
Consciousness Isn’t a Mystery, It’s Matter - ceres
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/16/opinion/consciousness-isnt-a-mystery-its-matter.html?_r=0
======
carapace
This is terrible. Is is even an argument?

I was reading "Hard problem of consciousness" Wikipedia article this morning:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hard_problem_of_consciousness](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hard_problem_of_consciousness)
I'm not sure this adds anything to that.

The author seems to want to say that consciousness is primary and that the
physical universe, matter, _is_ consciousness somehow, so __poof __no more
mystery.

But this doesn't touch the "hard problem" so who cares?

There is what I like to call the _flux_ : form and movement. I lump together
"external" and "internal" experience, including all proprioceptive experience,
etc.

Then there is the subjective awareness. It is primary. As the author points
out, every other fact we know is contingent upon the fact of subjective
awareness. Everything is content to this whatever-it-is observer. This
awareness itself seems not to have any qualities or properties whatsoever,
making it extremely difficult to talk about (and rendering it forever beyond
any scientific treatment!)

Somehow, this awareness _is_ our "self". (It may or may not also be tied into
the quantum "Measurement Problem" but that is a whole 'nother story.)

You have a body but you're not your body; you have emotions but you aren't
your emotions; you have thoughts but you aren't your thoughts; you are _that
awareness_.

Now, if that awareness created or creates the physical world (as the Bhagavad
Gita seems to state) that would be pretty amazing and I'd love to read about
it. This article doesn't really expand on that.

~~~
radarsat1
> You have a body but you're not your body

Not only that, but you're _you_ because you're not someone _else 's_ body.
That sounds tautological but I think it's important. I think a big part of
what gives someone consciousness is identity, and what gives us identity, is
the idea of us being an island isolotated within our body and therefore
distinct from other conciousnesses.

Which sounds pointless, but I think it's actually significant if you start to
consider the eventual effect of identity on "shared consciousness" via
technologically-enabled telepathy, which we may actually see one day in the
far future.

~~~
meric
Perhaps consciousness _is_ shared, only memory isn't, and the distinction is
mere an illusion due to distinct memory. Perhaps that's how aiming to be
"self-less" is a thing in Buddhism, Sufism, Zen, etc.

~~~
bbctol
I'd say perception is more relevant to the experience of unique identity than
memory; I only see out of my eyes, which makes me feel separate from those
around me, even if we'd have lived through all the same experiences.

~~~
radarsat1
I'm not sure perception and memory are all that different. What are memories
except echoes of perception? I actually wonder if memory is not our perceptual
signals caught within neural loops that are able to feedback and trigger
pattern detection circuits. When this happens for multiple patterns in
synchrony, we form associations. Is it right? Who knows.. no idea how even
neuroscience can start to answer that..

------
paulsutter
Consciousness is a suitcase word, which makes it challenging to debate. From
[1]:

"In The Emotion Machine, Marvin Minsky discusses suitcase words—words that
contain a variety of meanings packed into them, such as conscience, emotions,
consciousness, experience, thinking, morality, right, and wrong.

"The word ‘consciousness’ is used to describe a wide range of activities, such
as “how we reason and make decisions, how we represent our intentions, and how
we know what we’ve recently done [p128].” If we want to better understand the
various meanings of consciousness we need to analyse each one separately,
rather than treating it as a single concept.

[1] [https://alexvermeer.com/unpacking-suitcase-
words/](https://alexvermeer.com/unpacking-suitcase-words/)

~~~
astazangasta
Every word is a suitcase word.

~~~
mcguire
My words mean exactly what I wish them to mean.

~~~
coldtea
I got the Alice reference, but not the point of the comment.

Obviously they don't, and it's not up to the one saying the words but to the
listener too.

------
kanzure
> _Those who make the Very Large Mistake (of thinking they know enough about
> the nature of the physical to know that consciousness can’t be physical)
> tend to split into two groups. Members of the first group remain unshaken in
> their belief that consciousness exists, and conclude that there must be some
> sort of nonphysical stuff: They tend to become “dualists.” Members of the
> second group, passionately committed to the idea that everything is
> physical, make the most extraordinary move that has ever been made in the
> history of human thought. They deny the existence of consciousness: They
> become “eliminativists.”_

What's problematic about the "say no to consciousness" case? It seems to be
based on their preference for other descriptions of human brain activity,
especially when the alternative description (consciousness) has been so
ambiguous, vague and unhelpful.

> You cannot describe first-hand facts using only third-hand facts. This is
> the core philosophical dilemma in the hard problem of consciousness.

from
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12381348](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12381348)

(or more accurately, I think third-hand factual systems could probably posit
first-hand facts-- but be unable to assert validity or something. I am not a
philosopher.)

