/sci/ - Science & Math

do you think consciousness is some none-material soul or something ?

>>8142022
nope

>>8142022
only if you define conciousness to be some meta-physical thing, which it's not

any half way intelligent person can deduce the mechanism that generate self aware behaving entities

nop

>>8142022
kinda does, don't listen to the p-zombies

>>8142037
yes

No, it's materialism that invalidates hard problem of consciousness.

Qualia are fundamentally material, since all examples of minds that we have are inseparable from material brains. Whether they are "illusions" or some sort of emerging property are mere word games; it makes little difference in this regard. But I've yet to come across a hypothesis that gives a reasonable explanation how dualism might function.
Unless one can be provided, the "hard problem" is a trivial footnote in the greater projects of neurology and cognitive sciences.

>>8142052
>"consciousness explained"
>merely describes a few selected phenomena while ignoring the hard questions
Daniel, I'm disappoint.

>>8142209
The question is always the same, as it for religion. Has it ever happened that a study fields went from religion to science? Yes, always. As it ever happened that a field of study went from science to religion? No, never.

As it ever happened that a cognitive problem was explained by materialism, end then it wasn't? No, never.

Until that thread will not stop, there is no reason to waste time hoping there is unexplainable by materialism

>>8142216
*Until that trend will not stop, there is no reason to waste time hoping there is something unexplainable by materialism

>>8142216
What does it have do to with my criticism of that philosotard? He's a shitty writer and an even shittier thinker.

>>8142222
I thought you were implicitly saying that the problem not included were impossible to solve by the materialistic side.

I concede that you haven't actually wrote that

>>8142216
Everything we have explained was through materialism. However we have a number of problems, we have no solution for, even for old problems. Maybe they are not solvable through materialism.

>>8142251
Yes, but you do not drop a system unless you have a better one to replace it with

>>8142255
I agree. However, there may be phenomenon which cannot be explained by humans.

>>8142022
Materialism is already invalidated by quantum mechanics.

>>8142258
Maybe, I haven't seen something convincing me that it is the case yet. But I could always be wrong, if it turn out that physics law can change at random and cannot be predicted that would probably convince me.

In the particular case human cognitive ability I would be convinced if in 500 years we will not have solved those problems yet. Too bad I'll be dead by then

>>8142265
Meccanicism is, the future state of the universe cannot be calculated, but that does not mean that there the are phenomenon that follows intelligible rules

>>8142265
If you have views of QM mirroring Deepak Chopra, maybe for you.

>>8142273
>>8142281
Tell me. what is matter made of? Perhaps you'll name some particles, e.g. electrons, quarks, gluons. But what are those? Are they fundamental? Are they indecomposable? Are they "particles" or just "fields"? The smaller you go, the more you leave the material world behind. Sure you can describe experiments, but in the quantum world all we have is abstract mathematical objects. You can't even tell me the ontological nature of a wavefunction. Let alone how the pure randomness of its collapse is instantiated physically.

>>8142299
It may be that there a basic structure of reality, it maybe that a god made it, it maybe that the universe is a simulation, it may be that there is a infinite regression toward smaller components that never ends and it may be that there are no rules at all.

So what? We have no idea which one is correct and therefore we cannot discard materialism without a better system to replace it with.

>>8142299
Reducing our understanding of physics to ever more fundamental and abstract concepts doesn't suddenly give rise to nonphysical realms of reality. It merely sharpens our concept of what "physical" means.

The evidence suggests "consciousness" is just one of the higher layers of this onion, and likewise reducible. It is as material as anything else we can experience or conceptualize. It is not a different onion.

>>8142332
>It is as material as anything else we can experience or conceptualize
perhaps, but it may be like trying to map the topography of the ocean's surface.

it's technically possible but in reality unfeasible because the scope and resolution are so vast that you'd barely begin before it had changed.

there's a difference between reducible in theory and in practice.

>>8142364
Yes but the thread is about theory, not engineering. I don't think we will ever be able to control someone thoughts but I think it's theoretically possible

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hard_problem_of_consciousness#Responses

When the Wikipedia RESPONSES section exists and explains away all of your bullcrap, then it's a good clear clue you don't belong on /sci/.
If the problem has already been solved, then don't come here.
And don't ask anyone to "teach you" shit you loser.

>>8142370
then one has to wonder what the point of materialism is as theory goes when we both agree that there are things happening at scopes and resolutions that we cannot know and presumably never will.

if something is theoretically possible and practically impossible, is it not also theoretically impossible?

>>8142377
>SOLUTIONS
>RESPONSES
take a minute and see if you can tell the difference.

>>8142378
Materialism says that every rule of nature can be understood. It's about finding the basics not using then to create something new. Creating stuff is engineering, and materials has no claim regarding how easy is to do that

>>8142381
>Materialism says that every rule of nature can be understood.
seems pretty optimistic when we know full well there are systems having behaviors we cannot understand and presumably never will.

>>8142380
Stating responses can not contain solutions is a fallacy.
Ipso facto, you and OP are both fags.

>>8142396
I'm just here to teach you English.

if they were solutions they'd be labeled as such.

We use the most specific language possible to prevent morons from hurting themselves.

>>8142391
No, there are things that cannot be proven right or wrong in math, there are problems that requires so much computational power that we cannot solve, there are things we don't know yet, but it had never happened that we did not managed to lie down the rules that govern a problem

>>8142401
*in physics

>>8142401
math isn't materialistic though.

>>8142405
ok, makes more sense.

I think we're agreeing here, you just don't see things that are unknowable as a problem for a system that claims everything is knowable.

>>8142407
We have no reason to think that math is right either. It just happens to be. That is a different thing from materialism, because materialism is about induction and math about deduction

>>8142409
Well, if it turned out that one of those unknowable math things was a inside physics then yes, it would be the death of materialism, but it does not, it just there to let us wonder what math really is

Listen to all the Platonists and Sophists in this thread.

You are all forgetting that the only thing you have is a story, a Narrative. And the only way to talk about the Narrative is through the Narrative.
The world is; the Narrative is not.
You equivocate existence when you make the story real.
Here is the Meta-Narrative functional model of the brain: the brain is a sense organ that can sense itself; sense itself sensing itself; and can filter and add senses. This model can detect patterns in randomness. Whether those patterns are useful is not determined by the functional model, but by the world.
The product of these senses, no matter if it is a simple binary comparison or the complex recursion of billions of comparisons both internal and external, is a narrative, as long as there is an intent that can be identified.

The world is. It is indistinguishable from the narrative of randomness without the intent of the narrator. It is indivisible without the processing of the narrator.
The world has no need to know itself; it simply is. The world has no intent.

The world cannot be wrong, but your story of the world can be false. The world has no truth, but your story can be useful to be believed.

And no matter how complex your narrative of the world, it is still just a proxy, a story, for a world you cannot know, that is either useful to be believed or it is not.

I think; therefore I am not!

>>8142407
It's substitutional representational, not symbolic.
If you were here, I'd kick you in the face for making such stupid fucking statement.
>math isn't real

>>8142416
*I think of it as 2 separate things where sometimes physics borrows stuff from math, and that stuff happens to be knowable.

Materials does not really make claims regarding philosophy of math, because that is where the real spook is

>>8142420

So where does math come from?

You beggar the question. First, math is the pathways in the brain associated with the millions of pathways of experience and corroboration of narratives from others.
Why does it work? It works because it is consistent with the world, and the way we view the world, but also it is consistent with the intents of human narratives.

The narrative of evolution is not a ladder; it is a sieve. The reason anything is is simply because it is, but we turn that around and make up objects with our narrative process that "explain" why something made it through the sieve, when in fact the only reason that it is here is because it is.

Things evolve because they didn't die. If you wanted to you could look at the object as being instead of the person, their family. Then you wouldn't even be asking why it evolved, and would instead simple see that it survived.

Math is the same way. There is no rule for the world. But there is consistency in our narratives.

Deduction works because big things don't fit into smaller things. Induction works because things happen before other things in time and space.
This consistency is consistent because all of our narratives that make up the Narrative are this way.

The Sophists knew we could force stories on others and so thought confused the world with the narrative and thought it was mutable.
The Platonists could not answer the eternal why and so made up a heaven where ideal forms controlled the world and thought the world was static.

Both were wrong. All you have is a story. It is either consistent and useful to be believed for your intent, or it is not.

>>8142444
And this is why analytic philosophy is the only one halaf respected

>>8142447

It is surprising to me. Used to be, you'd pick up any book on math or science and in the forward would be a lecture on models, and a warning on ever thinking you were doing anything but telling a story.

Even Plank warned that "science advances one funeral at a time!"

There is too much dogma in everything humans corroborate, but I would be the first to admit that the theory of gravity is useful to be believed.

Oh and Qualia? Just more Platonism.

