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Comment by telmo | Hacker News Reader

This is a common attempt to rationalize away the hard problem of consciousness that I find to be an almost textbook example of "begging the question". What is a feeling? Well, it's a type of experience. Does a glass of water have experiences? Probably not, because experiences are phenomena that are relative to conscious entities. Saying that X has experiences or that X is conscious are, in my view, equivalent claims.

Saying that "consciousness is just a feeling" is equivalent to saying that "consciousness is just consciousness". It may sound like and explanation, but it is just a tautology.

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How about consciousness is just compression?

I was fascinated by a paper that argues the compression conjecture: the idea that consciousness is indistinguishable from compression. I just finished putting down my thoughts on the matter this morning [1]. This paper addresses "the hard problem of consciousness" directly:

> The answer to this question lies in the realization that the hypothesis of Amy’s subjective experience is a hypothesis which Amy herself holds, an understanding which is manifested through the compression she carries out. Understanding the hypothesis that one is feeling something and the actual experience of feeling are the same thing. Amy’s feeling therefore exists relative to the assumption of her own existence, an assumption which the system itself is capable of making

[0] https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/297030798.pdf

[1] https://mleverything.substack.com/p/consciousness-as-compres...

> Therefore, we can represent consciousness as a program that receives some input and performs some compression.

Are you of the opinion that gzip is conscious? When I execute gzip is it aware that it's compressing things?

If so, why do you think that?

If not, I don't understand the argument that consciousness and compression are the same thing.

It's not my theory, but check out the paper.

> Chairs do not carry out compression. They do not source sensory information from multiple locations and process it in parallel. They do not store memories to enhance future compression. And they do not develop a theory of self by compressing their own actions. Therefore they are not conscious

> Imagine holding a flame to the leg of a chair. The flame leaves a black mark, therefore the chair has certainly been affected by the flame. But intuitively, it does not seem reasonable to claim that the chair has experienced the flame. This difference between effect and experience is directly related to compression: specifically, the chair fails to experience the flame because the information it provides is not compressed in any way. If a chair’s leg is burned it has no effect on any of the other legs. No information is communicated, and consequently there is no inter-leg data compression to bind the experiences of the chair together. Furthermore, the chair stores no memory (other than a black mark). The burning event has no effect on how subsequent events are processed, meaning that the experiences of the chair are not bound together across time. Finally, because the chair does not compress its own response to the flame, it has no awareness of any subjective experience

Similarly, gzip does not develop a theory of self. It just compresses data based on some algorithm. It doesn't learn, have a sense of self or internalize its action

https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/297030798.pdf

> This difference between effect and experience is directly related to compression: specifically, the chair fails to experience the flame because the information it provides is not compressed in any way.

This is just begging the question: this (and everything else quoted in the above post) takes as axiomatic the proposition that consciousness is compression.

I would say the hard problem of consciousness is the problem of relativity. How do you see what happens in a different reference frame? Well, you can speculate, model, imagine it, but you can't see it. To see it you must be in that reference frame an look right from there. When you're in place of mind, you see what happens in it, otherwise you don't and can only speculate, model and imagine.

The "hard problem" is only a problem at all because it is ill defined. I don't get why many people think the hard problem is a problem. We think therefore we are.

What would a solution to the so called (I argue non-existent) hard problem look like?

Why is the hard problem a problem?

What new, useful information would "solving" it deliver?

Ah since we know why humans share a common qualia for red now we can do X?

I don't get it. Attempting to rationalise away an irrational premise, i.e. a hard problem exists, is always going to fail to convince believers. What is the point in attempting to define something that is ill-defined to start with?

Here is my position. Consciousness is a word. What it means varies over time and and space and according to who uses it. The mental model of who uses it may or may not correspond to objective reality in a broad or narrow sense. Magic is a word too. Just because we can explain N magic tricks does that mean that there is some "essence" of magic that is left unexplainable, i.e. the hard problem of magic? Just because we can come up with words for things does not mean that we actually know what we are talking about. I think "consciousness" as a word is not concretely defined therefore I am sceptical of a single unified natural phenomenon underlying the word. Giving a mental model a name does not necessarily give it reality.

