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Comment by mannykannot | Hacker News Reader

The author almost finds his way out of his impasse:

"Proponents of this view insist that their position does not eliminate consciousness, but instead reduces it to something else. They’re right, formally speaking... When you reduce chemical processes to physical processes, you don’t deny that chemical processes exist."

...but instead of following through, he returns to the truisms of his chosen tribe: "All true. And yet, to reduce consciousness to behavior and dispositions to behavior is to eliminate it. To say that consciousness is really nothing more than (dispositions to) behavior is to say that it doesn’t exist." The use of the phrase "really nothing more than..." is the response of someone who doesn't want to pursue the issue further.

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> The use of the phrase "really nothing more than..." is the response of someone who doesn't want to pursue the issue further.

I don't see how consciousness can simply be predispositions to behavior, because I have conscious experiences without any behavior. It also doesn't make any definitional sense. My experience of seeing red isn't the same thing as whatever behavior I might have as result.

> My experience of seeing red isn't the same thing as whatever behavior I might have as result.

The deeper you look at how the brain works, the more those two processes look like well-coordinated siblings.

Yea, but it still doesn't make sense. I mean, imagine Stephen Hawking really became incommunicable. He would still be very much conscious, without exhibiting any behavior. Even disposition of behavior doesn't make sense, because behavior is simply impossible. We're back to talking about the internal state of the brain/mind, and not simply behavior disposition.

So the idea of behavior disposition being central to consciousness is clearly silly. It is clearly a complicated function of the workings of the entire brain as a system -- even though the sensory and actuator (i.e. behavioral) systems are important to the individual, they are by no means exclusive or central.

If, by behavior, you mean movements by the body, then I think is a silly idea - a straw man, in fact, even if it was constructed by people who actually believed it. Pointing out its silliness may be amusing, but it doesn't get us any closer to understanding consciousness.

But if by behavior we don't mean movements by the body, and instead the whole state of the brain (the entire thinking process), then the theory is again trivial and useless (because it doesn't explain anything).

Indeed I don't claim to have read too much about it, but I think the main stream of behaviorism is literally that the functional response (i.e. black box response) is essentially all that matters. I'd be happy to know if there's more nuance than what appears.

I have a number of qualms about functional explanation of consciousness (which goes back to the Turing Test, probably earlier). I've seen outright denials that a representation of what is currently on your mind (the "mental theater"), often associated with consciousness, and indeed all similar abstractions we often use referring to our own minds, as "illusions" -- the brain is seen (by I believe at least a few currents) as a single monolithic black box function without a usefully interpretable internal state.

Anyone that has in fact experience programming computers will know there usually distinct caches, and clearly distinct subsystems that process information alternatively or in parallel, and algorithms operate recursively or iteratively over the memory until reaching a solution. I don't see why those insights shouldn't hold value for explaining consciousness, and perhaps explaining that even if an algorithm (e.g. a simple machine learning system) is indistinguishable from a [median] human in one or all tasks, then it is still not necessarily conscious, because the details of its inner workings lack certain features of a truly conscious being. For example, its internal representation of emotions may not be equivalent that of a human, such that it does not actually "experience" emotions, but because our own capabilities of verbally communicating emotions are quite limited, it may well beat the median human at this ability after utilizing gargantuan training sets.

So you can see themes of data efficiency, internal representation, etc emerge that are completely left out of behaviorism and related theories.

I intend to write a little about this (in an article), but there is probably at least a few academics exploring this more complicated, and complete, understanding.

> But if by behavior we don't mean movements by the body, and instead the whole state of the brain (the entire thinking process), then the theory is again trivial and useless...

Precisely: the straw man that you chose to tilt at in your previous post is beside the point. You have not found a fundamental logical self-contradiction in physicalism here.

It is not physicalism I am arguing against, it is behaviorism/functionalism.

Regardless, we are not going to arrive at an understanding of consciousness by arguing against weak ideas.

We can directly measure brain state to some resolution. So, as long as the brain can detect and understand outside stimulus we could still communicate.

