March 8, 2019 at 19:43The current state of consciousness science
To take our mind off physics a bit, temporarily change the subject. I will need the concept of a “ philosophical zombie ” - it would probably have to be explained for a long time, but the series “Wild West World” came to the rescue:
Actually, the very idea of the creators of the theme park consisted in the operation of such zombies - machines that do not differ in behavior from people, but feel nothing, have no consciousness. And what is consciousness in general?
We are interested in the oldest, most primitive part of consciousness, which gives us sensations. Sometimes called Qualia . ( Hereinafter, I give links to Russian wiki pages when they are quite complete, but it is always better to read the original in English ) Wikis are interesting to read, but you should not expect formally correct definitions from it. Progress here is slow and so far is rather a delineation of boundaries. And, in my opinion, one of the most important boundaries was drawn by the stern Australian guy, the philosopher from mathematics David Chalmers.
I must say that when they come to philosophy from the natural sciences, like Chalmers (from mathematics) or Max Tegmark (from physics), then these people write their work in a normal, human language.
Chalmers' merit was the separation of problems into “simple”, such as “how memory works,” and into a Complex problem . Of course, simple problems are not simple at all.. But they can simply be approached at least approximately. A complex problem is generally a different level. How can we know that my blue feelings are the same as yours? Maybe they are like red from me, because somewhere in my brain I messed up the wires? How can I be sure that you have consciousness, and you are not a new model from an amusement park? Or maybe a good half of people are born philosophical zombies? Do cats have consciousness? And what about bacteria? How does consciousness arise in the brain?
A difficult problem was known to Leibniz . Let me quote:It must be confessed, moreover, that perception, and that which depends on it, are inexplicable by mechanical causes, that is, by figures and motions, And, supposing that there were a mechanism so constructed as to think, feel and have perception, we might enter it as into a mill. And this granted, we should only find on visiting it, pieces which push one against another, but never anything by which to explain a perception. This must be sought, therefore, in the simple substance, and not in the composite or in the machine.
Vicki (and Chalmers) denotes a complex problem, but they do not say how it differs from a simple one. I figured out how to explain the difference. For a simple problem, we may not know the answer, but we know the format of the answer. For example, how does memory work? A genius in neuroscience will someday tell the public how neural connections plus some substances store information and how it is extracted.
Here is another example of a simple problem:
These are TOE formulas - theory of everything, including quantum gravity. Sorry to be so shallow. We do not yet know what these formulas are, but we expect something similar - a crazy professor and a blackboard covered with formulas.
Now imagine - you open the Internet and read: a scientistraped a journalist, discovered the secret of consciousness! It turns out that consciousness occurs in axons during h-capture of a pi-restrictase with its subsequent hydrolysis in a neuron, which leads to the appearance of impulses of a certain shape.
Pause
So how? Has it become clearer? I would grunt and say, well, yes, some kind of chemical reaction, impulses, this is already so full of circles, where is consciousness then? Agree, no matter what the text about how consciousness arises, in any case, nothing but another disappointment, this text will not give us. That is,
for a complex problem, we not only don’t know the answer,
but don’t even know the answer format
© my
Actually, for a physicist, the presence of consciousness as a kind of invisible, unregistered, immeasurable substance is akin to the statement that space is filled with invisible multi-colored unicorns that do not produce gravity and do not react with matter in any way. Such a theory should be immediately recognized as unscientific and cut out by Occam’s razor if ...
If it weren’t so self-evident that we have consciousness. Eyes can deceive us, hearing too. Remember Neo connected to the hardware? The only thing Neo was right about, even being in the matrix and not knowing about it, was that he had consciousness.
Functionalism suggests that consciousness is somehow born in the process of computing thinking. Philosophical zombies are impossible, because if they behave like people, then they have consciousness (duck typing). The approach is purely mechanistic and partly ostrich, because it really does not explain anything. Two objections can also be made:
Panpsychism approaches the problem from a different perspective. There is no process that creates consciousness. Consciousness is initially in everything, in bacteria and even atom. Oddly enough, this point of view is quite popular - apparently from despair. It is very incomprehensible to me how problems with additivity of consciousness are solved with this approach.
Consciousness cannot understand itself , it means that consciousness cannot in principle understand what consciousness is. Perhaps this is available to consciousness of a higher rank, which also cannot understand itself. Something similar to Godel’s theorem.
Finally, philosopher Daniel Dennett has a separate point of view.
He solves the problem in an original way - he denies the existence of consciousness at all, claiming that it is an illusion. Many even suspect that Daniel is actually a philosophical zombie. It's funny that when he wrote a book justifying his views, Consciousness Explained Chalmers and others dubbed it Consciousness Ignored and Consciousness Explained Away. I do not think that he actually denies the presence of consciousness in himself - most likely, he is just a troll.
At a minimum, this is important for Mind Upload. What guarantees are there that we won’t get zombies after the dive? And if you clone a person uploaded to a computer, then how many consciousnesses will there be? If so, is it possible to erase one consciousness? Does the erased consciousness hurt during erasure?
The connection of consciousness with the Doomsday Theorem is very interesting : If your consciousness randomly dwells in an arbitrary body, and the bodies are much larger towards the end of the development of civilization:
then with high probability we live close to the end of the world.
However, it depends on some assumptions, Self-sampling assumption vs Self Indication Assumption . This will help you solve the problem of the Sleeping Beauty!