The way I get out of that conundrum is to ask what would happen if the Earth were destroyed in some cataclysmic event and there were no humans left. I mean do you agree that the universe would still exist?

Do you think some other life in the universe might have consciousness, even if it's organized in a way that would be unrecognizable to us? How would you go about examining that question?

Carl Sagan spent a lot of time looking for ways to pose that question in ways that make it possible to "do science" about it and not just trail off into ideas that are beyond discussion, beyond meaning.

I mean if you are looking at a planet to see if the surface has been worked in a way that proves the existence of a technology-capable species (even if it was long extinct), you're talking about something "real" at that point.

Also, the book "Solaris" by Stanislaw Lem is really wonderful in the way it evokes the mystery of how a being can be sentient and utterly non-comprehensible to us. Quite brilliant really.

I have a first person experience of the world. You probably do too. Everything that I know, including all of the science I have learned, all of the books I have read, all the music I have listed too, all of the people I loved and even this post that you wrote and me replying to it exist for me purely within my first person experience of reality.

My subjective experience of reality is the only thing I have direct knowledge of. Everything else I must doubt. If you think about it, I am sure you will come to the same conclusion.

My paycheck says that I am a scientific researcher, and I have a deep appreciation for science. It provides me with models that go all the way from the subatomic world to societies, that expose regularities in reality, that allow me to understand how many things fit together, and to make predictions. But these are the things that are "just words" or, better yet, symbols. My conscious experience is the thing that I DO KNOW. Maybe it's all a dream. Maybe I'm a brain in a jar. Maybe I was created one nanosecond ago, and I am just a random fluctuation in some process and all of my memories are part of that.

And yet, and yet, the most fundamental phenomena of them all, the thing that I have experience of, is not predicted by any of the scientific models. There is no reason why a bunch of atoms should "become conscious" once their interactions are complex enough. There is no way to build a scientific instrument that measures consciousness. Sure, you can build a scientific instrument that detects brain states that we assume to be correlated with consciousness, but this is just crude analogy. Firstly we can never be sure, and secondly we don't know where the boundaries of the phenomenon are. Is a star conscious? Is the universe? Are the individual cells in your body? How do you know? How could you tell?

That is the mystery. I find that the people who deny the mystery have something equivalent to a religious belief, and that they are not necessarily aware of it . Believing that matter -> ??? -> consciousness is not so different from believing in creationism. A comforting story that makes reality seem intelligible, but that has no basis other than one's wishful thinking and group think. It certainly has nothing to do with science or rationality, at least so far.

>I have a first person experience of the world.

What is that composed of? I would say thoughts, feelings (somatic, sensory, psychological, psycho-motor state) and memories. Ok so - now supposedly fundamental atomic "consciousness" is actually composed of reducible parts. At least three, thoughts, feelings, memories. Which of these is scientifically unexplainable in principle? Thoughts are models of something, like an equation, image, or a program. Feelings are the product of sensory-thought integration. Memories are simulations of past thoughts and feelings. I think subjectivity is an illusion. Probably in a minority here though.

With a sufficiently powerful scanning tool i.e. super fMRI you could measure the neurocorrelates of thoughts and feelings.

Consciousness is a word. Subjectivity is an illusion existing in living people. Obviously past historical figures are not subjectively conscious because they are dead. So where did this supposedly existing thing "consciouness" go? Wouldn't a simpler, more scientific explanation be that it never existed to begin with. You say denying consciousness as a real extant thing is akin to religious belief but then you agree there is no possible mechanism for how it could arise materialistically. Isn't it simpler just to say it doesn't exist as something separate from the ensemble of functions of a living brain after all?

> I think subjectivity is an illusion.

If subjectivity is an illusion, then who or what is being deceived? It seems like even a false subjective experience would have to be experienced by someone or something, subjectively.

See this the fundamental problem with verbal reasoning about certain topics. I guess "illusion" was my imprecise attempt to say "something analogous to an illusion." What do I mean by that? Basically I mean that consciousness seems like one thing but perhaps it is not. I do not not agree that seems requires a "subjective" observation. Basically I am arguing subjectivity is incorrect but useful model of our selves that the brain creates on its own. It does not exist independent of a living brain.