~~~
empath75
Saying that conciousness isn't real because it's an emergent phenomenon of
non-conscious processes is like saying that turbulence isn't real, because
it's an emergent property of non-fluid particles. I mean sure, at the level of
atoms, it's just particles interacting locally, but that doesn't mean that at
certain scales, turbulence isn't a better way of looking at their group
behavior.

~~~
whybroke
Technically though describing consciousness as emergent property of neural
functioning is a conjecture, though a very credible one.

Unlike turbulence, I only have one case where I have ever seen this
consciousness which I am trying to explain as an epiphenomenon, namely my own.
All others consciousness (if they even exist which I can't prove directly) are
not remotely observed in the same way, they are self reported by other people.

So you have the question of why I can only directly perceive that emergent
property in exactly one brain and not others.

Likewise you'd have to explain why the emergent property is apparently
continuous through my whole lifetime over which my brain changes enormously.

Finally you'd have to deal with the hypothetical case where I am duplicated
molecule for molecule and then ask which consciousness would I have direct
access to, the duplicate or the original.

So while dualism is obviously patently absurd, the idea of consciousness as
epiphenomenon, while promising, needs work too.

~~~
bertiewhykovich
Why is dualism's patent absurdity obvious?

~~~
cgio
Because if something occurs outside the current laws of physics it does not
mean it's not natural, rather that the laws of physics need to adjust and take
it into account.

~~~
gyim
Except that if your conscience (and everything in you) is under the _laws_ of
physics, it implies that you are a deterministic or randomized machine. But
then it is not easy to explain free will, for example. You could say that if
it exists, it is a physical phenomenon, but what laws does it conform to? So
most naturalists say that free will is just an illusion, but I personally
would not call this a "patently obvious" choice. (I think it is a "Very Large
Mistake")

------
collyw
"Human conscious experience is wholly a matter of physical goings-on in the
body and in particular the brain."

Is there any proof of this? The while article seems to hinge on this
assumption and then go on from there. We can't see or measure consciousness
(brain activity yes, consciousness no). We only experience it. The article
makes far to many naive assumptions without any proof.

~~~
nitrogen
All the proof you need is the existence of psychoactive chemicals, the
effectiveness of transcranial magnetic stimulation, evidence from fMRI
studies, and the selective personality alterations that occur in cases of
localized brain damage.

~~~
RivieraKid
All of those only imply that the physical state of the brain affects
consciousness, which both camps agree on.

~~~
nitrogen
But physicalism explains it while dualism has to work around it, violating
Occam's razor.

More points in favor of physicalism: scientists' ability to alter rat neurons
to be photosensitive and attach them to fiber optic cables, the ability to
implant memories in rats by altering a neuron, the mapping of place neurons in
rats -- or perhaps the fact that brains are produced entirely from matter
consumed by the mother during gestation and by the creature afterward, so
where does the dualistic mind get a chance to insert itself?

I'll note that I used to be a staunch dualist for religious reasons, but
became convinced of physicalism over a period of years of semi-active reading.

~~~
ZeroFries
Or, matter is entirely imagined. Neurons are imagined. Atoms are imagined.
Reality is inseparable. Only one thing exists, as you say.

------
VLM
If consciousness is just a complicated computation, which seems the simplest
explanation, then it can be analogous to the attitude toward "old computer
science beliefs". As a side issue, someday much like people make furniture
using 300 year old technology there will be craftsman making programs using no
algorithm discovered (learned? found? created?) post 1970.

Its a good thing we invented computers in recorded history and they're not
prehistorical or delivered from space aliens, or we'd be having the same
sophistry about philosophical discussions about computers as we do about
consciousness. What, you claim a mere arrangement of impure silicon atoms
implements the majesty and beauty of the lambda and the red black tree? When
you think of binding a value to a variable, how do you propose to do that with
mere atoms alone? So you think you can build a computer completely out of NOR
gates, well, that's very nice but seeing as computers came from space aliens
and no human has ever made a computer we'll wait on that theory until we see
you run "hello world" on it. Surely an "intelligent designer" created
computers and such complexity cannot operate via mere atoms, much like mere
atoms arranged in peculiar shapes makes hard steel.

Something like this already almost exists between the EE/microcontroller type
people vs the CS/algo people. Note my plethora of weasel words, something,
almost, etc.

Aside from the philosophical analogies being entertaining by themselves, it
would make interesting hard sci fi. Imagine a world where god is blamed for
giving us clay tablets containing most of automata theory. Wouldn't that be an
interesting sci fi setting?

~~~
myflash13
The problem with claiming that consciousness is just a complicated computation
is not merely that we simply haven't advanced our study enough to understand
it. The problem is that what we know so far about the nature of computation
seems to _directly contradict and falsify_ the notion that consciousness is
just computation. To put it simply: our knowledge of computational complexity,
algorithms, and general problem solving shows that our human intelligence
performs _far_ more sophisticated operations than are possible given the
number of neurons that exist in our brains (unless there are some super-fast
algorithms that we haven't discovered yet, which would have massive
implications on the P=NP problem, and our understanding of physics).

Related video about why we don't have AI yet:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c3of7xYoMQM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c3of7xYoMQM)

~~~
wyager
> our knowledge of computational complexity, algorithms, and general problem
> solving shows that our human intelligence performs far more sophisticated
> operations than are possible given the number of neurons that exist in our
> brains

This is not true.

