Satyavan wrote: ↑Mon Feb 03, 2020 7:09 pm
Whatever knowledge that might be it will have inevitably to be based on consciousness. Knowledge without consciousness is no knowledge at all.
Too bad we can never answer the question "What is consciousness?"...
Satyavan wrote: ↑Mon Feb 03, 2020 7:09 pm
In fact physics tells us how things work, not what things are.
Exactly! Human Epistemology can only answer HOW questions, not WHAT questions. And so we can figure out HOW consciousness works, not WHAT consciousness is.
Richard Feynman said: what I cannot create I do not understand.
If we create/invent something that works LIKE consciousness, then we can reasonably say that we "understand" consciousness. Any other notion of "understanding" is incoherent and untestable.
Satyavan wrote: ↑Mon Feb 03, 2020 7:09 pm
At bottom we don't know what matter, energy, space, time, forces, etc, are beyond a mere abstract formal description. We have only a superficial view of reality far removed from what we would like to be an "objective reality" independent from our mind and consciousness.
This is the fallacy of Gray. Matter, energy, space, time, forces are just models - they aide our understanding. They are the best concepts/ideas we have towards "understanding". Just because they are abstract it doesn't mean they are useless.
In fact, to reject them without offering better alternatives is to throw the baby out with the bathwater.
Satyavan wrote: ↑Mon Feb 03, 2020 7:09 pm
A reason more to place consciousness as fundamental.
No, that's an error. Consciousness is made of all those abstract things: matter, energy, space, time, forces.
If at the bottom of the pyramid all of our "understanding" is abstract, then at the top of the pyramid (where consciousness is) you have no "understanding" whatsoever. The measurement problem in physics is directly related to this dilemma - our models of reality need to account for/explain "the observer".
Or, if you put "consciousness" as fundamental and you want to "understand consciousness" without appealing to "matter, energy, space, time, forces" e.g without resorting to reductionism - I am all ears. What ideas do you have?
Satyavan wrote: ↑Mon Feb 03, 2020 7:09 pm
So, then if he would have had computers he would have been able to do what? Explain someone what it feels like to have toothache?
He would've been one step closer than his predecessors towards modeling WHAT consciousness DOES.
Observe reality, Introspect, reflect, make decisions, act in the world.
Programming is nothing more than explaining to a computer HOW to do what you do. That's what an algorithm is - step-by-step instructions.
We do the "explaining" in formal languages.
Satyavan wrote: ↑Mon Feb 03, 2020 7:09 pm
Not what experience is but why it arises due to a program. Because consciousness is prior to modeling. Modeling requires objects of perceptual and experiential content. Without that no model is possible in the fist place.
OK, but there are two thought-experiments here:
1. Consciousness can be posterior to modeling. IF we model it e.g if we invent a sentient machine.
2. IF we live in The Matrix there's consciousness inside (me and you) and there is consciousness outside.
Satyavan wrote: ↑Mon Feb 03, 2020 7:09 pm
I'm not sure on the terminology here. For me there can be no phenomenal experience without consciousness. Once one is conscious experience needs no further explanation.
OK. How would you determine if a machine is sentient/conscious? What scientific test would you perform to verify it?
Hell! How would you determine if I am conscious? We have no test for it!
Satyavan wrote: ↑Mon Feb 03, 2020 7:09 pm
Yes, good old Kantian transcendental idealism. A step further and you will find yourself in the opposite camp.
Then science should admit that consciousness is beyond its reach, it was and remains a mystery.
Science admits this! It's Philosophy that's still asking questions we KNOW we can't answer. The question is Kobayashi Maru.
Consciousness WAS and WILL remain a mystery. The best that we can do is build Artificial Intelligence which mimics what humans do and passes the Turing test. If it passes whatever tests we design for it - it's "conscious".
Satyavan wrote: ↑Mon Feb 03, 2020 7:09 pm
Many tried this path and when it comes to the hard problem it never brought us forward by a yota.
Au contraire. Computers are taking humans' jobs. Mechanical minds are certainly a step in the right direction.
Satyavan wrote: ↑Mon Feb 03, 2020 7:09 pm
But nobody asked for this question. We know what experience is.
You just admitted that we can't answer "what is X" questions, it follows that you can't answer the question "What is experience?'" How then do you know what experience is?
Satyavan wrote: ↑Mon Feb 03, 2020 7:09 pm
Everybody of us knows for sure. It is the only thing we can state with absolutely 100% certainty to know what it is through our subjective inner life.
I know that I have experiences, I know that I am experiencing when I am experiencing. I don't know what experience is.
This is a quirk in Western Philosophy and in language in general. Verbs vs nouns. The universe is in constant motion - there are no nouns
Experience is NOT a noun - that's why you can't know what it is.
Experiencing is a verb. It's something you DO.
Satyavan wrote: ↑Mon Feb 03, 2020 7:09 pm
The question has always been HOW does experience come into being?
Experiencing IS being.
