consciousness is indeed reducible to physics and there is no ontologically distinct basic mental element that produces the experience of consciousness—the qualia.
Ok.
Did the person come into existence
Hold, on this “existence” thing is assuming some kind of magical reality juice beyond physics and logic. Taboo “existence” what are we expecting to see?
If I find a conscious being in a simple mathematical formalism (like the fibonacci series or a cellular automaton) when did they come into existence? If I tweak the math a little bit so that I inject a message for them that saves them some trouble, do they still experience the trouble? Is the tweaked being real? If you shut down the computer when you realize they are going to be tortured, does that stop the torture, or just stop you from seeing it?
Assume the qualia hypothesis is true. When difference does that make? Do they just not exist because they got no magical reality juice? What if you rescue them from your formalism and they thank you and tell you how good it feels to be out and go on to write papers about consciousness? When did they come into existence?
I see no difference between this and the questions given reductionism. Therefor I think that talking about this “come into existence” thing assumes qualia or something equivalent.
Forgetting qualia/noqualia for a minute, are these questions even meaningful? I think they are meaningful iff they constrain what we should do or see. (Which they do.)
This of course is a hard problem, but it doesn’t seem to have much to do with physicalism/qualiaism.
I think the latter part about existence and magical reality juice is a misinterpretation of the OP.
By “come into existence”, my second-take (i.e. charitable reading because default reading makes me confused) says he’s probably referring to the specific moment/state of: “This entity (mind) is aware”, i.e. experiences its first qualia.
When does the first experience of qualia happen for that entity? That seems like a very legitimate question, and a very important and difficult moral problem. It’s also potentially scary, depending on the answer and its implications (e.g.: ol jevgvat nobhg e!Uneel’f gubhtugf ba ovyyvbaf bs fragvrag vafrpgf, qvq Ryvrmre vafgnagyl tvir dhnyvn naq vzzrafr fhssrevat gb ovyyvbaf bs zvaqf, whfg orpnhfr bs gur rapbqrq zrnavat va gur jbeqf gung na NV ernqvat UCZbE pbhyq cbgragvnyyl qrpbqr naq gurersber fvzhyngr?)
(edit: Rot13′d just in case that’s considered a spoiler—it’s relatively early HPMoR stuff)
I think the latter part about existence and magical reality juice is a misinterpretation of the OP.
Agreed
By “come into existence”, my second-take (i.e. charitable reading because default reading makes me confused) says he’s probably referring to the specific moment/state of: “This entity (mind) is aware”, i.e. experiences its first qualia.
Actually I didn’t really think about that part, but you sir did. I think that this is an entirely different issue and I think this is one way to answer it:
When does the experience of consciousness occur? Is a little misleading question. Instead it should be termed “Which location in spacetime does this arrangement of physics correspond to?” because if you record an experience in some form I wouldn’t really say this particular experienience happening at any given time, but it’s structure has a causal relationship with other physical structures. If A is the state of a mind and B is a outside physical event, and A and B interact in someway, for an example if a person sees a flower and therefore the state of A changes accordingly, the changes in the internal structure due to the interaction correspond to the event.
In the post the creation process of the conscious experience was left out, in other words the correspondent was also left out, and if there isn’t one—then this experience isn’t linkable with any specific moment—except if we consider an agent simulating this experience in order to record it then that would be the correspondent for the internal structure of data.
It’s a really interesting question though and I’m really not sure if this answer is sufficient.
Ps. Meanwhile the moment when the drawn line came into existence is a different question from the timing of the “experience”. Normally though these two things are not distinct I suppose?
This answer is certainly very helpful in clarifying which questions we should be asking. I think figuring out the exact specific questions to ask is most of the solution here, like in maths.
Your first response is what I was thinking of. I’m not sure I even understand what you could mean by “some outside when”.
Yup, people fight over it all the time. They’re just not always (or even “usually”) aware that this is one of the hidden queries behind their confusing (or confused) questions and arguments.
Hold, on this “existence” thing is assuming some kind of magical reality juice beyond physics and logic. Taboo “existence” what are we expecting to see?