I wish I could respond with something more interesting, but that's all there
is to it. You are just saying something that is incorrect. Our brains are
information-theoretically and complexity-theoretically entirely reasonable.

~~~
myflash13
> Our brains are information-theoretically and complexity-theoretically
> entirely reasonable.

I know this has been the traditional view of most information theorists. But
many philosophers (and a few computer scientists) challenge that view. See
Fodor's frame problem[1]. The basic idea is this: yes, our brains are
complexity-theoretically reasonable _after_ the problem is defined given a set
of inputs, outputs, and problem states. However the real issue is how our
brains formulate the problem in the first place - how to sort through the
combinatorially explosive amount of information in order to narrow down what
is relevant to a problem. This objection has never been satisfactorily
answered by information theorists in my opinion. The answers given by info
theorists always seems to presuppose the existence of a problem formulation
before solving it.

[1] [http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/frame-
problem/](http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/frame-problem/)

~~~
eli_gottlieb
Everything in the brain is natively probabilistic. Representations which have
low to zero mutual information with the current sensory input are simply not
computed-with. You could say that almost all representations will have nonzero
mutual information with almost all real-world sensory input, but the sensory
input is precision-weighted, so it will take both a sufficiently high degree
of mutual information _and_ sufficiently high precision of the activating
sense-data to make a given branch of the hierarchy (the whole model is
hierarchical, and very large) relevant enough to load it into working memory
and use it for prediction.

~~~
myflash13
> Representations which have low to zero mutual information with the current
> sensory input are simply not computed-with.

Who decides that a particular representation in the brain has zero mutual
information with current sensory input? This requires a comparison of some
sort (i.e. computation).

~~~
eli_gottlieb
It's a distributed computation that has been mostly precomputed, ie: brain
connectivity. And a very popular theory of the brain says it does calculate
second-order (precision/entropy) statistics about what it models.

~~~
myflash13
The combinatorially explosive amount of information that we deal with at every
single moment is too large to be dismissed as "precomputed by brain
connectivity". If such a large amount of computation could be "precomputed",
it has massive implications on our understanding of complexity-theory. Besides
it contradicts our subjective feeling of free will, which is why it is not a
satisfactory answer for most people.

~~~
wyager
>combinatorially explosive amount of information that we deal with at every
single moment

What are you referring to? The sensory input to the brain takes, as a
ridiculously high upper bound, perhaps terabits per second. In reality it's
probably a few megabits. It's really not much. Vision is, I suspect, by far
the highest bandwidth input to our brain, and computer vision has met or
exceeded human vision in many tasks.

------
7373737373
Integrated Information Theory[0][1] is the first approach to solving these
problems that make sense for me. It takes an axiomatic approach and provides a
computable method to associate both a level of consciousness and the content
of the experience to an arbitrary causal system. Unlike all these unscientific
philosophical considerations it can actually be used to create testable
hypotheses.

[0]
[http://integratedinformationtheory.org/](http://integratedinformationtheory.org/)
[1]
[http://journals.plos.org/ploscompbiol/article?id=10.1371/jou...](http://journals.plos.org/ploscompbiol/article?id=10.1371/journal.pcbi.1003588)

~~~
davmre
Have you read Scott Aaronson's "Why I Am Not An Integrated Information
Theorist"
([http://www.scottaaronson.com/blog/?p=1799](http://www.scottaaronson.com/blog/?p=1799))?
He commends IIT for making falsifiable predictions, but argues that some of
those predictions are, in fact, false.

~~~
7373737373
Yes. In the follow-up linked above he also describes the authors' responses to
this. The predictions are not de facto false. He argues that they are
intuitively false, which is a matter of personal belief but not empirical
research. The same goes for some counterarguments.

~~~
davmre
What predictions does IIT make that could be 'de facto' falsified in the sense
you're imagining?

~~~
7373737373
It will probably depend on how well large systems can be approximated.

In terms of reproducible results, it would be most interesting to research the
shape of different qualia and how they progress if the underlying network
changes (both in function and connectivity). Right now, we can only rely on
self-aware and -reporting systems. But if we know how actual experiences
integrate if two systems merge it might be possible to get a "feeling" for
others.

Cases such as these[0] are therefore extremely interesting. If it is possible
to gradually change the connectivity between two systems, according to the
theory, there should be a sudden "split" into two experiences. High bandwidth
brain-computer-brain interfaces could possibly provide such a possibility in
the future.

[1] is another reason why I tend to be pretty agnostic about intuitive
arguments.

