to report a “quality”, an “experience” of awareness, they call “consciousness”. This is considered separate from awareness in experimentally verifiable sense – ie an ant or a stoplight sensor or a refrigerator temperature sensor, all of which are ‘aware’ in some sense, but generally aren’t supposed to be ‘conscious’, so have this ill-definable quality of subjective experience, which can’t be described scientifically, it must be taken on trust from humans who claim to have it.

Well, my coffee maker has an immediate awareness of its own ‘mental’ state. It can ask itself “am I hot enough?”, “am I too hot?”, “it the pressure too high?”, “is there enough water?” Nonetheless I assume to don’t ascribe to it the term ‘consciousness’ as I have tried to define it above. I believe that, like the coffee maker, we are aware of our mental states in a technical informational sense, but reject the notion of qualia.

Well, of course a word is just a word, and you can always define it to be reasonable. I’m taking issue only with the term as used philosophically describing an inherent qualia. I’m not sure neuroscientists don’t also consider qualia as being a component of their definition of consciousness. But in some contexts, the use of the term consciousness, especially in the medical context, is a much more mundane one – being defined as ‘awake and able to react to stimulus’, or ‘able to report a stimulus’ etc.

98

I think this is what you should have started with. :wink:

And now my official pronouncement on the whole matter is:

Yeah I got no idea how to deal with qualia.

I mean, they’re right there in front of my face.

But they contribute nothing to any physical account.

99

Strange, I guess I was wrong to assume that the notion of qualia is paramount in any discussion of ‘consciousness’ in a philosophical context.

100

Well said. An illusion requires a perceiver.

A computer does not require a trick piece of software to tell it it’s conscious because a computer would never think to ask the question of whether it was.