Satyavan wrote: ↑Mon Feb 03, 2020 7:09 pm
I meant the representations in the brain. There is nothing that makes us clear why that gives rise to a conscious experience, no more no less than the digital digits itself.
Again. "Why?" can only give you a causal answer. And a causal answer will give you a model. And a model can be executed on a computer. And the computer could act "conscious".
But just like the noun/verb quirk before - consciousness is not a noun either. Being conscious is something you DO. And so if a computer DOES what humans DO, then that's that.
It's as much as we are allowed to say.
Satyavan wrote: ↑Mon Feb 03, 2020 7:09 pm
And why do these representations alone not give rise to a conscious experience? (or do they?) Whereas why do those in our brain do? There is an obvious explanatory gap that leads us back always to the same point.
Because they need to be interpreted by signal processor of sorts. A CPU. A brain.
Satyavan wrote: ↑Mon Feb 03, 2020 7:09 pm
I didn't say that. I say that a process is still not an experience. What makes it an experience?
Everything is a physical process - therefore experience is a process.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Church%E2 ... _principle
Satyavan wrote: ↑Mon Feb 03, 2020 7:09 pm
If an experience is a physical process this does not imply that a physical process gives rise to an experience.
It does imply it. Unless you are making mystical claims. Are you not a monist? Thats precisely where Descartes went wrong!
Satyavan wrote: ↑Mon Feb 03, 2020 7:09 pm
It does not ask what experience is, it asks why a chunk of gray matter like a brain or a program or whatever complicate process are supposed to give rise to a subjective sentience in form of qualias and feelings.
I really can't give you any other answer here except... your strategy for dealing with questions/enquiry is flawed.
There are two ways to go about it.
1. Attempt to answer a question that you KNOW that can't be answered.
2.
Dissolve the question
As far as I am concerned Option 1 is insanity - you have set yourself up for failure, you KNOW you have set yourself up for failure, and then you still attempt the challenge? In the spirit of charity - I choose to assume you have ulterior motives for asking the question. Kobayashi Maru?
I prefer the 2nd approach.
Satyavan wrote: ↑Mon Feb 03, 2020 7:09 pm
Why are we not all zombies or terminators?
How do you know that we aren't? IF we live in The Matrix - you are a "zombie" with feelings and qualia!
You are ASSUMING that BECAUSE you "have feelings and experiences" you are NOT a machine. But that's by definition.
What if you are "just an algorithm" that has feelings/experiences? They need not be mutually exclusive things. It just means our definition/distinction is wrong.
Satyavan wrote: ↑Mon Feb 03, 2020 7:09 pm
Even if that would be true I don't see why this is supposed to explain why and how an algorithms gives rise to feelings?
It's not suppose to explain it - it's merely supposed to raise its status to possible factuality.
Explanations are not necessary for something to be deemed factual. Some humans (the scientist kind, myself included) don't care much for explanations beyond a certain level of instrumentalism. We are content having models that predict how gravity behaves even though we don't understand how gravity works.
We accept gravity as factual despite our lack of understanding.
Similarly: we don't need to explain how/why an algorithms give rise to feelings to accept that they DO give rise to feelings.
Satyavan wrote: ↑Mon Feb 03, 2020 7:09 pm
There seems to me no logical connection, it shifts only the problem to a higher level without solving it.
All of my previous questions all at once:
What is:
1. An explanation?
2. A problem?
3. A solution?
If you don't put goal posts on the field how do you expect to win the game?
Satyavan wrote: ↑Mon Feb 03, 2020 7:09 pm
Moreover, the most obvious question that always comes to my mind with this simulation hypothesis is who created the programmer then? If one resorts to yet another programmer who programmed our programmer one ends into an infinite loop which, at the end of the story, does not tells us nothing about our own universe.
You got that wrong! What you are observing is recursion. Recursion is a fact. Recursion is computation.
This is where the Mind-projection fallacy kicks in. Either recursion is a property of reality, or it's a property of our mind - we can't tell which!!!
The only question that interests me on my journey is thus: I know that I am self-aware (which gives rise to recursion). Is The Universe self-aware?
But then I remember that it's a question I can't answer and so I stop obsessing over it.
Satyavan wrote: ↑Mon Feb 03, 2020 7:09 pm
The same philosophical problems emerge all over again in another universe but remain rock solid without solution.
One more time:
What is:
1. An explanation?
2. A problem?
3. A solution?
You can't escape infinite regress! What caused the Big Bang? What caused the thing that caused The Big Bang?
And the thing before it?
And before that... ?
Whether it's infinite regress, or infinite recursion - Philosophy always prefers to brush this fact of human reasoning under the carpet. Job security and all... Welcome to the human condition.
So if infinite regress/recursion are "problems", what do you imagine a solution to this "problem" might look like? My solution is dissolving the question.
There was a story by Daniel Dennet that doesn't get much attention (
Two Black Boxes ). It makes an interesting point right at the end of it all - Philosophers keep obsessing/nitpicking about "problems" long after society has considered the "problem" solved and moved on.
Philosophy without technical input is sophistry, technical developments without philosophy end up answering questions of no interest.