[0]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Craniopagus_twins](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Craniopagus_twins)
[1] [https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn12301-man-with-
tiny-b...](https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn12301-man-with-tiny-brain-
shocks-doctors/)

------
mynegation
To echo callesgg elsewhere in this thread, my own pet "theory" is that
conciousness is a metacomputation, i.e. not just a process of neural reactions
to outside events, but reaction to a process of reaction. For example,
understanding the need to convey acquired information to another being to the
same species eventually led to the development of language. Figuring out that
brain forgets information led to the development of storytelling (hoping that
someone else will remember) and eventually writing. And so on. Conciousness to
me is not black and white but instead a spectrum of traits made possible by
thinking about thinking.

~~~
ilaksh
"metacomputation" \-- that reminded me of this from Wikipedia on metasystem
transition:

"Turchin has applied the concept of metasystem transition in the domain of
computing, via the notion of metacompilation or supercompilation. A
supercompiler is a compiler program that compiles its own code, thus
increasing its own efficiency, producing a remarkable speedup in its
execution."

------
coldtea
> _The reply is simple. We know what conscious experience is because the
> having is the knowing: Having conscious experience is knowing what it is._

That's sidestepping the issue. Of course we know what consciousness is in this
sense.

What we don't know, and what we actually mean when we say we don't know what
consciousness is, is what causes it and how it emerges.

~~~
azakai
You ask what causes consciousness and how it emerges, which presupposes
something before consciousness - something that can cause it and it can emerge
from. Most likely you intend the physical world.

Why is consciousness in need of being explained in that manner, is what I
think the author would ask. It's similar to saying that physical matter or
energy are hard problems, as we don't know what causes them or how they emerge
- not in the sense of conversion from one form of energy or matter to another,
but what generated matter or energy in the first place.

(With that said, I do think there are strong arguments for favoring the
physical world, and that pose a challenge for the author's position.)

~~~
coldtea
> _You ask what causes consciousness and how it emerges, which presupposes
> something before consciousness - something that can cause it and it can
> emerge from._

And why not? Most (all?) including rocks, have a cause and constituent
elements that need to be arranged in a certain way for them to have a
particular function.

The strange thing would be to presuppose consciousness as without something
before it. Which would be like what Christians for example consider for the
"soul".

------
callesgg
My personal theory of what consciousness is that it is a feedback loop.

I have major issues explaining why i think that but somehow it fits my model.

When thinking of consciousness as a feedback loop, stuff sort of makes sense.
I have been unable to poke holes in the theory but also unable to add strength
to it.

~~~
0x100000
You might be interested in reading Douglas Hofstadter's book I Am A Strange
Loop.

~~~
callesgg
Ordered a copy, thank you.

~~~
carapace
FWIW, this book gave me the idea that consciousness _could_ be some sort of
feedback loop involving the whole Universe (including you and me and everybody
else) possibly via quantum entanglement. I know that's terribly hand-wavey and
soupy, sorry about that, just felt I should mention it.

Related: meditation (at least some kinds) seems to operate by turning the
subjective awareness back onto itself, becoming aware of becoming aware of...
etc... A little like a camera hooked up to a monitor that it's pointed at, you
get an infinite regression.

In the camera-monitor system there is a physical loop of information from the
lens-to-screen-to-lens-to...

When you do it with you awareness, there _must_ be something looping
somewhere, regardless of the physicality or otherwise of consciousness, eh?

~~~
wyager
> FWIW, this book gave me the idea that consciousness could be some sort of
> feedback loop involving the whole Universe (including you and me and
> everybody else) possibly via quantum entanglement

Then this book sounds like it's not worth reading. There is absolutely no need
to invoke pseudo-quantum mumbo-jumbo to investigate consciousness. We don't
understand the chemical operation of neurons well enough to say whether
quantum effects are necessary for neural functioning (although they probably
aren't). Most "quantum-looking" (i.e. obviously non-classical) processes
happen at much smaller space and energy scales than the chemical processes we
know are involved in cognition.

Quantum entanglement almost certainly isn't involved because it can't be used
to transmit information and it requires high degrees of precision to make use
of in the first place.

The brain's thermal noise floor is vastly larger than the scale of most
"interesting" quantum effects.

~~~
carapace
Don't pan G.E.B. due to my wild-eyed speculation. I'm the one saying
"quantum!" and waving my hands here, not Hofstadter. ;-)

------
azernik
This is an almost stereotypical reductionist view - yes, we know a lot of fine
details of how consciousness and cognition and experience work, but we
absolutely do not understand their nature. That's like saying chemistry is all
you need to understand how a bacterium works. You'll be able to decipher a lot
of the mechanisms, but how the system developed and how the pieces fit
together is always going to remain beyond your grasp without more specific
research.

------
ilaksh
After reading all of the interesting comments and debates, I think that as far
as having fun wasting time with amateur philosophy, consciousness can be quite
a fun topic.

But beyond that I think I just want to echo what paulsutter said in his
comment -- consciousness is a suitcase word with too many different meanings.
To have a 'real' discussion you would need to unpack all of the different
meanings at the beginning, but no one is going to do that.

Also, the word consciousness is directly tied into belief systems, so if you
want to understand someone's belief system, you can ask them about it, but the
nature of beliefs is that you are not going to have a constructive
conversation.

