Hard problem of consciousness

>>8388160
then how do you explain our conscious inner life and subjective experience? also how do you explain qualia?

>>8388180
>>8388160
... or more basically... wtf? premise is illogical. whether we have consciousness is not debatable. It is in fact, maybe the only damn thing that is not debatable, because you could not debate the issue without... yup... consciousness

>>8388180
>then how do you explain our conscious inner life and subjective experience? also how do you explain qualia?
Mere illusions. People report these things since that's what conscious entities would do. But it's merely an act; a presentation.
So why do people emulate these behaviors?
Basically because being conscious would offer serious survival benefits, so evolution should have converged our behavior on that of a conscious entity. But, being atoms, we're fundamentally incapable of actually being conscious entities. But emulating conscious behaviors is sufficient to get the survival benefits, and is possible given the constraints of our form, thus this is what we converged on.

>>8388202
you're retarded. then there's no functional difference between actually being conscious and just emulating it. your argument is unfalsifiable and therefore invalid.

>>8388208
>then there's no functional difference between actually being conscious and just emulating it.
But there is a difference, in principle.

Dressing up like a chicken and walking around like a chicken and clucking doesn't make you a chicken, even if you're very good at it.

>>8388210
your argument is unfalsifiable and therefore invalid.

>>8388214
I disagree.

>>8388230
then try to falsify it. give us an example.

>>8388202
>Mere illusions
Who/what is being eluded?
Without consciousness, what does the word 'illusion' even mean?

>>8388160
we will figure it out when we figure out how a neuron works in precise quantum physical detail.

>>8388160
>>8388202
>>8388281
Pardon my English, not my first language. I've studied science, particularly neuropsychology and physics, for a good chunk of my life and more recently invested myself in the relevant philosophies. I feel that most scientists, even in the mental sciences, are grossly ignorant of what it actually is they're studying.

There is no hard problem of consciousness.

When we describe physical objects such as atoms and neurons, we're not referring to the actual concrete things but rather quantifiable abstract dimensionally extended patterns which we surmise indirectly both theoretically (pure logic) and empirically (scientific method of observation aka neuronal interaction with the environment).

The only concrete, direct actuality we can speak of is experience itself, which we describe qualitatively. What it is like to be rather than how it is structured. Qualitative concepts are categorically different than quantitative ones, so it's completely bizarre that people still try to explain consciousness physically. It is entirely possible, and in my opinion probable, that qualitative experience requires a particular physical structure, one that is computationally self reflective. I'd recommend Hofstadter to get an intro to what I'm referring to. But to ask how quality comes from atoms is to not understand what atoms are.

Perhaps someone with better English can translate what I'm trying to get out if I've not been completely unintelligible.

>>8388202
It is the illusions themselves we refer to...

>>8388210
You're chicken analogy implies there is a true chicken to compare against. Can you describe a true consciousness to compare against?

>>8388418
I don't think he mentioned himself being a chicken?

>>8388435
No shit.

>humans are not really conscious, but merely emulate the behaviors a conscious thing would have.

He needs to either cite and/or define what a real consciousness is that everything is pretending to have. I can cite and define what a real chicken is.

>>8388370
You're wasting your time with OP and his ilk. Their thoughts are typified by circular causal logic.

>>8388160
What Is it Like to Be a Bat?

You need to characterise the difference between objective and subjective experience.

>>8388440
Not the other poster but
>define what a real consciousness
Reminder that philosophy majors do not belong on /sci/
>>>/lit/

>>8388252

Answer this OP

>>8388160
those vibrations are what makes consciousness.

>>8388481
No shit

>humans are not really conscious, but merely emulate the behaviors a conscious thing would have.

You want science? What the fuck would I test for in this statement? I'll just take a sample of emulated consciousness and and look for qualitative and quantitative similarities with natural organically grown consciousness.

>>8388214
>your argument is unfalsifiable and therefore invalid.
Actually I think you'll more likely find subjective experience is what is in fact unfalsifiable and invalid.

Fuck, I forgot how dumb /sci/ could be sometimes.

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>>8388160
very witty

>>8388160
Why do we have this thread every week?

>>8388536
Because it's an interesting question that bears resolving.

>>8388501
It's not my job to come up with grounds for your argument in quantifiable terms, it's yours if you're dumb enough to make an argument as complex as the one you're suggesting and actually think it holds weight especially on a board full of autists who major mainly in math and engineering.

Philosophy majors
>>>/lit/

>>8388160
This is not compatible with evidence though. You make reality comply with ideology instead of making ideology comply with reality

>>8388551
Are you fucking dense? I'm not making any argument at all. I'm asking how the fuck does OP's statement making any god damned sense.

fuarkin noice b8 m8

>>8388160
there is no consciousness. what do you think the 9 months in your moms belly were for? the DNA describes how your body and your brain are build. your brain is preformatted. thats why all humans are alike. only a few minor changes are made from human to human, which is important for diversity (see evolution).

always keep in mind that your consciousness is simply neurons and electrons floating around in your brain, just like the electrons and transistors in your computer form logic.

>>8388160
The way I think it - is how systems are made in nature - like the first from of life, unicellular - it's a fully independent, secluded and functional system that uses information and stores it - then there's signs of intelligence later on.

Mainly life arise because under special conditions organic compounds were formed and they interact with each other as the universe dictated, but then that life was able to evolve, adapt - and become very complex systems that could comprehend environment and devise strategies...

HOW THE FUCK is universe dead or fundamentally alive.

>>8388160

You're right except I wouldn't say 'emulating consciousness' because it gives hard problem / dualism fags the sense you're admitting 'consciousness' exists on some level. I would just say 'consciousness' is a sloppy suitcase word for a bunch of different physical behaviors that we speak about in terms of non-physical otherworld magic because of the illusions of immediacy, detail, and continuity. In reality the data we get from our sense organs isnt immediate, detailed, or continuous but we're compelled to behave as though they are so that it's surprising when on closer inspection we find out what we thought was 'there' is really just a report that tells us something was there in a vague and abstracted way. When asked to imagine an object of some sort we can reliably ask followup questions about details of the objects structure and position to reveal the subject never really had an image of the thing in the first place so much as a reporting behavior where they say they're 'imagining'. Same deal with eye tracking and change blindness experiments, people believe they're seeing everything around them when actually they're oblivious to most everything except a small point of focus.

>>8388180

For every case where someone 'really is' having a deep / vivid subjective 'experience' suppose there's an externally identical case where someone has no such 'experience' and is merely compelled to behave / report in the same way. Then realize you would never have any way of knowing if you were the second case instead of the first since you would be compelled to behave as though you believe you are the first case. Then realize all of our evidence on reported 'experience' suggests a huge difference between what people believe they 'experienced' vs. what actually happened to them. Then realize the second case explains all of our behavior without needing to appeal to the cartesian dualism that most everyone today recognizes as a nonsensical idea. Then you'll understand why 'qualia' and the 'hard problem' are really just misunderstandings of our purely physical reporting behaviors.

>>8388202
>But, being atoms, we're fundamentally incapable of actually being conscious entities.
One would think being made of atoms would be a requisite, rather than a disqualifier.

>>8388786
You guys are only having this discussion because you believe on some level that consciousness is magic or spiritual so you feel the urge to explain it's in fact a illusion of some sort.

>>8388846
Consciousness is essentially magic.

>hurr here look at this assortment of lego blocks; because of their particular arrangement they've become aware of the world around them
In no way is this not equivalent to magic. It makes no difference to use lego blocks, atoms, or stones.

>>8388197
>we have consciousness
I feel real myself, but how do I know you're real?

>>8388483
they never do

all they do is spout a fountain of muh-muh-muh-feelings

>>8388160
But why would anyone care?

Consciousness is not a boolean, and for that matter, is everyone here working off a similar definition of what consciousness is?
Consciousness: The state of being conscious or aware.
I am conscious of the fact that op is a fag.
>>8388370
>to ask how quality comes from atoms is to not understand what atoms are.
based
>>8388741
I'm sorry anon. You forced my hand. I have to sound like a scrub brained hippy now; We are the universe becoming alive and self aware.
>>8388800
Are you saying that we need dualism is needed to be truly self aware? What it sounds like you are saying is so stupid I can't really believe it is being said. People are mechanical systems that are self aware.
The way you know you are experiencing things is by experiencing them. If you are experiencing imaginings of words that have pointers to other words that have pointers to meaning you are still experiencing things: imagined words.
If I say imagine a circle, and you imagine the word 'circle' you haven't gone too far off of what I asked, but you're going to have some trouble finding the circumference of the word 'circle'

>>8388160
Nonsense.

Are you negating your own sensations? If you have sensations you are conscious. The hard problem consists of explaining why we have subjective experiences, We have a consciousness. The question is whether or not our sensations have a subjective dimension.

Is qualia real or not, basically.

>>8388853
I like you. If you assume the material world is real and you are made from it, than it's really easy to extend that assumption to include everyone being real. Plus it makes life way better.

>>8388899
>Are you negating your own sensations? If you have sensations you are conscious.
But do I have sensations or do I mistakenly believe what I have to be sensations?

>>8388899
qualia is the sensory being processed. We can assume safely that everyone has it. We can assume that it will be similar based on how base an experience it is. Words are a way of trying to convey it to another person, although they kinda suck, I believe we will get smarter as people, and make our languages better.

>>8388905
What are you trying to refer to when you say 'sensation'?

>>8388851
You actually believe it's magic and then argument against it being magic - but your logic fails there, you started from a puerile assumption all along.

You also interpret awareness as something external and self-actualized in the universe like a field or something, it's just a complex process nothing more, it arise from the brain not the brain catches it as you imply, or even more comical as you said earlier - the brain knows it exists somewhere and it imitates it for survival...

>>8388915
>as you said earlier - the brain knows it exists somewhere and it imitates it for survival...
I struggle to fathom a less accurate reading of what I posted lol. Is this bait? I'm being baited, aren't I? In the future try to make it less plain if so.

My point is very simply that there seems no mechanism by which simple matter can generate subjective experiences, and that therefore the logical conclusion is that our intuition - that we have subjective experiences - must be false.

>>8388905
Who cares? You need consciousness to believe.

>>8388923
Tell me more about your special matter then.

>I don't know how awareness works therefore it must be absolutely false that we have it.

I'd say that a conscious being can never know if any other being is conscious aside from itself, it can only assume something is conscious because it seems to be
in other words you could be the single human player in a universe of NPCs

>>8388923
>I don't understand how you can get AIDS so my intuition that I have AIDS must be false.

