TylerX5 t1_j7dc6s1 wrote
Reply to comment by iSkulk_YT in What makes humans unique is not reducible to our brains or biology, but how we make sense of experience | Raymond Tallis by IAI_Admin
Proving or disproving consciousness is a near futile argument to attempt because we've yet clearly defined consciousness to begin with. Don't get me wrong. Proving or disproving consciousness is important, but so far the best answers are speculative interpretations of life experiences, and neuroscience. It's hard to accept consciousness doesn't exist when you think about your life (memories as you put it), and it is undeniable the ability to think can be altered quite predictably by affecting brain chemistry or matter (drugs, hormones, tumors, and other brain injuries). Neither of which proves nor disproves the existence of consciousness because the nature of it has no acceptable definition.
I think the conversation would be best progressed by taking the existence of consciousness as an axiomatic statement. Proving the existence of consciousness would then be irrelevant to describing what consciousness is and is not. I believe that is vastly more relevant and useful to current affairs regarding topics such as how to treat AI capable of passing the Turing Test.
noonemustknowmysecre t1_j7eyn0j wrote
> because we've yet clearly defined consciousness to begin with.
We've yet to agree upon a definition. Plenty of people have proposed their own personal pet definitions. Some are even clearly defined.
The hold-up isn't technical in nature, it's getting all the religious nuts to accept an answer.
TylerX5 t1_j7giij5 wrote
Could you provide me with a reasonable definition of consciousness that encompasses both real and imagined experiences, as well as their interpretations, while also being falsifiable?
noonemustknowmysecre t1_j7jwt71 wrote
> imagined experiences
I dunno how to explain this to you, but you're unconscious when you're dreaming. That's not an experience you're consciously having. I'm not going to be able to give you definition that includes something it ought not. But you don't like that do you? You're imagining some high-brow phenomenological consciousness which really means "soul", but in like, a fancy way. But there's no such thing. There's just consciousness that's the opposite of sleep. It's a disagreement on the definition.
TylerX5 t1_j7kbews wrote
>consciousness which really means "soul",
I don't think bringing up the concept of the soul is very productive in the conversation about consciousness (as i hinted at in my above comments).
>There's just consciousness that's the opposite of sleep.
How do you explain the phenomenon of lucid dreaming? It is true that current medical use of the terms conscious and unconscious do mean sleep and awake, it's not universally true in every medical context. It would be more accurate to say it means aware and unaware. You can be awake yet unconscious (there are drugs that prove this) and asleep yet conscious (just ask anyone who's suffers from sleep paralysis).
>There's just consciousness that's the opposite of sleep. It's a disagreement on the definition.
Correct me if I'm wrong here but you're defining consciousness as the opposite of asleep and asleep as the opposite of consciousness?.. Given that you're in a philosophy subreddit do you see why that is a poor answer for a definition? Assuming sleep is also a well defined phenomenon when it most certainly is not. Of course we have a practical definition of both what being awake is and what being asleep is that works very well in typical scenarios. But those definitions fall short when you ask what it means to be conscious. Normally I wouldn't care about it, and move on to something more interesting but the near potential of Turing Test passing AI has me pondering this question again. If can AI simulate a person requesting human rights, can simulate what a human response of being abused, can simulate being aware of its surroundings, can simulate episodic memory, can simulate being aware of being conscious and unconscious (powered on versus off), then is it not conscious and deserving of rights in which all conscious beings are? Or is human consciousness special? Or is our definition of consciousness incorrect?
>I dunno how to explain this to you
I can tell you're fun at parties... But seriously if you disrespect me again I'm leaving the conversation.
noonemustknowmysecre t1_j7nh6zd wrote
Well I apologize. A lot of people bring a whole lot of baggage that really makes a mess of the conversation. NOT getting it out the way leads to a whole lot of very unproductive conversation.
>How do you explain the phenomenon of lucid dreaming?
What explanation? You're not conscious. That's not an example of consciousness. It is not an example of, nor explained by consciousness.
How does the 1996 movie Space Jam explain lucid dreaming? It's unrelated.
>It would be more accurate to say it means aware and unaware. You can be awake yet unconscious (there are drugs that prove this) and asleep yet conscious (just ask anyone who's suffers from sleep paralysis).
mmm. No it wouldn't. You're off base here. You're very specifically conscious during sleep paralysis by definition. It happens after sleep. If you are aware, you're awake, and you're conscious. What drugs makes someone "awake and unconscious"? What you are correct about is that it's not an immediate on/off thing. There are stages in between as your brain boots up. You can be "minimally aware". Likewise, dope and alcohol reduce consciousness because they literally impede your senses and your mental functions. Caffeine and cocaine increase it, briefly. But any amount of consciousness would be, by definition, no longer unconscious.
>Correct me if I'm wrong here but you're defining consciousness as
Can do.
Consciousness is any system of active sensors feeding data to memory (of any sort) with any amount of intelligence that can/could act upon it. Remember that ants have some amount of intelligence. Amoeba hunt down their prey.
>Assuming sleep is also a well defined phenomenon when it most certainly is not. Of course we have a practical definition of both what being awake is and what being asleep is that works very well in typical scenarios. But those definitions fall short when you ask what it means to be conscious.
Wow dude you are working REAL hard at arguing with yourself here.
>then is it not conscious and deserving of rights in which all conscious beings are?
