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If I stab at your teddy bear will you feel that it is hurt? Yes it will gain consciousness. You can't prove it but other people can't prove that it's not consc

If I stab at your teddy bear will you feel that it is hurt? Yes it will gain consciousness. You can't prove it but other people can't prove that it's not conscious either

blatherard 21d ago
No of course not, because its a teddy bear! At best this is redefining "consciousness" to mean something only tangentially related.
zdragnar 21d ago
This is describing empathy at best and delusion to be uncharitable. To look at it another way: this form of social construction answers the question of "if a tree falls in the woods and nobody is around to hear it, does it make a sound?" with an emphatic "no". It is a sillier version of solipsism.
threethirtytwo 21d ago
You can prove other people are conscious off the assumption that you yourself are conscious. If you use that axiom then given genetics you know that other humans are rough copies of you so if you are conscious so are your copies because consciousness was copied.
- bluefirebrand 20d ago
  > You can prove other people are conscious off the assumption that you yourself are conscious I'm being a bit pedantic here, but no I don't think that "I am conscious therefore you must be too" is true I think you can claim that it is most reasonable to assume other people are conscious but I don't think it reaches the level of proof
  - bena 20d ago
    I don't think you're being pedantic. The person you're replying to seems like he wants to cut off the solipsistic argument; the only thing we can be sure of is our own consciousness, everything else is debateable. So while I know I am conscious, I do not know that everything I experience aren't just impulses fed to my brain by some external force. And I can't prove it either way. I have no way to test whether or not I'm a brain in a jar because the very thing I would use to evaluate the evidence is the thing that is potentially being manipulated. However, slapping a solipsist sees them abandoning their philosophy rather quickly. But I agree with you. We can't prove it, but "other people are as real and conscious as I" is a reasonable assumption to make
    - threethirtytwo 20d ago
      >And I can't prove it either way. Not true. This is "provable" aspects of you and your personality can be changed by physical changes to the brain. There are thousands of instances of this including experiments that verify this. While you can't "prove" this simply by observing this phenomenon among other people that level of "proof" is impossible. You technically can't prove anything and what we see with physical changes to the brain visibly influencing personality and behavior meets a reasonable criterion without getting too pedantic.
      - bena 19d ago
        I'm a little unclear as to what the disagreement is. I still think in your scenario, we would not be able to prove that that is what actually happened as opposed to someone manipulating the inputs to the brain to make it think that's what happened. Or to change it completely. Like that's the entire solipsistic problem. The brain is just sort of self-contained. Everything is essentially input. We are incapable of really knowing the experience of someone or something else. Or if what we perceive is what's actually happening. Because, as you note, the brain can be manipulated to act in ways counter to the manner it had been acting previously. We can induce sound and vision. If we were better at it and could keep the brain alive, we could full on do a brain in a vat. And I agree that sort of proof is impossible to acquire. Like, there is no way to prove conclusively that anyone else is conscious. But that's why we instead treat it as an axiom instead. We basically say "We're not going to prove it, we're just going to accept it as true". And that's fine. Mostly because it not being true is an existential horror no one wants to truly confront. And even with all of the more absurd conjectures, basically any form of "Last Thursdayism" of which simulation theory falls under, it's quicker to just assume that it's not true and treat the world we perceive as real with real rules that can be discovered through observation, testing, and experimentation. Because that's the only way we've been able to make any progress.
        threethirtytwo 19d ago
        See it’s too pedantic now. My statement is not that a type of proof is impossible. All proof is impossible. This is a fact of science. Proof is only possible in mathematics which is a made up game of axioms and theorems. Proof in reality is impossible. But humans go about believing in many things without proof. We believe in physics without proof because it’s relatively consistent though unproven. And I am saying that things like brain damage, brain surgery and electrodes and the physical changes those things do to the personality is ALSO relatively consistent. Consistent enough that we can know that the souls doesn’t exist that the personality the ego is a manifestation of the physical brain. Proof is not needed because we can’t prove anything anyway and the criterion is met in this aspect because it is the baseline of how we believe all things without proof. For example: We know that conscious experience and personality are manifestations of the physical brain rather than a non-physical soul because targeted changes to brain tissue directly alter a person's core identity, memories, and behaviors. The most famous historical example of this is Phineas Gage, a 19th-century railroad worker who survived an iron rod blasting through his frontal lobe; while his body healed, his polite, reliable personality vanished, replacing him with an impulsive and erratic stranger. Similarly, modern medical cases of patients suffering from severe Alzheimer's disease or traumatic brain injuries show how the physical erosion of brain matter systematically erases lifelong memories, moral reasoning, and the emotional bonds that define a person's character. Furthermore, patients who undergo "split-brain" surgery to treat epilepsy—where the corpus callosum connecting the two hemispheres is severed—effectively develop two separate streams of consciousness inside one head, with one half of the brain holding beliefs or desires that the other half is completely unaware of. If a unified, spiritual soul were the true source of our character, choices, and consciousness, physical damage, tissue erosion, or surgical separation would leave those abstract traits unharmed. Instead, because changing the physical structure and chemistry of the brain completely rewrites or splits who a person is, modern neuroscience concludes that the mind is entirely a product of the physical brain.
  - mishellaneous 19d ago
    can you provide an example of a claim in the subject being discussed, or any subject outside of mathematics, that manages to reach the level of proof?
- Der_Einzige 20d ago
  Radical skepticism of one's own consciousness is a perfectly fine take. Stop being baited by desecration propaganda about the cogito. You don't know if what actually appears to you as "thought" is actually "thinking". The appearance of thinking is not necessarily actually thinking (Chain of thought in models should make this very explicitly obvious to people). Take the radical skepticism pill and embrace epistemological monism - the idea that the only real truth is that all things are interpretations.