>>8388905
Yes, you are having sensations. You can make the crude distinction between the state of being (not-being) before your own birth and the state of being you are in right now. The difference is one also one of difference of sensation... I highly doubt that you are experience your own existences in the same as you would had you not been born.

>>8388935
>Yes, you are having sensations.
But am I? Humans' purported self-knowledge is not necessarily reliable.

It's well possible I'm a mere signal processor like a router or something; and an arrogant one to boot.

>>8388957
Are you saying you could be fooling me into thinking you are aware? Are you saying you could be fooling yourself into thinking you are aware?
Either way, I'm aware that you are aware of the word 'I' If you just meditate on that word for a while you will become more aware of your self, but having that word and using is enough to prove to me that you are self aware.

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>>8388160
ITT: Americans being baited.

Didn't american schools teach you philosophy, anon?

>>8388957
Doesn't matter. Take your current state of perceiving your surrounding and let that be called 'sensations', basically your perception of things. If perception = sensations, then the lack of sensations is also the lack of perception. You have no sensory input at all if you are lacking sensations. Are you currently in a state of non-existence? If no, you are having sensations. It doesn't matter if you are a brain in a vat, or that you are not perceiving the world as it truly is... all that matters is that you are perceiving something.

Gosh I was feeling kinda depressed about not having a reliable way of determining moral action, and being on the cusp of giving up on trying to help mankind and just doing wagecuck and intellectual hedonism. But then I came to this thread and got reminded that I have self awareness. Life is fucking awesome.

ITT: Babby's first cogito

>>8388967
>Are you saying you could be fooling yourself into thinking you are aware?
Yes, quite.

>>8388971
Man, if only we had a catchy meme-like way to sum that up.
I am perceiving something and I conclude I exist...
Something along those lines.

>>8388985
Then you are thinking, so you are conscious.

>>8388985
I think the problem might be that you are letting too much of your thinking happen in words. In language it is possible to get a contradiction like this.
People fool themselves about things. Me being conscious is a thing. Therefore I could be fooling myself about this!
But if you actually try to think about not being aware you will surely find yourself being a mind aware of it's attempt to think about thinking it is aware even though it is not. Then you can just factor out the other stuff and find your answer: yourself being aware.

>>8388986
Are you telling me that you can exist without being?

No, you cannot conclude that you exist just because you are perceiving something. You can however conclude that you are perceiving something, if you are in fact perceiving something.

If you in turn are perceiving yourself perceiving, you can conclude that you are in fact perceiving yourself perceiving. We label these state of affairs as follows:

Perceiving something = consiousness.
Perceiving yourself perceiving (something) = self-awareness.

If there are no state of affairs then you cannot perceive anything. Thus, you cannot conclude that you are in fact perceiving something, nor that you are in fact perceiving yourself perceiving. The question is not whether or not you exist, the question is whether or not you have a consiousness or not. The only way to conclude that you have a consiousness is if you have a consiousness in the first place, i.e. that particular state of affairs does in fact exist.

I can exist even if there are no perception. I cannot on the other hand say that I have something, i.e. a property that do not exist.

Tell me how something you have never seen looks like?

>>8388160
A few fundamental forces and a literal shit ton of energy was enough to create all the complexities of the universe, including life, as we know them. All that is good and well, but consciousness is where you draw the line?

>>8388197
You're right, it's not debatable. We have the science necessary to explain exactly why there is no such thing as consciousness, but it's just so damned hard for people to accept much like at one time it was hard to accept Earth would not be the center of the universe, not even the solar system. Much like even to this day, many people don't want to accept that we're descended from primates.

Consciousness is nothing more than an emergent property of intelligence, and enough stimulus. It's an illusion that we have a word for, much like free will. Just like a rat is poorly equipped to understand the limitations and workings of its own brain, we're having difficulties doing the same to ourselves from an outside point of view.

>>8389024
He was making a joke about cogito ergo sum, i.e. i think therefore i am/exist.

>>8389028
>We have the science necessary to explain exactly why there is no such thing as consciousness

You are conflating the premises of science with the findings of science. Science investigates objective and observable/measurable phenomena. Obviously it's not able to investigate consciousness, which is subjective. An outside observer can't observe consciousness. It's simply a problem with the method, but the method is not the same as actual reality.

>>8389028
Why are consciousness an illusion? Because it is an emergent property of intelligence, and enough stimulus? Makes no sense to call it an illusion just because of that. If consciousness is an emergent property of intelligence, and enough stimulus, then that is what consciousness is. So it is per definition not an illusion because we do not ascribe an attribute to consciousness which it does in fact not have.

>>8389031
No, I got that. I assumed the reason why he made the joke was because he thought I was expressing a similar sentiment as Descartes. I do not.

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This isn't really an illusion tho. It's just an illusion.

>>8388160
>How is it possible that a vibrating mess of atoms becomes conscious?
well, why would it not?

I never understood this or why it is such a big "problem"

>>8389084
Because we are completely unable to explain how sensations acquire characteristics.

>>8389024
>You can however conclude that you are perceiving something, if you are in fact perceiving something.
This thread is kinda cool. It drives anons to say perfectly true, but hilarious things like this.
>Tell me how something you have never seen looks like?
This part of your argument isn't so good though, cause I'm pretty happy making inferences. The inside of my floor looks like a bunch of old wooden beams. I've never seen them, but I know they look like the many wooden beams I've seen.
>>8389041
I can totally observe consciousness. Conscious things can pretend not to be conscious, but unconscious things can not pretend to be conscious.
>>8389028
>Consciousness is nothing more than an emergent property of intelligence, and enough stimulus. It's an illusion that we have a word for
What did anon mean by this?

>>8389070
What am I supposed to see?

>>8389070
...and this is A and not-A.

>>8389069
It sounds like you do. I think you're tsundere for descartes.

>>8389088
>completely unable
pretty sure sensations are explained quite well. what do you mean?

>>8389089
>I can totally observe consciousness. Conscious things can pretend not to be conscious, but unconscious things can not pretend to be conscious.

You can only observe behaviour, not consciousness.

>>8389101
Yes, but I said "how sensations acquire characteristics".

>>8389093

This: >>8389097

>>8389088
No we aren't... matter interacts with other matter. Systems are built from those interactions.
I was going to insult you're intelligence, but actually I find this topic of discussion really cool.
Nice dubs btw.
>>8389097
... and op isn't really a faggot. They're just a faggot.

>>8389089
>The inside of my floor looks like a bunch of old wooden beams

Haha. Not what I asked you to do. You are making an inductive inference based on prior experiences.Describe a non-existent object, which are not composed of objects you have already encountered. You cannot do this, because it is considered impossible.

>>8389103
see
>>8388902

>>8389124
Assuming consciousness from behaviour is not observing consciousness.

>>8389115
>matter interacts with other matter. Systems are built from those interactions.
This is a non-explanation. How does material interactions cause these characteristics of sensations?

I'm wondering if you just don't see this as a problem because you don't read. Are you familiar with the literature?

>>8389106
I know. Still dont know what you mean. It is the "completely unable" part that irks me

>>8389133
>This is a non-explanation
why?
>How does material interactions cause these characteristics of sensations?
Very complex neuroscientific processes

>>8389143
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/consciousness/#ExpQueHowConExi
http://consc.net/papers/facing.html

>>8389089
>>8389060
The point is that our definition of consciousness - at least the cultural definition - has similar connotations as the concept of a soul: In short, something so vastly unique and special, that it's seemingly supernatural. I'm not going to go over the why's of it point by point, but you get my meaning, I'm sure.

What I'm saying, then, is that consciousness is not anything like that at all, it's not even all that hard to define, really. As you increase the capacity and performance of any neural network or intelligence enough, it will move from simple basic instincts, into reasoning and memory not unlike the lower primates. Increase it even further, and it will become able to understand the concept of time, past, and future.. cause and effect. Together with the reasoning skills and memory, this higher intelligence now has the ability for far more complex thinking, and will become able to create and test concepts and their consequences in the mind itself, by simulating what they know the reality is like. It has the ability to reflect, to conceptualize, and to understand and handle abstract information. All of the above would invariably evolve into something like what we experience as consciousness. A simulation, if you will, of the intelligence studying itself and its surroundings.

So that consciousness is just an unavoidable illusion of what is ultimately the byproduct of an extremely powerful biological computer simply doing its calculations and acting upon them as they have been programmed to.

Just as the hardware that is the brain is the product of genetics, its neurological structure and chemical balance... the software that is your personality knowledge and experience was all programmed by all the previous stimuli in your life.

We are all, essentially, nothing more than an extremely complex reflex to the lessons of life, as interpreted by a supercomputer.

>>8389133
>the literature
What's "the literature" you are referring to?
Also, how is this a non-explanation? It's an extremely broad overview, and it makes the assumption that minds are matter based, rather than minds being the base of the universe.
Are you asking why red looks red? that's the feel of red flowing into the part of your mind that discerns red.

>>8389180
It's not a byproduct. They are the same thing.

>>8389157
>Very complex neuroscientific processes
That's not really an explanation though. Saying 'the brain does it' is not a description of the mechanism by which matter can be conscious.

>The cs people are getting real close to making computers think... I didn't think it was possible because qualia/dualism/soul/etc.
"Does that mean we can create machines with qualia/dualism/soul/etc?"
>no, it probably means that humans are mindless machines like computers.
>>8389210
It kinda seems like the question you are asking is answered by "go study brain science"
Surely you must know that the detail that can be explained in a single thread on 4chan is not the same as prolonged study on a subject.

>>8389176
Yeah, I know this. I just dont see what the real deal is. There are many progresses in neuroscience and we are getting closer and closer to understand how the brain functions. Some of the points are just philosophical circlejerk and can be explained by the consciuosness being pretty much an illusion

>>8389234
*big deal

>>8389028

>A few fundamental forces and a literal shit ton of energy was enough to create all the complexities of the universe, including life, as we know them. All that is good and well, but consciousness is where you draw the line?

^This exactly. It's pretty obvious what's going on when you consider this supposedly mysterious, non-physical, 'hard problem' topic people make such a big deal about is their own appraisal of themselves as a phenomenon. That's a pretty huge bias there to want to inflate what this phenomenon is. Much more likely than it really meriting an explanation that goes beyond the ones that account for everything else in the physical universe is that we're just physical structures like everything else and we're compelled to speak as though our behavior is a 'hard problem' because we're biased towards interpretations that make us out to be much more important than we are.

