As someone who is very much in favor of anti-aging, I’d answer to it something like this: “I’m fine with you entertaining all these philosophical arguments, and if you like them so much you literally want to die for them, by all means. But please don’t insist that me and everyone I care or will care about should also die for your philosophical arguments.”
SurvivalBias
Karma: 151
we’re perceiving things as “qualities”, as “feels”, even though all we are really perceiving is data
I consider it my success as a reductionist that this phrase genuinely does not make any sense to me.
But he says he doesn’t think the word “illusion” is a helpful word for expressing this, and illusionism should have been called something else, and I think he’s probably right.
Yep, can’t agree more, basically that’s why I was asking—“illusion” doesn’t sound like the right concept here.
Those are all great points. Regarding your first question, no, that’s not the reasoning I have. I think consciousness is the ability to reflect on myself firstly because it feels like the ability to reflect on myself. Kind of like the reason that I believe I can see is that when I open my eyes I start seeing things and if I interact with those things they really are mostly where I see them, nothing more sophisticated than that. There’s a bunch of longer more theoretical arguments I can bring for this point, but I never thought I should because I was kind of taking it as a given. It well may be me falling into the typical mind fallacy, if you say some people say otherwise. So if you have different intuitions about the consciousness, can you tell:
How do you subjectively, from the first person view, know that you are conscious?
Can you genuinely imagine being conscious but not self aware from the first person view?
If you get to talk to and interact with, an alien or an AI of unknown power and architecture, how would you go about finding out if they are conscious?
And because it doesn’t automatically fits into “If you have a conscious mind subjectively perceiving anything about the outside world, it has to feel like something” if you just replace “conscious” by “able to percieve itself”.
Well, no, it doesn’t fit quite as simple, but overall I think it works out. If you have an agent able to reflect on itself and model itself perceiving something, it’s going to reflect on the fact that it perceives something. I.e. it’s going to have some mental representation for both the perception and for itself perceiving it. It will be able to reason about itself perceiving things, and if it can communicate it will probably also talk about it. Different perceptions will be in relation to each other (e.g. sky is not the same color as grass, and grass color is associated with summer and warmth and so on). And, perhaps most importantly, it will have models of other such agents perceiving things and it will on the high abstract level that they have the same perceptions in them. But it will only have the access to the lower level data for such perceptions from its own sensory inputs, not others’, so it won’t be able to tell for sure what it “feels like” to them, because it won’t be getting theirs stream of low-level sensory inputs.
In short, I think—and please do correct me if you have a counterexample—that we have reasons to expect such an agent to make any claim humans make (given similar circumstances and training examples), and we can make any testable claim about such an agent that we can make about a human.
Ah, I see. My take on this question would be that we should focus on the word “you” rather than “qualia”. If you have a conscious mind subjectively perceiving anything about the outside world (or its own internal workings), it has to feel like something, almost by definition. Like, if you went to go get your covid shot and it hurt you’d say “it felt like something”. If and only if somehow you didn’t even feel the needle piercing your skin, you’ll say “I didn’t feel anything”. There were experiments proving that people can react to a stimulus they are not subjectively aware of (mostly for visual stimuli), but I’m pretty sure in all those cases they’d say they didn’t see anything—basically that’s how we know they were not subjectively aware of it. What would it even mean for a conscious mind to be aware of a stimulus but it not “feeling like something”? It must have some representation in the consciousness, that’s basically what we mean by “being aware of X” or “consciously experiencing X”.
So I’d say given a consciousness experiencing stuff, you necessarily have conscious experiences (aka qualia), that’s a tautology basically. So the question becomes why some things have consciousness, or to narrow it down to your question—why (certain) recursively self-modeling systems are conscious? And that’s kind of what I was trying to explain by the part 4 of the post, and approximately the same idea just from another perspective is much better covered in this book review and this article.
But if I tried to put it in one paragraph, I’d start with—how do I know that I’m conscious and why do I think I know it? And the answer would be a ramble along the lines of: well when I look into my mind I can see me, i.e. some guy who thinks and makes decisions and is aware of things, and have emotions and memories and so on and so forth. And at the same time as I see I also am this guy! I can have different thoughts whenever I choose to (to a degree), I can do different things whenever I choose to (to a still more limited degree), and at the same time I can reflect on the choice process. So my theory is that I can perceive myself as a human mind mostly because the self-reflecting model—which is me—has trained to perceive other human mind so well that it learned to generalize to itself (see the whole entire post for the details). Although Graziano in the article and book I linked provides a very convincing explanation as to why this self-modeling would also be very helpful for the general reasoning ability—something I was unsuccessfully trying to figure out in the part 5.
Your “definition” (which really isn’t a definition but just three examples) have almost no implications at all, that’s my only issue with it.
I don’t think qualia—to the degree it is at all a useful term—has much to do with the ability to feel pain, or anything. In my understanding all definitions of qualia assume it is a different thing from purely neurological perceptions (which is what I’d understand by “feelings”), more specifically that the perceptions can generate qualia sometimes in some creatures but they don’t automatically do.
