I’ll probably end up mostly agreeing with Integrated Information theories
Ah… x.x Maybe check out Scott Aaronsons’ blog posts on the topic (here and here)? I’m definitely more of the Denettian “consciousness is a convenient name for a particular sort of process built out of lots of parts with mental functions” school.
Anyhow, the reason I focused on drawing boundaries to separate my brain into separate physical systems is mostly historical—I got the idea from the Ebborians (further rambling here. Oh, right—I’m Manfred). I just don’t find mere mass all that convincing as a reason to think that some physical system’s surroundings are what I’m more likely to see next.
Intuitively it’s something like a symmetry of my information—if I can’t tell anything about my own brain mass just by thinking, then I shouldn’t assign my probabilities as if I have information about my brain mass. If there are two copies of me, one on Monday with a big brain and one on Tuesday with a small brain, I don’t see much difference in sensibleness between “it should be Monday because big brains are more likely” and “I should have a small brain because Tuesday is an inherently more likely day.” It just doesn’t compute as a valid argument for me without some intermediate steps that look like the Ebborians argument.
I’m definitely more of the Denettian “consciousness is a convenient name for a particular sort of process built out of lots of parts with mental functions” school.
I’m in that school as well. I’d never call correlates with anthropic measure like integrated information “consciousness”, there’s too much confusion there. I’m reluctant to call the purely mechanistic perception-encoding-rumination-action loop consciousness either. For that I try to stick, very strictly to “conscious behaviour”. I’d prefer something like “sentience” to take us even further from that mire of a word.
(But when I thought of the mirror chamber it occurred to me that there was more to it than “conscious behaviour isn’t mysterious, it’s just machines”. Something here is both relevant and mysterious. And so I have to find a way to reconcile the schools.)
athres ∝ mass is not supposed to be intuitive. Anthres ∝ number is very intuitive, what about the path from there to anthres ∝ mass didn’t work for you?
Ah… x.x Maybe check out Scott Aaronsons’ blog posts on the topic (here and here)? I’m definitely more of the Denettian “consciousness is a convenient name for a particular sort of process built out of lots of parts with mental functions” school.
Anyhow, the reason I focused on drawing boundaries to separate my brain into separate physical systems is mostly historical—I got the idea from the Ebborians (further rambling here. Oh, right—I’m Manfred). I just don’t find mere mass all that convincing as a reason to think that some physical system’s surroundings are what I’m more likely to see next.
Intuitively it’s something like a symmetry of my information—if I can’t tell anything about my own brain mass just by thinking, then I shouldn’t assign my probabilities as if I have information about my brain mass. If there are two copies of me, one on Monday with a big brain and one on Tuesday with a small brain, I don’t see much difference in sensibleness between “it should be Monday because big brains are more likely” and “I should have a small brain because Tuesday is an inherently more likely day.” It just doesn’t compute as a valid argument for me without some intermediate steps that look like the Ebborians argument.
I’m in that school as well. I’d never call correlates with anthropic measure like integrated information “consciousness”, there’s too much confusion there. I’m reluctant to call the purely mechanistic perception-encoding-rumination-action loop consciousness either. For that I try to stick, very strictly to “conscious behaviour”. I’d prefer something like “sentience” to take us even further from that mire of a word.
(But when I thought of the mirror chamber it occurred to me that there was more to it than “conscious behaviour isn’t mysterious, it’s just machines”. Something here is both relevant and mysterious. And so I have to find a way to reconcile the schools.)
athres ∝ mass is not supposed to be intuitive. Anthres ∝ number is very intuitive, what about the path from there to anthres ∝ mass didn’t work for you?