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Comment by nico | Hacker News Reader

> Since Galileo’s time the physical sciences have leaped forward, explaining the workings of the tiniest quarks to the largest galaxy clusters. But explaining things that reside “only in consciousness”

Everything we know about anything is mediated through our subjective understanding and perception. Be it mathematical formulas that describe the universe or feelings about something. If you remove people, we don’t know what there is, because we have no way of knowing

Sure you can remove some people and have others observe, but that is still mediated by people

We can never truly know anything that we don’t perceive ourselves - so it is just impossible to know anything about a universe that doesn’t include our perception of it

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> impossible to know anything about a universe that doesn’t include our perception of it

The optimistic take for me is that this is a fundamental feature of the Universe.

Sounds true but is it? We can't perceive neutrinos.

Says the guy who knows about neutrinos.

That's funny, you got me! It comes down to what we mean by know and perception.

If by know we mean prove, then we can know things in other universes that may or may not exist by creating axiomatic systems that don't match our own. If we mean know as believe to the core (such as believing the mechanics of a proof) than we can know many things, some which may be true but unprovable or may simply be false.

I can say I'm aware of neutrinos and believe they exist as formulated, but couldn't say they absolutely exist in our universe. Earlier models only turned out to be approximations.

To extend your argument, nothing we perceive is _exactly_ how it exists in the universe. Everything that comes into our senses is an approximation, whether directly or via technological instrumentation. I don’t think any of that contradicts the possibility that consciousness is some state of matter.

> it is just impossible to know anything about a universe that doesn’t include our perception of it

Is this true? What about logical deductions? Can't you use math and logic to know things without perceiving them?

To me, the quote and your questions seem like different concepts

Regarding your questions:

There is a difference between intellectual knowledge and experience

Sometimes the concept of gnosis is used to differentiate them

So for example, you can read a book about riding a bike, maybe the book is very detailed and tells you everything there is to “know” about riding a bike, but unless you actually ride a bike, you can never “truly know” (experience) what riding a bike is

Now regarding our perception and the universe:

We live in the universe, we are part of it, we can’t ever separate ourselves from it

Then how would we ever be able to remove our perception from it? It’s impossible to truly know

Of course we can speculate and we can come up with endless ideas, but we can never truly know anything that we don’t experience

In that sense, even our ideas are mediated through our inner perception of them

And of course this is my own subjective perception of my reality, as it is all I have

> So for example, you can read a book about riding a bike, maybe the book is very detailed and tells you everything there is to “know” about riding a bike, but unless you actually ride a bike, you can never “truly know” (experience) what riding a bike is

This is often asserted, but I don't see any reason to believe it is true. Just like we can picture creatures that have never existed, and even draw elaborate images of them, with enough detail and introspection we can picture an experience.

And even if we really couldn't, this would at best be a limitation of our wiring, there would be no reason to think it's a limitation of any conscious being. After all, a computer is perfectly able to simulate itself and to simulate any input it could receive, so it can clearly simulate any possible experience it could have given enough details. By the same token, the fact that we can't control our optic nerves (nor other senses) as precisely is an accident of our genetic makeup, not some fundamental property.

> we can picture an experience

Picture it, but not experience it, it’s two different things

Whether our own perception is an accident of our genetic makeup or a fundamental property doesn’t really matter, it’s still the only way we can ever experience the world

First, I would still challenge the idea that there is a fundemantal difference for us between picturing an experience and actually experiencing it. It will probably vary by experience, but at least things like "how would it feel to watch my loved ones die" can be experienced even if it doesn't happen, with enough introspection.

And this very much does matter for certain arguments about consciousness. If qualia are separate from thoughts but only through an accident of our own human minds' construction, then all arguments that rely on qualia to argue consciousness must be un physical (Chalmers likes these a lot) are obviously invalid.

Hmm I think we've moved the goal post from "know anything" to "truly know" (whatever that means).

I said it’s two different things, and explained why/how

Now, if you actually have something interesting to add to the conversation, please do

I'm just trying to understand what you're saying because you yourself used the words "know anything".

So if your comment is not about knowledge but only experience then all you are saying is a simple tautology, ie the only way to experience something is to experience it.

This really doesn't hit on the nature of experience or how it is similar or different from knowledge.

Could a memory of an experience be implanted? Yes, such things happen. We experience imaginary things in dreams as well.

It seems problematic to conflate experience and knowledge, which you seem to be doing even while admitting they are different. You seem to argue that experience is a truer form of knowledge but I would push back and argue they are tangential.

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