Consciousness

But to question whether or not one is a p-zombie opens up a whole new can of worms. Can someone without consciousness be aware that such thing exists to question whether they have it? Doesn't that make them conscious?

A person that hasn't experienced certain form of qualia (like color) can't comprehend it, so wouldn't a zombie be unable to understand the concept of qualia altogether?

No. What you are doing when you discuss p zombies is using a representation, a model to try to describe a phenomena. It's a metaphor trapped in language. You don't need to be "conscious" (whatever the fuck that means if it doesn't mean sensory processing) to make use of representations.

When you talk about color are you talking about color blind mary? The dumb metaphor of mary the scientist not being able to see blue despite knowing it's "characteristics"?
It's fucking retarded. It boils down to pattern recognition. Categorization and differentiation. If Mary has friend who is always there to point to the color blue and tell her when two things share that feature, she'll be able to comprehend the color blue in the same manner the rest of us do.

blindsight by watts is a fun and well-researched book focusing on connections between consciousness, intelligence, behavior and phenomenology. it's not terribly well written from a literary perspective, but it is very imaginative and if you are interested in these topics i think you will enjoy it

it is kind of interesting. It's like a Turing test gone wrong, or something, or that moment when you're on the phone and realize you're talking to a machine.

Idk, when I read this, I'm like "Is this guy a p-zombie?" You'd have to be retarded or literally not able to see colors to think this. So the conclusion must be that you don't see colors, at least not in the relevant way that non-p-zombies do.

It's hard to explain, we don't just pattern recognize and have responses to things that come across our eyes. We literally have this weird phenomenon "happen" to us where our eyes get filled with weird tinted visceral feelings. I really don't know how to explain what seeing a color is like to someone who can't.

Reading a post like this is like listening to an alien trying to describe a culture it has no knowledge of. Either you're not serious, or you're "out of it."

>wouldn't a zombie be unable to understand the concept of qualia altogether?

Possibly, and this may give us a behavioral criterion for p-zombies. People who claim not to be able to understand qualia or insist there's no such thing, etc. may just be p-zombies. They can't comprehend how sight could be something besides information processing or bodily response because there are literally no "lights on" in their head.

Maybe we'll even find some sort of physical correlate one day to the p-zombie/qualia-haver split. It's like being tetrachromatic or something – only a portion of humanity is "qualia conscious," the rest behave consciously but have no experiences.

Wait, there are others who have come up with the p-zombie theory? I got it from arguing with fedoras and my interactions with plebs.

Why stop at color? Why not sense of touch or taste? People keep on talking about qualia without understanding what sensory organs are or how they work. There's no general theory of sensory organs to refer to even though whenever someone speak about qualia they explicitly refer to the senses.

It also could be that people have a "sense" of qualia that is triggered whenever the brain enter a deep processing state. When you look at a blue object, a multitude of response can occur. Looking at the blue can bring up memories of a related event in the past. Bring up a related song. It can be sensory overload where everything else shuts down and all attention is put into visual inputs. At this point the brain is in overdrive and can't decide from the multitude of things that it can do, what exactly to do. The recognize this event and makes your mouth say "ah this is qualia." In either case it is tied to information processing.

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>People keep on talking about qualia without understanding what sensory organs are
You don't have to understand what the sense organs are to have an experience, or reflect on the fact that you are.

>It also could be that people have a "sense" of qualia that is triggered whenever the brain enter a deep processing state.
It doesn't really matter what it's caused by, the care fact that it happens is something some people seem not to be able to grasp, which might be evidence that p-zombies are real.

>Looking at the blue can bring up memories of a related event in the past. Bring up a related song. It can be sensory overload where everything else shuts down and all attention is put into visual inputs. At this point the brain is in overdrive and can't decide from the multitude of things that it can do, what exactly to do. The recognize this event and makes your mouth say "ah this is qualia." In either case it is tied to information processing.
Again, stuff like this^ makes me feel like I'm talking to an alien. It's so profoundly misguided that it's not clear whether a debate would be productive – it's as if the very notion of having an experience is not part of your worldview because you;ve never had one.

user, I wanted you to know that this comic made me laugh.

