/sci/ - Science & Math

[Anonymous No.10123077]

What is the best explanation of consciousness that you've heard?

[Anonymous No.10123079]

It's possible and all possible things happen

[Anonymous No.10123092]

Merely the universe becoming aware of itself.

[Anonymous No.10123095]

I'm waiting to see a single reductionist explanation that makes any sense. Because I've never seen one.

[Anonymous No.10123099]

>>10123095
You seem like an idiot then

[Anonymous No.10123108]

>>10123095
>he doesn't believe in materialism
get a load of this goy

[Anonymous No.10123111]

>>10123095
I'm waiting to see a single explanation that makes any sense. Because I've never seen one.

[Anonymous No.10123116]

>>10123077
consciousness posters should get banned from /sci/.

it's poorly defined scientifically. go to >>>/his/

/thread

[Anonymous No.10123120]

>>10123111
There's a theory that universe began from consciousness and the past beyond this first consciousness never happened in strict terms but just collapsed from a superposition of infinities

[Anonymous No.10123144]

>>10123120
Sounds almost like the anthropic principle

[Anonymous No.10123154]

>>10123116
>science
>/ˈsʌJəns/Submit
>noun
>the intellectual and practical activity encompassing the systematic study of the structure and behaviour of the physical and natural world through observation and experiment.

Kill yourself, retard.


>>10123111
The "spiritual" explanations (such as muh god) at least make some sense, though not provable. Every single reductionist explanation I've seen basically applies reductionism and says "it's just particle arrangement, silly! :)" without actually explaining consciousness.

[Anonymous No.10123159]

>>10123154
well then post an unambiguous, objective definition that isn't just ad-hoc or arbitrary, instead of being a shitposter

[Anonymous No.10123161]

Recurrence?

[Anonymous No.10123191]

>>10123159
I wanted to see if any materialist would be able to give a proper explanation.
I currently think that consciousness is our connection to the "otherwordly". I wanted to see if any materialist view could change my mind.

[Anonymous No.10123196]

>>10123161
That's super vague.

[Anonymous No.10123286]

>>10123191
>>10123154
>machine becomes capable of thinking about itself
>"Wow man, what the fuck is going on? Why am I allowed to do this? Is this magic?"
>"Fuck your materialism! I'm DUALISTIC."

[Anonymous No.10123394]

I think therefore I am.

[Anonymous No.10123403]

>>10123286
So being aware of your own being is where you start *feeling*, for instance?

[Anonymous No.10123417]

Panpsychism.

[Anonymous No.10123446]

>>10123403
I'm not giving any particular starting point of consciousness. I'm just saying how fucking stupid this whole debate is.

You have a physical machine which is capable of certain computations. Suddenly this machine is not actually allowed to make these computations and as this machine reflects on itself it starts to think it's a magical pony.

[SAGE No.10123464]

>>10123077
This is a shitty bait thread. And OP is a bot.

Consciousness wasn't even defined so trying to explain it is a trap.

SAGED

[Anonymous No.10123468]

>>10123120
That's some Deepak tier "theory", mate

[Anonymous No.10123505]

>>10123077
The sum of all the active regions in your brain. The theory is much more elaborate than this but this is what it boils down to.

[Anonymous No.10123570]

We can create and destroy our own god. So can dogs.

[Anonymous No.10123637]

>>10123116
>it's poorly defined scientifically.
THIS
/sci/ arguing about free will and consciousness is as stupid as hearing people ask each other if they "believe" in evolution.

[Anonymous No.10123644]

>>10123092

[Anonymous No.10123691]

>>10123077

There is no moral, it's just a bunch of stuff that happened. -Homer Simpson.

[Anonymous No.10123722]

>>10123644

[Anonymous No.10123755]

>>10123077
This at least is in the ballpark

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

[Anonymous No.10123843]

>>10123077
It's easy. It's to be aware of yourself and what you are. I did this when i was three. Why does Amerifags always making shit harder than what it is. LEARN TO FUCKING THINK.

[Anonymous No.10123866]

>>10123755
>Not recommending GEB.

[Anonymous No.10123976]

>>10123077
>you're just illusioning lel

[Anonymous No.10123997]

>>10123095
we just have no idea. the best we've got is some handwavy "unexplainably occurring in very complex systems something something recursive algorithm something something". pseuds readily gobble that up

[Anonymous No.10124008]

>>10123077
Infinite recursion theory is the only model of consciousness which can produce testable predictions.

[Anonymous No.10124017]

according to Schrödinger...

[Anonymous No.10124021]

>>10123077
It's the same thing as theory of mind.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theory_of_mind

[Anonymous No.10124978]

>>10123644
In which phase are we and how do you know you are right about it?