If I stab at your teddy bear will you feel that it is hurt? Yes it will gain consciousness. You can't prove it but other people can't prove that it's not conscious either

blatherard 21d ago

No of course not, because its a teddy bear! At best this is redefining "consciousness" to mean something only tangentially related.

zdragnar 21d ago

This is describing empathy at best and delusion to be uncharitable. To look at it another way: this form of social construction answers the question of "if a tree falls in the woods and nobody is around to hear it, does it make a sound?" with an emphatic "no". It is a sillier version of solipsism.

threethirtytwo 21d ago

You can prove other people are conscious off the assumption that you yourself are conscious. If you use that axiom then given genetics you know that other humans are rough copies of you so if you are conscious so are your copies because consciousness was copied.

bluefirebrand 20d ago
> You can prove other people are conscious off the assumption that you yourself are conscious I'm being a bit pedantic here, but no I don't think that "I am conscious therefore you must be too" is true I think you can claim that it is most reasonable to assume other people are conscious but I don't think it reaches the level of proof
- bena 20d ago
  I don't think you're being pedantic. The person you're replying to seems like he wants to cut off the solipsistic argument; the only thing we can be sure of is our own consciousness, everything else is debateable. So while I know I am conscious, I do not know that everything I experience aren't just impulses fed to my brain by some external force. And I can't prove it either way. I have no way to test whether or not I'm a brain in a jar because the very thing I would use to evaluate the evidence is the thing that is potentially being manipulated. However, slapping a solipsist sees them abandoning their philosophy rather quickly. But I agree with you. We can't prove it, but "other people are as real and conscious as I" is a reasonable assumption to make
  - threethirtytwo 20d ago
    >And I can't prove it either way. Not true. This is "provable" aspects of you and your personality can be changed by physical changes to the brain. There are thousands of instances of this including experiments that verify this. While you can't "prove" this simply by observing this phenomenon among other people that level of "proof" is impossible. You technically can't prove anything and what we see with physical changes to the brain visibly influencing personality and behavior meets a reasonable criterion without getting too pedantic.
    - bena 19d ago
      I'm a little unclear as to what the disagreement is. I still think in your scenario, we would not be able to prove that that is what actually happened as opposed to someone manipulating the inputs to the brain to make it think that's what happened. Or to change it completely. Like that's the entire solipsistic problem. The brain is just sort of self-contained. Everything is essentially input. We are incapable of really knowing the experience of someone or something else. Or if what we perceive is what's actually happening. Because, as you note, the brain can be manipulated to act in ways counter to the manner it had been acting previously. We can induce sound and vision. If we were better at it and could keep the brain alive, we could full on do a brain in a vat. And I agree that sort of proof is impossible to acquire. Like, there is no way to prove conclusively that anyone else is conscious. But that's why we instead treat it as an axiom instead. We basically say "We're not going to prove it, we're just going to accept it as true". And that's fine. Mostly because it not being true is an existential horror no one wants to truly confront. And even with all of the more absurd conjectures, basically any form of "Last Thursdayism" of which simulation theory falls under, it's quicker to just assume that it's not true and treat the world we perceive as real with real rules that can be discovered through observation, testing, and experimentation. Because that's the only way we've been able to make any progress.
      - threethirtytwo 19d ago
        See it’s too pedantic now. My statement is not that a type of proof is impossible. All proof is impossible. This is a fact of science. Proof is only possible in mathematics which is a made up game of axioms and theorems. Proof in reality is impossible. But humans go about believing in many things without proof. We believe in physics without proof because it’s relatively consistent though unproven. And I am saying that things like brain damage, brain surgery and electrodes and the physical changes those things do to the personality is ALSO relatively consistent. Consistent enough that we can know that the souls doesn’t exist that the personality the ego is a manifestation of the physical brain. Proof is not needed because we can’t prove anything anyway and the criterion is met in this aspect because it is the baseline of how we believe all things without proof. For example: We know that conscious experience and personality are manifestations of the physical brain rather than a non-physical soul because targeted changes to brain tissue directly alter a person's core identity, memories, and behaviors. The most famous historical example of this is Phineas Gage, a 19th-century railroad worker who survived an iron rod blasting through his frontal lobe; while his body healed, his polite, reliable personality vanished, replacing him with an impulsive and erratic stranger. Similarly, modern medical cases of patients suffering from severe Alzheimer's disease or traumatic brain injuries show how the physical erosion of brain matter systematically erases lifelong memories, moral reasoning, and the emotional bonds that define a person's character. Furthermore, patients who undergo "split-brain" surgery to treat epilepsy—where the corpus callosum connecting the two hemispheres is severed—effectively develop two separate streams of consciousness inside one head, with one half of the brain holding beliefs or desires that the other half is completely unaware of. If a unified, spiritual soul were the true source of our character, choices, and consciousness, physical damage, tissue erosion, or surgical separation would leave those abstract traits unharmed. Instead, because changing the physical structure and chemistry of the brain completely rewrites or splits who a person is, modern neuroscience concludes that the mind is entirely a product of the physical brain.
- mishellaneous 19d ago
  can you provide an example of a claim in the subject being discussed, or any subject outside of mathematics, that manages to reach the level of proof?
Der_Einzige 20d ago
Radical skepticism of one's own consciousness is a perfectly fine take. Stop being baited by desecration propaganda about the cogito. You don't know if what actually appears to you as "thought" is actually "thinking". The appearance of thinking is not necessarily actually thinking (Chain of thought in models should make this very explicitly obvious to people). Take the radical skepticism pill and embrace epistemological monism - the idea that the only real truth is that all things are interpretations.