If an "AI" image recognition algorithm classifies a zebra print couch with four legs as a zebra, the animal does that mean that the algorithm is experiencing a subjective deception or that it is just wrong?

I suspect the algorithm isn't experiencing anything at all. I know I am experiencing something even when I'm wrong or being deceived. I strongly suspect other people experience things.

What does "I know I am experiencing" actually mean? Can you define it in concrete terms? How would it differ from "I believe I am experiencing," or "I see myself as experiencing?" I think subjectivity is fundamentally unexplainable and does not require an explanation. I also think a belief in subjectivity is indistinguishable from the actuality of subjectivity. You believe you have subjective experience specific to you. Despite the fact that subjective, experience, and you is undefined apart from the functioning of your mind, i.e. the program running on your brain. Therefore if consciousness == mind why not just call it that? Mind can be broken down into various functional components. Why do you believe you have conscious experience? Because that is the way your mind is wired and that is what that word means to you at this point in space time. Is this indistinguishable, objectively from an illusion? I say no. If you say yes by what criteria would it be distinguished? If we define "illusion" as perceiving something as different from what it actually is, does the existence of an illusion require a "conscious" observer? I would say no. Now, as an aside, an astute reader will see in another comment I said the existence of this particular universe as a collapse of a superposition of universes may depend on consciousness, by that I simply meant a certain degree of information structure resulting in structure perceiving itself, not necessarily subjectivity.

Ideas don't have a noumen part and can't appear different from what they are. The error in your example is in association between the idea of zebra and an external object, the idea of zebra itself isn't wrong and isn't illusion and isn't different from some kind of true form of itself.

I am having difficulty understanding your point. Please feel free to clarify. To me "noumen" means mental or "thought" derived part.

Yeah the couch looks like a zebra. The idea it looks like a zebra is not wrong. However the conclusion that it therefore is a zebra is wrong. It is a visual misidentification. What distinguishes this from an illusion? We are not looking at true forms versus reality. We are looking at perceived form versus reality. When perceived form diverges from reality that seems like an illusion to me. Maybe you could call it something else, a mistake. What's the point here that you are trying to make?

Memories and feelings are merely constructs of the brain. Even those can be doubted. The "first person experience" goes deeper, it's the observer of these parts.

And beyond being an observer, the brain is aware of the observer, so it is not merely an observer (observer effect).

(It's also interesting (with controversial implications) that there are people who know precisely what's meant by consciousness, and others who only seem to understand it conceptually.)

>Memories and feelings are merely constructs of the brain...

So what does the first person experience when it has no memories or feelings or sensory-motor input? Obviously no living people can answer this barring perhaps some Buddhist monks or the like if they have truly managed to dissociate so profoundly. Remember if "nirvana" feels good then you got a feeling. I would argue that consciousness is also a construct of the living brain. It is possible that it also exists in other contexts (e.g. ghosts, demons, jin, characters in a novel, etc) but this has never been proven or even suggested by evidence and does not seem intuitively plausible to me. If I ever experience a ghost or demon in a convincing way maybe I will change my view. So as far as we can tell what we clumsy call consciousness is inseparable from a living brain running the program "human mind" or perhaps dog consciousness is inseparable from a living dog brain running the program "dog mind." So consciousness is also a mental construct. It comes from the mind.

I am interested in this statement >(It's also interesting (with controversial implications) that there are people who know precisely what's meant by consciousness, and others who only seem to understand it conceptually.)

Can you explain what you actually mean by this? It is not clear at all to me.

Are you suggesting some of us may be NPCs?

Assuming you are in the first group, those who "know precisely what's meant by consciousness," what is it that is meant by consciousness. "meant" means signified, what does consciousness signify that is not covered as a construct of the mind? Would you argue brain dead people are conscious, what about dead people, incorporate entities? Does consciousness not imply the ability to process information how does the energy to do that derive if not attached to a metabolising body? If consciousness,is a recursively self aware observer nested Russian doll style, as you seem to suggest how deep does the nesting go?

I think there is an observer in your mind, and it is part of your mind, but it tricks you it into thinking that it is not. That is the nature of consciousness. It is kind of like empathy turned inward.

>Are you suggesting some of us may be NPCs?

