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Quite a lot has been published about neural correlates of consciousness, so I'll go with whatever the evidence suggests. There are literally hundreds of attemp

Quite a lot has been published about neural correlates of consciousness, so I'll go with whatever the evidence suggests. There are literally hundreds of attempted explanations of phenomenal consciousness, none of which is generally accepted. For what it's worth, I think it's fundamental, i.e. not an emergent property of matter. At the very minimum, I think to be conscious of anything (other than nothing) requires the ability to sense the physical environment. What's your position?

fc417fc802 14d ago
> For what it's worth, I think it's fundamental, i.e. not an emergent property of matter. > requires the ability to sense the physical environment Aren't those two statements at odds? Your synapses are made of matter, so sensing the physical environment is being done by matter. You are fundamentally matter (AFAIK). To suggest otherwise the only thing that comes to mind is substance dualism. My position is that we don't know. I know I'm conscious. I assume other humans are simply because they're approximately the same as me and were produced by the same process. The farther you get from humans the less certain I am. Many insects resemble biological automatons if you examine them closely. Certainly single celled organisms don't seem likely to have anything going on. If you figure that a clod of dirt can't possibly be conscious but a mouse is, what's the relevant physical difference? Electricity? Computers have that. Complexity? Information density? Both of those as well. What do you think it means to sense?
- DonaldFisk 14d ago
  > Aren't those two statements at odds? Sensing (i.e. picking up information about its environment through sense organs) is a physical phenomenon and is reasonably well-understood. Consciousness is non=physical and takes that information (after processing in the brain) and directly experiences it. Consciousness is an extra step, and if it's fundamental then that is a kind of substance dualism. So what's conscious? People and other animals with sense organs and nervous systems. It's even possible that anything which senses its environment could be conscious: https://organism.earth/library/document/what-is-it-like-to-be-a-thermostat https://organism.earth/library/document/what-is-it-like-to-b... . That might include a robot connected to a camera and other sensory apparatus. Now you could argue that a computer running an LLM can pick up what its user types, and might therefore be conscious of which keys are being pressed. But not of the colours, sounds, smells, and other things described by human authors in its training set.
  - fc417fc802 14d ago
    > Consciousness is non=physical and takes that information (after processing in the brain) and directly experiences it. Aren't you inventing that whole cloth? What evidence is there to support this claim? Can you empirically measure consciousness to demonstrate its presence or absence? Is there a lobotomy you can perform to make someone unconscious but still able to respond to those around them? If such a lobotomy is within the realm of physical possibility then (at least theoretically) why can't LLMs be given equivalent functionality? If such a lobotomy is fundamentally impossible then by what mechanism is consciousness influencing human behavior? > Consciousness is an extra step, and if it's fundamental then that is a kind of substance dualism. So on the one hand you claim it's an extra (ie independent) step but on the other earlier you claimed that it requires the ability to sense the physical environment and that somehow LLMs can't do this (despite that I can feed them data from an environmental sensor). If it's an extra step presumably arbitrary data can be fed into it. You're simultaneously claiming that it's separate, yet somehow fundamentally tied to sensing the physical world (so not actually separate), and also that certain types of physical sensors are specially privileged (no physical mechanism proposed). And you don't seem to have evidence supporting these seemingly contradictory claims.
    - DonaldFisk 13d ago
      > Aren't you inventing that whole cloth? I should have said, "I think that consciousness ..." > So on the one hand you claim it's an extra (ie independent) step ... I should have said, "The conscious experience (of qualia) is an extra step, and if consciousness is fundamental then that's a kind of substance dualism. Thanks for pointing these out - I should have proof-read my reply before posting.
      - fc417fc802 12d ago
        You still haven't answered the question. You think ... why? Based on what? If consciousness is fundamental (ie substance dualism) then how is it exerting influence over our behavior? Isn't it the equivalent of watching a movie at that point? If it's not fundamental then what precludes a computer program from exhibiting it?

fc417fc802 14d ago

> For what it's worth, I think it's fundamental, i.e. not an emergent property of matter. > requires the ability to sense the physical environment Aren't those two statements at odds? Your synapses are made of matter, so sensing the physical environment is being done by matter. You are fundamentally matter (AFAIK). To suggest otherwise the only thing that comes to mind is substance dualism. My position is that we don't know. I know I'm conscious. I assume other humans are simply because they're approximately the same as me and were produced by the same process. The farther you get from humans the less certain I am. Many insects resemble biological automatons if you examine them closely. Certainly single celled organisms don't seem likely to have anything going on. If you figure that a clod of dirt can't possibly be conscious but a mouse is, what's the relevant physical difference? Electricity? Computers have that. Complexity? Information density? Both of those as well. What do you think it means to sense?

DonaldFisk 14d ago
> Aren't those two statements at odds? Sensing (i.e. picking up information about its environment through sense organs) is a physical phenomenon and is reasonably well-understood. Consciousness is non=physical and takes that information (after processing in the brain) and directly experiences it. Consciousness is an extra step, and if it's fundamental then that is a kind of substance dualism. So what's conscious? People and other animals with sense organs and nervous systems. It's even possible that anything which senses its environment could be conscious: https://organism.earth/library/document/what-is-it-like-to-be-a-thermostat https://organism.earth/library/document/what-is-it-like-to-b... . That might include a robot connected to a camera and other sensory apparatus. Now you could argue that a computer running an LLM can pick up what its user types, and might therefore be conscious of which keys are being pressed. But not of the colours, sounds, smells, and other things described by human authors in its training set.
- fc417fc802 14d ago
  > Consciousness is non=physical and takes that information (after processing in the brain) and directly experiences it. Aren't you inventing that whole cloth? What evidence is there to support this claim? Can you empirically measure consciousness to demonstrate its presence or absence? Is there a lobotomy you can perform to make someone unconscious but still able to respond to those around them? If such a lobotomy is within the realm of physical possibility then (at least theoretically) why can't LLMs be given equivalent functionality? If such a lobotomy is fundamentally impossible then by what mechanism is consciousness influencing human behavior? > Consciousness is an extra step, and if it's fundamental then that is a kind of substance dualism. So on the one hand you claim it's an extra (ie independent) step but on the other earlier you claimed that it requires the ability to sense the physical environment and that somehow LLMs can't do this (despite that I can feed them data from an environmental sensor). If it's an extra step presumably arbitrary data can be fed into it. You're simultaneously claiming that it's separate, yet somehow fundamentally tied to sensing the physical world (so not actually separate), and also that certain types of physical sensors are specially privileged (no physical mechanism proposed). And you don't seem to have evidence supporting these seemingly contradictory claims.
  - DonaldFisk 13d ago
    > Aren't you inventing that whole cloth? I should have said, "I think that consciousness ..." > So on the one hand you claim it's an extra (ie independent) step ... I should have said, "The conscious experience (of qualia) is an extra step, and if consciousness is fundamental then that's a kind of substance dualism. Thanks for pointing these out - I should have proof-read my reply before posting.
    - fc417fc802 12d ago
      You still haven't answered the question. You think ... why? Based on what? If consciousness is fundamental (ie substance dualism) then how is it exerting influence over our behavior? Isn't it the equivalent of watching a movie at that point? If it's not fundamental then what precludes a computer program from exhibiting it?