If I were a natural scientist, I wouldn't take a bet that I can scientifically explain a phenomenon which I can't even describe in terms of observable things.
Maybe there will come a point where it's in the gray area but not today. We know that people act in ways that we cannot explain even a little bit.
Also, the bet is friendly. It's just a way to express their different underlying opinions. Neither one is put out by it. They will likely enjoy some of the wine together.
Then how can you follow that with "... it's still clear that the bet is lost. We do not understand in 2023 how neurons give rise to consciousness"?
The neuroscientist wagered that he or other neuroscientists will achieve something in 25 years. They did not. If the goal was poorly specified or impossible to achieve, that is on the person starting and accepting the bet.
There was certainly the possibility that they could have disagreed on the outcome. But there is really no dispute.
The possibility of disagreement would have mattered if the bet itself were significant, but it wasn't. It was always a tiny stake.
I cannot tell you how tired I am of people arguing about the merits of string theory, where effectively none of the people involved know even the first thing about it. It's not that people shouldn't get involved, but involvement should be more than just cheerleading as if it were a sports game.
Maybe that's inevitable. Maybe the public engagement will always produce 99 dunces shouting and one young scientist who goes on to study it for real. But it can be disheartening when it looks as if 100% of the public discussion is both ignorant and mean.
Conscious experience is an observable thing, meaning that we can subjectively experience it and infer its existence in other sentient beings (including in cows and pigs), and it is part of nature. The problem is, we still have no good idea how it comes to be.
It's not like how you can experience or observe redness by looking at something red.
Does that matter? We also don't have a good idea how gravity comes to be.
Consciousness is those parts of the workings of the brain that are available to introspection.
People so love to throw all kinds of babble under the heading of consciousness, so there's scant chance that people will agree on any kind of definition, let alone this one.
But it's what I've been using, and I find that it makes all the supposedly hard questions about consciousness very simple to answer.
It's observable. You simply ask people what they have been or are thinking or sensing. If they are able to relate that, then, by the definition, they were conscious about it. Of course they might be lying or misremember; introspection is not intersubjective, and therefore hard to create reproducible experiments around. But that doesn't mean introspective information doesn't exist.
> says nothing about the phenominalogical experience of consciousness in a meaningful way
What kind of experience is observable, except by introspection?
The only observations of experiences that anyone can have are through either one's own introspection, or through what others have related of their introspection.
If you are to say that you have had a "phenomenological experience of consciousness" that you want me to explain, then you are giving an introspective report of a brain process that left an imprint that you can now describe. If the experience was not available to introspection, then you wouldn't be asking, because you wouldn't realise there was an experience at all.
Let's say someone is lying motionless on the ground. You then say they've "lost consciousness". Later, they wake up and object that they were not unconscious. "I could hear everything you said. I was paralysed, but conscious the whole time." Being able to relate their experience is what proves that they were conscious.
Someone will say that they "made a conscious decision". Same thing. They can relate the thought process behind the decision.
Someone will say: "I got lost on the way to the airport. I must have unconsciously wanted to stay home." In this case they tell you that they made a decision, but they cannot relate the thought process behind the decision, and they don't believe that at any point they could have. It is a decision not available to introspection, therefore "unconscious".
> the question under investigation
What investigation? Which observation is in need of explanation? All I have is the introspective observation of myself thinking, and reports from others making similar introspective observations.
If you are going to say that "consciousness" needs explanation, then your question is ill-formed, because your question contains a word that has no definition and no agreed upon meaning.
I'm intrigued!
Let's try some.
> Is a dog conscious?
Probably yes. Dog are social animals, so it makes sense that they would have the ability to reflect on earlier events, including a memory of what they were thinking.
Since we don't have a common language so we can hear their introspective reports, it's hard to confirm, though.
> Is ChatGPT conscious?
No, it does not make observations of its own mental state. When it appears to do so, it is reconstructing plausible observations from its training set of others making such observations.
That's just the specific design of ChatGPT, though. It doesn't have an "inner thought" layer. Other AI designs could easily be conscious; it's just that the best ones we've so far managed to build, don't have it.
> Is ps conscious?
No, it doesn't think.
> Does consciousness survive death?
Obviously no. It's a property of the living brain.
Somehow, that was way too easy to answer for such a big question. There's this expectation that the answer should cover all the mysteries of life and death. It doesn't. It just answers a specific question about consciousness, which, with my definition, is a simple question with a simple answer.
1. you have consciousness
2. people are speaking about consciousness
The second point makes it likely that consciousness is not simply a consequence of physics, but e.g. that it loops back into it; or perhaps it is more likely (because simpler) that physics is a consequence of consciousness.
Why would something that has no consciousness make up that it has consciousness?
You can make a computer program `printf("I have consciousness\n");`
But I actually also didn't follow the rest of the argument. How does whether other people say they have consciousness or not, tell anything about whether it's physics based or not? If it's physics based, people could say they have consciousness. If it's not physics based, they could also say that?
1. People are talking about consciousness.
2. This talking happens in the physical world (soundwaves are being produced, etc.)
3. We assume that other people have consciousness since they talk about it. As you say, there is no absolute proof of this, but Occam's razor makes it silly to assume otherwise.
4. So, the soundwaves (physics) are happening because of consciousness. There is a causal link from consciousness to physics.
This means that consciousness is not simply the observation of physics. It actually loops back into it, or physics is an emergent property of consciousness.
This shows that consciousness is not just qualia, i.e. the observation of physics.
Just the same way existence is self-referential.
Consciousness is a comparison of current sense input with memory.
No sense input, no consciousness. No memory, no consciousness.
A rock, can have a memory (its chips and wear), but no consciousness since it has no sense input.
Self Consciousness is therefore a comparison of the input of our senses with the memory of our Self.