>>8142317
You didn't quite understand my post. The underlying assertion of materialism is that in some sense everything is composed of matter. But the deeper we delve into the quantum world, the definition of matter breaks apart. Matter essentially must be decomposed into things which are not matter anymore, e.g. quantum information, abstract mathematical entities.

>>8142332
>The evidence suggests "consciousness" is just one of the higher layers of this onion, and likewise reducible.
Actually the evidence suggests that consciousness is at the lowest layers, as it is deeply intertwined with quantum phenomena.

>>8142377
>explains away all of your bullcrap
Where does it do that? It merely lists some philosotards' opinions.

>>8142444
I was thinking basically the same thing a few days ago. Kudos, one of the few philososhits on /sci/ who makes sense.

>>8142420
Oh look, it's the "cannot know nuffin" argument again.

>>8142459
200 years ago materialism did claim that. But nobody mean it since they found out waves pretty much.

Today materialism is about thinking that everything in physics has knowable rules

>>8142444
>narrative
Take your relativist postmodernist shit back to your "history of feminism" class or >>>/lit/. Math is true and remains true, independent of humans. 1+1=2 is a universal truth. We might have invented those symbols, but the statement itself is fundamental to the universe.

>Deduction works because big things don't fit into smaller things.
Your inappropriately overinflated ego certainly did fit into your minuscule brain.

>>8142447
"Analytic philosophy" is merely an autistic circlejerk over semantics of words which are not rigorously definable. It's the academic analogon of 4chan manchildren linking dictionary definitions of everyday language and vehemently insisting that this was the only way someone should be allowed to use that word. This nauseating display of pseudo-intellectualism does not subscribe to the search for truth anymore and hence does not deserve the title "philosophy".

>>8142454
>Oh and Qualia? Just more Platonism.
You seem to have the self-awareness and the linguistic comprehension of a femanon (i.e. none). The word "qualia" is a descriptive term denoting the phenomenon of subjective experience, observed through introspection. Contrary to what Daniel "strawman fighter" Dennett wants to make pop sci children believe in order to sell his dilettantish diarrhea of a book, the label "qualia" does not and did never imply an ontological statement about the nature of said experiences, let alone any allusions to them being a "substance" in the sense of substance dualism.

>>8142480
If there are multiple ways a word can be used, then that word is poor one. And allowing multiple interpretations of single word is stupidity at best and intentional misinformation at worst.

That is mathematical language is used in science.
Clearly redefining already existing words as they tried to do will never be successful and it's a waste of time , but writing pieces as the one above where not everything is clearly defined is despicable

>>8142462
Deepak pls go

>>8142493
physicists made the claim long before Indian pseudo-spiritual leaders took it up.

to a man which quantum physics, everything looks like quantum physics.

>>8142493
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Von_Neumann%E2%80%93Wigner_interpretation

Von Neumann was one of the smartest men who ever lived. He was a fucking polymath and a founding father of quantum mechanics, game theory and theoretical computer science, among many other things. But surely your tiny brainlet intellect can tell that he must have been wrong.

>>8142489
>linguistic prescriptivism

>>8142499
Quantum physics say jack squat about fuzzy, ill-defined concepts like "consciousness". This is New Age mumbo jumbo, and you should feel ashamed for being content in your ignorance. At the very least, elucidate us how you think QM is "deeply intertwined". I suspect it's the same old confused hogwash about the term "observing".

>>8142508
>Quantum physics say jack squat about fuzzy, ill-defined concepts like "consciousness".
absolutely true.
quantum physics says nothing about it.
quantum physicISTS on the other hand are always spouting off about things they don't understand.

>At the very least, elucidate us
I'm not the one that made the claim, and your English is terrible.

>>8142514
>and your English is terrible.
Completely irrelevant, and quite a gem coming from someone who wrote "to a man which quantum physics, everything looks like quantum physics".

>>8142251
>maybe there's one thing in the entire universe not explainable with a materialistic understanding of the universe
>conveniently, it lines up perfectly with religion

Or maybe consciousness is a poorly-defined idea as a result of the fact that the scientific method is relatively new and psychology is a crippled pseudoscience.

Some of the underlying phenomena of the brain (at a scale that is probably irrelevant) may be probabilistic. Therefore, souls are real.

>>8142528
fair enough.
My error was made by spellcheck though. Yours is entirely your own.

>>8142508
Look up Wigner's friend.

Materialism is now a big fat BS
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wJ71SXGEOCE

Physic of consciousness
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4F5dT2k4AQg

>>8142469
That's called fictionalism and it actually makes a lot of sense

>>8142631
that's not what fictionalism is

>>8142631
>fictionalism
You just made that up.

Why doesn't anybody just come out and say that the human nervous system is capable of some spooky feats that don't fit with current physical science, instead of half-committing their arguments while hiding behind a bunch of word games?

>>8142672
fictionalism makes a claim that "truth" or "knowledge" is a fiction and need not relate to the physical world. a somewhat common variety is the mathematical one, wherein mathematical theorems hold because the fiction is such.

like the statement: snape kills dumbledore.

it just doesn't mean that somehow there is no truth because truth forms a fiction.

>>8142677
Because the nervous system is a purely physical system, and claiming that it does magic will get you laughed at.

>>8142677
because autistic practitioners of "hard" science like to pretend they can reduce chaos while making fun of the "soft" sciences for failing at it.

Meanwhile the "soft" scientist enjoy poking fun at the "hard" sciences by demanding to see their reductionist proof of something they know full well isn't reducible.

/sci/ is particularly easy to troll with this stuff because:
1. there are no actual scientists here
2. the closest thing to scientists there are happen to be champions of "hard" sciences

which makes them very vulnerable to trolling since they're enthusiastic enough to defend their beliefs but naïve enough not to criticize them.

>>8142688
to my understanding, this is basically what dennet claims

>>8142689
:^)

>>8142688
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emergence

>>8142689
You don't have to "reduce chaos" to understand that a system's operation is merely complicated and chaotic, and is not spooky.

>>8142054
The mechanism that generates intelligent entities isn't really a philosophical problem, they can be considered really complicated machines. The real question is consciousness, the thing that distinguishes a philosophical zombie from something that's actually aware.

>>8142964
The brain somehow interacts with SOMETHING that doesn't really exist in any particular part of space, and this causes it to acquire information it shouldn't have.

>>8142052
Dan is literally the biggest hack. He doesn't even understand the hard problem.

Daily reminder that if you don't understand what's hard about the hard problem then you are not conscious.

:^)

>>8143047
lel

actual good shit post

>>8142505
You do have a point there, but well, he was wrong.

Why is consciousness considered to be inherent in the human species only? Why not other mammals. Then why not other animals, other lifeforms. Even more, why not inorganic chemistry?
Where do we draw the line? and why?
Seriously asking, what do you think about this?

>>8142022
does software invalidate materialism?

>>8143871
No one wants to think about it. The scinetific dogma surrounding our current standard model is so cancerous that any time someone points out a phenomona we don't understand most people go full deniel and try to explain it away without touching the hard problem because the thought of science not being able to explain everything for them is so scary. The guy who figured out that there had to be electromagnetism had to deal with the same autism.

It's so sad that most people at the core use the same framework to house their belief in science as other religions.

>>8143885
There is an interesting idea that sience slowly dying and soon will be unable to explain new shit, couse new shit will be so unbelivebly unintuative and contradictive.

>>8143908
Is this really happening?

>>8143885
Is consciousness brought up in physics? Besides the trip they had the last century with QM (which from what I know, that conscious observer turned up to be bullsh*t).
Does consciousness matter with particle physics?

>>8143996
Consciousness in terms of the pure subjective experience is not brought up by physics (at least not in the standard model) because the concept is not (yet) compatible with the materialistic world.

>>8144004
Ah ok, although it was brought up in QM

>>8144029
Only in Hollywood physics.

They latched onto this idea that we could prove dogs have souls, or some shit, because wave forms collapsed when observed.

The problem is, the observer doesn't need to be conscious (and there's always a machine involved anyways). The wave form collapses because there's no more fundamental particle with which you can measure it without collapsing it - as if you were trying to measure the surface of a balloon with a needle. Consciousness doesn't enter into it.

And then we cheat and pull this shit:
http://phys.org/news/2015-03-particle.html

>>8144033
But it was brought up by top physicists though.
"photograph of light" kek

>>8143908
>>8143990
We're a long, long ways off from exhausting the mysteries of the empirical world, but as there's always going to be things we can't break down into a communicably measurable fashion (ie. mathematically), I suppose we'll eventually hit a point where they only things left to explain are unexplainable.

It's much more likely we'll go extinct, one way or the other, first.

>>8143908
I was reading in a physics textbook that the future physics questions will be prefaced with "why" instead of "how."

Say hello to philosophy /sci/ tards, you're getting btfo by reality

>>8144034
Pop-sci physicists taking real physicists comments out of context.