> behavior is simply impossible

Thinking is also a form of behavior (in that it is to a large extent under one's control).

But not all behavior internal to the organism is conscious. Most of it is not. So consciousness is not behavior, even though it's correlated with some internal behavior.

BTW, behaviorism meant observable behavior, not biological processes, because behaviorists treated the brain (and body) as a blackbox, rather than get involved in a lot of speculation about how internal processes worked.

The way I look at it, conscious experiences are behavior: the behavior of an information-processing organ that has, in some mysterious but not necessarily magical way, become aware, to some extent, that it is not only an actor in its own model of what its sensory inputs mean, but also that it is a special actor, the one that actually creates the model.

Seeing red may be less mysterious than that - is it anything more than recalling similar sensations, and things (including abstract things like information/language constructs and emotions) that were associated with it?

> conscious experiences are behavior

Indeed - in the sense of behavior being equated with any kind of physical manifestation (inside or outside the brain).

> is it anything more than recalling

You are correct: having some form of memory is a prerequisite for consciousness.

I totally see it your way, that conscious experiences are just (internal) behaviour. But I don't think that conscious experience itself creates the model of itself and the rest. It merely views or recalls or traverses it. It certainly also has some kind of influence. But I like to seperate it from the unconscious rest that happens.

It can be seen in this light: Your experience and your thoughts are internal behaviour.

Even so, the problem is that some of my internal behavior is conscious, and some is not. So what makes the difference? I'm certainly not conscious of everything my brain does.

"If he’s right, no one has ever really suffered, in spite of agonizing diseases, mental illness, murder, rape, famine, slavery, bereavement, torture, and genocide. And no one has ever caused anyone else pain."

This concluding "slam dunk" is such an appeal to spooky-special-ness it makes me suspect the author hasn't yet grokked even the prerequisites to giving Dennett's views a fair shake.

And what would giving Dennett's view a fair shake ential? I've read and listened to what Dennett has to say on the matter, and the implication is exactly what the author states. It only seems like we are conscious, but we don't actually experience anything. We're all p-zombies, and Dennett has exactly stated that in at least one of his recent talks.

Dennett also tried to deny that we have dream experiences, calling it coming-to-seem-to-remember upon waking up. I don't know whether he still denies the experience of dreaming, but it would be totally consistent with experience being a cognitive illusion. Taking Dennett seriously entails denying any sort of internal experience, whether it being mental imagery, dreams, inner dialog, feel of pain, etc.)

(Apologies I don't have longer to write up what might be interesting to read of his, will do my best for a few minutes!)

What I find his most interesting core claims are basically: "human and animal brains aren't spookily special in some non-physical way, and there are physical explanations for things we've simply failed to imagine and accept yet".

And answering the "well whatabout [spookily special sounding thing]?" questions that naturally arise after that are the real fun challenge. But doing so is really tough, and often requires multiple long-held assumptions be questioned in succession, which is why so much of his work is on the process of questioning beliefs (and where his "thinking tools", thought experiments etc. really shine).

Re: "Dennett also tried to deny that we have dream experiences, calling it coming-to-seem-to-remember upon waking up", he's said himself[0] that is a myth based on mischaracterization of his work[1]:

> More than a few people apparently suppose that I espouse and defend the bizarre 'cassette theory' of dreaming in 'Are Dreams Experiences? '1 Emmett speaks, for instance, of "Dennett's defense of the cassette theory". Since more than a few suppose this, it must be because of obscurity or misdirection in my paper, for I do not end up espousing the theory, and am quite explicit about it. I concoct the cassette theory as a foil, as an alternative to what I call the received view, precisely in order to raise and investigate the question of what in fact would settle the issue between two such drastic rivals.

From what you wrote there are a couple of characterizations of Dennett's positions that suggest you might still enjoy giving some of his work another go with a generous mindset, e.g.:

> Taking Dennett seriously entails denying any sort of internal experience

I suspect Dennett wouldn't deny people perceive internal experience, heck -- evidence of that has been serialized right in your comment. He accounts for each of the phenomenon you describe (mental imagery, dreams as you mentioned, inner dialogue, pain) in his work, just not ascribing any fundamentally non-physical traits to the special-personal-feeling-ness of them.