Is it possible that the people who 'do not understand qualia' would be too subservient to their egos to just admit their own ignorance?

This would make the situation far more annoying, however.

Yes you do have to understand what sensory organs are and how they work to make any headway. It's fundamental since all our experience is tied to it.

I agree with you. People are zombies. Unpredictable zombies.

Unfortunately if you can't adequately describe it or communicate it, then there is no point in debating because we are using metaphors and language. It's not a hard science where objective data can be compared. Again the problem comes down to what you mean by "experience." My definition is simply what is shoved into the processor that is the human brain, which is sensory inputs.

>Unfortunately if you can't adequately describe it or communicate it, then there is no point in debating because we are using metaphors and language.
I agree, but the very disagreement may still be a little piece of evidence, which we can cash in on in the future, that such differences exist. It's like how some people are tetrachromatic and literally see the world differently, but in a way that was hard to pin down until recently. Likewise, there may be p-zombie and 'qualitative' humans, and our differences come out when we argue abstractly about issues like this, though we can't pin down right now the reasons for why we're different.

Even so, it may mean that it's in principle impossible to explain to a p-zombie what experiences are like. That's fine, as long as the p-zombies don't go around acting like because they don't experience anything it can't be possible.

>Again the problem comes down to what you mean by "experience." My definition is simply what is shoved into the processor that is the human brain, which is sensory inputs.
I don't buy this – 'experience' is a word of English that has its meaning from conventional usage, so you don't get to define it, unless you're using it as a technical term. But we're not, presumably, we just mean experience in the ordinary sense, and I think people by and large 'get' what's meant by the hard problem. Your own definition of 'experience,' for what it's worth, just seems completely retarded if we're going off the way the word is actually used. Often people mean by experience something qualitative and conscious. If you don't understand that, it's your problem, though, not theirs.

That would be true if people can pinpoint qualia to an actual phenomena instead of something abstract.

People who don't understand evolution and claim it doesn't exist will get fucked over by super viruses and mutated smallpox. We can't say the same for people who don't understand qualia.

Are you sure, though? We might expect some concrete effects: for example, people who don't understand qualia might have bad taste in music.

But don't you see the problem of defining experience in terms of "conscious" when people can't agree what conscious means?

"Experience" must be define in general terms. Google self driving cars learns from experience. Is google self driving cars conscious?

AlphaGo learns from playing a million Go games is that not experience? Was it not able to beat the world's best Go player despite not being conscious?

What is the difference between an "experienced" mechanic and someone who is new to the craft?

>But don't you see the problem of defining experience in terms of "conscious" when people can't agree what conscious means?
I think the usage of the term in everyday experience is pretty clear. If anything it's people like Dennett that muddy the waters: it seems like most people 'get' Cartesian thought experiments, inverted color spectrum, p-zombie, etc. without theoretical training when asked about them. A lot of people even report coming up with these ideas themselves when growing up.

>Google self driving cars learns from experience. Is google self driving cars conscious?
I guess technically I don't know, but I'm inclined to think not, mostly because my only cue for consciousness is similarity to other humans. 'Learn from experience' is one kind of idiom, but I wouldn't, for example, say that Google cars experience anything. And I think pretty much everyone would agree with that. To think they do is to be confused in some way, or to have very odd beliefs.

The fact that you think a Google car might experience in the same way as a person, or that people somehow are liable to confuse these concepts, again makes it feel like I'm talking to an alien and that there's something very fundamental you don't understand.

You mean no taste in music. They would listen to what 'others are listening to'.

>fiction that explores philosophical problems of consciousness

Philosophy.

Yeah, reductive Materialism is absolutely true for reductive Materialists.

The Mary knowing everything about color and therefore knowing what it's like is dumb.
>If only Mary knew everything about the physical state that brings about the experience of seeing red, she would know what it is like to see red.
The problem with that is it just restates the problem. The only way for Mary to know what seeing red is like is to actually see it (in this case via simulating the mental state that gives rise to the experience of seeing red).

this.