The fact that there was a subject that you couldn't measure without altering, was interesting from a mathematical viewpoint, but some folks just ran off with that it entirely nonsensical directions for the sake of drama.

>>8144036
At the rate we're going with this "the humanities are obsolete" trend, no one's going to be teaching philosophy in a few decades, so it won't much matter.

>>8144038
But my point is that some of those folks were top physicists

>>8144042
I'd say [citation needed] but I don't doubt there's some dinner table talk from physicists trying to make their field more interesting than it is to the laymen.

Point remains, consciousness has no baring on the collapse of waveforms. Ya just couldn't measure them without collapsing them, be it done by man or machine.

>>8142022
Conciousness creates reality

>>8144044
yep, true
>>8144045
True also.

>>8144045
prove it

>>8144042
Old same things. If there are not mathematical models, it is shit. No model for quantum physics + conciseness has been proposed, therefore no real top physicists has really went for what you are saying.

>>8144036
This is really interesting. We are going back to the old times, scientists were physicist, chemists, theologists and philosophers at the same time.
I heard Kanye West saying this in an interview recently, lol

>>8142538
SHOO SHOO P-ZOMBIE

>>8144071
Except is false. It's impossible to know a quarter of math. Hoping that fields of knowledge will not fragmentate even more is delusional

>>8144070
I was just saying that consciousness was brought up in the debate, nothing more. I know it has been disproved.

By the way folks. Don't you feel that,regarding to consciousness, "panpsychism" would be a really "scientific" or empirical conclusion?
Considering my point here:
>>8143871

>>8144075
Don't get me wrong, I think they will fragmentate even more.
But at the same time some of these fields will meet from different origins. For example biologia and computer simulation/maths. Or philosophy with physics.

It's actually pretty fucking badass to me that there are animals in this thread that are conscious, that know what I'm saying, that experience what I'm saying, and that are talking about the very fact of their experiencing these sorts of things.

Just...

>>8144078
Yeah sure someone could have very well said something, but that does not make it interesting. Regarding the other your post you quoted:
It depends on the definition of conciunsess, but nobody ever bother defining it. Many mammals exhibit some kind of mental processes like ours. It's like saying when a mountain stop being a mountain and become a hill. It comes down to definitions

>>8144087
But you are the only one conscious.

IF YOU ARE READING THIS YOU ARE IN A SIMULATION, WAKE UP

>>8144081
Yeah but it's not like they are indipendent things in the first place. Math and physichs are, because one is deductive and physics is inductive.
Every other science is a sub set of physics.
Pure inductive philosophy is a sub set of physics. And intuitive philosophy is not worth considering.

Plus it has never happened that a problem belonged to physics or math and was later moved to philosophy.

>>8143871
General consensus, these days, seems to be that animals are conscious, and feel and experience, similar to us. Whether sapience is uniquely human, or even if all humans are sapient, is a bit more widely debated, but that's just a matter of how information can be processed and re-assembled.

Consciousness is a very fuzzy thing though, and any definition you use will be incomplete in some fashion.

>>8144092
I probably am desu

If Mary really does know everything physical there is to know about the experience of color, then this effectively grants her almost omniscient powers of knowledge. Using this, she will be able to deduce her own reaction, and figure out exactly what the experience of seeing red will feel like.

Dennett finds that many people find it difficult to see this, so he uses the case of RoboMary to further illustrate what it would be like for Mary to possess such a vast knowledge of the physical workings of the human brain and color vision. RoboMary is an intelligent robot who, instead of the ordinary color camera-eyes, has a software lock such that she is only able to perceive black and white and shades in-between.

RoboMary can examine the computer brain of similar non-color-locked robots when they look at a red tomato, and see exactly how they react and what kinds of impulses occur. RoboMary can also construct a simulation of her own brain, unlock the simulation's color-lock and, with reference to the other robots, simulate exactly how this simulation of herself reacts to seeing a red tomato. RoboMary naturally has control over all of her internal states except for the color-lock. With the knowledge of her simulation's internal states upon seeing a red tomato, RoboMary can put her own internal states directly into the states they would be in upon seeing a red tomato. In this way, without ever seeing a red tomato through her cameras, she will know exactly what it is like to see a red tomato.

Dennett uses this example to show us that Mary's all-encompassing physical knowledge makes her own internal states as transparent as those of a robot or computer, and it is almost straightforward for her to figure out exactly how it feels to see red.

>>8144088
The thread is about the hard problem of consciousness. The definition is the subjective experience, not the medical state of consciousness. Most of the time someone presents the hard problem, people miss the core of it. The problem is not that we are confused about whether or not animal have mental processes. The problem is the question of why those processes are accompanied by subjective experience, why it feels like something to be you.

>>8144123
It's the same problem as free will. Except free will is about outputs and the one you described is about input.

It's much easier to see as an illusion.
>have you decided something?
>where did the though about the decision come from
>did you decided to decide?
>did you decided to decide to decide
Clearly at some point the decision just come to you, as the output of a program appears on a screen and the computer does not really know why that happend.

If you do not believe in free will you cannot really think there is something more in conciunsess, else you would just be the spectator with no power to do something

>>8144121
Still doesn't account for the fact that RoboMary is copying from Robots that ACTUALLY experience the qualia first. So she's totally reliant on people who have experienced qualia, that is, she would gain the knowledge of qualia until it was experienced. Doesn't refute qualia, but it does refute the thought experiment.

>>8144135
*It's much easier to see free will as an illusion

>>8144137
would not*

>>8144135
>If you do not believe in free will you cannot really think there is something more in conciunsess, else you would just be the spectator with no power to do something
huh?

>>8144121

>>8144148
If you think that the decisions you take are forced by nature laws and there is not since kind of supernatural thing that gives you free will, then thinking that conciunsess is supernatural is pretty much unreasonable too, because it would mean that you can perceive but you cannot act, it would be like watching a movie. Yes it's not really incompatible, but I never heard someone arguing that he had a soul but no free will and that he was just watching the show.

>>8144154
He refutes the thought experiment, but not qualia doe. Dan is on to something.

Perhaps Mary's failure to learn exactly what seeing red feels like is simply a failure of language, or a failure of our ability to describe experiences. An alien race with a different method of communication or description might be perfectly able to teach their version of Mary exactly how seeing the color red would feel. Perhaps it is simply a uniquely human failing to communicate first-person experiences from a third-person perspective. Dennett suggests that the description might even be possible using English. He uses a simpler version of the Mary thought experiment to show how this might work. What if Mary was in a room without triangles and was prevented from seeing or making any triangles? An English-language description of just a few words would be sufficient for her to imagine what it is like to see a triangle—she can simply and directly visualize a triangle in her mind. Similarly, Dennett proposes, it is perfectly, logically possible that the quale of what it is like to see red could eventually be described in an English-language description of millions or billions of words.

>>8144135
>If you do not believe in free will you cannot really think there is something more in conciunsess, else you would just be the spectator with no power to do something

The problem about discussing this is that with words like "me", "you", we're going to be stuck in semantics games forever. If I am the consciousness, and the brain is something ultimately foreign to me, I could be open to the possibility that I am just a spectator with no power. If that was the case though, the brain wouldn't be able to understand consciousness at all. So I think consciousness affects the brain and the brain in turn affects consciousness, like magnetism putting current into a wire through induction.

>>8144171
But you can misure induction. If it's impossible to measure the effect of consciousness on the brain, then the only solution is that consciousness is a result of the brain functions not a origin

>>8144167
>then thinking that conciunsess is supernatural is pretty much unreasonable too, because it would mean that you can perceive but you cannot act
That doesn't follow. You could still act, your acts would just be causally determined. The problem with your argument is that it's a "No True Scotsmen" argument. Basically you think that the only real actions are the ones that are spontaneous, or outside of space-time, or non-causal. But that doesn't necessarily have to be the case. I could still choose certain actions, except that my actions would just be deterministic or causally based, but where in the fact that my actions are causally determined does it make me just an observer? Free-will could actually be outside the empirical relations of space and time, it could be spontaneous, and only its effects would be recognizable in space and time in the constant empirical conditions and conditioned.

Basically that means that nature would not contradict free-will in anyway because we could posit freedom as a relation outside the empirical appearances while at the same time preserving them. Sure freedom outside of space and time would have no causality (there would be no causality of the cause, that is, a state of the cause that BEGINS to act), but its effects in empirical relations of space and time could still be detected, whilst still preserving the logic of contingency and the principle of sufficient reason, or causality, or w.e. term you want to use.

So in respect to the causality outside of space-time, the action we perceive could truly be the a first beginning, but in respect to the empirical relations of space and time it would only be a subordinate beginning.

There isn't a contradiction between freedom and nature if you posit nature as appearance and freedom as outside of appearance, which Kant did

>>8144193
Nono, i think that there are no decisions at all.

