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Comment by the_local_host | Hacker News Reader

> 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.

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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?

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