If anyone is curious about my own beliefs, I think that we can generally
answer the Leibniz machine question with 'emergence' so perhaps I am an
emergentist
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emergentism](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emergentism)

I like the general explanation of how something like consciousness arises from
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metasystem_transition](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metasystem_transition)

------
catshirt
i'm struggling to identify the point of the article.

mystery and matter have never been mutually exclusive. depending on it's
configuration, matter can lead to some mysterious things. "it's matter" is a
bad answer to pretty much every question.

~~~
shawkinaw
The point I got is this: Just because we can't figure out a physical picture
of consciousness doesn't mean there isn't one. Furthermore, it is the physical
part that is the big mystery, rather than the consciousness part.

~~~
catshirt
> _Just because we can 't figure out a physical picture of consciousness
> doesn't mean there isn't one._

didn't Descartes try to explain this hundreds of years ago?

> _it is the physical part that is the big mystery, rather than the
> consciousness part._

you say tomato, i say tomato. seems like the author is trying to mince words
or use people's connotations of these words to start an argument.

~~~
goatlover
The author is stating that physicalism (formerly materialism) is true,
however, physics fails to fully capture what it is to be physical, because it
doesn't not include our experience of said physical world.

Basically, our conceptual understanding is lacking. But dualists or idealists
might say the same thing, so ...

~~~
catshirt
> _Basically, our conceptual understanding is lacking. But dualists or
> idealists might say the same thing, so ..._

my point exactly. :) i'm not sure whose eyes the author is trying to open.

------
themgt
I feel like a lot of the replies here are missing what's actually a quite
subtle, thoughtful argument:

 _The German philosopher Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz made the point vividly in
1714. Perception or consciousness, he wrote, is “inexplicable on mechanical
principles, i.e. by shapes and movements. If we imagine a machine whose
structure makes it think, sense, and be conscious, we can conceive of it being
enlarged in such a way that we can go inside it like a mill” — think of the
1966 movie “Fantastic Voyage,” or imagine the ultimate brain scanner. Leibniz
continued, “Suppose we do: visiting its insides, we will never find anything
but parts pushing each other — never anything that could explain a conscious
state.”

...

Many make the same mistake today — the Very Large Mistake (as Winnie-the-Pooh
might put it) of thinking that we know enough about the nature of physical
stuff to know that conscious experience can’t be physical. We don’t. We don’t
know the intrinsic nature of physical stuff..

We find this idea extremely difficult because we’re so very deeply committed
to the belief that we know more about the physical than we do, and (in
particular) know enough to know that consciousness can’t be physical. We don’t
see that the hard problem is not what consciousness is, it’s what matter is —
what the physical is._

People making computer analogies below are engaging in the exact fallacy the
piece is arguing against. A turing machine is a mathematical model for
symbolic manipulation, and yet it's assumed one could somehow "map"
consciousness 1-to-1 onto such a machine. The fact we can't simulate a single
protein fold on a supercomputer gives me real pause in believing we've begun
to grasp or have the ability to digitally emulate the kind of tricks life used
to bootstrap consciousness out of matter.

I know the "no real evidence" / "too warm & wet & macro" arguments against
quantum consciousness, but that to me looks like by far the most fruitful path
to investigate to break out of dualist/"eliminativist" dilemma we find
ourselves in. Recent research on quantum biology already makes clear life
makes is far more quantum than I think almost anyone would have believed
possible a decade or two ago. Considering just photosynthesis, arguably no
life as we know it on earth would be possible without clever non-classical
hacks by nature.

~~~
ilaksh
This quantum biology stuff is just a way for dualists to hang on to their
religious or mystic beliefs.

~~~
CuriouslyC
Not exactly. We've pushed determinism down to the level of quantum mechanics.
Bell's theorem strongly implicates that the universe is fundamentally non-
deterministic. The way I see it, you can interpret this non-determinism as
randomness, or you can interpret it as choice. The thing I find ironic is that
most scientists - who espouse parsimony and deduction based on observation -
choose the random explanation. If quantum indeterminacy is random, it is the
first truly random process we've ever discovered. Additionally, when a
scientist states that their perception of choice is mistaken/an illusion, I
have to ask, then how do you trust any of the data you base your science on?

~~~
themgt
Yep, mostly agreed. I think if you squint a little, it's possible to see how
real non-deterministic "choice" can bootstrap itself out of QM. Do we have a
theory describing how? No, but such a theory would inherently upend the
foundations of science and western philosophy, so even if we don't have it in
hand, it's worth pointing out there's a fair amount of ... circumstantial
evidence(?) in that direction.

------
jack9
> I find this odd because we know exactly what consciousness is

I guess it's solved. I'm glad the NY Times is where I go for my scientific
analyses.

------
mcguire
" _I find this odd because we know exactly what consciousness is — where by
“consciousness” I mean what most people mean in this debate: experience of any
kind whatever. It’s the most familiar thing there is, whether it’s experience
of emotion, pain, understanding what someone is saying, seeing, hearing,
touching, tasting or feeling. It is in fact the only thing in the universe
whose ultimate intrinsic nature we can claim to know. It is utterly
unmysterious._

" _The nature of physical stuff, by contrast, is deeply mysterious, and
physics grows stranger by the hour._ "

The author seems to be traveling a road very close to solipsism.

If the only thing you can know is your own consciousness...