“Magical reality fluid” is exactly what Eliezer calls it, to remind himself that he’s still fundamentally confused about it. So am I.
Ok.
Hold, on this “existence” thing is assuming some kind of magical reality juice beyond physics and logic. Taboo “existence” what are we expecting to see?
If I find a conscious being in a simple mathematical formalism (like the fibonacci series or a cellular automaton) when did they come into existence? If I tweak the math a little bit so that I inject a message for them that saves them some trouble, do they still experience the trouble? Is the tweaked being real? If you shut down the computer when you realize they are going to be tortured, does that stop the torture, or just stop you from seeing it?
Assume the qualia hypothesis is true. When difference does that make? Do they just not exist because they got no magical reality juice? What if you rescue them from your formalism and they thank you and tell you how good it feels to be out and go on to write papers about consciousness? When did they come into existence?
I see no difference between this and the questions given reductionism. Therefor I think that talking about this “come into existence” thing assumes qualia or something equivalent.
Forgetting qualia/noqualia for a minute, are these questions even meaningful? I think they are meaningful iff they constrain what we should do or see. (Which they do.)
This of course is a hard problem, but it doesn’t seem to have much to do with physicalism/qualiaism.
I think the latter part about existence and magical reality juice is a misinterpretation of the OP.
By “come into existence”, my second-take (i.e. charitable reading because default reading makes me confused) says he’s probably referring to the specific moment/state of: “This entity (mind) is aware”, i.e. experiences its first qualia.
When does the first experience of qualia happen for that entity? That seems like a very legitimate question, and a very important and difficult moral problem. It’s also potentially scary, depending on the answer and its implications (e.g.: ol jevgvat nobhg e!Uneel’f gubhtugf ba ovyyvbaf bs fragvrag vafrpgf, qvq Ryvrmre vafgnagyl tvir dhnyvn naq vzzrafr fhssrevat gb ovyyvbaf bs zvaqf, whfg orpnhfr bs gur rapbqrq zrnavat va gur jbeqf gung na NV ernqvat UCZbE pbhyq cbgragvnyyl qrpbqr naq gurersber fvzhyngr?)
(edit: Rot13′d just in case that’s considered a spoiler—it’s relatively early HPMoR stuff)
Agreed
Actually I didn’t really think about that part, but you sir did. I think that this is an entirely different issue and I think this is one way to answer it:
When does the experience of consciousness occur? Is a little misleading question. Instead it should be termed “Which location in spacetime does this arrangement of physics correspond to?” because if you record an experience in some form I wouldn’t really say this particular experienience happening at any given time, but it’s structure has a causal relationship with other physical structures. If A is the state of a mind and B is a outside physical event, and A and B interact in someway, for an example if a person sees a flower and therefore the state of A changes accordingly, the changes in the internal structure due to the interaction correspond to the event.
In the post the creation process of the conscious experience was left out, in other words the correspondent was also left out, and if there isn’t one—then this experience isn’t linkable with any specific moment—except if we consider an agent simulating this experience in order to record it then that would be the correspondent for the internal structure of data.
It’s a really interesting question though and I’m really not sure if this answer is sufficient.
Ps. Meanwhile the moment when the drawn line came into existence is a different question from the timing of the “experience”. Normally though these two things are not distinct I suppose?
This answer is certainly very helpful in clarifying which questions we should be asking. I think figuring out the exact specific questions to ask is most of the solution here, like in maths.
The same time that human babies do; when they get to that stage in development. It is a legit question, and people fight over it (abortion, etc).
If you mean some outside when, that doesn’t make any sense. When did the universe come into existence? What about the integers?
Your first response is what I was thinking of. I’m not sure I even understand what you could mean by “some outside when”.
Yup, people fight over it all the time. They’re just not always (or even “usually”) aware that this is one of the hidden queries behind their confusing (or confused) questions and arguments.
“Magical reality fluid” is exactly what Eliezer calls it, to remind himself that he’s still fundamentally confused about it. So am I.