Actually, the very idea of the creators of the theme park consisted in the operation of such zombies - machines that do not differ in behavior from people, but feel nothing, have no consciousness. And what is consciousness in general?
We are interested in the oldest, most primitive part of consciousness, which gives us sensations. Sometimes called Qualia . ( Hereinafter, I give links to Russian wiki pages when they are quite complete, but it is always better to read the original in English ) Wikis are interesting to read, but you should not expect formally correct definitions from it. Progress here is slow and so far is rather a delineation of boundaries. And, in my opinion, one of the most important boundaries was drawn by the stern Australian guy, the philosopher from mathematics David Chalmers.
I must say that when they come to philosophy from the natural sciences, like Chalmers (from mathematics) or Max Tegmark (from physics), then these people write their work in a normal, human language.
Chalmers' merit was the separation of problems into “simple”, such as “how memory works,” and into a Complex problem . Of course, simple problems are not simple at all.. But they can simply be approached at least approximately. A complex problem is generally a different level. How can we know that my blue feelings are the same as yours? Maybe they are like red from me, because somewhere in my brain I messed up the wires? How can I be sure that you have consciousness, and you are not a new model from an amusement park? Or maybe a good half of people are born philosophical zombies? Do cats have consciousness? And what about bacteria? How does consciousness arise in the brain?
A difficult problem was known to Leibniz . Let me quote:It must be confessed, moreover, that perception, and that which depends on it, are inexplicable by mechanical causes, that is, by figures and motions, And, supposing that there were a mechanism so constructed as to think, feel and have perception, we might enter it as into a mill. And this granted, we should only find on visiting it, pieces which push one against another, but never anything by which to explain a perception. This must be sought, therefore, in the simple substance, and not in the composite or in the machine.
Why is the “difficult problem” difficult?
Vicki (and Chalmers) denotes a complex problem, but they do not say how it differs from a simple one. I figured out how to explain the difference. For a simple problem, we may not know the answer, but we know the format of the answer. For example, how does memory work? A genius in neuroscience will someday tell the public how neural connections plus some substances store information and how it is extracted.
Here is another example of a simple problem:
These are TOE formulas - theory of everything, including quantum gravity. Sorry to be so shallow. We do not yet know what these formulas are, but we expect something similar - a crazy professor and a blackboard covered with formulas.
Now imagine - you open the Internet and read: a scientist
Pause
So how? Has it become clearer? I would grunt and say, well, yes, some kind of chemical reaction, impulses, this is already so full of circles, where is consciousness then? Agree, no matter what the text about how consciousness arises, in any case, nothing but another disappointment, this text will not give us. That is,
for a complex problem, we not only don’t know the answer,
but don’t even know the answer format
© my
Occam's razor
Actually, for a physicist, the presence of consciousness as a kind of invisible, unregistered, immeasurable substance is akin to the statement that space is filled with invisible multi-colored unicorns that do not produce gravity and do not react with matter in any way. Such a theory should be immediately recognized as unscientific and cut out by Occam’s razor if ...
If it weren’t so self-evident that we have consciousness. Eyes can deceive us, hearing too. Remember Neo connected to the hardware? The only thing Neo was right about, even being in the matrix and not knowing about it, was that he had consciousness.
What are the ideas for solving a complex problem?
Functionalism suggests that consciousness is somehow born in the process of
- Blindsight - visual information falls out of the consciousness of such people, but they can circumvent obstacles - that is, video on the lower level is processed - it simply does not reach consciousness. This is an example of information processing that does not lead to sensation. Likewise, you pull your hand away from the hot before you even feel pain
- The pain itself is also an interesting phenomenon. It is clear that it was created for the self-preservation of living beings. But such a functional explanation completely ignores the fact that pain is unpleasant. A rover can bypass stones not because it hurts, but for self-preservation. Why is this feeling unpleasant? Functionalism completely ignores this component.
Panpsychism approaches the problem from a different perspective. There is no process that creates consciousness. Consciousness is initially in everything, in bacteria and even atom. Oddly enough, this point of view is quite popular - apparently from despair. It is very incomprehensible to me how problems with additivity of consciousness are solved with this approach.
Consciousness cannot understand itself , it means that consciousness cannot in principle understand what consciousness is. Perhaps this is available to consciousness of a higher rank, which also cannot understand itself. Something similar to Godel’s theorem.
Finally, philosopher Daniel Dennett has a separate point of view.
He solves the problem in an original way - he denies the existence of consciousness at all, claiming that it is an illusion. Many even suspect that Daniel is actually a philosophical zombie. It's funny that when he wrote a book justifying his views, Consciousness Explained Chalmers and others dubbed it Consciousness Ignored and Consciousness Explained Away. I do not think that he actually denies the presence of consciousness in himself - most likely, he is just a troll.
Is it that important?
At a minimum, this is important for Mind Upload. What guarantees are there that we won’t get zombies after the dive? And if you clone a person uploaded to a computer, then how many consciousnesses will there be? If so, is it possible to erase one consciousness? Does the erased consciousness hurt during erasure?
The connection of consciousness with the Doomsday Theorem is very interesting : If your consciousness randomly dwells in an arbitrary body, and the bodies are much larger towards the end of the development of civilization:
then with high probability we live close to the end of the world.
However, it depends on some assumptions, Self-sampling assumption vs Self Indication Assumption . This will help you solve the problem of the Sleeping Beauty!