~~~
visarga
Even though solipsism is considered unfalsifiable, it can't explain why the
world is so regular and yet complex, much more complex than human imagination.
We can feel the limits of our imagination, but reality is much more complex.
So there is the proof that there is an external world. It's not all in our
imagination, because our imagination is less complex than the world we
experience. If we said that our own imagination created the world, then it
must be a Godly power. Basically we attribute divine powers to our own minds,
which is absurd.

~~~
armitron
There is no proof of an external world, since nobody has ever experienced it.
Everything you consider to be a part of that external world is mediated
through your mind.

In short, you exist in virtual reality which is really manifested by your
mental map which is layer upon layer of memories, personality traits, beliefs
and thoughts.

That does not necessarily mean that "you" create _the_ world, only that your
mind gives raise to the subjective reality you have access to, the only
reality you have access to.

There may be an external, objective world out there, but we wouldn't be able
to directly access it.

~~~
mcguire
Absolutely. That's the point of the solipsism argument: you have to assume
there is an objective external world or you get into a trivial corner.

At which point you need to explain consciousness in other people, which you
cannot perceive directly.

~~~
armitron
Well the assumption of an objective external world I find a bit silly. We can
assume that other minds exist since we have direct experience of our own. It's
a small leap from one mind to many (a leap nonetheless).

But to assume an objective external world exists when nobody has ever
experienced such a thing, is a leap of quite different proportions, akin to
believing in a bearded man in the sky.

------
sp527
I didn't realize until reading this comment section that there's an entire
demographic of intelligent people in denial about why we are conscious
(generic cognition is an evolutionary advantage in responding to circumstances
that are too dynamic to be accounted for by a process measured in generations)
and whether it persists beyond death (no, because it's hooked up to the
brain).

And by the way, it clearly worked : we colonized the planet. And now we have
arrived at a juncture wherein we are left having to explain our existence when
the reality is that our only identifiable purpose is to reproduce. Everything
else is incidental.

~~~
sebastianconcpt
You are talking about behavior. Qualia is something else. Why does it exists?

~~~
sp527
Because evolution ultimately reduces entropy in response to stimuli. This
process, combined with time, can yield complexity. Countless studies abound
ascertaining rudimentary aspects of cognition in even fairly primitive
organisms. It's hardly a trait upon which humans hold an exclusive claim - we
just evolved the best version of it.

~~~
CuriouslyC
He's asking why we aren't just philosophical zombies. There's no reason that
systems that display intelligence have to experience existence.

~~~
sp527
That's another way of asking if we could (theoretically) simulate
intelligence. Scientific consensus offers an emphatic 'yes' to this question.
We debate the when and how (not the whether) of AGI.

------
jwatte
The article postulates that "everyones" definition of consciousness is
"experience of any kind whatever." That's not my definition at all. My camera
is not conscious because it experiences images. My speakers aren't conscious
because they experience the sound vibration they emit. Consciousness may be an
important part in us humans interpreting our experiences in some context, but
it is totally different from those experiences. I can be conscious for a while
in a sensory deprivation tank!

Separately, saying we "know nothing" about physics, just because we have to
experience physics through our senses, is somewhere between disingenuous and
false. We know how to predict the behaviour of physical systems very well. We
know much less about how to predict conscious systems. So, if by "knowledge"
you mean "ability to predict outcomes, possibly as result of stimuli," we know
physics much more than consciousness. Or, perhaps, we know simpler physical
systems, but but the complex systems that give rise to consciousness -- again,
we know more about physics than consciousness, but not enough physics to
explain consciousness as a physical system.

Finally, arguing that the mind is just its physical/chemical make up requires
a lot more proof than we currently have. That argument reduces to "there is no
free will." It may be true, but we don't know enough of quantum processes in
the brains function to say that for sure. We certainly can't simulate or
predict a couscous human brain yet.

------
noiv
I think more interesting is the question: What has consciousness? Or from what
point on humans carry one?

------
lohankin
From other news: Consciousness Isn’t a Mystery, It’s Backpropagation

~~~
p1esk
This is the most interesting comment in this thread.

~~~
RivieraKid
Maybe, but it makes little sense.

~~~
p1esk
Makes perfect sense to me. Consciousness is how the process of backpropagation
_feels_ to a sufficiently complex neural network.

------
gooserock
Perhaps I'm just not smart enough to understand what the hell this article is
driving at. But I'm pretty confident in my personal understanding of
"consciousness": it's a word that we use to describe our "experiencing" of the
physical world, which is an emergent property of our incredibly complex
neurological infrastructure.

