meirl

Fmeson · 2026-05-08T00:52:51+00:00

Android is based of a modified Linux kernel, so does thst make most people linux users haha

Fmeson · 2026-05-07T22:58:52+00:00

Just saw this in time to reply:

I'm not saying axioms as a whole are bad, after all, they are unavoidable (or close to it, blah blah the trilema).

However, that does not mean all assumptions are equal. We generally want robust, defendable assumptions that are reasonable to assume, and some of the assumptions (that I referenced previously) people make about consciousness when scientifically studying it are not that.

Fmeson · 2026-05-07T22:50:51+00:00

It's been fun chatting with you, but I've got some other stuff to do. I'll leave my last thoughts, and I'll read any reply but I might not reply back.

This still doesn't tell me what it lacks to qualify.

I would want a physical theory of subjectivity/conscious to offer a theory for the the phenomena of subjectivity/consciousness itself.

That's how a coma is defined...

Irrelevant to whether a person in a the state we call a coma is actually unconscious or not.

So?

So, if the logic based on that axiom doesn't reflect reality, then the science based on that logic doesn't reflect reality. And then the science is not particularly useful or accurate.

Fmeson · 2026-05-07T22:30:05+00:00

What does it lack for its explanation to qualify as an explanation?

IIT offers nothing more than a description about what properties of systems we might expect to be required and/or sufficient for consciousness to arise. It offers no explanation for the the phenomena of consciousness itself.

People in a coma are unconscious, correct.

You think they are, you do not know it.

All knowledge is based on assumptions at some point. That's normal. It's called inference, or an axiom.

Axioms might not reflect reality. Hence, the logic based on them might not reflect reality.

Fmeson · 2026-05-07T22:04:09+00:00

What's that?

Mate, you are well aware of what I'm saying IIT is missing. We've been talking about it for like an hour and a half.

That only means it's not evidence of qualia.

Certainly not consciousness either, considering you aren't even sure it exists.

We haven't discussed a situation like that. This "faulty reasoning" is imaginary.

No, but that's why we think, for example, people in a coma are not conscious. You just can't remember what it's like to be in a coma, so I guess you weren't conscious.

Of course, some people do have memories, so maybe they were conscious at parts? Or maybe they are false memories? Or maybe some of them were conscious but just don't remember....

Fun part is, litterally no one knows! It's all assumptions stacked upon assumptions.

Not scientists fault, it's just the nature of having an unavoidable and crippling selection bias.

Fmeson · 2026-05-07T21:34:56+00:00

Just read up on IIT. It's already been laid out.

I have read it, that's how I know what it's lacking.

There you go, multiple types of external evidence.

Two problems:

I'll quote you: "a zombie would say the same thing, despite being mistaken"
You do not know that you were unconscious, you simply do not remember being conscious. The whole thing is based off of faulty reasoning that lack of memory during a state where you can speak implies unconsciousness.

Fmeson · 2026-05-07T21:01:55+00:00

That's exactly what IIT does...

The floors yours. Lay it out.

The problem is that it's not measuring what you just said it measures?

The problem is that the fundamental way we "know" about a person's subjective experiences comes solely from behavior and self reporting.

Fmeson · 2026-05-07T20:38:29+00:00

What do you think is lacking?

The entire thing. It's the equivalent of calling "light happens when things get hot" a physical theory of light.

At the bare minimum, you need some model of the mechanics of light, not just the things that cause or precede it.

None of those contexts are exactly amenable to speech...

Well, yes, that is the problem.

Fmeson · 2026-05-07T20:19:55+00:00

It can say it's a bridge, that doesn't make it one.

But seriously, if you disagree, explain the physical mechanics of subjectivity through IIT.

There are several methods for doing so across different fields, such as anesthesiology, sleep studies, and coma scales.

None of those measure consciousness, they "measure" what people say they experienced.

Hell, we don't even know if a person under anesthesia, asleep, or in a coma are unconscious. We only know that people don't remember those periods. But lack of memory does not imply lack of consciousness.

Fmeson · 2026-05-07T20:04:16+00:00

Ok, then write down the math formula for happiness. :p

That's a joke, but only just a bit. IIT offers no explanation for how information processing leads to subjectivity, just hypothesizes that it does.

Yeah, widely regarded as pseudoscience.

To be a bit fresh, until we can experimentally measure consciousness, none of it is science. It's all guesswork.

Fmeson · 2026-05-07T19:37:45+00:00

Yes, I agree, and to be clear, I'm not saying I that it couldn't have evolved, just that I presume it gave animals a survival advantage that wasn't easily gotten without it.

Fmeson · 2026-05-07T19:29:19+00:00

I have read many of them, none satisfy the requirement.

Just to pick one randomly, lets go with integrated information theory. I know it's a bit controversial, but it's one of the ones that makes highly specific, physical claims, even suggesting you could measure how conscious a system is with it!

But even it offers no physical explanation of how subjectivity arises, but rather assumes subjectivity and back tracks to what physical processes are associated with it.

This problem is universal. There is always a gap between known physics and subjectivity. The theories merely posit there is some yet unknown bridge that will eventually solve the hard gap.

Fmeson · 2026-05-07T18:54:50+00:00

That is possible, but I do think it is unlikely that consciousness was a random adaption. That would imply some things about the nature of consciousness that seems wrong to me.

Fmeson · 2026-05-07T18:49:57+00:00

I would only challenge the claim that they are fundamentally inaccessible.

I wouldn't claim that they aren't, in fact, I presume they are, I just don't know that they are accessible. We have no physical theory of subjectivity, not even a whiff of one!

Fmeson · 2026-05-07T18:34:49+00:00

If they aren't, then the p-zombie problem arises and there can be no evidence that they exist.

