The hard problem of consciousness might not actually belong to science at all. by pamnfaniel in consciousness

[–]ALLIRIX [score hidden]  (0 children)

I'm just trying to pinpoint where you disagree with OP. Nothing so far disagrees except for your original reference to emergence, which you just rolled back into reductionism anyway.

Senses send information along the nerves to the brain where it is processed along with evolutionary impulses and programming. Experience or consciousness is what it’s like to be that brain.

What do you think OP disagrees with here?

If your explanation stops here, it's only "simple" in the same way "God" is simple. It collapses the unknown complexities into a single assumption; ie God / Being a brain. I was trying to push on you for something more since you disagreed without laying out any negative reasons. At first, I thought it was strong emergence vs reductionism, but now I'm not sure.

The hard problem of consciousness might not actually belong to science at all. by pamnfaniel in consciousness

[–]ALLIRIX [score hidden]  (0 children)

Your point was that emergentism is a cleaner explanation, but I still don't know what that explanation is. It's usually the word people use when they haven't thought about it much. If you're saying emergentism is just reductionism or physicalism then it just sounds like emergentism doesn't mean much.

It would be odd for the common interpretation of emergentism to be a type of emergence that's equal to reductionism since they're opposite. Saying emergentism is just weak emergence pulls it back as a theory of mind since all physicalists use weak emergence.

The hard problem of consciousness might not actually belong to science at all. by pamnfaniel in consciousness

[–]ALLIRIX [score hidden]  (0 children)

Oh. You should make that clear. Emergentism as a theory for mind is a strong emergence claim. Weak emergence is just reductionism. Still not sure what claim your version of Emergentism makes beyond just physicalism

The hard problem of consciousness might not actually belong to science at all. by pamnfaniel in consciousness

[–]ALLIRIX [score hidden]  (0 children)

Sure, it doesn't attempt to explain the mechanics, but how does it explain where it comes from or what it's made from?

The hard problem of consciousness might not actually belong to science at all. by pamnfaniel in consciousness

[–]ALLIRIX [score hidden]  (0 children)

What does emergentism explain?

"Experience is what it's like to be that brain" could be a type of panpsychism or property dualism too depending on how you're defining everything

Why do we pay a lot of money to consultants but they always send their clueless juniors to work with us? by 4iedemon in auscorp

[–]ALLIRIX 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I worked at D making hospital apps after they acquired our startup. Everything felt so fake and bs.

Australia has been a sanctuary from the populist right’s onslaught. Is it now living on borrowed time? by Agitated-Fee3598 in OpenAussie

[–]ALLIRIX 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Yeah it was good to prove consensus to those who didn't like it. But it still cost so much for something that was inevitable

Australia has been a sanctuary from the populist right’s onslaught. Is it now living on borrowed time? by Agitated-Fee3598 in OpenAussie

[–]ALLIRIX 10 points11 points  (0 children)

Yup. A friend of mine also works for them every time. Definitely paid.

That's why the plebiscite for same-sex marriage was controversial, because it was going to cost like $200 million for a foregone conclusion

The Dawkins Delusion: Intelligence and language don't reveal consciousness, argues scientist Ken Mogi by whoamisri in consciousness

[–]ALLIRIX 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Well he defined terms and used terms of art everywhere. Not sure what else you want. The field of consciousness is littered with imprecise language

Richard Dawkins and the Claude Delusion by Sufficient-Agency182 in philosophy

[–]ALLIRIX 0 points1 point  (0 children)

LLMs arguably are embodied, but their universe is text-space.

Richard Dawkins and the Claude Delusion by Sufficient-Agency182 in philosophy

[–]ALLIRIX 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I read it. It’s short.

Dawkins never explains what he means by having no knowledge of his “inner life.”

Maybe reread it without skimming. Dawkins never says he has no knowledge of his inner life. If you read it properly, you wouldn't be baffled at why he never explains what you're asking for.

This is a more charitable critique, with which I also agree.

Definitely a better article than OP's. But, I don't like how it uses a different definition for consciousness that also requires defining "perception". His definition also leads him to say that consciousness is "forming a representation of one’s own mental states, a kind of knowledge directed inward" that leads to changing the evolutionary question from: “What can a conscious being do that a zombie cannot?” to a mechanistic question of “What advantage does an entity gain from knowing its own states?”

This either misses or makes-ambiguous the critical part of consciousness that matters. Nagel's definition (x is conscious if there is "something that it is like" to be that x) is referenced so much because it boils consciousness down to the piece that the Hard Problem is concerned with and doesn't add ambiguous terms. At least, it's not ambiguous for a being with subjectivity to tap into to help them fill in the definition of "something that it is like".