Atoms don't need 'free will' or consciousness to direct their movement. We can tell how they will move by applying formulae of physics. If the parts are going to move the same way per physics regardless of any ghostly intervention from 'you' then we can safely consider these ideas convenient fictions of reporting behavior rather than actual forces. Just because you think you see something doesn't mean anything more than the fact you were compelled to engage in the behavior of acting and speaking in response to stimuli. There is no need to suppose there was an 'experience' of sight on top of those behaviors. It's good enough for your brain to just make you act and report as though the convenient fiction were a real thing.

>>8388160
>consciousness
Doesnt exist. Please go back to /x/ with this spiritual nonsense.

>>8389205
Well, yes. Exactly this. I'm putting that on the late night, thanks for fixing it for me.

>>8389234
>consciousness is an illusion

This again? This doesn't explain anything because it's contradictory. An illusion is an experience that doesn't correspond to reality. If you experience an illusion you are still experiencing, so consciousness exists and doesn't exist.

>>8389263

That's only what an illusion is if you choose to define the word in that one specific way. All you've established by bringing up that particular definition for the word is that there are other examples of sloppy language that assume a concept of 'experience' that doesn't really exist.

>>8389237
>Just because you think you see something doesn't mean anything more than the fact you were compelled to engage in the behavior of acting and speaking in response to stimuli.
Found the zombie.

>>8388929
that's called "the other minds problem" in philosophy of mind. The other two are "the mind-body problem" and "the hard problem of consciousness". We are full of fucking problems.

>>8389274

By definition a philosophical zombie would identical to and indistinguishable from the alleged non-zombies with the only difference being a lack of 'qualia'. If you think you can tell whether someone else or even your own self is or isn't a zombie then you're not understanding the terms of the hypothetical.

>>8389263
>>8389270

Merriam Webster's second definition for 'illusion' is nice and non-assumptive of 'experience' as a though it were a real thing and not just a spook of language:

>an incorrect idea : an idea that is based on something that is not true

>>8389237
>Humans are too self important, we are made of the physical universe. Therefore we suck.
I dunno anon, I think being the matter that thinks is a pretty big deal.
>Atoms aren't directed by minds!
When my finger atoms are directed to type on the keyboard atoms I assure you it is my consciousness directing it, and furthermore it's barely ghostly at all!

>>8389263
See >>8389180

If the word illusion doesn't work for you, then I have another analogy for you. If our brains and our intellect are the computer that drives everything we are, then our consciousness is like a sandbox environment created by this computer so that it can study the abstract, and reflect on itself. Our consciousness is much like a simulation, a tool for our brains to handle more complex information.

Go google up a lecture or two on free will, Sam Harris has a good one for instance. Basically, every action we take, every opinion we have, comes from outside of our consciousness. These urges, reactions, needs, thoughts, feelings, experiences, are not in our control. They come from the brain, or the computer, and we as our conscious selves simply experience them and are forced to act upon them. In a similar fashion, our reflections and the result of our complex thought processes are basically just output back into the computer as the products of this simulation, which is then used to calculate further action.

In basic psychology, we are slaves to superego and ID, the end result of patterns and structures preceding our own influence. This is not the first time the nature of consciousness has been intuited by processes of simple logic.

But as said, people simply have so much trouble accepting it. There is something fundamentally insulting, and troubling, in the idea that we are not as free and in control, as we would want to believe.

No need to worry though. Even if a computer simulates a computer which is aware of being a simulation by a computer... it doesn't change anything.

Consciousness is an illusion fags should read about methodological skepticism.

>>8389302

If you had perfect knowledge of every atom in the room you're in including the ones that make up your body all your typing would be predictable purely through physics. Your 'consciousness' would have no role in solving these physics problems.

>>8389310

Dualism fags should read something written after the 17th century. Nowadays when you bring up cartesian anything in a discussion about the mind it's to point out someone is doing something wrong with an argument.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cartesian_theater

>>8389314
Yeah. So?

>>8389314
Wait, no fuck that, my consciousness is defined physically. It is what I refer to when I talk about the cluster of brain atoms somehow thinking about things such as what a massive bundle of sticks op is.

>>8389325
I talk about cartesian robots most of the time. I was pretty confused at first desu.

>>8389314
Well, yes and no.

No, because QM has literally ages ago shown us that the unlike in classical physics, the universe is not deterministic. You can in fact NOT foresee events with absolute certainty, even if you know the position, velocity and charge of every single particle in the universe.

But yes, in that even if the subatomic world is non-deterministic and nothing but potentials, in these gigantic scales where you and I exist, the differences compared to a deterministic approach are so negligible they make no practical difference whatsoever. Not in the scope or time frame of a single individual starting and finishing an action in a room, anyway.

Some proponents of a consciousness and free will actually do rely on QM to explain away the problem. Which is so very amusing, because where they think they're replacing determinism with free will, they're actually just replacing it with randomness instead.

Point being, there is no version of a reality with the current understanding we have of our universe, that could POSSIBLY allow the existence of a true, free will, or this classical interpretation of a human consciousness. Not a single one.

>>8389347
>>8389352

Your brain atoms 'think' by blindly following physics. You're not any more willing anything to happen than a rock rolling down a hill is willing its movement.

>>8389357
free will : the power of acting without the constraint of necessity or fate; the ability to act at one's own discretion.
free will : the power of acting in a way you will not act.
I think the concept of free will seems to be broken yes, but the ability to act at one's own discretion is still there, even though the power to act as one will not act is not.
>>8389360
My brains atoms do not think. They are the process of thinking. That process is me willing. As such my atoms are my will, and they will me to influence my atoms.
Rocks have a pretty strong will to roll down hill desu.

>>8389325
>even after its ghostly dualism has been denounced and exorcized
Lol, how does consciousness work? Well y'see, theres a smaller consciousness inside it doing all the work.

http://consc.net/papers/facing.html
>Why is it that when our cognitive systems engage in visual and auditory information-processing, we have visual or auditory experience
Aren't those the same thing desuka?

>>8389375

Since the prediction (probabilistic prediction if we want to be extra-accurate and account for tiny qm scale uncertainty) of what your body will do can be obtained entirely from physics applied to your constituate atoms in the same way literally any other set of one or more atoms can be predicted, then the idea of a 'you' is superfluous. It contributes nothing to the prediction. And we wouldn't call physics 'you' either because it's the same exact physics every other atom in the universe is described by.

>Rocks have a pretty strong will to roll down hill desu.

Schopenhauer pls leave.

>>8389381

That's the point. It shows how nonsensical dualistic thinking is by pointing out the implicit endless regress of believing there's something in your head that 'experiences' things.

>>8389263
It is not a contradiction. Just because you experience it, doesnt mean that it cant be an illusion. I cant follow your logic there.
It is an illusion in the way, that you have no real agency in the physical world, "you" are just the OS of some cognitive functions, a survival feature.

>>8388160
No one really knows why electric chemical messages can cause animate matter to suddenly move and perceive the reality around it. The simplest form of life are basically microscopic masses that feed on the elements to produce energy to continue existing.

>>8389392
Sounds like you just described the process for duplicating me into a computer. I still care about myself as I did before even though you have a copy. If you are simulating that copy than I bet it cares for itself as well.
>the idea of a 'you' is superfluous.
Like fuck. Are you suggesting we should stop drawing boundaries around conceptual objects? You're not some kinda Taoist are you?

>>8389395
Except that it's a process of meat bits.
>>8389408
Just because people are mechanical doesn't mean they don't have agency. They are agency machines. Things with agency survive better. Bizarre.

>>8388197
>because you could not debate the issue without... yup... consciousness

Sorry buddyboy, but arguing that being able to argue about consciousness doesn't prove consciousness, see Turing test. Our egos and conciousness may be an illusion of memory and instinct.

>>8389428
>Just because people are mechanical doesn't mean they don't have agency
It means exactly that. So, you believe in free will?

>>8388370
What does Hofstadter discuss? Because it sounds as though you've partially dismissed the importance of the correlation between a physical structure and the experience of the mind.

>>8389511
Determinism doesn't imply free will doesn't exist. That's a fringe POV.

>>8389309
Wtf, i was talking about consciousness not free will.

>>8389408
Look, if consciousness is an illusion, you are still being conscious of the illusion, so you still have consciousness. You need consciousness to have experiences.

>>8389520
Wiki says he thought it was cool to think of all the universe as base will made manifest. Also he was sexist, but grew out of it.

>>8389583

It depends on how you define illusion. You're choosing to use the definition that assumes there's an 'experience', which doesn't actually probe anything except that this particular definition would also be based on an illusion. Just because we have the word 'sunrise' for example isn't a good argument in favor of the claim for geocentrism. Predictably, illusions can be seen in what ends up as the different words and definitions of our language. A better, and completely valid modern day definition for 'illusion' is merriam webster's second one for the word:

>an incorrect idea : an idea that is based on something that is not true

http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/illusion

>>8389511
I think free will is trying to cobble together the concepts of 'capable of decision making' and 'capable of doing what will not be done'
Obviously the latter is broken, but also obviously the former is a thing people have.

>>8389615
Well, ok, so you're simply saying we don't have consciousness, then? You're not saying that the brain somehow creates this elaborate lie that we are conscious?

>>8389629

You have behavior that references a fiction known as 'consciousnes' or 'experience' or 'I' because it's a simpler way to behave in a productive way than if you instead had to deal with the actual physical details underlying how your body and its behavior work.

>>8389638
It's easy to assume non-consciousness if you use third person characteristics. However, as I actually utter (or write) these phrases I am posessing consciousness of it.

I also think it's weird to say "having to deal with" the physical details. What does that mean? How do you deal with something then, just without consciousness?

>>8389583
>you are still being conscious of the illusion
thats the thing. you are not really. one can understand that it is an illusion but stil getting fooled by it

>>8389644

Just because a body is compelled to insist something is true doesn't mean it is. 'You' would have no way of telling if 'you' really do have some magic / immediate first person 'experience' or if 'you' have just been programmed to behave in reference to a convenient fiction. Human reporting on what we've taken in with our senses is found notoriously flawed and misjudged in all the studies that have ever been done on them.

>>8389239
found the zombie

>>8388538
It's a pointless thread full of /x/ tier shitposting and pseudo science.