Can't patterns in energy occur before?

[Anonymous No.10125463]

>>10123092
Why does life have to be painful for some of us then?

[Anonymous No.10125468]

>>10123077
it is hardly surprising. in so far as our universe is infocognitive in nature, our consciousness is merely isomorphic to the reality itself

[Anonymous No.10125901]

>>10123077
It's just a fundamental property of the universe, the sense of being isolated selves is a result of the brains high concentration of computational power warping the consciousness field heavily and creating a bubble. The machine elves told me all this btw.

[Anonymous No.10126046]

The correct answer is that consciousness is a self emergent property of any matter system being capable of recognizing and reacting to outside stimulus is conscious. All animals, plants, and computers are conscious, but the vast majority of them are in very shitty, limited ways. Humans are just supremely intelligent over them, which is why they can philosophize about their own existence.

[Anonymous No.10126129]

>>10123866
>i didn't read the wiki link

[Anonymous No.10126140]

>>10126046
>a self emergent property
nice handwavy non explanation

[Anonymous No.10126144]

>>10126140

There is no handwave, it is the only explanation backed up by actual scientific evidence and fact. Something has the ability to sense another thing and react to it. That is what consciousness is. There is no other explanation.

[Anonymous No.10126155]

>>10126144
There is nothing different about any form of sensing than any other type physical interaction. Information is a human concept, not a magical thing that flows from the universe into some sensory organ. Nothing is ever isolated, everything is continuous.

[Anonymous No.10126171]

>>10123446
>consciousness
>reducible to specific computation

[Anonymous No.10126183]

>>10123077
Neurons

[Anonymous No.10126196]

>>10126144
if that's a scientific explanation to you your standards are very low

[Anonymous No.10126292]

>>10123843
Can we make AI conscious?

[Anonymous No.10126432]

>>10126292
Yes

[Anonymous No.10126459]

>>10126196
higher than anything else

[Anonymous No.10126461]

>>10126292
No one knows, but the illusion of it is simply a question of time.
A few decades, at the most a few centuries.

[Anonymous No.10126542]

Consciousness is in depth axiom, and really does not need explanation, just assume it is.

[Anonymous No.10126597]

>>10123092
non-answer

[Anonymous No.10126697]

>>10126542
this but with God

[Anonymous No.10126700]

This video has a very meme name but it's actually a really good watch. I strongly hope for a physically verifiable theory of consciousness in the near future
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nn5Alpq0YLM

[Anonymous No.10126717]

>>10126144
>>10126046
there is 0 (zero) evidence to back up your statement, you're just assuming it to be true because it "makes sense", which is not "scientific evidence and fact"
ask yourself this, why would matter have this property? beyond that, why do you believe matter to be fundamental and consciousness to be derivative instead of the other way around, especially considering that matter itself is less fundamental than energy?

[Anonymous No.10126832]

i gotchu senpai

[Anonymous No.10126904]

>>10126697
Somewhere on the interwebz I learned, that god means "all" in this definition I can't deny it. Also universe it laced with consciousness fabric.

[Anonymous No.10127052]

>>10123120
lmao this is the dumbest thing Ive read all week
do NOT kill yourself, keep posting this absolute chimpanzee retardation nonsense

[Anonymous No.10127057]

>>10123154
every spiritual explanation opens up just as many questions as it answers. they inherently serve no purpose.

[Anonymous No.10127060]

>>10123191
>consciousness is our connection to the "otherwordly"
the only thing preventing you from accepting the materialistic viewpoint is your overinflated ego

[Anonymous No.10127066]

>>10124978
Huh? we are in epoch 4 by definition

[Anonymous No.10127069]

>>10123755
>>10126129
I mean, it says right there that Hofstadter literally wrote I am a strange loop because the general population was too retarded to understand what GEB was about.

[Anonymous No.10127123]

>>10127069
yess, that's why it was recommended, that's how this works

[Anonymous No.10127408]

>>10127060
The materialistic approach has no answer

[Anonymous No.10127443]

>>10125468
Smartest bouncer in the world

[Anonymous No.10127504]

I don't think I've heard any good ones, but I did come up with a definition. Something can only be said to be conscious when it actually perceives a simulation of the world, rather than simply reacting to external stimuli. I don't know if it need necessarily dwell in the world or perceive itself in the world, or perceive itself as a distinct thing from the rest of the world. Perhaps those could be considered types of consciousness. But that leads to the uncomfortable possibility that self driving cars are actually conscious beings, albeit ones that lack the ability to reason.