Yes. Although it's of no consequence, since nobody can prove they have a consciousness. It may be a non-binary state as well. (Ever lived for a few days "on automatic"?)

On the extreme ends, consciousness may logically appear anytime between existing in the womb (or even earlier?) and the first years of our lives. (There are anecdotes online of people who remember suddenly being self aware around 3 years old.) It might disappear anytime during the last years of our lives and on or before our death (I doubt any later, but who knows...). (Elderly people who suddenly regress into a purely reactive state, no longer taking conscious decisions, come to mind.)

(Appearing and disappearing could either mean coming into and out of existence, or attaching to our body from some greater or external mass of consciousness.)

>I think there is an observer in your mind, and it is part of your mind, but it tricks you it into thinking that it is not.

That is possible too.

Or the mind tricks the consciousness into thinking it's part of the body.

>So what does the first person experience when it has no memories or feelings or sensory-motor input?

I cannot imagine. Memories are a physical state of the brain, so perhaps any physical shape can qualify as memories. Senses are electrical signals, so perhaps any electrical signals can qualify. Perhaps something else entirely. It definitely would not be anything like the human experience, though.

Lightning striking down a tree is an electrical signal changing physical state.

Just as well, maybe there's just one single consciousness that exists beyond time, taking turns to experience everything for its eternity.

Or... Perhaps there's a million consciousnesses in your brain, and all of them, including you, are convinced that they're the one true consciousness in your brain.

> Saying that "consciousness is just a feeling" is equivalent to saying that "consciousness is just consciousness". It may sound like and explanation, but it is just a tautology.

I think you hit the nail in the head with that. Consciousness might very well just be a tautology, so the only definitions we are going to be able to produce are going to be circular or recursive.

However, this is a problem with written language in general. The definition of any word is only provided in the form of other words, which themselves are defined by words as well, so without an interpreter/reader that makes a connection from language to something else, language by itself can’t really have any meaning.

Perhaps consciousness cant know itself, just like fire can't burn itself, and water can't wet itself.

Or perhaps consciousness means being conscious of being conscious ;)

Ps: love your username

You may be surprised to learn that there is more to the theory than is conveyed in the headline to the Nautilus Q&A with the scientist who came up with it. A more accurate statement of Solms's view is that consciousness is precision adjustment within a hierarchical network of Markov blankets that self-organise to minimise free energy. You can judge for yourself whether he avoids tautology or rationalises away the hard problem, but you should probably first read his book, in which he explains the idea. Remarkably, given that this is a book about predictive coding in the brain, it is not all that taxing to read. What's more, as far as I can see, it does in fact solve the problem.

I feel like the greater problem is that we use the word 'consciousness' at all; the very term is undefined and acting like its a term we can build a science on is just as flimsy as saying its a feeling

How do you know there is a difference between a conscious being and a glass of water? I'm not saying the glass of water is conscious. Let's say it isn't. What tells you that an animal is any different?

This is yet another philosophical problem: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/other-minds/

Another good analogy here is definition of life. What is life and what is a difference between a living being and a glass of water? The difference is that they are different systems that work in different ways, for a system to be conscious, it should work in a certain way, and a glass of water doesn't work in that way, that's why it's not conscious. Consciousness should perceive reality, remember, model and analyze it, maybe even have intelligence, will, abstract thought, attention and reflection, then it can be seen as consciousness.

because we have neurons and a glass of water doesnt

Are you sure that neurons are a precondition for consciousness? I'm not arguing a glass fo water is conscious, but that argues against computers ever being conscious because they also have no neurons.

thats true, I guess theyre not required for consciousness but thats how it evolved here on Earth. I suppose all you would need is to be able to have a mental map of the world, however it happens

I think computers could be conscious (whatever that means) if they modelled living minds to a sufficiently high degree of precision. I do not see why the physical substrate would matter.

I don't know if a glass of water is conscious or not, nor can I come up with a scientific experience to test such an hypothesis, so I remain agnostic on that question. In fact, I cannot even come up with a scientific experience to test if other people are conscious. I just bet they are, because they are similar to me and I know I am.

My point is simply that "feeling" already assumes consciousness. Maybe everything is conscious. Still, saying "it's just a feeling" explains nothing. Most people assume that glasses of water are not conscious, so I just used that example to illustrate my point. But you make a valid remark.