>>8389734
I think you should reference these studies. Change blindness as mentioned earlier doesn't have any implication for the actual existence of conscious experience, only for the correspondence between conscious experience and reality.

Seems to me that people is confusing being consciuss with having souls

Being conscious is just being aware of our own existence, thus even if we are nothing but the result of interactions between matter and energy we are still conscious.

Having a soul means that conciousness/sapience is a basic component of the universe on the level of energy, mass and fundamental forces.

We are clearly conscious, we have to be to come up with the term on the first place

I don't really see what all the fuss is about anyway, it's irrelevant. We are. We think. We act. That's all that matters.

Now if souls were real tho, that'd be some seriously cool shit

>>8389520
Hofstadter does an amazing job at abstracting what exactly a physical system can be self reflective/ representative.
What I was getting at was that it is entirely possible, and imo probable, that the aspect of quality corresponds with a particular physical configuration. The kind of system that hofstadter describes seems to fit the bill nicely.

>>8390659

> ummmm u dont agree with me PSUEDO SCEINTIST

Fuck off, if your ideas are too precious to be talked about, no matter on what side you are, then perhaps /sci/ shouldn't be your board. Consciousness is a scientific topic, whether you like it or not, are there are actual discussions on it that don't use religion

>>8391585
>Consciousness is a scientific topic
It isn't. Everyone here is talking philosophy not science.
There's no falsifiability or even attempts to evoke the scientific method
>>>/x/

>>8391596

> It isn't

you do know that neuroscience is a, you know, science, right?

> durr philosophy means nothing

science is a philosophy

>>8391611
>> durr philosophy means nothing
nice strawman
> you do know that neuroscience is a, you know, science, right?
too bad the hard problem of consciousness isn't part of neuroscience.
There's not even any neuroscience in this thread.
Usually philosophy posters at least attempt to point to some article in a neuroscience journal that mentions consciousness.
>>>/x/

>>8391616

> nice strawman
> "Everyone here is talking philosophy not science"

praise dawkins

>>8391622
You have read the title of this board right?
This isn't a philosophy board. We have perfectly good boards for that.
>>>/his/ and >>>/lit/ and >>>/x/
I'm sorry that these concepts confuse you, but philosophy isn't science.

>>8391626

consciousness is a perfectly valid scientific topic dude

philosophy just happens to be understood by some scientific-minded people too, so we discuss it and how it challenges some scientific explanations that happen to be shaky

>>8391640
>consciousness is a perfectly valid scientific topic dude
Prove it.

>>8388160
This sort of attitude is why people who think the empirical method is all we need in life should be shot.

t. Physicist

>>8391721

>People should be shot because reality is offensive to me

Really makes you think.

>>8391726
>People mean literally everything they ever express, especially on 4chan

What a startling revelation

Test

>>8388160
>Personally I find the simplest explanation is that humans and other creatures are not really conscious, but merely emulate the behaviors a conscious thing would have.

if you consider that an explanation then you haven't understood the hard problem. A vibrating mess of atoms can have all the behaviour of a conscious being, all explainable from a third person perspective. But your own first person subjective experience cannot be explained by the same means. If it's just all about behaviour, why doesn't all those chemical reactions go on in the dark, without the observer?

>>8391611
>science is a philosophy
a flower growing out of a heap of shit
doesn't make it a piece of shit

>>8388160
Byproduct of an increasingly complex system of interactions.

>>8388160
start with the soft problem of unconsciousness

>>8389285
We're using a different kind of zombie here. A physical zombie that doesn't have consciousness. It doesn't changes much of its behaviour, except that it cannot process the word consciousness properly, or behave like it would if he understood/had consciousness

>>8392429
>But your own first person subjective experience cannot be explained by the same means.
That's precisely my point.

>If it's just all about behaviour, why doesn't all those chemical reactions go on in the dark, without the observer?
That's what I'm saying happens.

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>dumb niggers who don't know about the soul because they don't do daily yoga for years and so they are dumb and idiots

>>8392429

>If it's just all about behaviour, why doesn't all those chemical reactions go on in the dark, without the observer?

They do, you just don't realize it because you're compelled to engage in behavior where you act as though the convenient fiction of '1st person experience' actually happens. All that's required to make it seem real to you is that your brain engage in reporting behavior that says "this seems real." It's easier for people to go about their daily business with that useful lie than it would be for people to deal with everything in terms of all the complicated physical processes that are really responsible for our behavior. Saying "ow, that hurts" is a more useful reaction than saying "stimuli have interacted with my nerves and triggered pain behavior in me" even though the latter is a more accurate description of what happened than the former. '1st person experience' and the concept of 'self' are the cartoonish metaphorical story versions of the purely physical behaviors that constitute the situations these story versions gloss over.

>>8392733
Then you need to explain more what you mean by emulated. If it still feels like something to be you, then the "emulated consciousness" is still actual subjective experience, which means the hard problem is still there.

>>8392808
Again, you're only explaining the behavior of why conscious beings act conscious. That isn't the question. The question is why it feels like something at all. Pain can be compared to a complicated sensory alarm system getting triggered in a building and going off, yet we don't think it is something like to be the alarm. Why is it something like to be us? If you think the alarm scenario is identical to what pain is for us, then you're denying the existance of subjective experience, which is just completely insane, and would lead me to believe you lack subjective experience.

>>8392870

>you're only explaining the behavior of why conscious beings act conscious.

Because in reality that's all there is. Just because you're compelled to insist you're really having 'experiences' doesn't mean you are.

>The question is why it feels like something at all.

Your question is premised on a linguidtic spook. You don't actually 'feel' things, you're just compelled to engage in behavior and reporting where you reference the convenient fiction of 'pain'. We don't have evidence for anything other than physical cause and effect stimuli based reactions and reporting behavior. The fact this reporting behavior involved speaking in terms of an abstract / extra-physical reference point known as 'pain' just means you were compelled to reference it, not that 'it' is a thing that exists in objective reality. You don't actually have the abstract quality of 'fiveness' embedded in your right hand's fingers either. Human behavior is filled with examples like this where a non-real pseudo-object is referenced to make it easier to communicate every day occurances. No matter how 'real' you're compelled to insist these non-real pseudo-objects are, you will just be submitting the same bad piece of evidence over and over again: 'I know this feeling is real because it feels real.' Of course you will say it 'feels real.' That's the premise you're programmed to believe and act in terms of. It is evidence of nothing.

>Pain can be compared to a complicated sensory alarm system getting triggered in a building and going off, yet we don't think it is something like to be the alarm.

Just because you're compelled to speak in terms of there being a 'what it is to be like X' doesn't mean there actually is a 'what it is to be like X' in reality. What it means is you're compelled to speak that way.

>would lead me to believe you lack subjective experience.

I do and so does everyone else including you. It's a spook of language, not a real thing.

After reading this thread I have concluded that I am the only one conscious.

>>8388160
>How is it possible that a vibrating mess of atoms becomes conscious?


Well, when a mommy and a daddy love eachother very much, they give eachother a "Special Hug", and there is so much love in that hug that it produces an ENTIRE NEW PERSON.

>>8392734
what are real benefits of yoga, i want to get into this shit mane

>>8393263
it's time you stopped trolling the poor soul.

>>8396351

You're the troll. That post is accurate, brainlet.

>>8396367
No it's just bullshit. However, you nearly convinced me there are actually people who are not conscious. So kudos to you.

>>8396397

>you nearly convinced me there are actually people who are not conscious

It's an abstraction of language, not a real thing, brainlet. Nobody has some pile of 'consciousness' sitting there that can be taken apart and looked at like an object.

Take literally any alleged 'experience' you believe you're having and I'll show you an identical situation comprised 100% of physical reactions and behavior that you would never be able to distinguish from 'real experience' were you going through it. All your brain has to do is give you the punchline: 'I'm experiencing something!' That's sufficient to make you believe you 'experienced' something. There isn't any need for it to conjure non-physical phantasms for you to 'actually experience.' It just needs to get you to behave a certain way and believe certain things. And since we know your brain is fully capable of getting you to believe literally anything, it can certainly get you to believe you're 'experiencing' things even though there isn't any such thing as 'experience' physical reality. 'Experience' is really just a tool the brain has to make you behave certain ways and profess certain beliefs in a way that's beneficial to your survival (e.g. pain behavior keeps you from doing things that will injure or kill you) without needing to expose you to the messy wiring and cause / effect transactions going on under the hood. It says 'Hey buddy! Focus on this 100% real abstraction and do those things I conditioned you to do over the years!' and you accept it at face value even though it would make no sense as a real world thing and we have zero evidence of it existing as a real world thing because you're a brainlet.

>>8396397
>>8396448

tl;dr if you or any other qualia-believers want to have an argument in favor of what you're claiming, you'll need to explain why there's no way possible a person not having 'real experience' could be made to merely believe and behave as though they're having 'real experience.' As long as there's a way for a brain to make someone certain they're having it even though they aren't then nothing you claim to have 'experienced' will count as evidence in favor of it being real. 'I know it's real because it feels so real!' isn't a compelling argument.

>>8396448
>Take literally any alleged 'experience' you believe you're having and I'll show you an identical situation comprised 100% of physical reactions and behavior that you would never be able to distinguish from 'real experience' were you going through it.

Physical reactions are not experience, they may be a cause for experience though. It also doesn't matter if the subject of an experience is real of not, it is still consciously experienced.

What is this "you" you are talking about, the one which the brain convinces? Where is it located?

>>8396465
>if you or any other qualia-believers want to have an argument in favor of what you're claiming, you'll need to explain why there's no way possible a person not having 'real experience' could be made to merely believe and behave as though they're having 'real experience.'

It could be the case that this is indeed possible and I cannot argue in favor other than that I must say I have conscious experience. From my point of view it is the most essential thing there is and every believe I have, everything I know, every information I receive is through consciousness. I cannot guarantee that any other person has conscious experience but I believe they do because they are similar.

>>8396467

>Physical reactions are not experience

That's only true in the sense that 'experience' is a linguistic spook and not a real thing. Physical reactions are the real thing underlying the convenient fiction of 'experience'.

>It also doesn't matter if the subject of an experience is real of not, it is still consciously experienced.

Assume for the sake of argument you personally do have 'experience' as a real thing. Can you suppose the existence of some other person who doesn't have what you have at all but acts exactly the same as you externally to where nobody could tell the difference? And can you suppose this person would insist over and over just like you have that his 'experiences' are 'real'? If so, why are you so certain you're the one having the real 'experience' and not the one merely being made to believe and behave *like* you're having it? You wouldn't be able to tell, that's the point. Your brain just has to send out the command 'you are having an experience' and you will believe you're really having it.