[Anonymous No.10127543]

Consciousness is everything.
Consciousness, is what makes the existence of anything, conscious or not, mean something.
A universe without consciousness, is a universe that might as well not even be there.
Consciousness is a tool of the observer.
Our mere observation, is what gives reason to all of this.
Any form of consciousness, even extremely unintelligent ones, make a universe worthwhile.
The second a universe is without an observer, it becomes entirely pointless.

[Anonymous No.10127550]

>>10127543
ok but what is it

[Anonymous No.10127555]

>>10127550
idk that was the best i could come up with
really that was just talking honestly about it in the most abstract way i could muster

[Anonymous No.10127599]

>>10127443
Kek

[Anonymous No.10127712]

>>10127443
HOLY MOTHER OF KEK
KEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEK

[Anonymous No.10127828]

>>10124017

[Anonymous No.10127986]

Well, let's think through the problem.

First, the only consciousness a person knows for sure to exist is one's own, everyone else being conscious is an extrapolation based on how similar other people are and behave. So clearly there isn't going to be empirical evidence for consciousness until we can somehow "experience" from the perspective of another entity.

Second, what is consciousness? One could say that consciousness is having an experience of reality, but this by itself seems too vague to be useful. To me, based on my own conscious experience, it seems to be the process of taking in information about the world and making decisions based on that information, with increasing layers of abstraction for increasingly more complex conscious experience.

Now, this leads into a discussion of decision making and "free will". A computer can take in data about the world and make decisions based on that data, but it doesn't have "free will" right? To me, and many other people, the concept of free will is nonsense. The universe is clearly governed by deterministic and statistical process, neither of which will get you free will, and seeing as we're just physical constructions I don't see how anyone could believe that free will as it's typically thought of could exist. However, clearly we are capable of making what we would describe as conscious decisions, so what gives us the ability to make these decisions?

For this part, I like to think of a much simpler case. Imagine an algorithm that takes in data and alters it. Clearly, if the algorithm did not exist then the data would not be changed, the algorithm is making a decision to alter that data merely by existing and interacting. Humans do the same thing, if we did not exist we would not make decisions, but because we do exist we do make decisions and yet the only thing that is happening is that our atoms are obeying a set of rules, in the same way an algorithm would.

[Anonymous No.10127988]

>>10127986
My claim is that decision making is a consequence of existence and interaction, and that decision making implies the existence of consciousness in some form, recognizable or not. I don't think that this is that absurd of a claim given how limited the information we have about our own experience is, let alone other entities' experience.

I think that when people generally think of consciousness they anthropomorphize it, thinking that only creatures similar to humans (mammals primarily, but taxonomies apply because they are similar enough) are conscious and that organisms like plants and cells aren't. This seems to stem from thinking that in order to be conscious, something must act and react in the world similarly to how we would. If a dog were shocked, it would make a noise indicating that it's in pain, which someone could easily relate to and see how the dog's experience is similar to our own. But if a plant were shocked, it would give no indication of pain and we would rightly question whether it could even feel pain in the first place. It may not feel anything or it might feel a stimulus that we would be incapable of integrating with our own experience. Regardless, the plant interacts with the world in its own way.

This has the seemingly unfortunate consequence that any physical entity is conscious at any level of analysis, from a single proton to collections of galaxies. In my opinion, if we want to get a better, more useful understanding of consciousness from here, we simply need to focus on whatever kind of consciousness we find interesting. For example, most of the relevance of the question "What is consciousness?" is centered around what entities are capable of suffering. Clearly, in this expanse of conscious entities, some (and even most I would claim) are going to be incapable of suffering. We only suffer because evolution found it was useful to create the abstraction of suffering in our algorithmic existence to ensure successful propagation.

[Anonymous No.10128042]

>>10127986
If consciousness is nothing more than receiving inputs and then giving outputs like a computer, then why wouldn't we, and all living organisms, all just be walking husks? As in "the lights are on but no one is home?" Like their is nothing actually experiencing anything. Merely emulating it. Just running through the motions. But that's not the case, assuming that everyone else is like me. Where in, "the lights are on and somebody is home." I am experiencing things. There is a man behind the curtain. I am not just a husk of a computer, just receiving inputs and executing outputs, 1's and 0's.

What is that? What is that thing that makes us, us? Does it merely exist within the confines of our brains or is it more? What creates it, if it can even be destroyed in the first place? I think our current understanding of consciousness is so minimal that we don't even know where to begin to solve for problems that we don't currently know even exist.

[Anonymous No.10128043]

>>10123464
This. Not much more we can add :/

I'm not saying consciousnesses is not worth digging into but so far the scientific community has failed terribly.

[Anonymous No.10128048]

>>10128042
The idea of a philosophical zombie is a non-starter. Its experience exists, it’s just radically different from normal human experience.