The perfect example of : dubito, ergo cogito, ergo sum ("I doubt, therefore I think, therefore I am")

Indeed!

I hadn't scrolled down this far when I brought up the cogito myself - but I guess great minds think alike.

But, I think Descartes is straight up wrong here. He doesn't doubt, he believes that he doubts. Descartes never got away from his evil demon - it simply blinded him. He didn't take radical skepticism far enough and if he did he would realize that the Cogito is not good enough for a proof of ontology!

The universe of the evil skepticism demon is as follows: "There is exactly one truth, that there are no other truths". If you hold that axiom, than how can one unironically conclude that the cogito is a neat proof of ontology? Seems like the philosophical equivalent of "wet pavement causes rain"

What do you offer as the difference between the belief that he doubts and “actual” doubt. For him the doubt seems actual and acute. He doesn’t believe in the doubt, he is experiencing it. (Also Descartes never said doubt, that is a common addition)

> I just bet they are, because they are similar to me and I know I am.

You sound certain!

Is that because of some logical deductive series that you can articulate, or is it because of a very strong feeling you have?

I'm curious to understand what you are saying, because I don't feel the same way myself, at least not all the time.

> because I don't feel the same way myself, at least not all the time.

Depending on how you are interepting the other commenter's use of the word "similar" you might be trying to say either:

a) I don't think other people are conscious (a fairly exceptional claim)

b) I don't think other people are that similar to me (a fairly unremarkable claim)

Solipsism fitting into camp a)?

I always wondered: If you believe in only "One" - one consciousness, one unity - does that de facto make you a solipsist?

This crosses my mind from time to time, what physical properties sustain conciousness?

Our brains, which is where we suppose our conciousness originates, is made (most likely) from the same sub-atomic particles inanimate objects are made of.

So is there something more to these inanimate objects? Does a rock has more potential then we are aware of?

I don't know. Funny question to ask though.

> sub-atomic particles

Mostly whole atoms (or ions) plus electrons and protons (although the latter could be thought of as the ion of a particular isotope of hydrogen). Being pedantic, we can include photons, too.

We should not assume that the appearances of experience is proof of well... anything, and especially not of existence of experience. The classic example of where I think people f*** this up is with unironically accepting "Cogito Ergo Sum" or "I think, therefor I am". I'm surprised that blade runner didn't give folks intuition for why this might be wrong.

Funny enough though, many people have tried to boil down consciousness to be some "simple" concept like the original author with "consciousness is just a feeling". I'm reminded of when Sartre writes all about it in Being and Nothingness: "All of consciousness is consciousness of something"

It's clearly not a tautology. It's a basic scientific approach:

> You reduce it down to something much more biological, like basic feelings, and then you start building up the complexities.

Author is attempting to "build up the the complexities" from discrete falsifiable parts. There's great and obvious benefit to that. One obvious drawback is that it may not succeed in adequately addressing the complexity suggested by the history of philosophy of consciousness. But that in no way makes it a tautology.

I think you've overlooked something here.

> You reduce it down to something much more biological, like basic feelings, and then you start building up the complexities.

But at this point we're not even sure if the thing you're referring to is the same thing we originally intended to study.

This is one of the pitfalls of scientific discussions of consciousness. Usually the first reductionist step appears to substitute the subject under discussion for something entirely different and then proceeds to explain this other thing.

"Assume a spherical cow" and all that.

I read it as "it is a physiological signal".

Like the need to pee.

Sure, but the hard part is explaining the first person experience of feeling the need to pee or, in other words, consciousness.

I get it, but that is what I ment.

That "first person" is just a group of neurons experiencing a signal. Call it what you will: "On". Or "I am". I think about it as "Still connected", given that people who lose significant parts of their brain still "feel alive". When those neurons stop receiving it, the sense of self gradually stops.

I also think that one of the reasons we need sleeping is to recharge the signal emitters; that's why we lose consciousness in the process.

I must stress that I am not an expert in neorology at all, I just have thought about this for a while. Obviously when I say "a signal" as if it was a digital 1 or 0, evolution will probably have implemented bunch of chemicals and electrons being interchanged at different times at different places.

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