Let's try a different example: Suppose there's a secure area in the company you work at that's locked down via retinal scan. And suppose someone who shouldn't have access gets in, not by having the right retina, but by getting into the computer controlling the retinal scan and merely submitting the 'scan successful!' message. The machine would treat a legitimate successful scan as identical to this trick success message that bypassed the actual scanning part.

Now if you want to tell the difference between legitimate scans and trick success messages, it's possible you could, maybe by noting some other details that would be present with a real retinal scan but wouldn't be with the trick success message. But how would you be able to tell the difference in the case of 'real experience' vs. just a trick that gets you to behave a certain way including convincing you you've undergone 'real experience'? If there is a way, great. If not, it's bullshit.

>>8396467
>>8396501

tl;dr; I'm open to the possibility of 'qualia' / 'experience' being a real thing that we'll eventually be able to learn about and explain in terms of a new 'physics' of non-physical magic, but we have zero evidence of that and a perfectly identical alternative explanation structured purely in terms of the physical reality we have shitloads of evidence for.

I would stop worshiping science.
And start praying to God.
Even the rich know it's coming :)

>>8396501
There's no way to tell a sufficiently convincing illusion apart from reality, if that is what you mean. However that does not matter to consciousness. Consciousness is just information made into an experience.

>Your brain just has to send out the command 'you are having an experience'
Where does the brain send out the command to?

>>8396512

>Be a timeless eldritch abomination
>Decide to create a universe and life
>Intervene only very briefly at first to communicate a book of stories and laws
>Will come back in the future and take the 144,000 most submissive and dedicated worshipers and bring them back to the House of All Tears where they will suffer for all eternity through every manner of rape and torture there is to satisfy my infinite boredom
>My name is God

>>8396533
You don't understand.
God gave many chances.
Now you will suffer for your parents misfortunes just like the bible says.
If you're parents are God fearing people you have nothing to worry about correct?

>>8396532

>There's no way to tell a sufficiently convincing illusion apart from reality, if that is what you mean. However that does not matter to consciousness.

It does matter. Because the illusion does everything you need to do in order for it to be selected for as an evolutionary trait. And the illusion is explained solely in terms of actual physics. These qualities make it the more likely explanation for what 'consciousness' really is.

>Where does the brain send out the command to?

The rest of your body. So you'll say and do things in reference to that command e.g. shouting 'ow, that hurt!' and squeezing your foot because you stepped on a lego.

>>8396536

Enjoy being an alien sex slave, anon. God will really appreciate how submissive you've been for him.

>>8396510
we can explain the physical world pretty well, I agree, however we have no idea of what consciousness is. We have occupied ourselves with it for about 2500 years, and even now it seems we have come no step closer. hence the name "the hard problem".

>>8396543

>we have no idea of what consciousness is

Which would make a lot of sense if you suppose there isn't any such thing to begin with and that it's just a trick evolution's selected for where we're certain this thing is 'there' and behave in reference to 'it' but the behavior and the trick was all there ever was.

Modern science already deals with 'consciousness' by focusing on just behavior and the physical bodily reactions that can be examined as real, objective phenomena. Nobody does studies on what you 'experience'. They do studies on what you *report*.

The innocent have nothing to worry about because some of you were indoctrinated.
The rich have lied to you for to long.
Them and their families will be judged.

>>8396537
I have come to the conclusion that you have not understood what the hard problem of consciousness is truly about.

It does not matter if a situation is an illusion, it does not matter what the bodily reaction is, it does not matter if there is an evolutionary trait or not.

When I step on a lego, it is as you said. you could very well explain the whole thing in physical terms, that an electrical signal travels to the brain, the brain interprets the signal and an appropriate response is formulated and processed by the body. This is all fine and dandy and we are all happy. However, the whole situation is accompanied by a sense of pain.

And none of the knowledge we have can explain what this sense of pain is.

>>8396571
EXACTLY.
You are starting to get it.
Go with God.

>>8388582
It's a joke.

We need to accurately define what is consciousness in first instance before speculating about its nature, can you answer this? probably not.. then, what is the point of this thread?

what a bunch of pretentious asshats

>>8396553
Let's have a little experiment then shall we. If you just focus on what is now, what can you truly be sure of?

That you are breathing oxygen? Have you every examined the composition of air itself, have you seen the O2 molecule? No, you just believe it, you aren't sure.

That all those people you know are real? They could just be your imagination. Or a false memory. How can you be sure your friend "Tom" exists, right now, without you seeing him. So you just believe you know these people.

That the world outside of your room is real? It is just a believe, it could very well be an illusion your brain came up with to calm you down.

That the screen you see right now in front of you is real? Could just be an illusion.
Are these really photons you're seeing right now? Do your hands really touch that table? Do you even have hands? Can you be absolutely sure you even have a brain? Have you ever looked? Or do you just believe? So what is the only thing you can be sure of right now?

The only thing you can be sure of is that right now, you feel pressure, you see things, you hear things. That you have perceptions. Your consciousness is subject to these perceptions. And that's the only thing there for you right now.

>>8396571

>what the hard problem of consciousness is truly about

What it's about is people (mostly just philosophers) mistaking a linguistic / behavioral abstraction for a real thing. Marvin Minsky was (just died January of this year) a very well respected cognitive scientist and he would make the same arguments I've made against your belief in this 'hard problem'.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SNWVvZi3HX8

You can read more about his explanation for how this works in the book 'The Emotion Machine' which he made available on his website:

http://web.media.mit.edu/~minsky/


>However, the whole situation is accompanied by a sense of pain.

It's accompanied by your *report* of a sense of a pain. And your belief in a sense of pain, that belief being a longer term pattern that plays out in the network of your brain and gets you to continue doing and saying certain things forward into the future.

>And none of the knowledge we have can explain what this sense of pain is.

Because the thing you're looking for isn't real. None of the knowledge we have will explain what the fiveness of your right hand's fingers are either because fiveness isn't a real thing, it's a linguistic abstraction. It gets you to behave in certain ways which are useful. It gets you to speak / believe certain things which are useful. And insofar as 'it' exists at all, 'it' only exists as the trick that gets you to speak / believe / do things a certain way.

>>8396592

>The only thing you can be sure of is that right now, you feel pressure, you see things, you hear things. That you have perceptions.

You have no reason to assume you have those things. You only have a belief, not evidence. Strength of belief doesn't turn that belief into evidence. I don't care how insanely, vividly real you think your perceptions are, that doesn't mean they're anything more than a process that gets you to behave and insist in reference to an abstraction that isn't real but has convenient benefits as something to behave around.

>>8396600
Welp, then it may be as well that nothing is real, nothing exists.

>>8396604

In treating the physical world and mathematics seriously, we seem to get insights which can be used to build elaborate tools and systems like the network of computers we're apparently communicating through right now. That's good enough reason to tentatively believe something's there as far as physics, maths, and empirical science in general are concerned. In contrast, treating the 'experiential' world seriously, while helping us along in our mundane daily transactions at the personal level, hasn't formed the basis of any useful tools or systems at the level of collective science / technology. We have every reason to believe it isn't something we should take seriously. A huge tip-off to this is how 'immediate' and 'irreducible' people report it to be. These are exactly the qualities I would expect out of a linguistic abstraction. Something which simply "is" and yields no insights upon further inspection. A common way we have of assessing the reality of an apparent object is to poke at it, take it apart, get other people to corroborate its existence, check what we think we're noticing about it with what a machine picks up on it, compare what we think it's doing with what we predict it would do based on the laws of physics, etc. All things that don't check out when applied to the 'qualia' spook.

>>8388551
>>8388481
>>8396579
>Hurr. I am not really retarded guys. I just pretended to be retarded. It's a joke! I trolled you! Haha.

GTFO and never come back.

>>8388160
How the fuck is this a logical premise ?
According to what standard would our consciousness attempt to emulate its function from ?
e are conscious beings, unless you you're admitting you met a higher being wear upon our intellectual template would be based upon, then I'd have no problem with that.

>>8398676

>According to what standard would our consciousness attempt to emulate its function from ?

Can you clarify what you're asking here?

I'm not op, but I mostly agree with him. "Consciousness" isn't actually a thing that exists in reality, it's just a sloppy metaphor for the actual reactions and behaviors people have in response to stimuli. No surgeon is going to hear a song "in your head" by cutting open your brain and listening to it, just as they won't see your "mental images." These are metaphorical descriptions of processes which are in actuality purely behavioral. You behave in certain ways when you "hear" things or "see" things, and rather than us needing to discuss things in terms of stimuli and behavior, we're conditioned to speak in terms of a ghostly double of the physical world where immediate and irreducible "experiences" happen.

Read Gilbert Ryle and Wittgenstein for more details on this explanation of "consciousness."

What's to say that there is only 1 stream of subjective experience in your brain? What if you're only one of the many systems that have experiences, and the actions you consider subconscious is still subjectively experienced in another part of your brain? That would mean that there are many conscious entities in your brain that are all experiencing reading this text in one way or another, depending on what functions that part of the brain is concerned with. Suicide then becomes a very direct ethical concern considering a single conscious entitiy is not in charge of making every decision.

This idea begs a question of identity. The thoughts and actions of your person would therefore not longer be you. The only thing that is truly yours is your conscious experience, which is arguably still true even if there is only 1 stream of consciousness, but this illustrates that reality in a clearer way.

>>8388160
how are you able to think such if you are not conscious? Introspection is something which required consciousness to be attained.

>>8388160
>How is it possible that a vibrating mess of atoms becomes conscious?
Because oversimplification disqualifies the premise.

>>8388160
It isn't conscious though. It's just a pile of atoms that responds to interactions like anything else. The place you were born, the language you speak, all predetermined and out of your control. The language you think in was put there by others. Concubines is just an idea. A feeling that humans happen to have. But they are machines, that function brilliantly, but machines nonetheless. The brain is like an atomic level engendering feet that functions as a logical "computer" basically. You only think you're conscious.

This entire thread is so stupid, and it shows that philosophy is stupid

We have the experience of being consciouss and no proof of the oposite, yet some brilliantly stupid philosopher thought that consciousness is something else, something that is actually fictional, something of which we have no proof and no reason to think of, and everyone went crazy trying to find out why we have emulated consciousness

It's literally the exact opposite of science, it's someone making up something that doesn't exist and trying to find out how can it be real

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>tfw americans try to counterargument a millenial ontological and epistemological problem
The only answer is Nietzsche, brainlets. That's why the metaphysical circlejerk stopped when he published his notes.