As I said if there Is a decision, when do I decide to decide? If you think that conciunsess is a consequence of the brain and not the origin you need no decision at all.
The brain receive inputs, it processes, and producers outputs. Then it elaborate what he has just done, he tell himself he made a choices and store that information to use in future elaborations, like to maintain consistency.

The whole idea about decisions is full of spooky things and and mechanical data process is the only that has no paradoxes

>>8144202
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ryle%27s_regress

Ryle's regress fails if you assume that some decisions are non-causal.

Your bedrock assumption in the decisions decisions decisions is causality.

>>8144213
> Ryle's regress fails if you assume that some decisions are non-causal.
Why should they? Every input has to come from somewhere

>>8144222
But that's exactly the assumption under discussion. I'm not disclaiming causality, all I'm doing is just pointing out your assumption of causality, and your negative assumption against non-causal forces. Causality would not be broken in space-time if non-causal forces spontaneously caused an effect in space-time. This is why people still ask "well what happened before the big bang?"

That's like asking what is north of the north pole though

>>8144234
*non-causal forces outside of space-time caused effects in space-time

>>8144234
My previous post did not made sense, I refused decisions earlier, so not casual decision did not made sense either. There could be not casual effects from outside the universe, but they could not affect decisions, since they do not exist

>>8144257
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kant%27s_antinomies

Gonna go, nice talking to you

You're asking a board filled with materialists if materialism is valid anon

>>8144176
Well right now we can't measure it because we don't know what to look for. We don't know what the nature of consciousness is or what makes it possible for it to exist. The functions of the brain are probably involved in creating it, but to say that biochemistry as we understand it now creates consciousness alone is a bit silly. Even if biochemistry was alone in creating consciousness and we could see in the brain where and how it happens the hard problem would still be there, because subjective experience is a concept completely disconnected and incompatible with our models of the physical world.

>>8144340
>subjective experience is a concept completely disconnected and incompatible with our models of the physical world.
which is a bit amusing since subjective experience is just another one of our models of the physical world.

>>8144287
He's giving them an implicit Turing test.

>>8144168
>An alien race with a different method of communication or description might be perfectly able to teach their version of Mary exactly how seeing the color red would feel.

Communication and description are physical processes. Alien methods aren't going to differ greatly. Feeling is a straw man for perception. The feeling would have to be described, which would have to be described, etc, which shows he doesn't know that the problem of infinite regress is equivalent to the hard problem of consciousness.

>>8142022
Nein

I don't understand the hard problem.
I don't feel baffled by consciousness.

Am I a p-zombie?

>>8146165
What's the difference between a computer that simulates a mind, and a computer that IS a mind? It is very much possible to create an AI that can behave intelligently, make sound decisions, and answer questions as a human would. The question is, is that system conscious? If it is (or if it isn't), why?

Honestly, the real hard problem is properly defining "consciousness" so that we all know what the hell the other person is talking about

>>8142022
Probably not, although nobody here can really say for sure

>>8147400
>is that system conscious?
depends how it was constructed.

if it makes human decisions for the same reasons humans do then yes.

if it's just running a program then no.

>inb4 humans are just running a program
that's true, but it's just a bit more complex than anything we've yet written.

>>8142022
That depends on how you define thoughs terms.

>>8147400
Why is that a fucking problem? Is the fucking computer fucking complex enough? Then it's fucking conscious. There's nothing else to it for fucks sake. You bunch of dumb fuckers need to stick with the sciences and keep the fuck away from philosophy.

>>8147672
>There's nothing else to it for fucks sake
...said the guy that hasn't invented conscious AI but claims it'd be super simple if he ever tried.

>>8147722
He's responding to someone talking about definitions. The proper response was to tell him he's an idiot because he completely missed the point that we don't have a useful definition of consciousness in the first fucking place. But you missed it and made yourself look like an idiot that can't read the thread.

>>8147738
no definition is needed to point out that it hasn't been done yet.

>>8147755
That is the stupidest thing I've seen today. If I define it as "capable of solving problems" my calculator qualifies. Definitions are important, and there is no useful definition we agree on - only suggested traits that a "good" definition should imply.

>>8147758
>there is no useful definition we agree on
Oh there's agreement.

no person yet has claimed to have a conscious AI by any definition. So I'd say the intuitive definition is working just fine.

>>8147758
>That is the stupidest thing I've seen today
I take it you don't own a mirror

>>8147763
>no person yet has claimed to have a conscious AI by any definition.
Because they would be shit on, yes, but you are completely missing the fucking point.

>So I'd say the intuitive definition is working just fine.
"The intuitive definition" is not agreed upon, thus this statement is meaningless. Pretending that everyone thinks the same as you is childish. Regardless, the more AI research develops the more important it will be to have a real definition.

>>8147769
>"The intuitive definition" is not agreed upon, thus this statement is meaningless
it's certainly agreed upon if everyone agrees it hasn't been reached yet.

>the more AI research develops the more important it will be to have a real definition.
tautological since AI research can't progress without a definition, and in fact the main thing holding it back is the fact that it doesn't know what it's trying to produce.

which means it's perfectly right to mock people that claim it's simple when they can't produce it.

>>8142022
Does anyone have an example of any such hard problems that aren't just a nonsensical question?

>>8147775
no.
It's just asking for an objective explanation for subjective phenomena. The entire premise is nonsensical. There is no objective way to ask the question and no subjective way to measure it.

>>8142022
new to /sci/ what's the hard problem?

>>8147781
It's basically asking how chemical signals become experiences.

>https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hard_problem_of_consciousness

>>8147787
haha ohhh. Yep been thinking about that one for years. It's impossible, we have souls. Problem solved.

>>8147790
kek.

the answer will show up eventually, and I expect the answer will be something like subjective experience is another model our brain constructs to interact with reality. Or perhaps an ex post facto rationalization of perceptions and our physiological reaction to them.

either way it's an emergent property that probably doesn't actually exist in any measurable sense.

>>8147796
Yeah I would agree with you on your groundbreaking assumption that our brain interprets signals..

This isn't a scientific question.

This is pseudoscientific woo woo.

Consciousness, essentially the 'mind', is a self-aware sub-structure of the brain, which simulates a depiction of reality which is suitable for pursuing our reproductive and survival needs.

The subjective perspective is essentially an internal simulation.

The world flips upside down when you stand on your head and disappears when you close your eyes, yet you subconsciously interpret your sensory inputs as though there is an external reality that is independent of your orientation, location and state of mind.

Now, although this perspective involves both censorship (such as rejecting the reality of dreams), interpolation (between eye-blinks) and extrapolation (attributing existence to subjectively unverified phenomena) of your internal reality, independent observers nonetheless appear to share this consensus perspective, which is of course resultant of us being members of the same species and therefore sharing the same adaptive challenges over evolutionary history.

Philosophy is dead, as is philosophical ethics and the humanities in general.

Science is coming after all of these previously respected fields, for example with archaeology, linguistics, geology and molecular biology falsifying numerous written accounts concerning historical events.

I couldn’t be happier; death to pseudoscience!

>>8147801
>Science is coming after all of these previously respected fields
it has dispensed with most of them.

biology is a bit too complex for the reductionists to handle so far. Chaos doesn't fit neatly into your rulebooks.

you call it pseudoscience, and rightly so. The people that solve these problems won't be scientists by your definition. Your scientists can't touch complexity. And because it's out of their reach they also can't comprehend it.

>>8147801
Well maybe science can help you solve important problems like how to put a useless robot on some planet we can't inhabit for the next 500 years anyway. But meanwhile here on Earth, we have ethical and social dilemmas to solve that could determine whether or not our species is still going to be around for the next 10 years or not. And the first 5 minutes of that statement was all hogwash. If reality was some big separate experience for everyone then jump in front of a bus. Maybe in your reality doing that actually feels great and doesn't kill you. See?

>>8147801
>>8147810
Ever heard of gun laws, socialism vs capitalism, freedom of speech, civil rights? I suppose that's all useless "psuedo science".

>>8147806

Yes, we haven't solved these problems yet, however that shouldn't come as a surprise considering how young science actually is.

The people that solve these problems will be scientists, namely computer scientists, neuroscientist, evolutionary psychologists (not the meme ones), biochemists and molecular biologists, to name a few.

An interdisciplinary approach to the issue of consciousness will be requires, that and time.

>>8147810

I see reading comprehension isn't your strong point.

>If reality was some big separate experience for everyone...

I said:

>independent observers nonetheless appear to share this consensus perspective, which is of course resultant of us being members of the same species and therefore sharing the same adaptive challenges over evolutionary history.

Which is literally the opposite of what you interpreted from my statements.

We share a consensus view of reality.

That is what I said.

>Maybe in your reality doing that actually feels great and doesn't kill you. See?

