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Comment by thethimble | Hacker News Reader

The framework of materialism posits that there’s a physical universe and consciousness is an emergent property of physical processes. This view is so prevalent in the western world it’s hard to imagine how it could be anything else.

As an alternative, imagine that consciousness is primary. After all, any evidence that you have about the material world happens as an appearance within consciousness. (See “brain in a vat” and related thought experiments for the legitimacy of this idea).

In this alternative model, the concept of replicating consciousness with material processes doesn’t make any sense because consciousness is primary.

To be clear I’m not making any assertions about which model is correct. Instead I’m suggesting that the model you choose is axiomatic - taken as given as opposed to inferred from evidence. And starting with the latter model means artificial replication of consciousness isn’t even a logical proposition.

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>I’m suggesting that the model you choose is axiomatic - taken as given as opposed to inferred from evidence

The brain is the seat of consciousness and the brain is material, therefore consciousness is emergent from material. My evidence that the brain is the seat of consciousness is that when my head hurts it impairs my thoughts, and that my eyes are connected to by brain.

Stated a bit differently:

All events must have a cause, therefore consciousness must have a cause. The brain is the most likely candidate for the cause of consciousness. The brain is material, therefore consciousness is emergent from material.

What role do you think the brain plays in consciousness? Do you believe that events must have causes?

> The brain is the seat of consciousness and the brain is material, therefore consciousness is emergent from material

This is true from the standpoint of materialism but not necessarily fundamentally true.

How do you know you have a brain? As you explore this question, you’ll realize that the knowledge that you have a brain only manifests as appearances within consciousness.

It’s not necessary true that these appearances are giving you a window into an objective material universe. Instead it might be possible that your consciousness is a product of a simulation where your entire subjectivity - including the observation that you have a brain - is a manifestation of another mechanism that is outside of observability.

The point is that we simply don’t know what’s at rock bottom - an objective universe, a simulation, or an alien’s dream. Therefore the “arrow” of causality might flow from consciousness towards material as opposed to the other way around.

>Instead it might be possible that your consciousness is a product of a simulation where your entire subjectivity - including the observation that you have a brain - is a manifestation of another mechanism that is outside of observability.

Ok, well in that simulation materialism is true and I can make an AI with emergent consciousness ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

It’s not clear that the material world of the simulation is of the same kind of the material world we seem to observe. Further it seems definitely not clear that we can interact/modify the simulation’s material at all.

The arrow of causality flows from simulation to consciousness and there might be no mechanism to artificially create consciousness from within consciousness.

Whatever reality is, humans have sex and make new conscious agents all the time. If they can be created by birth, why not by building?

My point was that however the subjective reality I perceive came about, the laws of it still seem to allow for the creation of new non-biological conscious agents.

We are not able (at least to my current knowledge) to go entirely from inorganic matter to a simple organic cell.

So, to make this so strange to say: while we can procreate organic agents, we cannot yet build them with our hands.

Thus I think we are a bit far away from creating consciousness. Whatever that is.

>it might be possible that your consciousness is a product of a simulation where your entire subjectivity - including the observation that you have a brain - is a manifestation of another mechanism that is outside of observability.

Ok. But that is equally true for any observation. For example, I don't really know that the computer I'm using to write this post actually exists under that proposition, as perhaps by brain is imagining it. So you are really rejecting observations in general here. My point is that given that observations in general are correct, then it is clear that the brain is the cause of consciousness.

If observations imply that there’s a material universe that you are inspecting then I agree with your conclusion that the brain creates consciousness and it seems possible to replicate that consciousness artificially.

However, I am rejecting the idea that observations necessarily imply the existence of a material universe.

Actually rather than “rejecting”, I’m suggesting that it’s logically possible to take the “reverse” position: that consciousness is primary and we are experiencing what appears to be a material universe within that conscious experience. In this model it doesn’t make logical sense to be able to replicate consciousness with materials because materials seem to exist within consciousness as opposed to the other way around.

My overarching point is that most people here seem to believe that we’ll obviously replicate consciousness with more understanding of biology and I think that’s a bold claim because it’s not obvious that materialism is the “correct” framework to describe existence.

In any case, these frameworks are in the realm of non-falsifiability (axiomatic) so you can’t really claim either is fundamentally correct.

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