>>8388160
/Dennet is an ass

>>8398693
>Consciousness" isn't actually a thing that exists in reality, it's just a sloppy metaphor for the actual reactions and behaviors people have in response to stimuli.

That is not a good argument. Consciousness is a label for a property with certain attributes. Consciousness is this thing you are experience, you cannot say that it does not really exist - because that is false no matter how you see it. You are arguing semantics.

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I'd like to argue that I have a conscience, but I'm very aware that there's no way to prove that and I dont think there ever will be.

It doesn't make any damn sense to me at all, conscience defies reason and logic and I still believe it's real. The worst part of it is that it turns into a really nasty ethical dilemma when you start thinking of AI (as in, where does the concience go between each clock cycle?) but then again I can't tell you where my conscience goes between each planck length, or basically in the timeslices between each "event" happening in my brain.

Conscience is so frustrating because I think there are real ethical dilemmas here, but it's just so utterly inapproachable.

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>>8388160
>The only answer is Nietzsche, brainlets.

>>8399454
>nietzsche is le nihilism xD
>what a fedora amIrite guise? lol!!1
Is this the average /sci/tizen?

>>8399459
>bring up Nietzsche for no real reason relevant to thread topic and use edgy words like "brainlet"
>expect people to not call you a faggot
Wew

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>>8399464
>I don't know what's the relation
So, you just got triggered by the "brainlet" word?

Brainlet detected.

>>8399468
Go to /pol/ fedora

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>>8399470
No, you go back to pol brainlet.
>>>/8gag/

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Sure is full on Dennett shitposting in here.

>>8399472
>>8399468
>>8399338
>>8396448
>>8396367
Why do you feel the need to add insults to all your arguments? Are you insecure about your own intelligence?

>>8399590
>his argument is against the bait part of my post
Nice one, brainlet.

>>8399433

>you cannot say that it does not really exist - because that is false no matter how you see it

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

>>8399590

>he thinks Dennett is wrong

Read this entire book:

http://s-f-walker.org.uk/pubsebooks/pdfs/Gilbert_Ryle_The_Concept_of_Mind.pdf

>>8389451
I always hated that "consciousness is an illusion" bullshit. If it's an illusion, something has to be experiencing that illusion which would be conscious by definition. Shitty attempt from scientists to explain something science can't.

>>8400847
When did he reject it?

>>8400831

> If it's an illusion, something has to be experiencing that illusion which would be conscious by definition.
>by definition

Key phrase there is "by definition." There's more than one definition for "illusion."

http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/illusion

>: something that looks or seems different from what it is : something that is false or not real but that seems to be true or real
>: an incorrect idea : an idea that is based on something that is not true

First one would fit what you're suggesting, but the second one is just as valid a definition and would require no "experiencing" party. Also, using word definitions as evidence in favor of your argument isn't a very sound practice since language will reflect popular beliefs regardless of how right or wrong they are; that's where language comes from is popular culture. Just because we have the phrase "bless you" for when people sneeze doesn't mean sneezing is evidence of God's existence. It means it's evidence of the influence of belief in God's existence on language.

>>8400860
This still doesn't explain the subjective experience that I (and presumably everyone else) experiences.

>>8400872

>the subjective experience that I (and presumably everyone else) experiences

The explanation is that you (and everyone else) don't. You believe you do. Collections of neurons in your brain fire off to other collections of neurons in your brain and in doing so send signals reporting that you're "experiencing" things, but all there is in reality is the stimuli, the physical reactions, your behavioral reactions, and your reports of "experiencing" things. You would never be able to tell the difference between if the "experiences" you think you have were actually "there" vs. if you were merely being compelled to behave as though a convenient yet fictional point of reference known as "experience" were actually "there," and the second of those two possibilities is explicable in terms of ordinary physical reality so that's probably a better explanation than the first possibility.

>>8400883
This is a completely behaviorist approach. You're assuming all there is to people's claims of consciousness is the output (the claims of it, etc). You're ignoring thoughts and cognition. You can't claim that thoughts only exist in so far as our behavior suggests it when I can think to my self right now.

>>8388842
under8ed

>>8400895

>You're assuming all there is to people's claims of consciousness is the output (the claims of it, etc).

I don't have to assume. That's all the evidence we actually have. Literally every single time anyone ever claims to have an "experience," what we have is a report, not an "experience."

>You can't claim that thoughts only exist in so far as our behavior suggests it when I can think to my self right now.

That's a report.

>>8400903
You're also forgetting the evidence of our own experience. You're limiting your criterion of evidence to what we see in others.

>>8388160
What are the things a "conscious thing would have," Opie?

>>8400958

>You're also forgetting the evidence of our own experience.

Arguing "it" doesn't exist =/= forgetting "it"

>You're limiting your criterion of evidence to what we see in others.

No, I don't have any evidence beyond reports when it comes to myself either. If I try to claim something I believe I'm "experiencing" is really there as an extra-physical phenomenon, what I would have in reality is a report (my own) of "experience." This report might include the insistence the "experience" is very immediate, irreducible, and present, but none of those details would make it anything more than a report. Same with other sorts of behavior. Just because I have an abstract point of reference where I know what place to put my hand to open a door doesn't mean there's actual an "experience" of a doorknob floating there that demands a new physics to explain it.

Substitute a robot you built for me in that example. It's an extremely high quality robot that can do and say everything we do and say. And it talks to you about how it "sees" the doorknob as it places its appendage onto it and uses it to open the door. But you as its creator know it doesn't really "see" anything so much as it merely behaves certain ways in response to the input to its sensors. And you built it to speak in terms of what it "sees" just as a convenience so it can talk to humans in the same terms they're used to and not confuse them with the details of how its machine behavioral routines really operate. Maybe you even built it to insist upon further inquiry from those around it that it definitely knows for sure it has an "experience" of "seeing" things even though it doesn't. And it isn't lying when it says these things because it's been designed to believe these things are true about it. It's just that what it was designed to believe happens to not be true.

How the robot is in this hypothetical is how we are in reality.

>>8401006
>Arguing "it" doesn't exist =/= forgetting "it"

You did "forget it" in your collection of "evidence."

>If I try to claim something I believe I'm "experiencing" is really there as an extra-physical phenomenon

That's your assumption right there. No one is positing that the experience of consciousness as proof of consciousness is also implying some meta-physical phenomena. All we're saying is that there's more to consciousness than we currently understand (and more than you're submitting).

>but none of those details would make it anything more than a report.

From my vantage point it's nothing more than a report. But from your vantage point it's a clear experience.

>Substitute a robot you built for me in that example

No matter how realistic the robot, we can't conclude for or against consciousness as the only way to tell something is conscious is to experience it yourself. We can try and make arguments either way but the only absolute truth we know of is that it at least exists as given by our own experience.

Basically, you're key misunderstanding is that you think my experience as being conscious is only as good as my report to you. This is a valid argument if you're trying to make a claim about my consciousness, but it says nothing about my certainty as to the knowledge of my consciousness' existence.

>>8401031

>No one is positing that the experience of consciousness as proof of consciousness is also implying some meta-physical phenomena.

Just because you don't intend it to be that doesn't mean it isn't that. If you believe "consciousness" is an actual thing distinct from what is described by physics, then that would mean you're suggesting an extra-physical thing exists.

>From my vantage point it's nothing more than a report. But from your vantage point it's a clear experience.

No, from my vantage point it's also just a report. Saying it's a "clear experience" is really saying you've reported a "clear experience" (or if I'm the subject in the example, then I'm saying I've reported a "clear experience"). You're being convinced to believe in the abstract reference point you're compelled to report in terms of. It doesn't matter how vivid or real you believe these "experiences" are, all you have is reports and behavior. Your brain is perfectly capable of making you believe things that aren't true. We know for a fact it does in many different ways. This is one of those ways.

>you think my experience as being conscious is only as good as my report to you

Your belief in "experience" / "consciousness" as a literal thing is in fact a belief. You believe it's true. That's all that can be established. You don't have "certainty as to the knowledge of [your] consciousness' existence." You have certainty of a belief in that. You don't want to acknowledge the possibility your belief isn't true, but you have no evidence to assume it isn't true. What you're calling "evidence" is actually the thing you don't have evidence for: your conclusion that you're really having "experiences." It doesn't matter how "immediate" you're compelled to believe these "experiences" are. Your brain is also perfectly capable of making you believe in a false immediacy.

>>8401081
>Just because you don't intend it to be that doesn't mean it isn't that. If you believe "consciousness" is an actual thing distinct from what is described by physics, then that would mean you're suggesting an extra-physical thing exists.

How are you defining extra-physical? To entertain the thought of consciousness is an actual thing doesn't mean that such a thing wouldn't follow physical laws. It simply means we haven't figured out how it all works yet.

As a general response to the other things you're saying:
I feel like everyone should be able to intuetively understand the hard problem. It's so strange that everyone who argues against the problem doesn't fundamentally understand it. Ironically what works best to get this intuative understand is to look at the world from a completely deterministic point of view. Picture yourself as nothing more than a complicated mess of chemical reactions, that simply do what the laws of nature compells them to. You are experiencing reading this text right now. Why is it that there is a "you" there? Even if your brain simply makes you to believe there is experience, there is still a you there. Why aren't all those atoms going about processing all their actions without that "sense", "experience", "self", whatever word works best? Before responding to this post with your same points again thinking I just don't get what you're saying, try for a while to understand what I'm saying intuitively.

>>8401081
> If you believe "consciousness" is an actual thing distinct from what is described by physics, then that would mean you're suggesting an extra-physical thing exists.

Absolutely not. Is it really so hard to imagine physical realities that physics can't yet explain? Just because we don't understand something doesn't mean you have to try and fit it into a theory that clearly doesn't explain it well.

>Saying it's a "clear experience" is really saying you've reported a "clear experience"

Literally "saying" it in fact reporting it. But you're uncharitably reading the wrong definitions of my words. Allow me to clarify: my experience (whether I inform an internet stranger about it or not) is not a report. It's an experience. And the experience of consciousness (even if it's literally just me who is conscious in the universe) is all the evidence I need to conclude that consciousness exists.

