11 replies to this topic

[vyntager]

Let's suppose you have a human being, a person. That person believes she is conscious.

Now, it seems there's no way she could prove that to anyone else. Hence, solipsism.

Fortunately, anyone can know he/she is conscious. Cogito, ergo sum and all that. You can prove to yourself that you are "conscious".

But can you prove to anyone else that you can actually do that ? If you were just a philosophical zombie, then of course you'd pretend to be conscious too.
Do you even know for sure what it means to be conscious ? Are you sure you are, actually conscious ?

Think twice. What is it you're basing your belief upon ? A definition of consciousness ? A definite, scientific test that can discriminate consciousness ? The inner feeling of consciousness ?

Probably the latter. Now, what makes you think this feeling is genuine ? Have any way to really check ? What if you were actually just telling yourself that, cheating yourself into telling, not just your surrounding, but also, your very self, that you were conscious; you zombie !

And even if the feeling were to be genuine, can you be sure it's really consciousness ? Maybe you're mistaken, and the REAL feeling of consciousness is something else, while what you're experiencing is, well, not that.

What if this was the future (or soviet russia), and you were an upload, and while you had a feeling that you were conscious, it wouldn't be the real thing, merely a crafty eszatz, as would you, made in such a way as to not notice the difference from the standpoint of your inner feelings alone.

Would it be safe to go a bit further, and check if you were really conscious, no matter what you thought ? To find a true, scientific way of proving that you were conscious or not, if such a thing made sense to begin with ? To do that no matter what, soulless automaton, or genuine sophont ? And if you can't ever be sure then, why be so sure now too ? Shouldn't it be the task of anyone who believes in his own state of being conscious, and who believes this state is something important, to check if he actually IS into that state, before even acting in such a way as to preserve it ?


You'd believe you were conscious ...and at last, you'd be RIGHT in believing so. If that is ever possible of course.

Edited by vyntager, 22 December 2008 - 10:42 PM.

[forever freedom]

Would it be safe to go a bit further, and check if you were really conscious, no matter what you thought ? To find a true, scientific way of proving that you were conscious or not, if such a thing made sense to begin with ? To do that no matter what, soulless automaton, or genuine sophont ? And if you can't ever be sure then, why be so sure now too ? Shouldn't it be the task of anyone who believes in his own state of being conscious, and who believes this state is something important, to check if he actually IS into that state, before even acting in such a way as to preserve it ?

No, it shouldn't. You create/imagine many assumptions that can't be proven nor disproven and you think that the person should act/waste time to disprove a very remote possibility?

Should i waste years of my life trying to uncover possible secret societies that could be controlling everything around me? Or to go on a quest to try to find out if aliens didn't already dominate earth by placing tiny nanorobots inside each one of us and control our every thought and action? Or reseearch every single religion that man has ever created to see if any of them is "the true one", saving myself from this "true religion"'s God wrath against the infidels?


You get my point?

[vyntager]

No, it shouldn't. You create/imagine many assumptions that can't be proven nor disproven and you think that the person should act/waste time to disprove a very remote possibility?

You get my point?

Certainly. I wonder if others do though; consciousness sure stirs a lot of fuss in many minds.

Nevertheless, it is a question of how important you think a question is, and how much you're ready to spend on such a question. Some people are bound to obsess about some of those arbitrary questions, because they think they are important questions. In a way, they are in their right to do so too.

[Cyberbrain]

What is it you're basing your belief upon ?

Innate instinct. Genetic programing.

A definition of consciousness ?

Many. Some define it as memory, others as intelligence. I neither. I define it simply as awareness, thought the definition of awareness is ambiguous .

A definite, scientific test that can discriminate consciousness ?

Look in a mirror.

The inner feeling of consciousness ?

Electrical neurochemical signals.

[John Schloendorn]

You can tell a zombie by posting stuff like that. To the conscious, consciousness is self-evident. Its particular contents may be an illusion, but the very fact that you can experience illusions means that there is consciousness. Not being conscious by definition wouldn't feel like anything.

By the very meaning of consciousness, the conscious will agree with the above, and the zombies will disagree or be unable to process the above. So it's a test to tell who's who. Maybe we can have a formal ImmInst poll to determine what fraction of the membership are zombies ?

[vyntager]

A definite, scientific test that can discriminate consciousness ?

Look in a mirror.

Actually, an odd thought struck me. Have you ever really seen you ? Most of the time, we don't even pay attention anymore, to our likeness or that of people we've long known, not as we'd for someone we'd newly met. It actually doesn't feel like anything to me to watch myself in a mirror. Either I see something I'm used to, and wouldn't even give it a thought, either I see a face, in the same way I'd see a stranger's face - feeling like I'm seeing something odd, not what I'd have expected, or seeing myself in a new light. Like I was the stranger.

You can tell a zombie by posting stuff like that. To the conscious, consciousness is self-evident. Its particular contents may be an illusion, but the very fact that you can experience illusions means that there is consciousness. Not being conscious by definition wouldn't feel like anything.

I'm not quite sure. Wait ... now that doesn't mean I am a zombie. Or does it : / ?

