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Comment by a13o | Hacker News Reader

We never bothered to define consciousness with any scientific rigor, so why not? It's common for things that are everywhere, to also be nowhere at all.

Could the cosmos, in fact, be smurpity-badoingo?

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It seems that an anesthesiologists job is to make sure you’re unconscious. If there’s anyone that knows how to define consciousness, it should probably be them.

Seems that consciousness is an awareness of certain stimuli that give rise to novel patterns in our brain, in turn triggering our frontal lobes to notice…

Arguably science is not able to define consciousness because of the subjective nature of it, and how the aim of science is to remove subjectivity from its observations and conclusions.

On the other hand, religions have been studying consciousness for thousands of years, and indeed it is not something that can be verified by science.

Why is it so hard for people to understand that you can’t have productive discussions about things that you haven’t solidly defined?

We know what consciousness is. It's our self-awareness.

We don't know where it comes from our how to test it, because each individual can only observe their own consciousness.

All we know is that we have it because its not about what the word means. It's about how we apply the category of "conscious" to things. It's a way of either distancing or bringing ourselves closer to things.

We might as well just ask "Is the universe like us?"

> We know what consciousness is. It's our self-awareness

Not really. There are plenty of disorders that destroy a person’s self-awareness but appear to leave a fully conscious person there anyway.

Then take off the “self” part.

How about conscious is awareness? The more aware you are, the more conscious you are?

Is 1000 bees more or less aware than 10 buffalo?

I believe you are right to say that consciousness is generally regarded as more than self-awareness, but unless you want to regard self-awareness as specifically not a form of consciousness, then the consciousness of the people with the disorder you refer to are missing something - something that I believe was of great importance in the evolution of the human mind.

Yeah, my understanding is that it's highly undesirable to have no sense of self-awareness.

What I like to ask about consciousness is to identify the step in the chain of organisms or matters where we jump from not having consciousness to having one.

That is a real problem though. Many things you cannot define because their bounds are indefinite. To define those things requires knowing the bounds. It's much simpler to accept our limitations in language and cognition because it removes those artifical boundaries when connecting physics to metaphysics. We only need to describe things when they matter.

Then there are things you can very solidly define but never know what they are. We can describe physics, and their applications, but when connecting metaphysical effects down to the constituent quantum processes the whole is unknown. We aren't sensible enough.

The truly wholesome perspective is from outside the universe.

Why is it so hard for people who hold this view to see that there is a bootstrap problem for any knowledge beyond personal experience if this were true? The reality is that definitions are works-in-progress, and getting started often involves a 'definition' that is little more than a placeholder for an eventual explanation of something currently unexplainable.

human history is filled with examples of important discoveries based on productive discussions about things we haven't solidly defined. I have found that the further I stay from those areas, the happier I am.

Could Pet Rocks Be Conscious?

I mean, really. I feel like having a method of sensation and an ability to react to those sensations is a fundamental basis for "consciousness" and if you can point to the sun or the Local Cluster's sensory apparatus, I may listen to the rest of your (the Editorial You, not the commenter this reply is attached to) argument.

Otherwise, we're just pointing at complex things and saying "does haz Conscience lol?"

Avicenna argued otherwise. Have a look at his "floating man" thought experiment for how consciousness can exist detached from any sense experience.

The problem with your definition is that it excluded forms of life that do not have actors and sensors. Implying that consciousness is not a mental property, but rather a property of being physically able to manipulate the world.

I.e. you are saying Stephen Hawking is definitely less conscious than an average human with functioning arms and legs. In its essence, you are too focused on your own experience of reality.

It is about fundamental basis for consciousness. Stephen Hawking had sensory apparatus and a method to react to inputs. Alas, I would say he is no longer conscious. If he had no method to react, like locked-in patients, we could argue about whether they are conscious, but we are currently trying to measure consciousness in those people too by measuring brain waves (look, something changes predictably when he hears us). We don't see any evidence that sun has any sensory input or output. It's like you arguing whether 0.9999 or 0.99999 is bigger when I argue whether 0 or 1 is bigger.

A pure observer with no deliberate actions or impulse reactions sounds like it can most definitely be conscious.

Do we have to interact with it?

> A pure observer with no deliberate actions or impulse reactions sounds like it can most definitely be conscious.

Yes, but how can we know about the existence of such observer? There can be infinite number of such observers filling every cubic millimeter of our space, but does it change anything for us? Existence of such observer is as meaningless as orbital teapots [0].

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russell%27s_teapot

Edit: a voice recorder without a tape and battery meets your definition. Is it conscious?

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