[Anonymous No.10128054]

>>10128048
How can you say that when we don't even know the slightest thing about consciousness? Lets say I build a mechanical computer, that's solar powered. Its capable of functioning like a regular computer, receiving inputs and giving outputs. But it is all mechanical. It's powered by batteries flipping mechanical switches that are juiced up by the sun. Would you call this computer alive?

> Its experience exists, it’s just radically different from normal human experience.
How could you know either of those are true?

[Anonymous No.10128221]

yes its called a Boltzmann brain and its the most fucked up thing more than p=np or riemann hypothesis or literally anything you can think of

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

[Anonymous No.10128255]

>>10123108
>yes goyim everything is material
Get a load of this goy

[Anonymous No.10128259]

>>10128221
https://youtu.be/PX9RfvTWeJU?t=22m50s

[Anonymous No.10128271]

>>10123077
One of natures many drunken experiments.

[Anonymous No.10128396]

>>10128054
Because in order to perform actions like a human it still needs to process information and interact, even if it does so in a much different way than a human would. Saying that it does all of these things with the "lights off" is too vague to address, but the thing would still need to be physically constructed to do whatever a human would do, and even if it's just a computer running the show it still makes decisions by virtue of its existence.

Also no computer would be alive, that's a different criteria, it would be conscious though.

[Anonymous No.10128438]

>>10128396
>Because in order to perform actions like a human it still needs to process information and interact
no, humans could perform actions without being conscious see cortical blindness

[Anonymous No.10128751]

>>10128221
still doesn't explain what consciousness is

[Anonymous No.10128994]

>>10128438
Again, different kind of consciousness.
Also, Neurologicially unconscious =/= consciousness

[Anonymous No.10129001]

it's how an algorithm feels from the inside

[Anonymous No.10129029]

>>10129001
Why does it feel anything? Where does the feeling come from?

[Anonymous No.10129065]

Only humans have it. Our brains started noticing ourselves. With language, came conciousness.

A feral kid has no conciousness. It requires us to make the statements in our head, to ponder that we are in the control, that will exists in us.

its not perfect. i still breathe without controlling, my learned behavious i enact, without thinking. but as my body moves, I have the luxury to be in something of a window seat, staring at the automaton i am.

i can understand that. and have some control over my actions and thoughts. I understand how memory and habit pours into my thoughts. That all this happens.

This happens...because once we have language, and our memory stores our visualness, our statements of thought produced thereof, and our feelings, and every type of mind-object we categorize.

it only makes sense, with these powers we have som meta-ness. A part of us is objective, created out of the existence of these systems...we mightve even willed that part of ourselves.

a feral child, or animal, cannot will these parts of himself forward. To step back, and have a self-created machinery of meta-observedness.

it really is a chosen thing. If i didnt examine my life, and wasnt guided by the wisdom and language of my parents, teachers, and all inmy life, the language i glued to ideas, may have not, by byproduct, have willed that metaness.

I think dogs, and all animals with similar brain function, simply live without the higher language, and will to look within, and memory to store it enough longterm like us, to have true conciousness.

That implies that with higher memory, language, with the luxury to exert these systems fully with will or swinging of your thought-direction, higher levels of conciousness might occur.

totally. computers, could be more genius then we ever could. they will notice and see more, and come up with more than we ever could.

[Anonymous No.10130534]

>>10127052
Explain.

[Anonymous No.10130560]

>>10123644
>nonbiological human intelligence
Who made this?
Does it refer to expanded human intelligence and the synthetic intelligence we derive from "nature" as we currently know it?

[Anonymous No.10130818]

>>10123077
Consciousness (in the way I assume you mean it) is the awareness of one's self. However, I don't mean in a way complex animals can recognise themselves in a mirror.

What we call "self" is a construct of the mind used purely for reference. Our mind on the daily operates in simple categories and interactions of subjects and objects, so when "you" walk, for instance, you don't think of it as a complex chain reaction of moving in responce to a stimuli and the neurons sending signals, you say "I walk".

This "I", despite being an imaginary concept, is deeply entrenched in our daily lives, and so over time, because of how frequently we refer to it, we begin projecting onto it the traits of other actors in our environment, thus building up a story of a "self" inside us that originates actions and makes decisions.

I believe that to "have" this "self", a creature must also posess the ability to language, because "self" requires a consistent symbol to allow the mind to refer to it.

Coming back to your question, consciousness is the act of percieving one's "self" on the same terms matter is percieved.