[0]: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2FBF00357702

[1]: It's not hard to imagine how Dennett's claims could end up so often being mischaracterized (even by academic philosophers) -- the stuff he's claiming is subtle and (by its mind-blowing nature) hard to accept! So if someone hasn't yet grokked it, and they re-tell it how they stored it, the reader is doomed to never take seriously that kooky philosopher's claims.

> I suspect Dennett wouldn't deny people perceive internal experience, heck -- evidence of that has been serialized right in your comment. He accounts for each of the phenomenon you describe (mental imagery, dreams as you mentioned, inner dialogue, pain) in his work, just not ascribing any fundamentally non-physical traits to the special-personal-feeling-ness of them.

Right, but under Dennett's account, it only seems like we have subjective experiences. He compares it to the sun rising and setting. It seems like the sun literally rises and sets, even though we know it's the Earth turning. Similarly, Dennett thinks neuroscience will show that although it seems like we have these subjective experiences, they are really nothing more than brain activity, and as such, can be fully described by third person, objective scientific account. This is contrary to what philosophers like Chalmers and Nagel have argued.

> It's not hard to imagine how Dennett's claims could end up so often being mischaracterized

And the same can be said for any philosopher that attracts a lot of disagreement. There are plenty of Chalmers detractors. Do they understand all the subtlety of his arguments? However, I do think Dennett and Chalmers understand each other well enough.

> I've read and listened to what Dennett has to say on the matter, and the implication is exactly what the author states. It only seems like we are conscious, but we don't actually experience anything.

That is not what Dennett is saying. I have read all of his writings on consciousness, and he is quite clear (and in some places says in so many words) that he is not saying conscious experience does not exist. He is just saying that consciousness, real consciousness, is not like what the "mysterians" think it is like; it doesn't have all of the properties that people like the author of this article claim it has.

> Dennett also tried to deny that we have dream experiences

No, he didn't. He asked the question "are dreams experiences?" (in an article with that exact title that appears in the book Brainstorms, and more recently in other articles), and his conclusion was basically "it depends on what you mean by those words". Which illustrates another common fallacy that Dennett often has to rebut: the belief that saying something in ordinary language is sufficient to pin down a precise concept that can be explored and tested.

> Taking Dennett seriously entails denying any sort of internal experience

It does no such thing. Whatever giving Dennett's views a fair shake entails, you clearly have not met the requirements.

I have found Dennett's opponents to be an unreliable source on what he actually believes, but the question of who holds which beliefs is really beside the point - we are not going to understand consciousness through appeals to authority or other ad hominem arguments.

Ultimately any intelligent process needs to arise from non-intelligent processes. This is so obvious that it’s hard to believe it needs stating.

I think that’s partly the motivation behind panpsychism, although I haven’t studied the subject well enough to be sure.

>> Ultimately any intelligent process needs to arise from non-intelligent processes.

I rather enjoyed the authors brief mention of atoms having some type of intelligence or consciousness. Perhaps they do and it's such a small amount that we can't detect it. Some have pointed out that mathematics is strangely well suited to describing physics, but clearly it will not work do describe phenomena that don't follow those types of mathematical models.

I'm just playing devils advocate, I doubt what I just wrote but I can't refute it either. Some phenomena are actually defined as aggregate behavior - sound waves, coherent light, matter in the solid state - and cannot exist at the level of atoms or photons.

> Some phenomena are actually defined as aggregate behavior - sound waves, coherent light, matter in the solid state - and cannot exist at the level of atoms or photons.

While this is true, it does not mean that these phenomena cannot be explained in terms of the behavior of atoms or photons. They can. The position of those who are called "Deniers" by the author of this article is simply that consciousness is another such phenomenon.

> mathematics is strangely well suited to describing physics

This is like saying that numbers are strangely well suited to counting things.

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