“Clarification: by “pattern” I mean an arrangement of parts where the important qualities of the arrangement, the qualities that we use to determine whether it is [a thing] or not, are more dependent on the arrangement itself than on the internal workings of each part. Anything where the whole is more than the parts, one might say, but that would depend on what is meant by “more”.”
There is no situation where the whole is more than the parts—if anything new is emerging, it is a new part coming from somewhere not previously declared.
“You didn’t answer my question. Would pain still hurt? Would food still taste good? And so on. You have an internal experience, and it won’t go away even if you are a purely physical thing made out of mere ordinary atoms moving mindlessly.”
No—it wouldn’t hurt and all other feelings would be imaginary too. The reason they feel too real for that to be the case though is an indication that they are real.
“Is it wrong to press keys on the computer which keeps displaying the word “Ouch!”?” --> That depends on whether I have reason to think that the computer is simulating a conscious being, changing the simulation depending on my input, and then printing a text-representation of the conscious being’s experience or words.”
So if it’s just producing fake assertions, it isn’t wrong. And if we are just producing fake assertions, there is nothing wrong about “torturing” people either.
“Is it wrong to kick a box which keeps saying “Ouch!”? It could have a person inside, or just a machine programmed to play a recorded “ouch” sound whenever the box shakes. (What I mean by this is that your thought experiment doesn’t indicate much about computers—the same issue could be found with about as much absurdity elsewhere.)”
If we have followed the trail to see how the data is generated, we are not kicking a box with unknown content—if the trail shows us that the data is nothing but fake assertions, we are kicking a non-conscious box.
“Nobody’s saying that sentience doesn’t have any causal role on things. That’s insane. How could we talk about sentience if sentience couldn’t affect the world?”
In which case we should be able to follow the trail and see the causation in action, thereby either uncovering the mechanism of sentience or showing that there isn’t any.
“I think that you’re considering feelings to be ontologically basic, as if you could say “I feel pain” and be wrong, not because you are lying but because there’s no Pain inside your brain. Thoughts, feelings, all these internal things are the brain’s computations themselves. It doesn’t have to accurately record an external property—it just has to describe itself.”
If you’re wrong in thinking you feel pain, there is no pain.
“Perhaps people disagree with you about the relative size of mysteries. That should be a possibility that you consider before assuming that something isn’t important because it hasn’t been Up In Golden Lights to the point that you’ve heard of it.
What are you on about—it’s precisely because this is the most important question of them all that it should be up in golden lights.
“(And anyway, GEB won the Pulitzer Prize! It’s been called a major literary event!”
All manner of crap wins prizes of that kind.
″...it’s not worth it to you to spend half a minute on its Wikipedia page before rejecting it simply because you’ve never heard of it?)”
If it had a model showing the role of sentience in the system, the big question would have been answered and we wouldn’t have a continual stream of books and articles asking the question and searching desperately for answers that haven’t been found by anyone.
“What do you mean, “so many people are asking to see it”? And I’ve never claimed that it’s been “kept hidden away”.”
I mean exactly what I said—everyone’s asking for answers, and none of them have found answers where you claim they lie waiting to be discovered.
″ GEB is a fairly well-known book, and I haven’t even claimed that GEB’s description of thoughts is the best or most relevant model. That chapter is a popularization of neuropsychology to the point that a decently educated and thoughtful layman can understand it, and it’s necessarily less specific and detailed than the entire body of neuropsychological information. Go ask an actual neuropsychologist if you want to learn more. Just because people haven’t read your mind and dumped relatively niche information on your lap without you even asking them doesn’t mean that they don’t have it.”
It doesn’t answer the question. There are plenty of experts on the brain and its functionality, but none of them know how consciousness or sentience works.
“Clarification: by “pattern” I mean an arrangement of parts where the important qualities of the arrangement, the qualities that we use to determine whether it is [a thing] or not, are more dependent on the arrangement itself than on the internal workings of each part. Anything where the whole is more than the parts, one might say, but that would depend on what is meant by “more”.”
There is no situation where the whole is more than the parts—if anything new is emerging, it is a new part coming from somewhere not previously declared.
“You didn’t answer my question. Would pain still hurt? Would food still taste good? And so on. You have an internal experience, and it won’t go away even if you are a purely physical thing made out of mere ordinary atoms moving mindlessly.”
No—it wouldn’t hurt and all other feelings would be imaginary too. The reason they feel too real for that to be the case though is an indication that they are real.
“Is it wrong to press keys on the computer which keeps displaying the word “Ouch!”?” --> That depends on whether I have reason to think that the computer is simulating a conscious being, changing the simulation depending on my input, and then printing a text-representation of the conscious being’s experience or words.”
So if it’s just producing fake assertions, it isn’t wrong. And if we are just producing fake assertions, there is nothing wrong about “torturing” people either.
“Is it wrong to kick a box which keeps saying “Ouch!”? It could have a person inside, or just a machine programmed to play a recorded “ouch” sound whenever the box shakes. (What I mean by this is that your thought experiment doesn’t indicate much about computers—the same issue could be found with about as much absurdity elsewhere.)”
If we have followed the trail to see how the data is generated, we are not kicking a box with unknown content—if the trail shows us that the data is nothing but fake assertions, we are kicking a non-conscious box.
“Nobody’s saying that sentience doesn’t have any causal role on things. That’s insane. How could we talk about sentience if sentience couldn’t affect the world?”
In which case we should be able to follow the trail and see the causation in action, thereby either uncovering the mechanism of sentience or showing that there isn’t any.
“I think that you’re considering feelings to be ontologically basic, as if you could say “I feel pain” and be wrong, not because you are lying but because there’s no Pain inside your brain. Thoughts, feelings, all these internal things are the brain’s computations themselves. It doesn’t have to accurately record an external property—it just has to describe itself.”
If you’re wrong in thinking you feel pain, there is no pain.
“Perhaps people disagree with you about the relative size of mysteries. That should be a possibility that you consider before assuming that something isn’t important because it hasn’t been Up In Golden Lights to the point that you’ve heard of it.
What are you on about—it’s precisely because this is the most important question of them all that it should be up in golden lights.
“(And anyway, GEB won the Pulitzer Prize! It’s been called a major literary event!”
All manner of crap wins prizes of that kind.
″...it’s not worth it to you to spend half a minute on its Wikipedia page before rejecting it simply because you’ve never heard of it?)”
If it had a model showing the role of sentience in the system, the big question would have been answered and we wouldn’t have a continual stream of books and articles asking the question and searching desperately for answers that haven’t been found by anyone.
“What do you mean, “so many people are asking to see it”? And I’ve never claimed that it’s been “kept hidden away”.”
I mean exactly what I said—everyone’s asking for answers, and none of them have found answers where you claim they lie waiting to be discovered.
″ GEB is a fairly well-known book, and I haven’t even claimed that GEB’s description of thoughts is the best or most relevant model. That chapter is a popularization of neuropsychology to the point that a decently educated and thoughtful layman can understand it, and it’s necessarily less specific and detailed than the entire body of neuropsychological information. Go ask an actual neuropsychologist if you want to learn more. Just because people haven’t read your mind and dumped relatively niche information on your lap without you even asking them doesn’t mean that they don’t have it.”
It doesn’t answer the question. There are plenty of experts on the brain and its functionality, but none of them know how consciousness or sentience works.