No. Just as ants and amoeba are conscious and don't have the rights that people have. Like the concept of "life", it's not all that special. No one in their right mind argues that your gut bacteria aren't alive and yet we don't blink an eye at killing thousands of them routinely. Does AI deserve rights? Maybe. But don't hinge the whole thing on consciousness, even if we could all use the word the same way.
>Or is human consciousness special?
Not very.
>Or is our definition of consciousness incorrect?
Yes. Almost everyone pretends they're special because of ego or ordained by god, but I repeat myself.
>But seriously if you disrespect me again I'm leaving the conversation.
Pft, we're on reddit.
TylerX5 t1_j7ulc1f wrote
>Consciousness is any system of active sensors feeding data to memory (of any sort) with any amount of intelligence that can/could act upon it. Remember that ants have some amount of intelligence. Amoeba hunt down their prey.
Depending on how intelligence is defined by that definition of consciousness all of the animal kingdom (and most of the other kingdoms of life) is conscious. As well as any self teaching AI.
noonemustknowmysecre t1_j7v68px wrote
Yes.
Show me how your consciousness is fundamentally different than that of a cow.
We're probably smarter than most cows, but then again you and I are probably smarter than most people. That's not really a road anyone wants to go down.
You still owe me What drugs makes someone "awake and unconscious"?
C'mon man, I said consciousness is being awake. The obvious rebuttal is explaining how they're two different things. If you're just going to skip over the hard questions, you've already left the conversation even if you're still here.
TylerX5 t1_j7vqvr1 wrote
>You still owe me What drugs makes someone "awake and unconscious"?
This is an example of one but there are many others in the vein of date-rape drugs that have the effect I'm referencing. At the right dosage people can be awake yet very little to none of their experience during intoxication is stored into memory. That's essentially being unconscious and awake at the same time. Another example? Alcohol when people "black out" while drinking.
>C'mon man, I said consciousness is being awake. The obvious rebuttal is explaining how they're two different things. If you're just going to skip over the hard questions, you've already left the conversation even if you're still here.
I have a clearer idea of what it means to be awake and asleep than I do conscious and unconscious. I believe both are biomechanistically determined. Awake and asleep are actively adapting cyclical states regulated by the circadian rhythm (which I'll assume you're familiar with).
Consciousness seems to be an emergent property of episodic memory and linguistic (or perhaps symbolic?) activation thereof. We can talk ourselves into accessing our memories as well as talk ourselves into explaining them. I guess if I were to take a stab at a precise definition of consciousness, it is the act of using symbols (language and representation of language) to engage memory processes.
Unconscious is the state of a being capable of consciousness who is temporarily unable to do so.
Not conscious is the state of a being that lacks the ability to be conscious.
>Show me how your consciousness is fundamentally different than that of a cow.
We have episodic memory and symbolic language to access it, which emerges as consciousness. That would be my best answer to that question at this time.
noonemustknowmysecre t1_j7w9noe wrote
>At the right dosage people can be awake yet very little to none of their experience during intoxication is stored into memory.
Now that's something. Yeah, similar to "black-out drunk", where they simply don't form any lasting memories of their actions.
KEY FACTOR: They do not RETAIN any memory of events. Hand someone wacked out of their gourd a banana phone and say "ring ring" and they'll answer it. For that to happen they have to have at least some persistence of state between "that's a phone" and "what do I do when I answer a phone". And that state is stored in memory. They're not brain-dead. GHB impairs memory. It doesn't just stop memory all together. ...Yeah, this has been studied. The booze stops the transfer from short-term to long-term memory. Remember what I said about memory being "of any sort"? Even if you later forget, it doesn't mean you weren't conscious when it happened.
I mean, that's a real good try. But the science doesn't back it up.
>How are they different? > both are biomechanistically determined?
...movement? wtf does the mechanical properties of biology have to do with sleeping? We lay still when we sleep? Surely you're trying to talk about something else. Bruh, don't attempt to pull wool with dem dar big'ol words. You're chatting with someone who can call bullshit on it.
>Consciousness seems to be an emergent property of episodic memory
(And sensory input going in otherwise it's all just solipsism. And something to make sense of it. YEAH! Isn't it GREAT when we find out we're all on the same page and agree with each other? )
>and linguistic (or perhaps symbolic?) activation thereof.
I'm willing to posit that whatever you think "symbolic activation of memory" entails, it might as well be called "intelligence". Consider, an image of a snake. If a cows sees a snake, there's a jumble of electrochemical signals which the cow has been trained to know SYMBOLIZES a danger.
Language though? My first blush is to call that out as just plain silly. What's special about language? Humans (and most social animals) have portions of our brains dedicated to language, sure. But this is a weird thing to hinge consciousness on. Social sharks are conscious, while solitary polar bears are not?
>We can talk ourselves into accessing our memories
I mean, so can smells. Sounds. Being in the dark. We've taught children raised by wolves language later in life and they confirm there's still memory even without language. I mean, how else would anything ever learn. I'm really not following this marriage between language and memory that you've made.
>> Show me how your consciousness is fundamentally different than that of a cow.
>We have episodic memory
Why on earth would you believe cows don't? (You understand "episodic" just means long-term memory that we can review, like an episode, right?) This is real silly for anyone who's ever put a cow inside an electric fence. They certainly learn how the fence works. Likewise, smart cows are a problem in feedlots and such. When one learns how to get a latch open, the others all learn it. And, you know, retain that knowledge. In long-term memory. Which can be handy for the later when they try to open a latch.
>and symbolic language to access it
Animals have language. ...no promises about cows specifically though. I mean, they're pretty dumb. But moving the discussion to crows doesn't change much here.
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