Otherwise you’d have to argue one of the two:
Either even the most primitive animals like worms which you can literally simulate neuron by neuron, have qualia as long as they have some senses and neurons.
..or “feel pain” and e.g. “feel warmth” are somehow fundamentally different where the first necessarily requires/produces quale and the second may or may not produce it.
Both sound rather indefensible to me, so it follows that an animal can feel pain without experiencing a quale of it, just like a scallop can see the light without experiencing a quale of it. But two caveats on this. First, I don’t have a really good grasp on what a qualia is, and as wikipedia attests neither do the experts. I feel there’s some core of truth that people are trying to get at with this concept (something along what you said in your first comment), but also it’s very often used as a rug for people to hide their confusion under, so I’m always skeptical about using this term. Second, whether or not one should ascribe any moral worth to the agents without consciousness/qualia is decisively not a part of what I’m saying here. I personally do, but as you say it depends on one’s preferences, and so largely orthogonal to the question of how consciousness works.
Looking at your debate both with me and with Gordon below, it seems like your side of the argument mostly consists of telling the opponent “no you’re wrong” without providing any evidence to that claim. I honestly did my best to raise the sanity waterline a little, but to no success, so I don’t see much sense in continuing.
Sure, I wasn’t claiming at any point to provide a precise mathematical model let alone implementation, if that’s what you’re talking about. What I was saying is that I have guesses as to what that mathematical model should be computing. In order to tell whether the person experiences a quale of X (in the sense of them perceiving this sensation), you’d want to see whether the sensory input from the eyes corresponding to the red sky is propagated all the way up to the top level of predictive cascade—the level capable of modeling itself to a degree—and whether this top level’s state is altered in a way to reflect itself observing the red sky.
And admittedly what I’m saying is super high level, but I’ve just finished reading a much more detailed and I think fully compatible account of this in this article that Kaj linked. In their sense, I think the answer to your question is that the qualia (perceived sensation) arises when both attention and awareness are focused on the input—see the article for specific definitions.
The situation where the input reaches the top level and affects it, but is not registered subjectively, corresponds to attention without awareness in their terms (or to the information having propagated to the top level, but the corresponding change in the top level state not being reflected in itself). It’s observed in people with blindsight, and also was recreated experimentally.
Replacing it with another word of which you then use identically isn’t the same as tabooing, that’s kind of defeats the purpose.
there can still be agreement that they in some sense about sensory qualities.
There may be, but then it seems there’s no agreement about what sensory qualities are.
I’ve said s already, haven’t I? A solution to the HP would allow you to predict sensory qualities from detailed brain scans, in the way that Mary can’t.
No, you have not, in fact in all your comments you haven’t mentioned “predict” or “mary” or “brain” ever once. But now we’re getting somewhere! How do you tell that a certain solution can or can’t predict “sensory qualities”? Or better, when you say “predict qualities from the brain scans” do you mean “feel/imagine them yourself as if you’ve experienced those sensory inputs firsthand”, or do you mean something else?
Yeah, although seems only in the sense where “everything [we perceive] is illusion”? Which is not functionally different from “nothing is illusion”. Unless I’m missing something?
Yeah that sounds reasonable and in line with my intuitions. Where by “somebody” I would mean consciousness—the mind modeling itself. The difference between “qualia” and “no qualia” would be the difference between the signal of e.g. pain propagating all the way to the topmost, conscious level, which would predict not just receiving the signal (as all layers below also do), but also predict its own state altered by receiving the signal. In the latter case, the reason why the mind knows there’s “somebody” experiencing it, is because it observes (=predicts) this “somebody” experiencing it. And of course that “somebody” is the mind itself.
And then it raises questions like “why not having ability to do recursion stops you from feeling pain”.
Well my—and many other people’s—answer to that would be that of course it doesn’t, for any reasonable definition of pain. Do you believe it does?
I’m not trying to pull the subject towards anything, I’m just genuinely trying to understand your position, and I’d appreciate a little bit of cooperation on your part in this. Such as, answering any of the questions I asked. And “I don’t know” is a perfectly valid answer, I have no intention to “gotcha” you or anything like this, and by your own admission the problem is hard. So I’d ask you to not interpret any of my words above or below as an attack, quite the opposite I’m doing my best to see your point.
You should be using the famous hardness of the HP as a guide to understanding it … If it seems easy , you’ve got it wrong.
With all due respect, that sounds to me like you’re insisting that the answer to a mysterious question should be itself mysterious, which it shouldn’t. Sorry if I misinterpret your words, in that case again I’d appreciate you being a bit more clear about what you’re trying to say.
FYI, there is no precise and universally accepted definition of “matter”.
Exactly, and that is why using Wikipedia article for definition in such debates is not a good idea. Ideally, I’d ask you (or try myself in an identical situation) to taboo the words “qualia” and “hard problem” and try to explain what exactly question(s) do you think remains unanswered by the theory. But failing that, we can at least agree on the definition on qualia.
