This seems obvious to me and I don't understand how one can think otherwise.
Once you define consciousness it might be easy to implement. If I use the definition "perception of our own thoughts" it's already implemented with ps or activity monitor. The mystery is how this is done biologically and how evolution had led to it. But the implementation with computers is trivial.
We do not know how the universe works on a fundamental level. We don't know if the universe can be simulated by a Turing machine.
I think it's clear it can't.
1) I have subjective experience (there is something that it is like to be me). 2) My subjective experience is outside of what math can describe (perhaps math can describe the degree to which I experience each qualia, but that is different from experiencing the qualia themselves). 3) I am able to take this experience and write that I know that there is something beyond mathematical rules that exists. 4) My behaviour (what words I write) is influenced by the existence of something non-mathematical. 5) My behaviour can't be described as a mathematical function of the past.
Mind you, i dont think either side of the debate has much in way of evidence, so it ends up coming down to just what feels "right" which is pretty unsatisfactory.
2) Prove it.
3) The fact that you're able to write this doesn't make it true.
4) Is it? What? Again, prove it.
5) What else is it a function of, then?
5) It may be a function of the past, just not one that can be given a mathematical definition. I should have said "defined" rather than "described".
At a rhetorical level: Don't fixate on what math can or cannot describe. In the past, it could not describe states of matter, though they certainly existed. Now, we can describe and simulate such states pretty well. But describing, detecting, or simulating does not mean recreating. I don't think any of us currently "know" whether consciousness will be better described, detected, or simulated in the future.
At an introspective level: When pondering the "experience of being me", don't forget to question the identity concept "me" as much as the experience part... Consider altered states of consciousness through drugs, disease, or brain injury. It can really expand your view here to empathize with someone who suffers one or more of these issues, where you can consider their illusory identity and experience.
“My subjective experience is outside of what math can describe”?
If there was a perfect identical copy of you, down to the quantum level, would they have nearly the exact same subjective experience or not?
If not, why?
(Of course, they couldn’t be in the exact same location as you, which means the experience can’t be perfectly identical).
> If there was a perfect identical copy of you, down to the quantum level, would they have nearly the exact same subjective experience or not?
The copy would likely have similar experience and behaviour. So you could say that my behaviour is a mathematical function of the past in the sense that every input maps to a unique output. But it doesn't mean that which inputs map to which outputs can be fully described by math. Maybe I should say "defined" instead of "described". In any formal system, only countably many functions can be defined, but there are an uncountable number of possible behaviour functions. I think the universe's behaviour must lie in this uncountable space for any computable formal system.
Isn't that everything though?
Math can describe a stop sign. It can say it is a red octagon or whatever. That doesn't mean it is the stop sign.
Math does not have independent existence in the world (sorry platonists), its just a really formal language for describing the patterns we see.
> 5) My behaviour can't be described as a mathematical function of the past.
Neither can particles (if you mean exactly)
This particular group of some specific biologists and philosophers can declare whatever they want.
But when you see how they attempt to define consciousness, it falls apart, because we don't have any objective definition of it.
The article states:
> The declaration focuses on the most basic kind of consciousness, known as phenomenal consciousness... If a creature is phenomenally conscious, it has the capacity to experience feelings such as pain or pleasure or hunger, but not necessarily more complex mental states such as self-awareness.
Unfortunately, we have no method whatsoever (yet) of distinguishing between creatures who genuinely feel pain/pleasure, and creatures who act in ways to avoid bad outcomes and seek good outcomes while feeling nothing, while we merely project our own feelings onto them.
We don't even have a scientific definition of the verb "feel" at all. We have utterly no idea what distinguishes neurons that contribute to conscious feeling, from neurons that are subconscious and produce no feeling at all.
Personally I have yet to see any compelling evidence that 'conscious experience' as some privileged special thing actually exists at all.
And yet literally everything we know as human beings, we acquire through conscious experience. Conscious experience is the bedrock upon which we build all our sophisticated ideas of reality and, eventually, science. The very concept of "evidence" is nothing but a conscious idea. You don't need evidence of conscious experience, because conscious experience precedes the very concept of evidence.
It's one of the great paradoxes of philosophy, and specifically metaphysics. Which nobody has solved yet.
How do we reconcile the truth of idealism on the one hand -- that all we can ever be 100% sure of existing are our conscious ideas (both awake and while dreaming at night) -- with the empirical truth of realism on the other hand -- that there is a scientifically consistent "reality" out there which our ideas attempt to map onto and correlate with?
It is also true, as Niels Bohr said, that the opposite of an ordinary truth is a falsity, but the opposite of a profound truth may also be another profound truth!
Now, recall that in Hamlet, William Shakespeare said: “There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.”
From these three quotes from three famously wise people, I have to conclude that I may choose to experience reality as very common and ordinary, or as divinely miraculous, and this choice can yield one of two profoundly different results: either the experience of misery and boredom, or joy and ecstasy!" -ER Close
There's some parallels with epilepsy patients that have split brain surgery, essentially isolating both hemispheres. I can't remember the precise details, but in one experiment, the left (language) side of the brain is able to post-hoc rationalize picking up a glass of water, after the right side of the brain was asked to do so (presumably in the left ear). When asked in the right ear, "Why did you pick up the glass", the left brain simply replies to the researcher that they wanted to pick up the glass. This experiment implies 'dual consciousness', but why stop at two? But certainly dual consciousness could also explain blindsightedness.
Myopic edgelord main character syndrome.
Under what circumstances would you, the human, be conscious but other humans are not?
A friend of mine has recently stopped eating any pig products due to him finding out that pigs enjoy playing video games:
That pig is going to die. How is dying to feed humans worse than the inevitable alternative of dying to feed some other living thing?
The little red contact lenses for the chickens are horrifying though.
Maybe religious people I guess, if they have weird ideas about souls.
Anyone who has spent any significant amount of time living with a dog or a cat will confirm that their four-legged companions behave very much as if they had emotions analogous to our own. That they remember us individually, have favorite spots to rest, individual personality traits.
Ants don't have hobbies, of course, and I doubt they spend their evenings pondering the meaning of life. But viewing them as purely mechanical automata misses a big part of their lives.
Most people accept that animals experience sensations and take efforts to minimize their suffering, eg, when butchering, hunting, or fishing.
We’re deeply concerned when people dont do that and, eg, torture small animals for fun.
Is this not kind of what the point of meditation is for a lot of people, reaching higher planes of consciousness? And my understanding is that a common technique in meditation is to notice when thoughts arise (ie: truth), note them, and let them pass.
so for most people it was far from obvious that the Earth was spherical
If the earth was commonly spoken of in day to day language as the round ball, than i would assume this meant that even commoners knew that it was round.
You're instead thinking of heliocentrism vs geocentrism, which is about the planets as a whole revolving around the sun.
This is a common misguided gotcha question that is hilariously so confidently gotten wrong, just like what is heavier, a kilogram of lead or a kilogram of feathers? The former is heavier and I can prove it with one word.
some humans never learn to speak because they can't hear. I'm pretty sure they are conscious
Animals and toddlers are not Decartesian automatons. They have perception and feel pain, can suffer and deserve empathy. But they are not speaking subjects and therefore not subjects at all. A deaf-mute person who can communicate conceptually is a speaking subject. A person who, under any particular circumstances, never comes to form concepts of the world, i.e. to open up the symbolic space, is not a subject.
It was probably premature of me to equate this with consciousness. It always triggers me a bit when people assume that animals are just like us, only with fur and on four legs or something like that.