This thread is intriguing. I have for years now thought that AIs would be by their very nature be p-zombies. Their existence amongst us, however, makes conscious AI plausible. Although it may never be conceived intentionally.

Isn't the point of experience something to learn from? If you eliminate the practical and everyday use for the term than what is left? Is experience simply "what I feel?" Of course we can separate the terms. There is nothing wrong with that. What we are talking about is "practical experience" versus "personal experience." Practical experience is well defined. Personal experience requires self recognition, consciousness, and a whole lot of other troublesome aspects.

Why stop at color. Let's talk about radio waves. Can people experience radio waves? Yes, it's called using a radio. It goes back to pattern recognition and categorization. If you can differentiate with some degree of accuracy, then you have some form of experience.
Do sharks experience blood? Do bats experience sound? Do dogs experience the smell of cats? Many of the problems and misunderstanding is again, a lack of a general theory of senses and it's mechanisms. If you can come up with a theory, maybe you'll win some prize.

You ever read Merleau-Ponty, nigga?

If you truly want to understand consciousness, read "the origin of consciousness and the breakdown of the bicameral mind". It's my favorite text on consciousness and I've read many.

You can make the same argument towards the people who do believe in qualia. I think the idea that people who don't "get" the hard problem being p-zombies is interesting, but you have to admit there is a certain arrogance and naivness to your argument when you start to make up theories for why "they just don't get it".

I wouldn't count on that. Even if phenomenal consciousness exists in a new substrate, the "content" of the qualia is still very dependent on the physical interactions, so it would make sense that the reason music would sound good, is because your neural network has been trained in a way that makes you like it, and the experience is then "projected" accordingly. It's not like there is some universal "good music" qualia that corresponds to certain note configurations of music.

Nice meme.

Colorblind people just don't get it, either. There is no arrogance to it, a lament.

My arrogance was me 3 years ago demanding that they be mapped and reduced to the environment they claim to be.

>Isn't the point of experience something to learn from? If you eliminate the practical and everyday use for the term than what is left? Is experience simply "what I feel?"

When talking about "experience" in philosophy of mind, what it "feels like" phenomenally from the first person perspective is very much what's meant.

>Personal experience requires self recognition
Not necessarily. You can imagine yourself in scenarios where your sense of self is very much "toned down" or non-existent completely, yet it still feels like something to be you. Self recognition is part of the way we model ourselves in our environment, but to phenomenally experience is something different. Self recognition has causal powers over the content of the experience, but I don't think it's needed there as a base for there to even be experience in the first place. I guess it would if you want to go the Dennett route and argue that the "phenomenal" is nothing more than an illusory abstraction of language.

Classics should at least be in top tier.

But with colorblindness we can prove that difference in experience has an ontological cause that makes them perceive color differently. With the hard problem, it's a little bit harder to prove an ontological gap, and not just that everything is functional but we lack the knowledge to understanding how.

this.

>we can prove that difference in experience has an ontological cause that makes them perceive color differently.
I can prove to myself that I exist, and we can discuss this with people who aren't blind to existence.

An unconscious being can use the same logic to prove that it exists. Proof that you exist is not proof that you are more than a set of functions. What you need is proof that the qualitative aspect of existing cannot be explained functionally. And I think there is a good reason to believe that such is the case, for the same reason you do. But making a logical consistent argument for this is very hard since the very framework of logical arguments is deeply rooted in contexts of quantitative things, which phenomenal experience doesn't seem to be.

Another problematic thing is that if this phenomenal "stuff" is so different from the physical, then how is it that it manifests so profoundly in the behavioral output of you and me? How can a purely functional system "prove" the existence of the phenomenal, if the very nature of it escapes and goes up and beyond the functions of the system making the argument?

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None of the stuff on the right explains how it is that "you" have a subjective experience.

How does the brain make you act like you saw something? Why is there a subjective experience associated with this? When a computer calculates inputs, do you think that the computer experiences something?