And even if we insist on using Wiki as the source of truth, here’s the direct quote: “Much of the debate over their importance hinges on the definition of the term, and various philosophers emphasize or deny the existence of certain features of qualia. Consequently, the nature and existence of various definitions of qualia remain controversial because they are not verifiable.” To me it sounds at odds with, again direct quote: “Qualia are sufficiently well defined to enable us to tell that you have not solved the hard problem”. If nature and even existence something depends on the definition, it’s not sufficiently well defined to tell whether theory X explains it (which is all not to say that you’re wrong and wikipedia is right, I don’t think it’s the highest authority on such matters. Just that you seem to have some different, narrower definition in mind so we can’t use reference to wiki as the source of truth)
Note that not everything that is true of qualia (or anything else) needs to be in the definition.
Yeah, I kinda hoped that I don’t need to spell it out, but okay, there we go. You’re correct, not everything that’s true of qualia needs to be in the definition. However I would insist that a reasonable definition doesn’t directly contradict any important true facts. Whereas one of the definitions in that wiki article (by Dennett) says that qualia is “private; that is, all interpersonal comparisons of qualia are systematically impossible.”
I would not expect a definition alone to answer every possible question.
Again, totally agree, that’s why I started with specific questions rather than definitions. So, considering that “I don’t know” is a perfectly reasonable answer, could you maybe try answering them? Or, if that’s seems like a better option to you, give an example of a question which you think proves Graziano/my theory isn’t sufficient to solve the hard problem?
The part that you quoted doesn’t define anything, it’s just 3 examples, which together may be just as well defined simply as “sensations”. And the Wikipedia article itself lists a number of different, not equivalent definitions none of which is anything I’d called rigorous, plus a number of references to qualia proponents who claim that this or that part of some definition is wrong (e.g. Ramachandran and Hirstein say that qualia could be communicated), plus a list of qualia opponents who have significant issues with the whole concept. That is exactly what I’m referring to as “ill-defined”.
Now you say that you think qualia is well-defined, so I’m asking you to help me to understand the definition you have in mind, so we can talk about it meaningfully. That’s why the questions matter—I can’t answer you whether I think I or Clark or Graziano or whoever else solved the hard problem if I don’t understand what do you mean by the hard problem (for which not all definitions even include the term “qualia”).
Do you have something to say about qualia that depends on knowing the answer?
Well of course, everything I have to say depends on knowing the answer because the answer would help me understand what is it that you mean by qualia. So do you feel like your definition allows you to answer this question? And, while we’re at it, my follow up question of whether you assume animals have qualia and if yes which of them? If so, that’d be very helpful for my understanding.
Thanks a lot for the links! I didn’t look into them yet, but the second quote sounds pretty much exactly like what I was trying to say, only expressed more intelligibly. Guess the broad concept is “in the air” enough that even a layman can grope their way to it.
Yeah that’s a great question. In my reasoning absence of evidence is the evidence of absence, but admittedly a weak one. Theoretically I imagine you can run an experiment to test this, something like—present a chimpanzee with a very difficult but solvable task, let it have maybe one go to figure out how things work, then take the task away. Then let it have another try after some time, repeat (eta: with new chimpanzees or tasks), measure success as a function of time. I’m not saying it’s a great experiment design, just that “spends resting hours on solving problems” is an externally observable quality. If there’s any real evidence they do, I’ll be the first to admit that part is not correct, and it was just a guess to begin with.
For one, the part about qualia talks specifically about sensory inputs. So I’m not sure how’s what you’re saying is an objection, can you clarify? Also, this part leans really heavily on “Surfing the Uncertainty”, not sure if you’ve read it but if you haven’t that may be another issue.
And if you say you have a good definition of quale, even if you can’t quite put it into words—can you explain me when a sensation perceived by a human (in the biological sense of perceiving) stops being a quale? Like with your example of “redness of the evening sky”. Lets say I sit and stare at the sky marveling how red it is—in my understanding I definitely experience a quale. What if I just walking down the street and maybe vaguely aware that the sky is red? What if I’m running for my life from a dog, or blind drunk or somehow else have no clue what color the sky is even though it’s technically in my field of vision?
What Do We Know About The Consciousness, Anyway?
Would be great to see anti-aging research investigated in more details. On one hand, many people in and around ratiosphere seem to believe we’re about to see some tangible progress in slowing aging in humans soon (decade or two), see e.g. this great post by JackH recently. On the other hand, other people in this sphere and also in biotech argue that we’re quite a distance away from the point where dedicated anti-aging research makes sense and for now focus should be on fundamental biology. I’d be happy to see up-to-date evidence for these two positions evaluated side by side.
And as a potentially separate tread(s) of thoughts, what the ramifications of each being true would be for people interested in the general area of not dying, how it can affect one’s lifestyle, donations, career choices etc.
Yeah, may be my sloppy reading but I definitely didn’t realize that you’re saying sex is not potentially harmful to true selfhood, I thought you’re saying it is. I agree that the hormonal effects you’re describing can be counterproductive to many other goals (or even to the goal of having sex in some cases) and worth being aware of. It’s only the idea of them being somehow qualitatively different from other motivations that I was arguing against.
discovery of the in-group / out-group mentality that is amplified by it
Can you elaborate on that? Is it supposed to mean that sex amplifies us vs them mentality?
Meetup link seems to be broken