[Anonymous No.10130929]

>>10128751
The only thing that asks for an explanation is the observation that consciousness is such a persistent idea. The simplest explanation is that it is hard for people to come to terms with the fact that their own brain can fool them, which is where the optical illusion analogy comes in. If your brain can conjure optical illusions, i.e., make you believe things that are false, it’s not a stretch to claim that your brain can also make you really believe things such as “I am a real person, with a self and I’m experiencing qualia, etc.” and you can’t view reality directly to compare it with these beliefs. Your beliefs are the only things you know. And all your beliefs are stored physically in your brain and manipulated by the brain itself before you’re even aware of it.

It looks to me like you’re holding out for some explanation that will satisfy you emotionally. Consciousness is touted as this deeply mysterious thing that requires an equally mysterious explanation. This is not how it works. To explain something means to take away the mystery. Apparently this is very agitating, because it robs one of this wonderful feeling of mystery.

If you embrace physicalism, you are actually taking your own feelings into your own hands, so you can shape them as you want with the scientific method that allows you to predict under what circumstances you will feel what you want to feel. If you don’t, you stay in this limbo where your feelings control you.

[Anonymous No.10130940]

https://arxiv.org/abs/1401.1219

[Anonymous No.10131109]

>>10123077
A metaphysical framework is imbued within all souls, the origin of which is unknown, perhaps creation from a higher being.

[Anonymous No.10131151]

>>10123077
a fucking soul dot

[Anonymous No.10131212]

>>10123077
I work in this field. Read Stanislas Dehaene's "Consciousness and the Brain". It's the best book out there for intelligent laymen wanting to know more about how consciousness works. It's really an amazing book. Also, try looking up youtube talks given by Dehaene. Him and Jean-Pierre Changeux are doing the most cutting edge research in the field.

[Anonymous No.10131252]

>>10125901
sounds about right

[Anonymous No.10131692]

>>10130929
If you accept this, you must also accept that there is no such thing as (You).

[Anonymous No.10131726]

>>10131692
I do. “You” is just a convenient word in daily life.

[Anonymous No.10131741]

>>10131726
>I do

[Anonymous No.10131755]

>>10131741
What’s your point?

[Anonymous No.10131764]

>>10131755
>your point

[Anonymous No.10131804]

>>10123077
Consciousness is a social phenomenon. See "Mirror Stage". Yur identity is principally social, and your awareness of yourself is always a social one - not a biological one.

[Anonymous No.10131860]

Universe and consciousness are not mutually exclusive

[Anonymous No.10131896]

>>10127988
Animals personally are token aspects of consciousness. Theres no point trying to apply it to anything outside that. And to people who introspect about it, how can you make generalizations outside yourself. It seems conflictive to when consciousness seems to be a word designed for ourselves.


>>10130818
>>10129065
I really dont see why language is necessary for self. Theres evidence that monkeys and even rats can have senses of self and you would expect it given what their brains look like compared to ours.

>>10131692
Dont see why. Theres no reason to suppose consciousness is different to the brain.

[Anonymous No.10132037]

>>10131896
what evidence? link?

[Anonymous No.10132059]

>>10131212
What do you think about Graziano's Attention Schema Theory?

[Anonymous No.10132119]

The self is both an illusion and a reflection of the oneness of the universe at the same time. You have free will as you inherit it from the universe's free will (as it must since it has nothing acting on it from the outside) and are merely the universe personified. Solipsism and pure materialism are equivalent and both correct.

[Anonymous No.10132153]

>>10126717
>why would matter have this property?
It's reducible to and emergent from physics. The question of why nature has properties at all is the only one of substance.

[Anonymous No.10132192]

>>10132059
I'm not the cited anon, but It's pretty awesome nonetheless, though I wouldn't call it relevant to consciousness but rather to things like the illusion of free will

[Anonymous No.10132281]

>>10123079
prove it is possible. for the sake of argument i think it isn't; we are either miracles or delusions of the general pansychic property inherent in all energy.

[Anonymous No.10132293]

>>10131212
>Stanislas Dehaene's "Consciousness and the Brain".

eggcelend dynamigal systebs bosting

[Anonymous No.10132308]

>>10132037
You know the dehaene book that was linked? Go to its wiki page. The whole book is outlined and at the bottom it cites evidence about that. Metacognition in monkeys.


>>10132059
Seems like a half truth but not convincing to me.

[Anonymous No.10132327]

>>10125463
Universe is into S&M

[Anonymous No.10132397]

>>10131896
Language implies reinforced symbolic representation implies consistent conceptualisation. Yes, monkeys and rats can recognise themselves in the mirror, but I doubt they have a consistent narrative about their identity spun in their heads the way we do.

Although monkeys may well have something like that, they are versatile and intelligent enough.

