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Comment by hliyan | Hacker News Reader

Few things hurt science more than people who put their desire for their ideas to be true, over experimental evidence. Unfortunately, the more difficult it is to gather experimental evidence (as it is psychology), the more this desire takes over, I think.

Currently, we have no choice but to relegate everything we think we know about consciousness to the realm of hypothesis, because the only form of evidence we have (first hand experience) cannot be shared or analyzed. I don't have a huge problem with people hypothesizing that consciousness (or perhaps more aptly, free will) has quantum properties, but they should clearly label them as such -- hypotheses.

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I 100% agree that science is held back by that desire, but there are some parts of consciousness we can test. Giving sight to the blind, for example, and getting them to see a cube and sphere for the first time. Giving someone varying amounts of LSD. I would argue even talking about consciousness with individuals in a lab-like setting. If most individuals use the same type of language to describe certain behaviours at the very least it bounds the range of what could be collective delusion.

We had a debate at office about this. We had a lot of trouble untangling perception (or awareness) from qualia (which is basically a thing as experienced by a person). For example, a cat may be aware of its reflection in the mirror, and may eventually map points on the mirror to points on its own body, but is there something inside the cats brain that is doing the observing? Or is it just a computing device that operates on a continuous input-processing-output loop that learns from previous loops?

I think the riddle is in the language.

When someone talks of oceans they don't question if it is just a bunch of quarks. The information processing system is intelligible to us because we live in a universe of consequence. Perception, awareness, and qualia seem to be all possible from neural activity.

> is there something inside the cats brain that is doing the observing? Or is it just a computing device that operates on a continuous input-processing-output loop that learns from previous loops?

The big question is, is there a difference? We haven't really established whether a sufficiently complex input-processing-output algorithm could also be a self-aware thing inside the cat's brain doing the observing. To posit that both things are separate mechanisms is a dangerous assumption, I think, when we don't really know what that "thing inside the cat's brain that observes" is.

Interesting. Would you say there is a "thing inside the brain that observes" in the case of humans, or more specifically, in your case personally? Much of my argument rests on the flimsy pillar that I personally perceive myself as an observer in a way that is different from inanimate objects.

Perhaps the only difference is in the level of complexity?

We can only speculate, but in my mind, to "be" the one that observes does not preclude from there being something in my brain that observes, which in turn, unconsciously, becomes part of what I call my identity and self. At the end of the day, to the best of our knowledge, living beings are made of the same atoms and chemical reactions as inanimate objects. So, yes, I would speculate that it's all a question of complexity.

When I pet my cat and it begins to purr and stretch out its paws, I know there is qualia involved.

But a cat's brain is scarcely larger than a walnut.

> Is there something inside the cats brain that is doing the observing?

That would be the homunculus fallacy, the idea that an agent must have an agent within itself to account for its agency.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homunculus_argument

I don't think this is what he meant. Asking whether there is an observer in the cat is asking whether there is any mental life in the cat, i.e. whether there is anything it is like to be the cat. This is different from the homunculus fallacy that posits an inner observer to explain how mental representations of sensory information are consumed (e.g. the cartesian theater).

> We had a debate at office about this. We had a lot of trouble untangling perception (or awareness) from qualia (which is basically a thing as experienced by a person).

This is the essence of the hard problem of consciousness: do qualia actually exist such that they are different than the perceptions that lead to them? Dennett thinks not, and that like all of our mental faculties, "qualia" are simply another cognitive trick to help us shift or maintain focus on important stimuli (or serve some other functional purpose).

An analogy I like to use is that qualia would be similar to how single-CPU computers can give the illusion of parallelism by rapid context switching.

What if I consider my feelings of free(ish) will observational evidence? This argument is hashed out in detail here: http://econfaculty.gmu.edu/bcaplan/Searle

In particular:

> I observe that I choose freely, at least sometimes; and if you introspect, you will see it too. There is no reason to assume that these observations are illusory, any more than there is reason to assume that vision or hearing is illusory. I frequently hear scientists declare that real science (as opposed to bogus Aristotelian science) rests on observation; that is, they take the observed facts as a given, and work from there. The insistence that free will does not exist has more in common with the worst a priori scholasticism than with modern science. The latter demanded that the facts fit the theory, while the essence of science is supposed to be that we make our theories fit the observed facts. […] Any argument for doubting our observations of our mental states would ipso facto be an argument to doubt the observations that confirmed atomic theory. […]

> This doesn’t mean that I am sure that no explanation is possible; maybe one day someone will show that this “brute fact” is not a brute fact at all, but one capable of a simple explanation. The point is that we don’t need to wait for this explanation before we can accept my view. We can gather all of the needed evidence for that if we merely turn inwards and observe.

> Unfortunately, the more difficult it is to gather experimental evidence (as it is psychology), the more this desire takes over, I think.

And doubly unfortunately, even the gathering of experimental evidence is subject to this problem: funding is denied for politically incorrect studies, the methodological problems found in all real world experiments are emphasized in the studies we dislike, ignored in studies that confirm our biases, etc.

> put their desire for their ideas to be true, over experimental evidence

Welcome to social sciences, psychology etc. Sadly.

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