Well, if a dopamine mediated goal pursuit program corresponding to jumping in front of a bus was running in the brain of an individual, and then upon achieving this goal the individual received short moments of pleasure preceding his inevitable death, due to a dysfunctional CNS, then the situation you just described would have occurred.

This is possible in theory, however is extremely unlikely to happen.

The majority of individuals would not experience this, as of course, any individual who consistently found pleasure in pain and had a tendency to indulge in suicidal behaviour, would have been plucked from the gene pool some time ago.

It would be a freak event; the likelihood that suicidal behaviour and some form of CNS dysfunction that caused pleasure to be elicited in place of pain is low, but given enough time and enough people, it is possible.

>>8147813

Well yes, and it's culture, which is essentially the biological equivalent to cloud storage.

>>8147801
I liked your post about gender identitiy but its more than obvious you dont know what youre talking about here.

>>8147846
>An interdisciplinary approach to the issue of consciousness will be requires, that and time.
I expect the problem will be solved with self-diagnostic machines- cars are a current example. I also expect it will be rendered moot by the realization that consciousness is a terrible thing to inflict on anyone.

>>8147813

I ran out of space in that last post.

Yes, these things largely are, however that doesn't mean that they haven't done well.

The notion that we are all equal is wonderful, but it's not factually accurate, nor is it holding up particularly well.

I would propose a scientifically informed culture, that may assist us in making the best choices for the majority,

For example, evidence based policy as mandatory, no ifs not buts.

As for equality, well providing the majority of the population remain uneducated in relation to their natural behavioural inclinations, then I do not see anything changing significantly.

We are social animals, and much like other primates we live in social hierarchies, where prestige and dominance largely control access to resources.

If we want to change this, we’d need an educated population at the very least, but perhaps some form of neural rewiring at a stage further down the line, in order to change the way we perceive others.

Psychological mechanisms for intra-sex rivalry and homicide could be altered in young males to dramatically reduce the homicide rate (which is largely due to males between the ages of 17-30), and on a wider note, mechanisms dealing with kin detection could be altered to be permanently active, so that we perceive all other humans to be out kin, and subsequently behave altruistically towards them.

Ant societies are far more efficient that ours, for example, simply due to the fact that the workers are all female siblings who share roughly 75% of their genes due to the haploid-diploid reproductive system.
They work together, simply because they all benefit from the same thing, which is unfortunately not true for humans, or any other great ape for that matter.

>>8147860

That's not a criticism anon, please be more specific.

You have essentially said nothing.

>>8147867

Absolutely, it is highly likely that a lot of our problem solving with be done by machines.

>>8147860
>>8147871

I'm waiting...

How can the hard problem of consciousness be formulated? Can it even be done?

My only, admitttedly shitty attempt, is "why was I created in such a way that I have the experience of perceiving the world through this body's senses, and not some other person's body's senses?"

>>8147887
>Can it even be done?
no.
subjectivity isn't available to objectivity.

>>8147887
Because you are a separate organism anon, that is to say a separate bundle of highly integrated systems built upon relatively stable, complex - carbon based - replicating molecular structures.
The human organism is an organic robotic machine which houses the aforementioned molecular replicators, whose on board computer has developed self-awareness.
Awareness itself is resultant of a particular series of interrelated structures, formed by neural networks in the brain.
The mind, as some call it, is essentially a self-aware substructure of the grander structural network of the brain.
One can follow this structure from the mind, all the way to the macrostructure of the observable universe.
I may describe neural networks producing an internal simulation via complex computations, in relation to consciousness, whereas I would perhaps describe operator-valued fields on R4 obeying Lorentz-invariant partial differential equations and commutation relationships, acting on an abstract Hilbert space, in order to describe our universe.

>>8147903

>subjectivity isn't available to objectivity

Humans perceive vertical heights to be approximately 30% higher than they actually are, when viewed from the top down.

Oh look, subjectivity described objectively.


Your erroneous statement took me around 2 seconds to falsify.

>>8147922
that's an example of subjectivity failing to be objective, one of an infinite possible number.

it says nothing objective about subjectivity because humans don't perceive things as just a metric.

>>8147932

Yes, however it is an objective definition of subjective perception.

>>8147935
it would be if all you saw when you looked off a cliff was "150 feet."

of course that's not the experience of looking off a height at all.

>>8147939

You're moving the goalpost, anon.

The example I presented you with, was an objective definition of a subjective perspective.

As for all the other sensory data that floods the brain upon looking at a vertical height from the top down, well that's a different story.

I understand what you are getting at, and I'll provide an example of my own.

We experience time flowing, however physics tells us that time most likely does not flow.

How to we understand our perception of time flowing?

There, that is an example where an objective understanding of a subjective experience has not been solved and is extremely complex.

However, my point is that an aspect of objective perspective can be objectively described, which stands in opposition to your original argument.

I never said, the entirey of subjective experience can be objectively desribed at this point in time.

>>8147944
>However, my point is that an aspect of objective perspective can be objectively described, which stands in opposition to your original argument.
I said subjectivity, not one aspect of it.

but I don't really feel like arguing the point with you so if you want to feel like you've beat me go right ahead. It's a pyrrhic victory though, since as I said subjectivity isn't available to objectivity, even if parts of it are.

because (as is the premise of this trolling thread), subjectivity is actually greater than the sum of its parts. An emergent property as we biologists like to call it. Irreducible because it's a chaotic combination of many factors that by themselves are easy enough to explain but taken in the gestalt defy description let alone explanation.

>>8147944
>You're moving the goalpost, anon.
not true.
You're engaging in hasty generalization.

not meant as a personal attack, just diagnostics.

what's true for a part isn't necessarily true for the whole.

>>8147916
I know, that's why it was a shitty attempt, a sufficiently advanced robot could obviously be described as self-aware. I just feel like the concept of self-awareness doesn't account for the entirety of the hard problem of consciousness, but it seems like there's no way phrase it properly, so it's pointless discussing it

>>8147955

I think this is more of a semantic misunderstanding, to be honest.

Beat you?

I thought we were engaging in dialectical pursuit, whereby we attempt to increase understanding of a topic by contributing and refuting logical ideas.

I did not intended to imply that consciousness can be described as a sum of its parts, I merely stated that subjectivity can be described objectively, but of course I was referring to an aspect of it, rather than the entirety of subjective conscious experience.

I was responding to a logical argument, out of its original context, not describing how consciousness could be defined, which was a little autistic and pedantic, granted.

>>8147965

No, you have misinterpreted my words, however I can see that I wasn't particularly clear.

I was replying the simple logical argument, out of the context of consciousness.

>>8147980

I honestly do not see a problem.

The answer is, we don't know at this moment in time.

That's just science.

>>8147986
Don't know what? Not to be rude

>>8147985
>I was replying the simple logical argument
fair enough. My wording wasn't precise enough to defend in that case.

>>8147980

What is the basis for the argument that consciousness cannot be described as a sum of its parts, providing that we are aware of all the parts?

The classic 'salt is salty, but sodium and chlorine are not' example of an emergent property, is a good way of reminding us that we cannot apply properties of the whole to its individual parts.

However, if we are aware of all the parts, then what’s stopping us from constructing and understanding the whole?

We understand sodium, chlorine and sodium chloride well enough, so what’s stopping us understanding the vast neural networks of the brain and their interactions, apart from time and the advancement of technology and related theory?

Honest question, not meant to be contentious or a troll.

>>8147989

How an organic structure trasnlates into subjective conscious experience.

>>8147991

Everything is more ambiguous online, to be fair.

>>8148002
I'd say we basically do, it just feels like there's more to it than an extremely complex system of memory, processors, sensors and feedback systems, and that "more" seems impossible to even ask sensible questions about

>>8148036
to clarify: It feels like there's more to conscious existance, rather than "it feels like there's more to self-awareness" which machines could clearly achieve if programmed to know their own structure and functioning

>>8147955
>>8147965


What is the basis for the argument that consciousness cannot be described as a sum of its parts, providing that we are aware of all the parts?

The classic 'salt is salty, but sodium and chlorine are not' example of an emergent property, is a good way of reminding us that we cannot apply properties of the whole to its individual parts.

However, if we are aware of all the parts, then what’s stopping us from constructing and understanding the whole?

We understand sodium, chlorine and sodium chloride well enough, so what’s stopping us understanding the vast neural networks of the brain and their interactions, apart from time and the advancement of technology and related theory?

Is it complexity?

Well, if so, I’d suggest that it is possible for new mathematical models to dramatically reduce the degree of perceived complexity surrounding this issue, as well as many others.

A basic example of this would be to generate an image of white noise using a quantum random number generator, which would leave you with a highly complex image that would require awareness of thousands of bits to describe it, say 128 x 128 = 16,384 bits.

Now, you could also produce a white noise image of the same size, by utilising the binary digits of the square root of two (i.e. 1.414213562… = 1.0100001010000110…).