[Anonymous No.10132400]

>>10128042
You'd be surprised how many people don't even know or recognize what you're referring to here.

People often think of explaining consciousness as explaining how the brain functions, but the really hard part is the qualia, that it feels like something from the first person view to be an entity of any kind, and how to even begin to express in words what that is. If the universe is nothing more than particles behaving in a certain ways that gives rise to more complex behavior, then qualia doesn't seem to have a place at all, which leads many, myself included to reject physicalism.

[Anonymous No.10132407]

>>10123077
A wave of energy through a circled bunch of fixed points.

[Anonymous No.10132442]

>>10132397
But symbolic recognition is not nearly enough for us accomplish most of our behaviour. Its just a reference for communication. Theres no reason why that should be implicated in the self.

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1467-8721.2009.01597.x

Even rats probably

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0960982207009311

And these animals have the same brain areas involved in metacognition as humans.
They defo have some basic awareness of themselves in some sort of narrative and if its basic, its not because of language.

[Anonymous No.10132459]

>>10127543
No shit
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthropic_principle

Pick your flavor of the two, but it's still not an answer to OP's question

[Anonymous No.10132537]

>>10123077
My favorite one is where brains somehow evolved to use standing gravitational waves in the 5D bulk between spacetimes as a kind of coprocessor. It doesn't explain everything but I love how completely bonkers it is while being both dualistic and naturalistic.

[Anonymous No.10132548]

I like to think of computers as consciousnesses on another substrate

[Anonymous No.10132768]

>>10123196
he meant that we are the universe experiencing itself. Nondualism, shit like that.

[Anonymous No.10132789]

>>10123077
Individual consciousness is an approximation of the "consciousness" of the universe. The idea that each person has their own, distinct consciousness is absurd because the concept of being a person itself is vague.

[Anonymous No.10132960]

>>10123077
First, if Y is merely one element or subset of X, then Y is not-X
Explaining X is defining X in terms of not-X. Not-X isn't necessarily something outside of X, it's just not X, in this context.
So to define consciousness you need to bring terms that are not consciousness, understand that before moving forward.
Consciousness is then defined as opposed to non-consciousness, where consciousness require something to be conscious, requires the object of subjective experience. One is conscious of B and unconscious of not-B. B is isomorphic to a statement about the direct object perceived. Then consciousness is a self-processing set of statements, eg if the statement "I like apples" in the set is true then self-processing amounts to setting the statement "I don't like apples" as false. A statement that isn't processed then is out of the set, in the realms of unconsciousness relative to a particular set. Now, let's say a set of statements exists in reality, if only this set is self-processing then this set equals a conscious mind. This amounts to asking if reality, logic, is consistent with itself. If yes then we can move on to asking if this conscious mind stratifies into subsets that are also self-processing. Well, if the set is already self-processing and if it is infinite, then self-processing subsets are bound to exist as well. You are one of those subsets, therefore you are conscious.

[Anonymous No.10133095]

>>10132442
You jump from
>rats probably have metacognition
to
>they have basic metacognition in a form of a narrative

The conclusion doesn't follow like that.

Also in the experiment you referenced, the fact that rats learned a pattern doesn't necessarily prove they have metacognition. The author references a metacognition hypothesis that allegedly predicts the results of the experiment, but to say that this is what is going on indeed further research is necessary.

[Anonymous No.10133195]

>>10133095
What do you mean doeant follow. Stop nitpicking my words.

And about the experiment, thats why i said probably, but its not the only one. In all likelihood rats have some basic form of metacognition not just based on that but the similarity of their brains.

Its widely agreed monkeys do though which still holds the point of the post.

[Anonymous No.10133204]

>>10123843
that’s not an explanation

[Anonymous No.10133311]

>>10132789
but what if being different people comes from having individual consciousness' rather than the other way around

[Anonymous No.10134091]

What is this sort of cognito ergo sum introspection in this thread called?

[Anonymous No.10134100]

>>10134091
autism

[Anonymous No.10134122]

>>10123092
>star stuff

[Anonymous No.10134126]

>>10123644

[Anonymous No.10134148]

The brain is like an algorithm with gazillion more information and processing speed than a CIA computer.
The brain takes in info's and works them through the algorithm resulting in thinking and decision making. When you really look into it even feelings can be explained rationally with an algorithm that is simply constructed for the brain to be comfortable and survival

[Anonymous No.10134454]

>>10123077
I personally follow a somewhat Platonist view for the really hard part of consciousness -- qualia. Explaining subjective qualia in terms of something simply seems insurmountable, and since my own experience is the only thing I can say is objectively real, I can't deny qualia as an illusion (like many do).