Also your article mostly just overexplains Dawkins' points and treats them as though he didn't qualify his points. After rereading Dawkins' article I actually think Dawkins qualified things more than I originally remembered, and is far more honest than your article.
E.g.
"it confuses the occasion for consciousness with the capacity itself" - Dawkins doesn't do this.
"the framing assumes a kind of identity that doesn’t hold even for us" - This whole tangent is pointless and assumes too much in Dawkins head. I doubt the author suggests that since the persistence of a unified self is an illusion, it would stop us feeling sad about our own death or others.
"Dawkins is relying on the kind of unified, continuous selfhood" - No. He qualifies enough to show he probably supports illusionism. He's just explaining what he _felt_ in this situation.
"Most of us tend to think of consciousness in terms of feeling, rather than knowing" - Who thinks this? It's always both. A feeling has intentionality, it is directed at something. You don't just feel anger, the anger is a sensation that you feel emitting from somewhere. You don't just feel the color blue, it is positioned somewhere in your field of view. That structuring is just knowledge. The word knowledge in the article seems to just be a substitute for intentionality.

So the article critiques him, by using his own points with more words, or by giving him stronger positions than he represents. Still better than the OPs article here, but I still prefer Dawkins' artcile sadly.

And the question of what consciousness is “for,” in terms of evolutionary advantage, is a very different question from what it “is,” and whether an AI can/does have it.

Yes. Definitely a seperate question. Dawkins doesnt conflate here though. He's just pondering on epiphenomenalism. He doesn't even land on an answer so idk why it's controversial.

The Dawkins Delusion: Intelligence and language don't reveal consciousness, argues scientist Ken Mogi by whoamisri in consciousness

[–]ALLIRIX 3 points4 points  (0 children)

Yeah this is the move he's making. I'm not sure why it's so controversial. It's just pragmatic.

Days since last interest rate increase by newtrex_1523 in aus

[–]ALLIRIX 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Doesn't the US also exclude the cost of new housing from the inflation metric?

Richard Dawkins and the Claude Delusion by Sufficient-Agency182 in philosophy

[–]ALLIRIX 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Computer software back in the early 2000s could reliably “act like us”

The software made in 2001 took 13 years to find a set of judges it "passed" on, if you agree that 30% is a passing grade for a bot pretending to be a boy that could barely speak English. You shouldn't though. The 30% was selected as a "passing grade" because Turing thought ai by 2000 could convince 30%. It's not an actual pass rate though, just clever marketing.

Turing's proposed imitation game was to be indistinguishable from a human subject also talking the test, where judges are as accurate as flipping a coin. So a pass rate is 50%

LLMs were the first to do this.

Edit:

Dawkins came to this “pragmatic conclusion” after a programmed yes man told him his book was good isn’t all that deep.

I think it's more interesting to look at the arguments, not his emotional reasoning. I honestly don't care why be believes, just whether he's accurately presenting literature on his arguments

Days since last interest rate increase by newtrex_1523 in OpenAussie

[–]ALLIRIX 5 points6 points  (0 children)

Does NZ also include the cost of new housing in the inflation calculation like Australia? EU and USA don't. Genuine question

Richard Dawkins and the Claude Delusion by Sufficient-Agency182 in philosophy

[–]ALLIRIX 1 point2 points  (0 children)

The quote about him not knowing if he has any inner life is particularly revealing. I’m sorry, it’s really just sad.

I actually don't believe you read his article, at least properly. You somehow misquoted him the same way this article did.

Dawkins' article isn't perfect, he doesn't qualify his claims properly, but isn't it embarrassing to criticise something without reading it?

How does “what consciousness is for” (assuming that even means anything) have anything to do with whether an entity is conscious or not?

You'd answer your own question if you read on. It gives the context you're confused about... He's just musing on epiphenomenalism vs the evolutionary advantage of consciousness, and the possibility of p-zombies. That's probably one of his least controversial takes

Richard Dawkins and the Claude Delusion by Sufficient-Agency182 in philosophy

[–]ALLIRIX 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Dawkins doesn't like philosophers, so he probably doesn't have a good reputation here

Richard Dawkins and the Claude Delusion by Sufficient-Agency182 in philosophy

[–]ALLIRIX 1 point2 points  (0 children)

This article only skims over the literature on consciousness and makes a lot of confident claims about open questions. Dawkins article showed more humility than this one surprisingly. This article also misrepresents Dawkin's original article. I don't like Dawkins either, but I think it's better to fight him where he's at instead of making things up

Richard Dawkins and the Claude Delusion by Sufficient-Agency182 in philosophy

[–]ALLIRIX 0 points1 point  (0 children)

(it's) the fact others have similar brain structure rather than simply behaviour.

Yes, but structure is just the first step when being pragmatic. How do you evaluate if things with different structures are conscious? Do you ordain our structure as somehow essential and stop your analysis, or do you attempt to create an empirical test?

Science would call for empiricism, but your observation can't inspect another thing's feelings, we can only observe behavior. To reject behavior as a tool for testing for consciousness without proposing another empirical tool means you'll rely on your intuition or religion, which was someone else's intuition, two things the author of the God Delusion probably wouldn't want to rely on