Is this article agreeing with me, or disagreeing with me? I can't honestly
tell.

~~~
thyrsus
"[T]here is a fundamental respect in which ultimate intrinsic nature of the
stuff of the universe is unknown to us — except insofar as it is
consciousness"

I think the article finds "emergent property" mysterious. It intuits that
there is a link between knowing what the "stuff" is that behaves as physics
describes it, and "consciousness", by which we know there is something rather
than nothing. I think that's a mistake: it's like thinking you couldn't
understand an article on the web without directly observing all the
electronics that created it. I don't believe that fundamental particles (e.g.,
quarks) have any identifier attached to them to distinguish them from other
fundamental particles, except those that describe their behavior: (probability
distribution of) location, (probability distribution of) momentum,
(probability distribution of) mass, etc. There is no "stuff" that is not
behavior. Physics works to refine our model of the fundamental particles;
everything after that is "emergent property". A sorting algorithm in a high
level language doesn't depend on what CPU it runs on, given sufficient RAM and
that there are no hardware faults. It may have been designed by a human, but
it may also have been generated by simulated evolution (genetic algorithm).
Fundamental particles/waves don't have hardware faults, but they do have
probability distributions. Atoms are an emergent property of their
constituents and decay when their constituents reach a low probability state
incompatible with the constitution of the atom. Molecules are an emergent
property of atoms and become different molecules when their constituents decay
or their components react to some external force (usually the electromagnetic
forces of another molecule). Cells are an emergent property of some kinds of
molecules, and so on up the complexity scale. Consciousness is perhaps the top
of the pyramid.

------
aminok
Given the world is analog, with states never reaching a state of absolute zero
(e.g. there is no distance from a nucleus at which there is zero probability
that an orbiting electron will be found), I think consciousness does not ever
diminish to nothingness at physical states simpler than our own. It could
therefore be reasoned that all matter in the universe is conscious.

------
smegel
> where by “consciousness” I mean what most people mean in this debate:
> experience of any kind whatever

Really? Most people I know would throw self-awareness into the mix. When you
make such a bad start, the rest of your article isn't worth reading.

------
walter_bishop
"It’s ironic that the people who are most likely to doubt or deny the
existence of consciousness (on the ground that everything is physical, and
that consciousness can’t possibly be physical)"

We don't doubt that consciousness exists, what we do call into question is the
assertion that it is of a non-corporeal nature. Therefore it has to be
physical in nature.

panpsychism: 'the doctrine or belief that everything material, however small,
has an element of individual consciousness.'

------
kazinator
If consciousness is just matter, why isn't yours accessible to me. There is
something deeper at play.

I have a hypothesis that a consciousness is a function of a universe. Each
universe has just one consciousness.

Another person's consciousness is inaccessible because it's in a different
universe. Only the matter part of that is projected in your universe, not the
actual identity.

Without a hypothesis like this, we are left with postulating hidden variables:
some hidden context pointer which resolves to you or me or such.

~~~
gooserock
> If consciousness is just matter, why isn't yours accessible to me.

Because my matter and your matter aren't in close enough physical proximity or
the appropriate configuration to have any communication with one another. Same
way that you and I both live in houses, but my front door doesn't open into
your living room.

~~~
kazinator
You can visit someone's home, or move to a new one.

I think that being locked to a particular consciousness and having no access
to another one is on par with not having access to parallel universes. I'm
going to click Update right now. In another universe, a parallel me closes the
page without clicking Update. I have no access to that.

------
sebastianconcpt
Mechanicists confuse Consciousness with behavior. Of course we have behavior
(mind) and that, in a mechanistic world, is enough to survive and reproduce.
But Consciousness is something else. We are not Philosophical Zombies. Qualia
is there and is a hard problem that resist most hypotesis.

------
paolomaffei
Scientific rationalism at its worst: trying to apply logic for something that
is beyond logic, and all the way not realizing the basic mistake of thinking
that everything in experience can be expressed or understood with logic,
thought and scientific experiments.

The writer (and a very large part of society) is so oblivious to the
unconscious dogma "Everything can be explained in a consistent scientific
system" that he doesn't even see it he's holding it - precisely like a
Christian will tell you "Look stuff is like this, it says so in the bible".

All this mental masturbation about trying to locate consciousness in the
brain/body is utterly ridicoulous. Why do you think you haven't found it yet?
Hello?

But according to scientific rationalism everything that exist is matter (for
only matter can be PROVED to exist with a scientific experiment...), so
consciousness must be there too right? Just like a man who's lost his keys
outside, but the street is very dark and cold, so he decided to search for
them in his house, which has lights to see better and is much more
comfortable.

------
Madmallard
People with mitochondrial disease get autistic symptoms

autism is like lacking of part of the conscious experience of interpersonal
interaction

your cells are processing reality for you and when you lack the energy you
will lack some of that processing

------
vinceguidry
This article just kicks around concepts with no real insight. It's easy to
demonstrate that consciousness is matter. Put a bullet through someone's brain
and that person will cease to be conscious.

What is difficult to demonstrate is if that is all there is to it. For this we
can turn to math. Do the intricacies of the rules of mathematics actually
exist anywhere? Obviously not, unless you consider words and symbols written
in books to qualify. Math exists everywhere, because you can use it to
describe the physical, and it exists nowhere, because there is no literal
physical representation of it anywhere.

But we _can_ actually _build_ physical representations of particular math
equations, inputting them as programs into a computer. The representations
obey the rules of mathematics, as well as the rules of the physical world, if
you destroy the computer, you also destroy the operation of the program.

But yet there is more to these programs than meets the eye physically. There
are hidden rules that they operate by, more than just the physical affects
them. These are the rules of math. We can analyze the programs using various
mathematical techniques and prove things regarding them.

It is the same way with consciousness. We only see the physical affects
because that's what we're looking for. We don't see the countless hidden rules
that also affect consciousness. They are so numerous and manifold that they
look wholly continuous with the physical world and physical rules.

What are these rules? In a word, they are ideas. Ideas have logic to them and
can be compared with other ideas. We can say that one course of action is good
or bad, when compared to other courses of action. Ideas and thoughts
themselves are so comparable to computer programs that it's amazing to me that
we programmers scoff at the idea of thinking machines.

You analyze thoughts with other thoughts, with tools of logic. You analyze
computer programs with the rules of math, many times those rules are
implemented with other computer programs. The question, "what is
consciousness," is purely the domain of philosophy. Biology and physics can
only takes us so far in our quest to understand ourselves.

To attempt to do so would be like trying to analyze a running computer system
by smashing it apart and looking at the silicon under a microscope. It
fundamentally mistakes what a computer program is. And knowing that it is just
electrical signals traveling across transistor gates doesn't get you very far
either. Even analyzing the voltage levels across the entire running system
isn't going to tell you much either.

------
RivieraKid
This is how I see it:

\- Consciousness is out of the scope of physics. You have to leave the common
"physics is everything" perspective to understand consciousness, however
counterintuitive that is.

\- Physics is just a tool to describe the patterns of our subjective
experience / consciousness.

\- The hard problem is, why does positioning atoms in a piece of matter
(brain) trigger the perception of color or pain?

\- Dualism and solipsism are approximately correct, depending on the specific
definitions, which vary a lot.