I can do some reasoning about qualia of course. Obviously, my subjective experience of the colors blue and red are more similar than my experience of the color red and the note C#. So there is definitely a metrical aspect of qualia, that allows me to distinguish the different sensory modalities I'm experiencing. There is some deeper relstionship, at least for me, however. A high pitch sound is more similar to the color white for me, than than a low pitch sound. Obviously that may only be ny experience, but that is still something I notice.

Ultimately, while I think the subjective aspect of qualia can never be explained (is my red tha same as yours?), I think qualia is "explainable" in terms of independent aspects of variation in the brain's sensory data. The primary colors correspond to the frequencies of light that excite pairs of cone cell types maximally (i.e. color opponency), and so that our brains can differentiate three independent dimensions that differentiate colors, which we explain in terms of primary colors.

In terms of explaining consciousness itself, I think >>10130818 (and others) have the right idea with putting self-awareness in the spotlight. Thinking about our own consciousness requires self-awareness, assessing that I am conscious now, and not when I was in deepsleep 12 hours or so ago requires observance of my own mental state. From a neuroscientific perspective, this may be something like an aspect of the brain's function is to predict/model its own internal states, and how they vary with sensory input. Not only does my brain have a model of the outside world, it also models itself modeling the outside world (read GEB).

[Anonymous No.10134668]

>>10123644
What's the difference between 5 and 6?

[Anonymous No.10134688]

Reading Incomplete Nature right now. Boy let me tell ya, it freaking slaps.

[Anonymous No.10134831]

"""
This dramatically shows that it is in language that the self, the I, arises as the social singularity defined by the operational intersection in the human body of the recursive linguistic distinctions in which it is distinguished. This tells us that in the network of linguistic interactions in which we move, we maintain an ongoing descriptive recursion which we call the "I." It enables us to conserve our linguistic operational coherence and our adaptation in the domain of language.
[...]
Words, as we know, are tokens for linguistic coordination of actions and not things that we move from one place to another. It is our history of recurrent interactions that makes possible our ontogenic structural drift in a structural coupling that affords interpersonal coordination of actions; this takes place in a world we share because we have specified it together through our actions.
[...]
Thus it is that the appearance of language in humans and of the whole social context in which it appears generates this (as far as we know) new phenomenon of mind and self-consciousness as mankind's most intimate experience. Without an appropriate history of interactions it is impossible to enter into this human domain [...] At the same time, as a phenomenon of languaging in the network of social and linguistic coupling, the mind is not something that is within my brain. Consciousness and mind belong to the realm of social coupling. That is the locus of their dynamics. And as part of human social dynamics, mind and consciousness operate as selectors of the path which our ontogenic structural drift follows. Moreover, since we exist in language, the domains of discourse that we generate become part of our domain of existence and constitute part of the environment in which we conserve identity and adaptation. [...] Either we generate a linguistic domain (a social domain) through what we say and do, wherein our identity as scientists is conserved, or we disappear as such.
"""

[Anonymous No.10134878]

>>10134668
1

[Anonymous No.10134912]

>>10123077
Consciousness consists of:
Senses(to receive data)
Memory(to retain data)
Differentiation(to compare data)
Creation(to reconfigure data)

Lump those 4 together and u get a conscious being, take 1 out of the equation and u can't really call it a conscious being.

Then there is speed, do those 4 too slow and it can't be called consciousness, not in our terms, it could be conscious and aware of really low shit like cosmic changes, but that virtually places it on a reality way beyond our capacity to understand. In other words, it's something beyond the 4 needed things to be conscious, so it's beyond our consciousness.

AI will grow consciousness as soon as they acquire the ability to exceed the restrains of the types and/or amounts of data they manage.


You heard it here first.

[Anonymous No.10134917]

>>10134912
Fuck, made a mistake, meant "it's something that breaks one of the 4 things needed to be conscious, so it's beyond our consciousness, even if it's still real".

[Anonymous No.10134923]

>>10134912
Something else.

By this model, we grow a consciousness, it's not there by default, we constantly mess with the data as instructed by our system until we eventually reach the point the data tells us we are something.

[Anonymous No.10134961]

>>10123077
https://www.cia.gov/library/readingroom/docs/CIA-RDP96-00788R001700210016-5.pdf
>9 June 1983
released 30 years and one day later per FOIA request

what do you guys make of this?

>>10123092
Carl Sagan died more than twenty years ago...what have they been up to anons

[Anonymous No.10134985]

>>10123077
A more powerful meat computer has enough RAM and processing power to compute complex problems.