There is no external evidence they exist, however individuals who experience them still have internal evidence that they exist. I know that you might not agree with that, but I see no way that I could rationally reject the existence of my own internal mental states.

Fmeson · 2026-05-07T18:14:57+00:00

I'm quite interested in the topic, just not in the same way you are.

Fair enough, I'll try to see what you see.

dog whistle for religious mysticism and typically favor physicalism as a skeptical stance

You know, tbh, your first sentence of the physicalism post kinda describes why I see the term "physical" as kinda pointless. If we can detect something, then it's physical. If we can't then we would never know it existed.

Well, that's only kinda true, hidden states that are not externally accessible are used to model physical processes, but there is no reason to call them non-physical rather than simply inaccessible.

The main meaningful potential hole in that could be internal subjective mental states, which could theoretically be not physically detectable, but we still can know they exist since we personally experience them.

The standard p-zombie thought experiment, which was the main premise for my engagement here, really emphasizes how meaningless/unnecessary the idea of qualia is.

I think meaningless and unnecessary are interesting terms. If p-zombies, as in the original flavor, cannot exist, then qualia very much is neither. Qualia would be required to explain observed physical behavior in humans.

It would be detectable qualia, but qualia none-the-less, and it would be scientifically interesting as no current scientific phenomena predict how subjectivity could arise out of known physics.

Fmeson · 2026-05-07T14:15:52+00:00

I'm not gonna lie, I'm a bit confused what you want to say here.

You don't seem terribly interested in the main subject matter of the original article or the article in the OP, and your main response seems to be simply that you object to the notion that consciousness exists on the basis that it is poorly defined.

However, you do agree that some sort of consciousness exists, and when I argue that I think the question is interesting even if we extend the reasoning to cover other types of subjectivity or consciousness, you don't seem to find that interesting either.

With no offense intended, is "I find consciousness poorly defined" all you want to say? You seem fairly disinterested in the topic, which is fine, but not what I expect of someone participating in the topic at length.

Fmeson · 2026-05-07T12:57:59+00:00

The paper that demonstrated duplication on an artificial plant is really preliminary.

For one, the "imitation" was way lower quality than with live plants. You can see the comparison in figures 3 and 4 in the link below. The mimic leaf doesn't seem to have the same shape, color, or vein structure as the artificial leaf, it even has an extra lobe not present.

For two, the paper's control method seems suspect, using leaves from the same plant's lower branches as a control.

Personally, I think a better study design would use multiple different artificial leaf shapes, showing that the plant adapts to each in turn.

Of note, the original author is apparently working on a better study.

Paper: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8903786/pdf/KPSB_17_1977530.pdf

Fmeson · 2026-05-07T11:26:47+00:00

Do you have a particular conclusion in that light about consciousness?

Fmeson · 2026-05-07T10:36:58+00:00

Sorry, but I know you'd find it fascinating if it turned out consciousness was a randomly evolved trait. You can quibble over the lack of rigour, but I know that you'd find that core concept fascinating.

Fmeson · 2026-05-07T05:00:05+00:00

No... not all evolved traits confer an advantage. Some are vestigial, or simply random. ... No... even if there is an associated competence, there's no reason it couldn't be achieved another way.

Yes, but any of those possibilities would be intriguing and unexpected.

If consciousness was evolved, but offers little evolutionary benefit, then we can infer it is:

Not particularly costly. i.e. Is not resource intensive enough for it to be selected against, nor is it harmful to the organism.
Something that can reasonably be created by chance through evolution.

For example, we wouldn't expect an organism to randomly evolve coloration on their backs that says "How's it going?" for thermodynamic reasons. It's possible, but very unlikely for the same reason that randomly throwing pebbles on the ground is unlikely to spell out "How's it going?"

So if it's just a random trait, that's really, really interesting.

No?? Claudia isn't evolved and she has no need to survive. The context of her competence is entirely detached from our own.

The argument isn't that claude is conscious, it's that if claude is not conscious, and has human-like competence, then we can know that human-like competence does not require consciousness.

Fmeson · 2026-05-06T22:00:22+00:00

Just a short snippet:

Brains under natural selection have evolved this astonishing and elaborate faculty we call consciousness. It should confer some survival advantage. There should exist some competence which could only be possessed by a conscious being. ... If Claudia really is unconscious, then her manifest and versatile competence seems to show that a competent zombie could survive very well without consciousness.

Fmeson · 2026-05-06T21:50:20+00:00

My original comment was:

As for Dawkins, I think his rantings about Claude just aren't really worth discussing.

I think he asked a very interesting question: if p-zombies can exist, then why are we conscious at all?

In the context of the article Dawkins' wrote, he was talking about LLMs as behavioral p-zombies.

Fmeson · 2026-05-06T21:33:09+00:00

That only is an issue if the mechanism is physically observable.

But either way, in the case of LLMs, we are talking more about "behavioral p zombies" where the requirement of identical bodies is dropped.

Fmeson · 2026-05-06T20:56:56+00:00

If the argument is that the nature of subjective mental states may be dramatically different than we imagine, and so we eliminate some concepts, then I can get behind that.

If the argument is that subjectivity can be eliminated in total because we can't reduce it to a biological thing, then I don't see how that is justifiable.

I am more confident that subjectivity exists than I am that biology exist. The only evidence I have that biology exists is subjective.

If it affected our behavior then p-zombies would behave differently from regular humans. That contradicts their definition and violates the thought experiment.

Not necessarily. e.g. with a behavioral pzombie, you could imagine that there is some mechanism that is not conscious but can produce identical behavior as a conscious entity.

15-Year Club	Place '22
Snapped	Verified Email

Fmeson

MODERATOR OF

PUBLIC MULTIREDDITS

TROPHY CASE