>Your belief in "experience" / "consciousness"

But that's the thing. It's not just a belief. It's an experience. A data point. Evidence. You might as well call all scientific empirical evidence "beliefs" by your logic because you have to "believe" in the data points so that you can use them.

But question what the definition of consciousness is that is so special where atoms being able to form a consciousness becomes impossible. Does the definition of it include magic?

Blindsight.

>>8401489
The definition of consciousness in discussions about the hard problem is always the subjective experience, which is not explained by any standard models in either biology, physics, or neuroscience.

>Does the definition of it include magic?
I don't know, depends what your definition of magic is.

>>8402491

>The definition of consciousness in discussions about the hard problem is always the subjective experience

Every argument made against the "hard problem" as real that I've ever read has disputed that the belief in a "subjective experience" is real. If everyone agreed it's a real thing there wouldn't be arguments.

>>8402502
Yeah. From my perspective subjective experience is the most fundamental and undisputable thing about existance. If you have it, it should be obvious what the hard problem is about and what exacly is meant by subjective experience. Yet there is a big disconnect between the two groups, where it's almost like they're discussing two different things but with the same label.

>>8402547

>If you have it, it should be obvious what the hard problem is about and what exacly is meant by subjective experience.

Often times what is "obvious" to people are false beliefs. "Obvious" in practice gets used as another word for "I don't question it." Also you're implying people who don't believe in it are merely failing to see it; the alternative explanation is you're failing to see how it's a convenient fiction the brain references rather than an actual object that needs to be explained in the same way physical phenomena are explained. I believe you're underestimating the scope of untrue things the brain is capable of making you accept as true. No non-physical "qualia" are required for your brain to make you believe you have non-physical "qualia." All that's required is making you believe and behave in certain ways that reference the convenient fiction. No matter how real you might believe it "appears" to you, I can give you an indistinguishable example of someone just like you who has no "qualia" and is merely made to believe he has it. And of course, I would say you and that duplicate you are in actuality the same and both don't have non-physical qualia. If you believe you do have it, I think you would need to explain what reason you would have for thinking you can definitely know you're one who has it and not the duplicate who doesn't. The duplicate would insist in the same way you do that he has it too. He'd just be wrong, and if he can be wrong, why can't you be wrong too?

>>8402580
All reasonable points, if you're looking at me from the third person perspective. But is that enough to dismiss your own subjective experience, even if you also hold the opinion that the brain simply makes you believe you have it? There is a massive difference between explaining why you act the way you do and why it is like something to be you at all. And I guess that's where you think I don't make any sense, and I think you don't make any sense for not understanding what I mean.

>>8402654

>But is that enough to dismiss your own subjective experience, even if you also hold the opinion that the brain simply makes you believe you have it?

Saying "dismiss your own subjective experience" assumes the thing you're talking about dismissing. So "yes and no." I wouldn't say I'm dismissing my own "subjective experience" because I don't believe there's such a thing as non-physical "experience." I would say I'm dismissing the physical / literal reality of this alleged thing that we're compelled to behave and report in reference to. I'm saying the reference point is literally just a reference point. Like how numbers don't exist in physical reality but the concept of numbers is instead an abstract reference point we behave and report in reference to.

>>8402666
>Saying "dismiss your own subjective experience" assumes the thing you're talking about dismissing. So "yes and no." I wouldn't say I'm dismissing my own "subjective experience" because I don't believe there's such a thing as non-physical "experience."

The problem with the word "non-physical" is that what we define as physical is generally very tied to our current understanding of the universe; the standard model of science. If there is more to matter than we currently understand, that aspect would become part of the physical as soon as it's discovered. If you claim that undiscovered aspects of matter would be connected to consciousness, you would be called a dualist for suggesting so before those aspects were accepted as "physical". The same problem is why the definitions of dualism is silly as well: Because our limited understanding of consciousness, it looks as if there is a mental and a physical reality, but only because our framework of understanding is built from incomplete information about "the physical". Physical and non-physical are completely meaningless words.

>I would say I'm dismissing the physical / literal reality of this alleged thing that we're compelled to behave and report in reference to.

Can you still not see even a slight difference between explaining why you behave/report a certain way and explaining why it is like something to be you? What do you think I mean by that?

>>8402740

>Can you still not see even a slight difference between explaining why you behave/report a certain way and explaining why it is like something to be you?

You believe there's a difference and believe there is "something it is like to be" because your brain is able to make you behave and report as though that abstract reference point is a real thing. So it's a little complicated. I wouldn't say there's no difference. I would say one is an accurate description of reality while the other is a fictional description of reality that can be explained in terms of the first description.

And let me further clarify that the thing being explained is why that fiction comes up and why you believe in it. This is definitely different then explaining why there is "something it is like to be." I can't explain the existence of something that doesn't exist. I can only explain the conditions that make a belief in something that doesn't exist work. I like Daniel Dennett's magic trick analogy for this situation. Imagine someone's asking why a magician was able to cut a lady in half and put her back together. If someone says "the magician merely made you believe a lady was cut in half and put back together without actually doing it," it wouldn't explain how the lady got cut in half and put back together. But it would explain the belief that a lady was cut in half and put back together. And really, the first question of how the lady got cut in half and put back together isn't a valid question because it assumes a non-real thing as though it were real.

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>mfw scitards cannot into metaphysics

do you clowns even vorstellung?

>>8402764

>muh repackaged buddhism

Schopenhauer is shit tier, senpai.

>>8402780

>judging based Schoppy by his ethics instead of his metaphysics

lmaoing at your life pham

>>8402784

No, his metaphysics are repackaged buddhism too.

>>8402786

>transcendental idealism
>repackaged buddism

my sides

>>8402799

ctrl+f for buddhist and tell me you don't get results, senpai.

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

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>>8402799
>conceptual circlejerk
I'll wait for you with Nietzsche over here, lads.

>>8402805

>crass materialism

you can do better than this m9

>>8402802

>historical parallel is the same thing as imitation

Prior to Schopenhauer's time the core works of Buddhism weren't even widely available in Europe, and Buddist metaphysics just boil down to "you can't know shit about true reality" which Schopenhauer argues against

>>8402784
>>8402799

>If I were to take the results of my philosophy as the standard of truth, I would have to consider Buddhism the finest of all religion.

>When the tenets of Buddhism became known in Europe during the third and fourth decade of the nineteenth century, Arthur Schopenhauer was delighted with the affinity they showed to his own philosophy. Having completed his main work Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung as early as 1818, he considered it an entirely new (and thus pure) expression of the wisdom once taught by the Buddha—at times he even called himself a “Buddhaist.”

>>8402812

>Buddist metaphysics just boil down to "you can't know shit about true reality"

Gautama Buddha is depicted as saying questions about reality aren't important compared to the question of suffering. He didn't say you couldn't know about it, just that they "wouldn't further." The view of our fundamental nature as Will always trying to satisfy itself but not succeeding is hella Buddhist.

>>8402816

Buddhism is a religion you dolt, Schopenhauer was a philosopher. Aside from a few core principles he reflects Christian metaphysics more than anything

>>8402829

>religion
>philosophy

There's not much difference between the two. Take away the chanting and magical bullshit and you get philosophy.

>>8402827

nature =/= reality lad

Buddhism has nothing about the forms of the intellect or double aspect theory

>>8402831

>religion
>science

there's not much difference between the two. take away the moralizing and magic bullshit and you get science

>>8402808
>Implication of refutation
We are still here, lads.

Nietzsche says "Hi".

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Do you think there is a hard problem, /sci/?
http://www.strawpoll.me/11402693

I think it would be interesting to see the results of this.

>>8388160
"Hard problem of"
Its a 'hard problem' because we don't even know the nature of it or if it is even a problem

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>>8388418
Oooooh shots fired.

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>>8405113
Aw guys, 7th page. Bump.

>>8396594
>And insofar as 'it' exists at all, 'it' only exists as the trick that gets you to speak / believe / do things a certain way.
I hope one day this can be proven. If the brain is playing a trick on you all the time then there most likely exists a part of the brain dedicated for it. Remove it and you get a zombie

>>8405113
True, she is too young to understand why here dad would make her study such babby tier maths.

In the future when she grows up she will realize that her dad is just a brainlet.

>>8402841
fucking REKT

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>>8406286

>Remove it and you get a zombie

That's something you can read about already with blindsight. They're people who have functional eyes that take in visual stimuli but they don't have access to the abstract reference point of visuals. So they report being unable to see anything, but if you put a trashcan in front of them they will step out of the way. Then when you ask them why they stepped out of the way they won't be able to explain it.

So the abstract reference point seems to serve the purpose of letting us speak and act in reference to stimuli at a higher level than just base instinctual responses deal with them.

>>8388160
>Personally I find the simplest explanation is that humans and other creatures are not really conscious, but merely emulate the behaviors a conscious thing would have.
One time I was tripping on acid and playing with my cat, and I realized he was just an automaton responding to external stimuli, not actually conscious as I had previously anthropomorphized him to be while sober.

Another time, again tripping on acid, I was at the beach and the sun was coming up and I realized that I too am just an automaton, a dirty, unthinking, uncreative ape like creature being animated by..? That I could create nothing, come up with nothing new, it was all just patterns of responses to stimuli when talking to other people there who were obviously the same, just dirty ape automata pointlessly acting and responding according to whatever pre programmed or random patterns happened to I guess control things or just happened to be.

Like a cellular automata or something, but the whole universe is a giant triangular fractal cellular automata just sort of chaotically going along with no actual conscious thought or creativity as in creation or original novel thought.


But who knows though. Why are we who we think ourselves or appear to be? What difference does it make? Why do you have whatever interests and feelings that you do, and how meta can you get changing those things as you 'will' but what is you? And who is making these choices? Probably all just random shit going on.

>>8406425
Neat!

damn thread has got me depressed desu, if there is no magical soul what's the meaning of all this?

>>8406693

To suffer.

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pic related

>>8405111
Untrue. We know the nature of it, not the origin though, and we there is a problem of how to integrate it into our understanding of the universe.

That said, it's called "the hard problem" because we don't even have any idea what the solution would look like. With other problems, we often have an idea of a solution, here we do not.

>>8406286
you still need to fucking define who this "you" is.

>>8388160
But what difference does it make? If we emulate the same behaviours a conscious thing would have it makes no difference if we are truly conscious or not.