By the very meaning of consciousness, the conscious will agree with the above, and the zombies will disagree or be unable to process the above. So it's a test to tell who's who. Maybe we can have a formal ImmInst poll to determine what fraction of the membership are zombies ?

Busted

Maybe I should just initiate that poll in a separate topic. Though I'm a little bit afraid of what the results would be.

Edited by vyntager, 27 December 2008 - 09:19 PM.

[Clifford Greenblatt]

Think twice. What is it you're basing your belief upon ? A definition of consciousness ? A definite, scientific test that can discriminate consciousness ? The inner feeling of consciousness ?

This is where we need to start. David Chalmers distinguishes two problems of consciousness, the easy problem and the hard problem. The easy problem is everything that Daniel Dennett explains in his best seller, Consciousness Explained. The hard problem of consciousness is what David Chalmers also calls conscious experience. I have some difficulty with the term conscious experience because the term experience usually has a purely functional meaning. I prefer the term sentience, but I will use David Chalmers’ term throughout this post for consistency of terminology. David Chalmers views conscious experience as a fundamental property of nature that has so far eluded scientific investigation. I find his definition of conscious experience somewhat vague, so I will present my own definition, which I feel is consistent with David Chalmers’ idea of information having a double aspect. I define conscious experience or sentience as a most profound phenomenon that is associated with but distinct from information processes of the mind.

Let's suppose you have a human being, a person. That person believes she is conscious.

Now, it seems there's no way she could prove that to anyone else. Hence, solipsism.

Fortunately, anyone can know he/she is conscious. Cogito, ergo sum and all that. You can prove to yourself that you are "conscious".

But can you prove to anyone else that you can actually do that ? If you were just a philosophical zombie, then of course you'd pretend to be conscious too.
Do you even know for sure what it means to be conscious ? Are you sure you are, actually conscious ?

Due to the intimate association between the easy and hard problems of consciousness, we have a very strong intuitive sense of that which David Chalmers calls conscious experience. We internally experience a profound and compelling proof that we have conscious experiences. This internal experience does not limit itself to the internal mind, but has significant external influences, as we verbally report our internal experience to others. However, some may confuse the hard problem with the easy problem when hearing the verbal report.

From what I understand, a philosophical zombie is physically identical to a conscious person but is not conscious. I prefer to avoid this particular thought experiment, because I do not think anyone could be physically identical to a conscious person without being conscious. I prefer a thought experiment involving a machine that has a highly advanced mind with respect to the easy problem of consciousness but has nothing with respect to the hard problem of consciousness. Such a machine may be able to communicate with us fluently in our language and consider itself to be conscious, but someone’s verbal report of a profound property or phenomenon being associated with consciousness would be quite meaningless to it. The machine could have many mental characteristics in common with a complete person, but there would be definite detectable differences.

[yipe]

I'm certainly NOT conscious. I'm either a robot designed to think that it's yipe, or a zombie with no qualia but the verbal behaviour to tell others and myself that I do have qualia.
Either way I CERTAINLY don't have any free will. Yep, the big bang set up the initial conditions and all I am is the playing out of subatomic particles mixed with quantum randomness inside my brain which controls everything: including giving me the impression that I'm choosing all of this. YAY for being dead!

This is how philosophy majors get their giggles...

[shifter]

Hmmm, get someone to stamp on your foot. If it hurts, your conscious!!

'The Matrix' was only a movie....

[Cyberbrain]

Hmmm, get someone to stamp on your foot. If it hurts, your conscious!!

Hmm, interesting point. I guess one way to look at consciousness is simply the awareness of pain.

Edited by Kostas, 05 January 2009 - 04:52 AM.

[Kutta]

As long as we reject dualism a philosophical zombie is impossible.... it means that physical structures and processes determine fully every phenomenon, thus physical identity will always be a total identity.

Are we dualists anyway? Well, it actually doesn't really matter. Not being a dualist is almost as problematic in terms of logical and philosophical plausibility as being one.

Let's face it: the dilemmas of determinism, consciousness, free will, etc. are at the moment extremely far from being solved, I mean primarily in a scientific way (is there another way of solving things, after all, hm?). Discussions and arguments about it are on par with discussions about biogenesis or the concept of time. I say these discussions about points that cannot be even remotely proven are quite fun and useful but should never be taken very seriously.

[bahhumbug]

Well you can think of it this way:

A p-zombie would be unable to truly deduce it's own existence without being informed of it before being set in motion. Assuming that it can be proven beyond a doubt that an entity is aware of its own existence, if it is unaware at one point and then aware at another, it can be said to be conscious. It has deduced its own existence from the axioms of its experience (thus showing that it has qualia and the intelligence to use them effectively).

I propose that by measuring the quantity of information encoded in a given entity's driving mechanism (its brain for organic entities, its operant software for digital entities), p-zombies can be detected as they would not exhibit the precipitous increase in information that would occur as the entity proves its own existence and then proceeds to deduce the existence of other entities. The sudden deduction of self-existence would also cause a drastic increase in meta-data as the entity self-analyzes and creates an internal representation of itself.

Or I could be crazy...
bahhumbug