~~~
mruniverse
Physics seeks to find out how things work. Questions might not be answerable
but that doesn't put it out of the scope of physics.

The hard problem you pose (positioning atoms... triggering perception of color
or pain), what else is that but a physics problem?

------
danielam
"philosophers have struggled to comprehend the nature of consciousness”

Many philosophers today, including materialists, are heirs to Cartesian
metaphysics, the same metaphysics that brought us the mind-body problem and
the problem of qualia. The difficulties the author has in mind are very much
bound up with this Cartesian (and Galilean) legacy.

The idea that material beings can be conscious is often treated like it's some
new and shocking claim. The reason for that is, again, the broadly Cartesian
heritage at work. For Descartes, it takes an immaterial "res cogitans" to be
conscious. The material body, as a desiccated "res extensa", is incapable of
functioning as a substrate for anything we might call "consciousness". And
because Descartes holds that only human beings possess minds understood as
"res cogitans", only human beings can possess consciousness. Furthermore, "res
extensa" lacks sensory qualities like color or sound. As a result, these
qualities are located in the "res cogitans" as immaterial "qualia".
Materialism does not escape the Cartesian paradigm. Instead, it denies the
"res cogitans" and tries to locate what was ascribed to the "res cogitans"
back in the "res extensa" while maintaining many of the metaphysical and
methodological tenets of Cartesianism. This is where the problem of qualia
occurs. The problem is insurmountable as long as the Cartesian suppositions
are maintained. No amount of "keeping at it" with the current methods will
ever resolve the issue. (See Nagel for more.)

For what it's worth, Aristotelian metaphysics encounters no such difficulties
because it does not adhere to the dualism of Cartesian metaphysics (though
sadly, few philosophers understand Aristotelian metaphysics; there seems to be
a resurgence of interest, however). Indeed, for Aristotle, "consciousness"
(though he does not use this term) is part and parcel of what it means to be
an animal, human or otherwise. (See Jaworski and Feser for more.)

"It’s true that people can make all sorts of mistakes about what is going on
when they have experience, but none of them threaten the fundamental sense in
which we know exactly what experience is just in having it."

If there was any doubt about the Cartesian flavor of the author's reasoning,
this statement should have dispelled it.

"Members of the first group remain unshaken in their belief that consciousness
exists, and conclude that there must be some sort of nonphysical stuff: They
tend to become 'dualists.' Members of the second group, passionately committed
to the idea that everything is physical, make the most extraordinary move that
has ever been made in the history of human thought. They deny the existence of
consciousness: They become 'eliminativists.'"

Ah, but the eliminativists haven't escaped the legacy of Cartesian dualism
either! They've eliminated not only the "res cogitans", but the facts of
experience (e.g., "qualia") altogether! It's a notoriously incoherent
position.

Strawson says he's a panpsychic physicalist, but that falls into the dualist
camp once you get down to it. He offers no third way between Cartesian dualism
and eliminativism.