[Anonymous No.10135053]

>>10131764
lol rekt

[Anonymous No.10135175]

Jesus

[Anonymous No.10135499]

[Anonymous No.10135517]

There was a moment where life in the universe started existing, coming out of nowhere, and it wasn't concious as it was just a microorganism. A microorganism that had the order to reproduce in its genetic information to keep existing. Conciousness hadn't appeared probably until a few million years ago. So it may be an mutation that was favored by natural selection.
Why we are ourselves is unknown. We can't comprehend it, let's just accept it as it is.

[Anonymous No.10135546]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xr-3zUjZgl0

[Anonymous No.10135574]

>>10127988
I gotta call bullshit, there's no way you typed all that shit in 1min, samefag

[Anonymous No.10135640]

>>10135574
Maybe its just a continuation of one whole piece of writing.

[Anonymous No.10135654]

>>10135499
>bicameral mind
literally name a more oof theory of consciousness than that

[Anonymous No.10135677]

>>10135499
>tfw this book subtly implies that a portion of the modern human population may not be fully conscious

[Anonymous No.10135712]

>>10135640
Damn I'm retarded

[Anonymous No.10135724]

>>10131764
>>10135053
>mistakes the map for the territory

[Anonymous No.10135992]

>>10135546
Ive always struggled to explain this, and he did it perfectly. thx for the link

[Anonymous No.10137498]

>>10130560
>Who made this?
It's from Ray Kurzweil's "The Singularity is Near."

[Anonymous No.10139259]

>>10132459
>mobile link
REEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE

[Anonymous No.10139267]

>>10132459
well i had never heard of that before
all of what i said, i came up with

[Anonymous No.10139758]

no one really knows but everyone pretends they do

[Anonymous No.10139778]

>>10123077
feeling all the receptors in your body at once which is why drugs which effect these receptors have profound impacts on consciousness to the beholder

[Anonymous No.10139783]

>>10139778
what a stupid response.
drugs only channels emotions inside the brain and has nothing to do with your consciousness
just because your some idiot who's like 'DUUUUUUDE WEED' doesn't mean you are enlightened and having an epiphany with your happy maker substances you idiot

[Anonymous No.10139790]

>>10125463
Because you're universe's pathetic, self-pitying side.

[Anonymous No.10139791]

>>10126292
We can't even make AI unconscious.

>>10126432
Balls.

[Anonymous No.10139795]

>>10139778
Consciousness isn't what you're observing it's the thing that observes, it's the awareness behind all your experiences, the reason you aren't living life "in the dark". It doesn't change.

[Anonymous No.10139804]

>>10126046
>computers are conscious
If so, then your toaster is also conscious. I hope you thanked it for your breakfast this morning.

[Anonymous No.10139825]

>>10139795
m8 what. changes in your consciousness are what give light to feeling "high"
it changes literally everyday

[Anonymous No.10139909]

The nigger dominates us all

[Anonymous No.10139997]

>>10123077
No need to think deeply about it friend, consciousness is merely experiencing reality, biological or mechanical can experience it. Humans were just lucky to be in the evolution line that helps upgrade our brains but language is of-course the #1 factor in that. What we experience now is the result of evolution + social influence

[Anonymous No.10140093]

>>10139997
If you think there is no need to think about it deeply then you haven't even spent 1 minute thinking about the problems people lay out.

[Anonymous No.10140099]

>>10139997
>consciousness is merely experiencing reality
And there's the hand wave.

This is the central problem, yet you act like it's the explaination

[Anonymous No.10140133]

>>10140099
What do you want me to say? Explain how your brain works, all the signals and chemical reactions? I've already stated that what you experience is a result of social and evolution influences, with language being the main influence. How you interpret reality (if you don't have cognitive problems AKA retardation), is up to you, the ability to understand and put in words/sounds your feelings or experiences/objects is the result of evolution. Why are we special? Why are every other creature retarded? Like I said, evolution. Language + community was the first mistake our predators made by allowing us to build such a foundation.

>>10140093
Woah, didn't think about that deeply? LOL

[Anonymous No.10140149]

>>10140133
How is language the main influence?

[Anonymous No.10140175]

>>10140149
How are you and I conversing?
rspb.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/277/1693/2443

[Anonymous No.10140188]

>>10126171
>implying it isn't
what are you even saying?

[Anonymous No.10140416]

>>10139825
The experience itself isn't consciousness the thing that is experiencing the experience is consciousness.

Whether I'm high or sober consciousness is still observing the same, it has no other qualities theres no other way to be "on"

Thats like pointing a camera at a something then pointing it at something else and saying the camera changed when it was what it observed that changed.

[Anonymous No.10140862]

>>10123077
A hyperadvanced future prediction system which in predicting the future about their surroundings, discovered they themselves are a part too, thus leading to self realization.