The strategy “If presented with a mystery, ascribe complete responsibility for that mystery to some ontologically basic thing” is the main culprit here, especially since I count it being used three times.
The problem with conscienciouness, is that full scientific knowledge of a phenomenon, tells nothing about it. It has been allways obvious, but now, with neural networks it is even more evident. You have the generative model, that is, the perfect scientic knowledge on a system. Still you know nothing about sentience.
I agree with Chalmers, but I dislike his presentation of dualistic naturalism, because he goes into long mental experiments. This is far more immediate: Laplace demon cannot assess sentience. And Laplace’s deamon is the “omniscient materialist”… In this limited (but critical) sense, conscience is not material.
But conscious states are strongly determined by brain states as far as we can check. The argument that people use to argue against fully identifying the two comes down to deriving the metaphysical nature of qualia from their phenomenological properties. It seems to me that is epistemically problematic to argue against objective claims with intuition about something that we cannot even contrast with anything. We just have our intuition about phenomenology, no conceivable way to track the processes behind the phenomenon from that intuition. This is the reason why people imagine qualia to be individual entities and then think they can remove them ceteris paribus, or that they can’t be tracked by Laplace’s demons.
Consciousness doesn’t need to be fundamentally distinct from non-consciousness. Rocks can’t monitor their own states at all, but computers can, that doesn’t mean that a fundamentally new property was added when you turn a rock into a computer. If we stop trying to derive metaphysics from phenomenology, the same account can be applied to consciousness. Then whatever processes track with what we feel consciousness to be will be trackable by a Laplace demon.
“But conscious states are strongly determined by brain states as far as we can check”
You can only “check” your own mental states, so that is not very far.
“Consciousness doesn’t need to be fundamentally distinct from non-consciousness”
I cannot argue against eliminativism, because perhaps you are nos conscious. Still, I would not eat you because of cultural taboos and legal complications...but no longer for moral reasons! :-)
As commented in the article, this philosopher is conscious for sure, but the regarding the gentle reader, he only can hope. Not even the Laplace demon would know, and my phenomenic knowledge is vastly inferior.
“Laplace demon cannot assess sentience” is begging the question just as much as “philosophical zombies are possible” It’s obviously true only if you assume the premise of counsciousness epiphenomenality.
It has been allways obvious, but now, with neural networks it is even more evident. You have the generative model, that is, the perfect scientic knowledge on a system. Still you know nothing about sentience.
NNs do not represent the full scientific knowledge of a system. Also I think you are mistaken where the evidence point due to repetative goalpost shifting that has been happening with the term “counsciousness”. It used to be much much bigger concept but everytime we discovered how some part of it worked on a mechanical level, it got redefined to be smaller—the still unknown part of the previous definition. We do know a lot about counsciousness in the original meaning of the term.
Laplace demon cannot assess sentience” is begging the question just as much as “philosophical zombies are possible” It’s obviously true only if you assume the premise of counsciousness epiphenomenality.
It’s also true if you assume there is no possible reductive explanation of phenomenal consciousness … which dualists like Arturo do.
If Laplace’s Demon knows All Physics, and the
reductive explanation of phenomenal consciousness isn’t part of All Physics, then Laplace’s Demon doesnt know any facts about consciousness.
We belive this, because Laplace demon has an explanation of all material facts (that is physicalism, isn’t it?). What else can you “know”, what else can you explain?
The most you can do is to trust is the “neural correlates of conscience” research agenda, but it depends on having a Rosetta stone (=credible accounts of subjective experience), and beyond other humans, we have nothing (while perhaps IA translation of some cetacea will be available, increasing a little bit the “interpretability circle”).
But we will never know “What Is It Like to Be a Bat?”
Well, I gave this a read, but I’m not a big fan.
The strategy “If presented with a mystery, ascribe complete responsibility for that mystery to some ontologically basic thing” is the main culprit here, especially since I count it being used three times.
The problem with conscienciouness, is that full scientific knowledge of a phenomenon, tells nothing about it. It has been allways obvious, but now, with neural networks it is even more evident. You have the generative model, that is, the perfect scientic knowledge on a system. Still you know nothing about sentience.
I agree with Chalmers, but I dislike his presentation of dualistic naturalism, because he goes into long mental experiments. This is far more immediate: Laplace demon cannot assess sentience. And Laplace’s deamon is the “omniscient materialist”… In this limited (but critical) sense, conscience is not material.
You dont need to postulate conterfactual zombies.
But conscious states are strongly determined by brain states as far as we can check. The argument that people use to argue against fully identifying the two comes down to deriving the metaphysical nature of qualia from their phenomenological properties. It seems to me that is epistemically problematic to argue against objective claims with intuition about something that we cannot even contrast with anything. We just have our intuition about phenomenology, no conceivable way to track the processes behind the phenomenon from that intuition. This is the reason why people imagine qualia to be individual entities and then think they can remove them ceteris paribus, or that they can’t be tracked by Laplace’s demons.
Consciousness doesn’t need to be fundamentally distinct from non-consciousness. Rocks can’t monitor their own states at all, but computers can, that doesn’t mean that a fundamentally new property was added when you turn a rock into a computer. If we stop trying to derive metaphysics from phenomenology, the same account can be applied to consciousness. Then whatever processes track with what we feel consciousness to be will be trackable by a Laplace demon.
“But conscious states are strongly determined by brain states as far as we can check”
You can only “check” your own mental states, so that is not very far.
“Consciousness doesn’t need to be fundamentally distinct from non-consciousness”
I cannot argue against eliminativism, because perhaps you are nos conscious. Still, I would not eat you because of cultural taboos and legal complications...but no longer for moral reasons! :-)
As commented in the article, this philosopher is conscious for sure, but the regarding the gentle reader, he only can hope. Not even the Laplace demon would know, and my phenomenic knowledge is vastly inferior.
Consciousness not being fundamental doesn’t equal consciousness not existing.
“Laplace demon cannot assess sentience” is begging the question just as much as “philosophical zombies are possible” It’s obviously true only if you assume the premise of counsciousness epiphenomenality.
NNs do not represent the full scientific knowledge of a system. Also I think you are mistaken where the evidence point due to repetative goalpost shifting that has been happening with the term “counsciousness”. It used to be much much bigger concept but everytime we discovered how some part of it worked on a mechanical level, it got redefined to be smaller—the still unknown part of the previous definition. We do know a lot about counsciousness in the original meaning of the term.
It’s also true if you assume there is no possible reductive explanation of phenomenal consciousness … which dualists like Arturo do.
If Laplace’s Demon knows All Physics, and the reductive explanation of phenomenal consciousness isn’t part of All Physics, then Laplace’s Demon doesnt know any facts about consciousness.
We belive this, because Laplace demon has an explanation of all material facts (that is physicalism, isn’t it?). What else can you “know”, what else can you explain?
The most you can do is to trust is the “neural correlates of conscience” research agenda, but it depends on having a Rosetta stone (=credible accounts of subjective experience), and beyond other humans, we have nothing (while perhaps IA translation of some cetacea will be available, increasing a little bit the “interpretability circle”).
But we will never know “What Is It Like to Be a Bat?”