Let’s say that this binary pattern can be generated by a computer program that is 100 bits long, then you would only need to be aware of 100 bits in order to describe a pattern of 16,383 bits, therefore reducing the apparent complexity significantly.

>>8148045

Furthermore, if we were to focus on a small section of such a pattern, then we would find it to be relatively easy to describe, for example a section of 9 bits would require one bit to describe each black and white pixel, therefore 9bits in total.

However, as soon as we begin moving outwards things become more complex, for example a square cut out from the middle of the image would require far more information to describe it, and since it has been separated from the whole, it can no longer be described simply by √2.

In this situation the whole is less complex than its parts.

In fact, this example shows us that the whole can contain less information the some of its parts, and in some cases even one of its parts.

Therefore, it is possible that complexity is merely an illusion.

>>8148036
>>8148039

Well yes, we basically do, but not thoroughly.

As for it 'feeling' as though there is more to it, that's just your programming anon, don't worry about it.

>>8147955
>>8147965

Ok so consciousness cannot be described as a sum of its parts.

The classic 'salt is salty, but sodium and chlorine are not' example of an emergent property, is a good way of reminding us that we cannot apply properties of the whole to its individual parts.

However, what if I were to tell you that we do not need to understand its parts, in order to understand the whole?

To attempt to understand all the parts that make up subjective conscious experience, may well be too complex.

However, what if new mathematical models were able to dramatically reduce the degree of perceived complexity surrounding this issue, as well as many others?

A basic example of this would be to generate an image of white noise using a quantum random number generator, which would leave you with a highly complex image that would require awareness of thousands of bits to describe it, say 128 x 128 = 16,384 bits.

Now, you could also produce a white noise image of the same size, by utilising the binary digits of the square root of two (i.e. 1.414213562… = 1.0100001010000110…).

Let’s say that this binary pattern can be generated by a computer program that is 100 bits long, then you would only need to be aware of 100 bits in order to describe a pattern of 16,383 bits, therefore reducing the apparent complexity significantly.

>>8148061

Furthermore, if we were to focus on a small section of such a pattern, then we would find it to be relatively easy to describe, for example a section of 9 bits would require one bit to describe each black and white pixel, therefore 9bits in total.

However, as soon as we begin moving outwards things become more complex, for example a square cut out from the middle of the image would require far more information to describe it, and since it has been separated from the whole, it can no longer be described simply by √2.

In this situation the whole is less complex than its parts.

In fact, this example shows us that the whole can contain less information the some of its parts, and in some cases even one of its parts.

Therefore, it is possible that complexity is merely an illusion.

>>8147799
Rekt

>>8148064

#whitenoise

>>8142424
what does this even mean?

>>8148095
Not sure what the guy you replied too meant , but the math thing was about that physics is not exactly like math, it's very similar and what is true in math is very often true in physics too, depending on the level of detail of your physical description

>>8147672
>g-guys ignore all the hard questions!
>science already has all the answers
>I-know because I'm a math grad student and I have a high iq

itt: gobbledygook

>>8148119
> implying you're conscious

>>8148123

Hi.

>>8148135
G’day mate

>>8147758

>awareness of one's environment, as well as recognition of that awareness.

There you go.

>>8148123
This has been pointed out before, but you can't just throw something via using an appeal to authority intermixed with an appeal to assertion.

Science depends solely on Empiricism, and that is solely Epistemology, a subfield of Philosophy.

When many famous scientists say bad things about philosophy, they usually refer to:
- Sophism
- Solipsism
- Non-terminal Existentialism
- Frankfurt Antipositivism
None of which are actually philosophy.
They get their facts wrong.
Popper had corrected this several times.
Without philosophy there is no:
- Empiricism
- Induction
- Deduction
- Incorrect presumption checking
And without those, science doesn't exist.
Science is SOLELY the philosophy of Empiricism.


Also, here's an interesting link:
http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/cross-check/is-lawrence-krauss-a-physicist-or-just-a-bad-philosopher/

>>8148140

You know, those Dawkins quotes are contextually unrelated.

>>8148143
You have no clue what you're talking about do you?

>>8148123
>>8148143


>>8148143

Well, I thought that this would be better understood, but it's just not.

Science is essentially falsifiable logical inquiry.

It relies on induction, deduction and to some extent abduction, in order to formulate logically viable hypotheses that are falsifiable.

Falsifiability is what separates logic based philosophy, from scientific inquiry.

These hypotheses are then tested via experimentation, and subsequent mathematical analysis of empirical evidence.

If the results of this process are in agreement with the predictions made by the hypothesis, then you have yourself a theory.

Of course, this theory is then tested by repeat experimentation, as well as a critical analysis of the methodology used in your original experiment, carried out by others in the field.

If the theory stands the test of time, which usually takes around two or three decades, then you have yourself a scientific fact.

Science is the highest form of logical inquiry, which was born in philosophy; in fact it is entirely based on the Socratic method, with the addition of empiricism.

The only authorities in science are logical viability and quality of evidence, which subsequently rely on transparency.

The Greek persuasive techniques of ethos, pathos and logos are rhetorical tools and have no place in science.

Therefore, the appeal to authority which the anon above made is invalid.

It is a form of ethos or ‘appeal to the credibility of the speaker’, which is based on social prestige and dominance.

Dominance and prestige are only relevant to human beings, because we are primates that live in social hierarchies.

Therefore, to make such an appeal is tantamount to reducing your intellectual capability to that of a chimpanzee.

>>8148123
>>8148143

Well, I thought that this would be better understood, but it's just not.

Science is essentially falsifiable logical inquiry.

It relies on induction, deduction and to some extent abduction, in order to formulate logically viable hypotheses that are falsifiable.

Falsifiability is what separates logic based philosophy, from scientific inquiry.

These hypotheses are then tested via experimentation, and subsequent mathematical analysis of empirical evidence.

If the results of this process are in agreement with the predictions made by the hypothesis, then you have yourself a theory.

Of course, this theory is then tested by repeat experimentation, as well as a critical analysis of the methodology used in your original experiment, carried out by others in the field.

If the theory stands the test of time, which usually takes around two or three decades, then you have yourself a scientific fact.

Science is the highest form of logical inquiry, which was born in philosophy; in fact it is entirely based on the Socratic method, with the addition of falsification.

The only authorities in science are logical viability and quality of evidence, which subsequently rely on transparency.

The Greek persuasive techniques of ethos, pathos and logos are rhetorical tools and have no place in science.

Therefore, the appeal to authority which the anon above made is invalid.

It is a form of ethos or ‘appeal to the credibility of the speaker’, which is based on social prestige and dominance.

Dominance and prestige are only relevant to human beings, because we are primates that live in social hierarchies.

Therefore, to make such an appeal is tantamount to reducing your intellectual capability to that of a chimpanzee.

>>8148147
my cock and your mothers ass aren't contextually unrelated
>>8148172
there are no scientific facts, only interpretations

>>8142022
The error of a false causality. Humans have always believed that they knew what a cause was; but how did we get this knowledge — or more precisely, our faith that we had this knowledge? From the realm of the famous "inner facts," of which not a single one has so far turned out to be true. We believe that we are the cause of our own will: we think that here at least we can see a cause at work. Nor did we doubt that all the antecedents of our will, its causes, were to be found in our own consciousness or in our personal "motives." Otherwise, we would not be responsible for what we choose to do. Who would deny that his thoughts have a cause, and that his own mind caused the thoughts? Of these "inward facts" that seem to demonstrate causality, the primary and most persuasive one is that of the will as cause. The idea of consciousness ("spirit") or, later, that of the ego (the "subject") as a cause are only afterbirths: first the causality of the will was firmly accepted as proved, as a fact, and these other concepts followed from it. But we have reservations about these concepts. Today we no longer believe any of this is true.

>>8142022
>>8148210
The "inner world" is full of phantoms and illusions: the will being one of them. The will no longer moves anything, hence it does not explain anything — it merely accompanies events; it can also be completely absent. The so-called motives: another error. Merely a surface phenomenon of consciousness, something shadowing the deed that is more likely to hide the causes of our actions than to reveal them. And as for the ego . that has become a fable, a fiction, a play on words! It has altogether ceased to think, feel, or will! What follows from this? There are no mental causes at all. The whole of the allegedly empirical evidence for mental causes has gone out the window. That is what follows! And what a nice delusion we had perpetrated with this "empirical evidence;" we interpreted the real world as a world of causes, a world of wills, a world of spirits. The most ancient and enduring psychology was at work here: it simply interpreted everything that happened in the world as an act, as the effect of a will; the world was inhabited with a multiplicity of wills; an agent (a "subject") was slipped under the surface of events. It was out of himself that man projected his three most unquestioned "inner facts" — the will, the spirit, the ego. He even took the concept of being from the concept of the ego; he interpreted "things" as "being" in accordance with his concept of the ego as a cause. Small wonder that later he always found in things what he had already put into them. The thing itself, the concept of thing is a mere extension of the faith in the ego as cause. And even your atom, my dear materialists and physicists — how much error, how much rudimentary psychology still resides in your atom! Not to mention the "thing-in-itself," the horrendum pudendum of metaphysicians! The "spirit as cause" mistaken for reality! And made the very measure of reality! And called God!