I've also had such an experience multiple times when discussing consciousness. This thread itself is an example.

> if this phenomenal "stuff" is so different from the physical, then how is it that it manifests so profoundly in the behavioral output of you and me?
not him but that's a good question, really made me think. Another question would be why not other animals as well?

>if this phenomenal "stuff" is so different from the physical, then how is it that it manifests so profoundly in the behavioral output of you and me?
I always found this to be one of the fatal argument against epiphenomenalism

That image has not a single good point against qualia, and nobody believes in Cartesian theater or in the homunculus.

>That would be true if people can pinpoint qualia to an actual phenomena instead of something abstract.

That would effectively be equivalent to solving the hard problem of consciousness. It's precisely the lack of any theory allowing us to pinpoint qualia as anything but the subjective experience of feeling that is the issue.

total red herring desu

Yes.

Trying to save epiphenomenalism, a possible response is to argue that if the physical can epiphenomenally cause the mental, then it could be possible that the physical would process information that indirectly describes features of the mental without ever needing to interact with it. It's simply corresponding with the phenomenal experience without directly accessing it, like two clocks wound up at the same time. An analogy would be: when a computer burns a disc, the would-be contents of the disc is going to be in the computers memory when the disc is created, and if saved, the computer could describe the disc, without reading anything from it. The computer has then caused the disc, and is able to describe it without reading anything from its final form. This leaves the question of how exactly information crosses to the "phenomenal realm", but that gap doesn't create as many problems as causal interaction the other way.

>An unconscious being can use the same logic to prove that it exists.

unconscious beings don't do much. ask anyone in a persistent vegetative coma.

I like how the immanent Self is still immanent in every one of those meme arrows and you don't even realize it.

Interesting defense. I'll have to give it some more thought. I might respond on the content later.

>unconscious beings
He's obviously referring to p-zombies.

Btw, is anyone here familiar with a contemporary idealist take on the problem? You'd think that framework could provide the ground for a comprehensive analysis. Or have the phenomenologist taken this role in continental thought?

People who don't understand what qualia are detected.

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proof of

Here OP. Read this.

>consciousness discussions
>Veeky Forums

I downloaded this as an audiobook and I'm going to listen to it at work. I'm going to suck your dick if it's good.

if a computer was accurately modeled after a brain i should totally think that the computer experiences something

There are reasons to doubt this.

Like you say, if it is functionally identical, then why not? Well, first of all, it being functionally identical might not matter since the very gap at the heart of the hard problem is between function and experience. The computer could function identically but still lack phenomenal experience. But why would it lack it? Well, you could argue that the physical substrate where consciousness resides is affected/created differently when a system operates in the incredibly parallell way a brain does, as opposed to the fast repetitive symbol shuffling that happens in a single place in the CPU. Thus, the nature of the experience is not governed by the functional outcome of a system, but instead on HOW the system came to the functional outcome.

by saying a "computer" could be modeled after a brain is already assuming too much. a brain's main mode of experiencing the world is not computation

Any system we come to understand can be simulated in a computer, so we should at least get a simulation that is functionally indistinguishable. Whether or not it feels like anything to be that simulation is another question.

>muh ghost in the machine

How can Dennett be so infuriating yet at the same time so calming to listen to?

>i should totally think
It's intuitively appealing but it's not scientifically investigable due to the structural impenetrability of the other minds problem.

Yes, it has existed for a long time. Chalmers is most famous for employing them against physicalism. I think everyone interested in phenomenal consciousness should read his papers.

consc.net/consc-papers.html

Men with large beards make you think their whole beard is talking to you and it seems very gentle and soft. In reality he is just a normal man with a normal mouth, and the effect of his beard muffling or affecting the sound coming out of it is slim to nil. But your brain registers Dennett talking (even when you can't see him physically) as a big soft fluffy beard gently susurrating words at you like a summer breeze ruffling through leaves. In reality he's just a stupid piece of shit with a fleshy mouth but you think he's a leafy breeze.