Re: “If a fact, a rule that has held so far, then (some people claim that) consciousness is an observation that contradicts this rule.”
Right—but those people have no convincing evidence. If there was some mysterious meta-physical do-dah out there, we should expect to see some evidence. Until there is evidence, the hypothesis is not favoured by Occam’s razor.
The advocates can look for evidence, and the sceptics can think they are crazy—but until some actual evidence is found, there’s not much for people like me to discuss. The hypothesis is about as near to dead as it can get.
As I said: the hypothesis relies entirely on everyone agreeing that they, too, sense this mysterious thing inside them (or identical with them, or whatever).
Until new evidence or argument is brought forward, I’ll continue treating it as a cultural mental artifact. But I do feel somewhat sympathetic towards attempts at creating such new arguments without using new evidence.
Why would a subjective experience cause people to think they know more about physics than physicists do? Subjective experiences are an especially poor quality form of evidence.
Subjective experience is immediate. You can’t ignore or deny its existence (although you may think there’s nothing unexplained or mysterious about it).
When people consider that physics doesn’t explain their subjective experience (whether or not these people fully understand physics), they therefore feel they have no choice but to conclude that the physics, or the physical ontology, is incomplete.
In an computable universe, you can make agents experience literally anything. No amount of zen moments would add up to reasonable evidence.
What would be more convincing is that if brains demonstrably did something that violated the known laws of physics. Much like Penrose thought they did, IOW. Then we would have to poke around in search of what was going on. However, there seems to be no hint of that.
Subjective experience is immediate. You can’t ignore or deny its existence.
Sure you can, if you’re an epiphenomenalist. (Am I right that you’ve been advocating that position, though you may not hold it?) A conscious being could sincerely deny experiencing consciousness. Such a being wouldn’t be a normal human, though possibly a brain-damaged human. At any rate, they surely exist in mind-space. Likewise, an unconscious being could claim to experience consciousness (i.e. a p-zombie).
It would seem that heterophenomenology as ciphergoth has been advocating is incompatible with ephiphenomenalism.
I suspect that there might be some sort of personality disposition to be more or less willing to claim to experience experience, to feel the immediacy of consciousness. Something analogous to the conservative/liberal divide. If that’s true, then making claims like the quoted one is just the mind projection fallacy.
Sure you can, if you’re an epiphenomenalist. (Am I right that you’ve been advocating that position, though you may not hold it?)
Yes, that’s more or less what I’ve been advocating. (The funny thing is that I don’t even have a clear position of my own...)
Regarding consciousness without experience, in what sense is it consciousness then? I’d call it an unconscious but highly intelligent agent—perhaps the AIs we’ll build will be such.
I suspect that there might be some sort of personality disposition to be more or less willing to claim to experience experience, to feel the immediacy of consciousness. Something analogous to the conservative/liberal divide. If that’s true, then making claims like the quoted one is just the mind projection fallacy.
A very good idea, and a possible explanation for many disagreements. It’d be just like the known cases of people disagreeing about whether thinking necessarily involved visual mental images, or whether human thinking necessarily involves “talking to oneself” using sound processing circuitry.
The “experience experience” of those who do report it still has to be explained to their satisfaction. Those who don’t experience it as vividly just tend to shrug it off as not important or not real or a cultural delusion of some sort.
Re: “If a fact, a rule that has held so far, then (some people claim that) consciousness is an observation that contradicts this rule.”
Right—but those people have no convincing evidence. If there was some mysterious meta-physical do-dah out there, we should expect to see some evidence. Until there is evidence, the hypothesis is not favoured by Occam’s razor.
The advocates can look for evidence, and the sceptics can think they are crazy—but until some actual evidence is found, there’s not much for people like me to discuss. The hypothesis is about as near to dead as it can get.
As I said: the hypothesis relies entirely on everyone agreeing that they, too, sense this mysterious thing inside them (or identical with them, or whatever).
Until new evidence or argument is brought forward, I’ll continue treating it as a cultural mental artifact. But I do feel somewhat sympathetic towards attempts at creating such new arguments without using new evidence.
Why would a subjective experience cause people to think they know more about physics than physicists do? Subjective experiences are an especially poor quality form of evidence.
Subjective experience is immediate. You can’t ignore or deny its existence (although you may think there’s nothing unexplained or mysterious about it).
When people consider that physics doesn’t explain their subjective experience (whether or not these people fully understand physics), they therefore feel they have no choice but to conclude that the physics, or the physical ontology, is incomplete.
In an computable universe, you can make agents experience literally anything. No amount of zen moments would add up to reasonable evidence.
What would be more convincing is that if brains demonstrably did something that violated the known laws of physics. Much like Penrose thought they did, IOW. Then we would have to poke around in search of what was going on. However, there seems to be no hint of that.
Sure you can, if you’re an epiphenomenalist. (Am I right that you’ve been advocating that position, though you may not hold it?) A conscious being could sincerely deny experiencing consciousness. Such a being wouldn’t be a normal human, though possibly a brain-damaged human. At any rate, they surely exist in mind-space. Likewise, an unconscious being could claim to experience consciousness (i.e. a p-zombie).
It would seem that heterophenomenology as ciphergoth has been advocating is incompatible with ephiphenomenalism.
I suspect that there might be some sort of personality disposition to be more or less willing to claim to experience experience, to feel the immediacy of consciousness. Something analogous to the conservative/liberal divide. If that’s true, then making claims like the quoted one is just the mind projection fallacy.
Yes, that’s more or less what I’ve been advocating. (The funny thing is that I don’t even have a clear position of my own...)
Regarding consciousness without experience, in what sense is it consciousness then? I’d call it an unconscious but highly intelligent agent—perhaps the AIs we’ll build will be such.
A very good idea, and a possible explanation for many disagreements. It’d be just like the known cases of people disagreeing about whether thinking necessarily involved visual mental images, or whether human thinking necessarily involves “talking to oneself” using sound processing circuitry.
The “experience experience” of those who do report it still has to be explained to their satisfaction. Those who don’t experience it as vividly just tend to shrug it off as not important or not real or a cultural delusion of some sort.