>>8148203

My post clearly stated that a sceintific fact is just a theory that has not been falsified.

Do people here intentionally misread posts or something?

>>8147801
You pretty much dance around the hard problem like so many others.

>The subjective perspective is essentially an internal simulation.
That doesn't address the question. Why does it create subjective experience, how can it feel like something to be a system of complex chemistry? Whether you call it a simulation, illusion, trick, etc, what core mechanics is it that allows for the subjective experience to take place? You skip over that part and assumes matter magically inherit experience from complexity.

>>8148218
your idea of temporary interpretations shouldn't give rise to the erection it does, much less so to a degree of complete disregard for others

People assume chemical reactions can magically amount to consciousness, completely ignoring the mechanics involved with allowing the actual state of consciousness itself to exist. The reactions only add up to the reactions themselves, there has to be something else involved for consciousness to come into existance. A hidden varaible that makes 2+2 add up to 5 instead of 4. A good analogy would be to look at nuclear reactions. Take us back to a time where we didn't know about the atom or what goes on below basic chemistry. If someone were to try to explain what was going on in the sun, they would assume that the chemistry-framework THEY KNEW was the cause of it; maybe they would say the sun contained different elements that reacted really strongly with each other, when in fact it was forces completely unknown working much deeper in matter that caused it. That same level of ignorance is now plaguing consciousness discussion.

>>8148252
>The reactions only add up to the reactions themselves, there has to be something else involved for consciousness to come into existance. A hidden varaible that makes 2+2 add up to 5 instead of 4

Why can't that hidden variable be a part of those reactions? I don't think materialism is invalidated just because there exists some property of consciousness we don't understand yet.

Science has shown that nature is often complicated, and that spooky, unintuitive things can arrive from an entirely materialistic view.

>>8142022
While not materialists will not be able to explain split brain patients, materialism will be the better explanation

>>8148252
>>8148676

I do see what you are saying though. Maybe it is ignorant to assume that there isn't something more to consciousness.

This >>8148002 is also my post.

Where I state that we are unaware of:

>how an organic structure trasnlates into subjective conscious experience.

I was merely reframing the question, not attempting to answer it.

>>8148249

Well considering this method of temporary interpretations saves lives and has given us the technology we are using to communicate as of this very moment, I’d say it gives me a damn good erection, whereas other forms of interpretation leave me as flaccid as a wet sock.

It may not be the truth, whatever that means, and I couldn’t care less.

>>8148246

This >>8148002 (You) is also my post.

Where I state that we are unaware of:

>how an organic structure trasnlates into subjective conscious experience.

I was merely reframing the question, not attempting to answer it.

>>8148249

Well considering this method of temporary interpretations saves lives and has given us the technology we are using to communicate as of this very moment, I’d say it gives me a damn good erection, whereas other forms of interpretation leave me as flaccid as a wet sock.

It may not be the truth, whatever that means, and I couldn’t care less.

>>8142022

>Does the hard problem of consciousness invalidate materialism?

Does the fact that we don't know something, invalidate science?

No, it fuels science.

>>8148061
>>8148064
I agree.
I think it's possible what we'll wind up doing is just mapping out neural connections of an existing brain and simulating the wiring elsewhere, thereby producing consciousness without bothering to understand right away how or why it emerges.

But I think it's clear the whole is less complex than the parts, e.g. neurology is considerably more complex than psychology or sociology. The anatomy is quite a lot more complex than the behaviors it produces.

but then that's the hard problem- how does the brain take complex signals and render them as seemingly simple experiences and perceptions? Mechanically this would seem to be an act of simplification.

>>8148676
>Why can't that hidden variable be a part of those reactions?

They certainly can, but it wouldn't be on the chemical level, as in, our model of how chemistry currently works. When people dismissive about the hard problem talk about the brain creating consciousness, they usually also assume chemistry is alone responsible for creating it, when there could be things deeper down into matter playing into it, as with my analogy with nuclear reactions. I don't think materialism is invalidaded per say, I was just talking generally about the hard problem. I think the mystery of consciousness will open ourselves up to the fact that we are far from having the whole picture, and materialism being invalidated or not means very little at that point.

>>8148742
>the mystery of consciousness will open ourselves up to the fact that we are far from having the whole picture
>we

one of the reasons this question trolls reductionists so well is the assumption that consciousness takes place in the brain. It's true the brain is central to the process but if it's deprived of its senses and environments it quickly stops working

reductionists concentrate on the brain, consciousness occurs in the entire body and the landscape around it.

>>8148738

Yes, I completely agree.

The latest data on how the brain stores and accesses information relating to language, reveals incredibly complex firing patterns, involving networks all over the brain.

It seems that creating artificial consciousness will be a step in the right direction, and then subsequent advances in computer science, physics, biochemistry, etc., will further improve our currently limited understanding.

I'd say it's only a matter of time, but that's just me being optimistic.

>>8148753

Well, considering that brain injury is essentially the primary cause of impaired or altered consciousness, I'd say it's fair to assume that consciousness is produced in the brain.

If we're just highly evolved apes, what makes anyone think that conciousness is some immaterial magical force that can't be explained by science? The brain = conciousness no?

Why is thread dead?

>>8148828

I think it became overloaded with illogical questions and suppositions, so anyone with anything valuable to contribute just left.

I became disillusioned with it a little while ago, until someone finally replied to one of my posts.

>>8148812

Because our internal simulation is dualistic in nature, therefore we experience an inherent sense of mind and matter.

People mistake the subjective experience of our evolved mind for objective reality.

We can acknowledge this sense of dualism and state that it is illusionary, just as we may for free will and the flow of time.

However, people find it extremely difficult to let go of subjective experience.

>>8148812
The explanation of the hard problem has been posted so many times in the thread it's getting silly to write it again. Why is it so hard for people to intuitively comprehend it?

>>8144123
>>8148246
>>8148252
>>8143871
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hard_problem_of_consciousness
>"How is it that some organisms are subjects of experience?"
>"Why does awareness of sensory information exist at all?"
>"Why do qualia exist?"
>"Why is there a subjective component to experience?"
>"Why aren't we philosophical zombies?"

>>8142555
You're a fucking moron.

>>8149003

>hard problem of consciousness

Bad meme. Very bad meme.

This is some XVI. century tier "origo of the ego" tier pseudoscientific babbling.

Why do people even bother keep yapping about this WHILE we are discovering how our consciousness actually works through mapping our brain activity and starting to develop a primitive model of it?

Fast forward a century and people will look back at these late "philosophers" like how we look at XVIII. century alchemists.

Just silly people, who were late to the party.

>>8149003
>>8149147

Also, I'm not saying these questions are invalid, but "philosophy" has really no place in answering them now when we have hard sciences entering the field.

Do you want to understand human/animal experiences? Git equipped, get subjects, start measuring.

>>8149147
>Why do people even bother keep yapping about this WHILE we are discovering how our consciousness actually works through mapping our brain activity and starting to develop a primitive model of it?
If you took some time to understand the hard problem you wouldn't be asking this.

>Also, I'm not saying these questions are invalid, but "philosophy" has really no place in answering them now when we have hard sciences entering the field.
I don't think philosophy has ever been about answering questions, but knowing which to ask and how to ask them so that science can get the ansers. How are scientists supposed to make new discoveries and know what to measure if they're not constantly thinking and coming up with hypotheses? If every scientist was also a philosopher we would probably be decades ahead in scientific understanding of the universe.

>>8149153
If every scientist were a philosopher all we would have is comfy armchairs.

>>8149153
>https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hard_problem_of_consciousness

>These theorists argue that once we really come to understand what consciousness is, we will realize that the hard problem is unreal.

>>8142022
not if you consider einstein's theory of relativity

>>8142093
Consciousness is made from a collection of materials, though.

>>8148812
>how could anyone observe the universe and hold the belief that there are matters beyond our comprehension

xD

>>8149418
>>how could anyone observe the universe and hold the belief that there are matters beyond our comprehension
Besides unobservables like things outside the Universe (and so what actually started the universe), what makes you think you can't comprehend something

>>8149423
what makes you think you can comprehend everything, even after having listed several that you can't

To those having trouble accepting the hard problem: If you had a teleporter that worked by scanning the state of all your matter, destroyed your body, but rebuilt it exacly identical at your destination, in an instant, would that still be you? If that wouldn't be you, how do you expect the theory of consciousness just being biochemistry to hold up, if two identical versions of yourself, are different? Are you not giving into the idea that subjective experience is appearing to operate seperately of your physical body, by saying that it wouldn't be you?