>>8407742
that depends. you can have the viewpoint that universe only has value because of conscious observers. without conscious observers, it doesn't matter what happens or if anything happens at all. like a painting no one ever sees.

can't make heads or fucking tails of this desu.
If it is a trick then am 'I' not the trick thus exist? Not in the dualist way of meta-physical but that a part of my brain would be 'me' conscious? What is the difference between an actually conscious being and this "tricked me"?

>>8407835
A sensible thought.

The illusion argument only makes sense if you're looking from a third person view into a person and try to explain why they say they're conscious. It doesn't work if you look at it from a first person view, because the experience is right there in your face, undeniably existing. If it is an illusion, then that illusion has managed to create experience, which still means the hard problem remains.

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>>8407671
This doesn't invalidate the fact that consciousness are chemicals and that's all.

So this mickey mouse comic is dumb. Checkmate >>>/x/

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>>8407890

The problem is the word "illusion" is itself heavily tainted with the assumption that "qualia" are real phenomena. I liken this problem to how the word "sunrise" is tainted with geocentrist thinking. You wouldn't use that word as evidence the sun revolves around the earth since what it actually constitutes is evidence that the wrong idea of geocentrism influenced language.

That said, if we're using the word "illusion," I would just clarify this isn't "illusion" in the sense of an altered "experience" but rather "illusion" in the sense of a difference between an idea / belief about reality and that which reality actually is.

>the experience is right there in your face, undeniably existing.

Even though p-zombies are traditionally used to argue in favor of "experience" as a real thing, I find them useful for showing us a situation where people believe and behave in reference to "experience" even though they don't have it in reality. If you believe p-zombies are plausible, then you believe there could be a p-zombie version of you who says and does everything you do in exactly the same way, including arguing that his "experience" is right there in front of his face, undeniably existing. But he won't actually have "experience" in reality. What if you are this p-zombie? You would have no way of knowing if you were because you would still believe and behave as though you were having "experiences."

You would claim to know things based on your "first person view," but in reality there would be no such view. Only the belief in and behavior in reference to the abstract concept of that view. And that's all that's required for us to be the way we are. Genuine "experience" wouldn't add anything to what we have. You wouldn't be able to tell if you had it or not. You can insist that your "experiences" are so clear and vivid and immediate that they must be real, but the p-zombie would believe and say the same thing.

>>8388800
You could do experiments instead of shit talk and know.

>>8408075
>If you believe p-zombies are plausible, then you believe there could be a p-zombie version of you who says and does everything you do in exactly the same way, including arguing that his "experience" is right there in front of his face, undeniably existing.

Well that's where your example gets a little tricky. Depending on how subjective experience would work if it was real, it could either have an influence on the brain & vice-versa, or not. Kind of like how electromagnetism can induct current in a wire, so can subjective experience induct behavior arguing about the real-ness of experiences in the brain. So that begs the question if a p-zombie should be able to argue for his experiences in this way.

As far as me being a p-zombie being concerned, I only think that's a valid thought about me from your third person perspective. Me behaving the same as the p-zombie isn't making me doubt my experience, because having any glimmer of existance or feeling at all confirms my subjective experience.

you're right.

we don't really have free will either. there is no such thing as randomness in the universe. someone from the beginning could've used mathematics to see everything in this exact moment right now, and any other time.

we're like the TV we watch and books we read. we don't truly exist as beings with free will. the reason why you are questioning this is because it was meant for you to question right now. everything was already written with math since the start.

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>>8408109

Consider this:

>>8406425

There exist in the real world people who can see but not have access to reference "sights" as abstract objects.

Do you really think blindsight is a disease of "qualia?" I think the more likely explanation is they're just like us and merely don't have the convenient reference point we *believe* is 1st person "experience." We have a mechanism that lets us talk about "sights" even though there is only stimuli and reaction in reality, and we end up mistakenly elevating this convenient abstraction to the level of real physical phenomena.

Now we do have what's called privileged access to certain information about our own stimuli, but that need not compel us to believe there is an entirely distinct 1st person "experience" point of view. Priviliged access to information about stimuli or our own thoughts isn't any more mysterious than privileged access to another person's voice on a telephone call. It's just privacy.

>>8408127
i doubt prescience negates free will. i could tell you I'm going to watch a movie tonight and your knowledge of my future doesn't seem to infringe my free will

i also doubt restrictions of free will negate free will (in most cases), they are simply restrictions. for example, i want to create a spaceship for myself using my mind, but my lack of abilities doesn't mean free will can't exist, it just means that it can (and is) restricted in some ways

also pure randomness or lack thereof in the observable universe is conjecture, and contemporary physics tells us to sample all possible paths of a particle given a time interval rather than starting with a position and momentum and predicting motion, so there's some good news if my argument wasn't convincing and you believe prescience negates free

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This would explain why I'm a zombie.

I believe in a just god. Hitler was able to get away with genocide because jews he killed were not really created as conscious beings, so he did nothing wrong by preventing a zombie apocalypse.

>>8388160
i dont think there's a difference between consciousness and a perfect emulation of consciousness. if there are no differences, a = a. if there is a difference, then the emulation is imperfect

also I find the metric for sentience to be incredibly hominid-centric. the line is incredibly thin and is conveniently drawn just before contemporary humans, this is completely absurd and the bias is overwhelming

there will probably be entities with a level of complexity with a difference between us orders of magnitude greater than between us and ants. the stimuli / reaction model highlights this perfectly. we see an incredibly small percent of the EM spectrum, are incapable of hearing nearly all sound, our sense of touch is beyond laughable, the rest goes for all of our senses and ability to create coherent thoughts, let alone process all available stimuli, we can't even detect what 80%+ of our universe is (let alone everything else we can't even begin to sense). what is a deaf, blind, mute, retard to a sentient being?

anyone who claims humans are the benchmark is pathetic, and the level of conceit required to take this position disgusts me

>>8408206
then why did he lose?

>>8388160
>"hard" ""problem"" of """consciousness"""

>>8408240
he was born to lose anon, just like everyone more or less

How do you explain a massive black void full of massive fireballs and cosmic dust?

The hard problem of consciousness is that 1.) Consciousness exists. 2) The brain and consciousness are correlated. 3) We don't know the physical mechanism for the arising of these self-conscious entities.

I would go far to say that saying that the brain is responsible for consciousness is a complete theory is obviously erroneous. We experience consciousness as a continuous streaming event that is whole. The particles of matter are seperate and disjointed. They lack the presence of a unity which would explain the physical phenomena of experience. Some scientists have turned to the electromagnetic field theory, as at least that has the semblance of a whole strucuture, but I think even that has its flaws.

If subjective experience doesn't exist then how can you explain dreams?

>>8388160
I strongly believe that there is some kind of quantum tangling in the brain, kind of extra-dimensional processing but with a need of physical manifestation for it to work properly.

People that are sick in the brain will also see their consciousness affected

>>8409472

Why should our experience of consciousness correlate to the physical reality of the system producing it? Anyway, is our experience of consciousness really continuous, or do we merely "feel" such? Similarly to the way we "feel" that we control our actions within some framework of what people term free-will. Utterly preposterous when considering that the brain follows the same laws as any deterministic system, but we all definitely feel as though we exist as some magical, supernatural entity with some sort of control over our actions.

Back to your point, do we not see things in a continuous manner? Yet the physical limitations of the eye demand that our sight is indeed composed of a series of discreet images. This illusion is replicated very easily with films that display a high enough number of frames per second.

>>8409516

What do you believe quantum entanglement has to do with consciousness?

>>8409516
>quantum tangling
>Extra-dimensional processing

Stop using buzz words.

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>>8388160 This is nothing more than a wry attempt at a self generated argument. This is not even a discussion it is nothing more than a flawed observation being brought to the table just to get replies. Simple answer is as follows imitation of consciousness is consciousness. The simple fact that we are compiled atoms brings nothing to the issue. You think, you act, you exist, so you are conscious. Now even if you said are we sentient it still would not matter. You feel and know you exist. Even if we exist in a simulation the conscious you exhibit is your reality so by the very nature of existing it is real. Imitation of a process can never fully intact the desired process it can only act out the part of the process that has been observed. Since non of us are observing a greater being that is in an obviously higher state of reality then there is nothing to imitate further damaging the idea you put forth.

>>8388160
>How is it possible that a vibrating mess of atoms becomes conscious?

Evolution based life develops the necessary components of behavior to be considered conscious and then continues to replicate and evolve.

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>>8409564

> Namefag
> Unironically coming into a thread late and calling in bait
> Worst of all, namefag

>>8409472
The electromagnetc field theory only moves the hard problem from the biochemical level to the quantum. You can then ask, why is it that field acting purely according to the laws of physics, can amount to subjective experience.

Not sure that matter being seperate and disjointed is any argument towards it not being able to create subjective experience either. Why is unity required for that? What's even required for unity? Can you even say matter lack unity? There are forces that hold the matter together, wouldn't that count as unity?

I thing.thereford i eistx

>>8409516
>People that are sick in the brain will also see their consciousness affected

That is a very flawed argument that completely misses the point. No one is denying that chemical reactions have a part in creating subjective experience, but knowing the causation does not explain the details of the phenomenon, as little as knowing how a flashlight works explains the inner workings of a photon.

>>8409880
I agree the electromagnetic field theory doesn't solve the problem either, as how would a force field that acts upon particles be attributed with the qualities of perception, but it still is a step in the right direction in regards to wholeness.

If you set up a bunch of dominos to topple over, , they may be inter-related but they still lack a unity that connects the entirety of the dominos which is how information is expressed in the mind.
There are connections between particles, but no overarching unity, besides something like the electromagnetic field or a currently undiscovered quantum phenomena.

>>8396594
>Why is it immediate? Or complex? etc.

Not my understanding of the hard problem at all. Not why is the color blue immediate but what is the color blue and why does it exist as we experience it?

>>8411333
/thread

after 301 fucking replies

>>8410223

>why does it exist as we experience it?

Because that question is based on an untrue premise that you know you "experienced" something.

>>8392808
all these discussions do is convince me that half of the people on earth are p-zombies. I literally believe that now. I think that's the answer.

>>8411864

Then you're halfway towards graduating from brainlet dualism and realizing the patrician reality of radical behaviorism. Just have to make that final step and accept you aren't made out of magic and don't have a good reason to believe you can tell the difference between "really" having "experiences" vs. only being made to believe you've been.

>>8392734
Ah, yes, "Souls"’. The immortal essence that possesses a mortal body. We have dismissed this claim.

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>>8412014
It must feel nice to have no experience. Oh wait.