>>8149428
I actually think we can even comprehend those, just not prove anything since their unobservable.
If consciousness exists, and you can observe it's effects (you claim that it exists so I assume you've seen it's effects) then there is no reason why it can't be explained.

I'm a bit drunk so I might not be completely coherent or on point.

>>8149432
>would that still be you?
sure. except there would be 2 of me.

>>8149437
1 body is destroyed as the new one is created. There is never more than 1 of you at the same time. Would you experience teleporting to the other location, or would your old body's subjective experience ceace, while the new one believes he has your subjective experience, and that the teleport went fine?

>>8149433
comprehension without proof is belief.
i don't claim that it exists since i can't explain it

>>8149432
>If you had a teleporter that worked by scanning the state of all your matter, destroyed your body, but rebuilt it exacly identical at your destination, in an instant, would that still be you?

Yes.

(And Swampman is just philosophical masturbation, btw)

And if you didn't destroy my original body, MWI dictates that the longer living version would be "me". If Copenhagen is correct, then I just get to see a clone of myself teleported, whatever our eventual destinies.

But I always thought Copenhagen was cautious, skittish pussyfooting.

All we have to do is reject the vitalist notion that there is something outside of the material brain that produces the mind. An argument I've had to face at uni was essentially a rehash of Leibniz's mill example. The analogy argues that since there is no individual part of us that produces our consciousness/mind that it would have to be some metaphysical vital component. Such an argument is seemingly flawed. Not only does it insert an argument which doesn't seem testable, but it is pretty dull. There is no single part of a watch that gives it the quality of time measurement, but it is a result of all the pieces working together. In the same way, consciousness wouldn't necessarily need this vital component, but could arise as a consequence of the brain itself.

>>8149547

Computers would be more puzzling to Liebniz...a shitload of tiny transistors that somehow work in concert to create a song, movie, picture, game, internet conversation, etc.

>>8142273
>the future state of the universe cannot be calculated, but that does not mean that there the are phenomenon that follows intelligible rules

Meccanism must be incoherent. Incomprehensible!

> the future state of the universe cannot be calculated

And! And! Entirely false.

>>8149432
Biology does this anyway.
>hurr durr 7 year rule

Approximately every ~7 years your body almost, sans for the skeletal system, and perhaps, after thinking about it, the brain, completely rebuilds itself.

Also I'm like 6 feet taller with tens of billions of more brain cells than I was and what I had at my conception. Still me, though, right?

Still, any person can be knocked unconsnscious, without any remembrance of what happened prior. So yes, it can, in light of hard evidence, be labeled as material.

Though on the opposing side, consciousness doesn't fill space (how I know it, anyway).

So there's, obviously, an argument for that.

>>8148687
>Well considering this method of temporary interpretations saves lives and has given us the technology we are using to communicate as of this very moment, I’d say it gives me a damn good erection, whereas other forms of interpretation leave me as flaccid as a wet sock.
ideas should be valued for more than their direct implications
>It may not be the truth, whatever that means, and I couldn’t care less.
it was all you cared about in a recent post

>>8149547
>>8149557
the computer analogy is subject to heavy criticism, the way they work now

Here's an interesting argument

If consciousness is the product of physics, then a simulation of consciousness would itself be conscious

Hypothetically, a conscious being with a set of instructions, and unlimited time and memory could itself simulate another conscious

A simulation can be done on a computer, but it can also be done on pen and paper

You could literally be a scientific paper

>>8149582
the idea has crossed people's minds.
We may just be a playback of a very sophisticated recording.

>>8149582
Beautiful. I'll remember that argument.

>>8149582
>A simulation can be done on a computer, but it can also be done on pen and paper

Way ahead of ya, doc.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_room

>>8147758

Your calculator doesn't solve problems. You solve problems with your calculator.

God I fucking hate this board.

>>8149906
>>8149619

How old are you people? Is that really the first time you people have thought of this? I used to come up with these ideas when I was a child. How is any of this shit supposed to be hard? Multiplying two random five digit numbers by each other in less than 0.5s, 20 times is fucking hard. "The hard problem of consciousness" is not fucking hard.

God fucking dammit. What is wrong with everyone? Where are your fucking priorities? Your fucking house could be burning down and you would be sitting there with your thumb up your ass questioning whether fire was real or not.

>>8151023
>hard problem is ez I did it when I was 4 LOOOL
>doesn't post the solution to this supposed easy problem

People like you are the ultimate cancer of discovery and advancement of scientific knowledge.

>>8150677
>A computer AI will eventually become a person if you program it complicated enough
>nigger logic

Is there a meaningful definition of consciousness

>>8151111
>you program it
>you
>program it

Found your mistake, despite the nice quads:

"Like other machine learning methods – systems that learn from data – neural networks have been used to solve a wide variety of tasks, like computer vision and speech recognition, that are hard to solve using ordinary rule-based programming."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artificial_neural_network

>>8149582
ink on paper is conscious.

K senpai

>>8151504
>Is there a meaningful definition of consciousness

A self-preservation illusion caused by sensory data being channeled through the highly emotional pattern recognition device known as the brain?

>>8151504
Everyone talking about consciousness has defined what they mean by consciousness enough so that you can understand what they're talking about. Defining it in a more physical sense would be impossible since we don't know what mechanics are involved in allowing it to exist.

Everyone talking about the hard problem has defined what they mean by consciousness enough so that you can understand what they're talking about. Defining it in a more physical sense would be impossible since we don't know what mechanics are involved in allowing it to exist.

>>8151578
>what mechanics are involved in allowing it to exist

Crane or skyhook?

>>8142022
No.

>>8142052
Thank you.

>>8151572
And if you're having depression or suicidal-thoughts, is it consciousness still an illusion about self-preservation?

I feel like consciousness can't be defined with biological or evolutionary terms, but that's just my opinion.

>>8142022
Physics also talks about non-materialistic things, so you don't need consciousness to invalidate materialism. However, I tend to think that we won't ever be able to explain consciousness fully.

>>8151572
In what sense is it an illusion and how does it help in self-preservation?

>>8152059>>8142093
That would be an interesting thing for you to demonstrate. First prove you are conscious to me.

since when have useless philosophers invaded /sci/? i just want my shitty memes, not shitty memes that take themselves seriously.

Since we know consciousness exists, why aren't we treating it like any other fundamental property of the universe, like gravity, space, time, etc?

>>8155782
Because not everything is subject to consciousness, it isn't universal or at the very least we haven't got anywhere near a large enough sample of conscious things to say it is. So far the only conscious life forms we've ever encountered are relegated to one habitable planet, while gravity for example is observable everywhere.

>>8144097
>Pure inductive philosophy is a sub set of physics. And intuitive philosophy is not worth considering.

>Pure inductive philosophy is a sub set of physics.

Wut. Source?

>Any philosophy that isn't metaphysics or theoretical physics is useless.

Wut. Ignorant. Ethics, aesthetics, political philosophy, heuristics, epistemology.

>intuitive philosophy.

You literally have no idea what you're talking about. Obviously didn't start with the Greeks.

>>8153252
Why is there a distinct culture among certain kinds of sciencefags to dismiss philosophy? It's arguably one of the most important fields of thought. It changes how human beings perceive and understand the world around them, and I don't mean in the physical sciences way. I mean it actually CHANGES the way people think, as in, it influences the workings of society, from feminism to existentialism, to animal liberation, to the nature of reality, to how we read information, and other schools of thought. It evaluates cultures and introduces new eras of thought, such as the enlightenment, which led to modern science in the first place. Even empiricism is a philosophical meme.

And the hard question of consciousness is a worthy question to ask. How could anyone not want to wonder about it?

Sorry. I love science, but I also love philosophy, and it always bothers me when science people are ignorant about philosophy. In my view, the two complement another while attempting to do completely different things.

>>8156250
>It's arguably one of the most important fields of thought.
It can be tl:dr into "make sure you understand what you are doing, and have some kind of plan"
And that is what makes it so easy to mismiss .

The reality is that you need some of it. You need to understand that there is a field history(so you can look it up), and often the execution of a idea is flawed until somebody do legwork(look up "pulsar").
Or that there will be resistance to new ideas, no matter how right they are.
Or that the new idea could be wrong, because it lacks legwork

Zombie test:
http://www.strawpoll.me/10553126

>>8157757
Should have added a captcha to keep the bots out.

What is the most intuitive way to explain the hard problem to people who just don't get it? I came up with this just now:

We have a very good understading of how chemistry works, and thus, we have a very good understanding of how the building blocks of the brain works. If you want to argue that the brain creates consciousness on its own through biological processes, how can chemistry somehow magically have experiences, if complex enough? It would be like analogous to someone managing to create a working computer with just lego pieces, it just wouldn't work. If you're doing illusion argument, how do you just ignore that?