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When thinking about the evolution of the taxonomy of life, I think about how there's really no good reason to imagine a lifeform as being a singular, physically connected organism. We structure it that way because it's useful. We see trees and we imagine each one is a lifeform, but there are entire forests of just one tree. I don't think it's too bizarre to structure a model that demonstrates communities of lifeforms (whether ants, slime mold, or humans) as being effectively one conscious being.
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/process-philosophy/
Taxonomy is essentially building a metaphor or analogy. It's useful at times, but it often breaks down when you start looking at it too hard.
Take everyone's favorite example: the tomato. We get into all sorts of discussions about what is a fruit, a vegetable, botanically or culinarily, etc, etc. Ultimately realizing that all plant matter is categorized as "vegetable" on the most abstract level. Thinking that one more layer of taxonomy will neatly box everything.
But it won't.
We call the iPhone a phone, but is it? I can call people from my laptop, my tablet, etc. I can watch videos and play music and write notes on my phone. Everything is everything, and nothing is what it is.
Classification is one of the hardest things because it's entirely a fuzzy problem.
Fuzzy edges don't render the centers un-useful. Philosophical debates about the edges consume all the oxygen, but regardless of whether you think an iPhone is a phone or a computer or a television, it is definitely not a cricket bat. An inability to draw a sharp boundary doesn't mean classification has broken down, and it's nihilistic to conclude that real, meaningful distinctions cannot be drawn.
My son has empirically disproven this when he was four.
He's also disproven that it's not a cookie.
No, I quite agree, I don't know what the point of saying that is either.
Oh, let's link to "lumpers and splitters"! This comes up over and over again in a million contexts. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lumpers_and_splitters
To bring up an even more argued about example—is a hot dog a sandwich? Some people say yes, some people say no, but the answer can be (and most likely is) "kinda".
What, a downvote, did I get that wrong? I wish downvoters would speak up and explain themselves.
OK, I searched GEB, it is in fact Aunt Hillary.
To me, the fact that an awareness of one self exists isn't particularly stunning - what's stunning to me is that we believe it is something incredibly special and we are the only ones endowed with it.
I think this assumption comes from the same human self confidence that decided it was the only thing "created in gods image" in the universe and so on...
The point of that is that humans obviously are exceptionally special relative to absolutely everything else we know in this universe. And while consciousness and intelligence are two different concepts, it's not unreasonable to think things which are 'natural' for a human are anything but for other species.
You don't need something the size of a country to show the problem. If one person starts a business they have an awareness of the business as a separate entity with its own tendencies, needs, and so on. Even if they're the only employee.
But there's a huge leap from 'a human individual is conscious of their own interests and identifications' to 'and therefore their business has an independent consciousness of its own.'
At what point, if anywhere, does a supposedly independent consciousness appear, where is it located, and can it communicate independently?
I don't currently have an opinion on the consciousness of agents/AIs, but this strikes me, at the very least, as a form of self-awareness.
Once a system (made of people, neurons, wires) creates outputs that are greater than the sum of its individual parts AND these outputs are self-referential you have something that could be considered conciousness. I wouldn't think the business in your example is self conscious - its an entity that is fully controlled by the person and an extension of it.
But, once the business grows, is composed of more people and interacts with customers and markets, it will develop automatisms for self preservation. At this stage, I would consider it concious.
Nonhuman animals? No idea. We don't even know how to phrase the question rigorously, let alone how to even conceptualize answering it.
I believe we are all just bags of chemicals playing out the laws of physics, no libertarian free will at all. Consciousness is an orthogonal issue. Humans have it, and if you have ever lived with a dog you'd agree they have it too despite not being verbal ... hell, it isn't rare for humans to have no internal dialog yet nobody would say they are not conscious.
Consciousness is a continuum and there is no bright line where it starts/stops. Bacteria react to their environment but they are conscious in the same way that one minute after shaving I have a "beard" -- technically the hair stubble rises above the surface of my skin, but it isn't a beard. Wait a month and clearly I do, but there is no bright line where I transition to having a beard.
I guess this must be elaborated on in the article (without a subscription I can only see the abstract). But it seems like quite a leap. In particular we could believe in the possibility of consciousness in spacially distributed group entities, but that that possibility isn’t realized in the case of a country.
Which would make sense. For example if one believes that human consciousness somehow arises from signals shooting around from one neuron to another… sure, why not believe that some kind of ant-sized creature (or whatever, ants are just evocative) could be sending those signals between one another, and consciousness arises from that collective? But, human signal propagation might be too slow or error-prone to “close the feedback loop” so to speak.
This phrase comes up a lot in discussions of consciousness and I've never understood it and never seen why it's supposed to encapsulate the idea.
It isn't "like" anything to be me. There isn't something else I can compare it to. All I know is that I exist and experience and that there is an aspect of that experience that is impossible to communicate, define or share.
Yet if somebody takes an entirely materalistic take of the world, that is to say that all things are the result of purely physical processes, it leads to an odd scenario because a human would also just be a series of ongoing physical processes - neurons firing in response to stimuli leading the brain to some inevitable 'reflex', and so on. Yet we, or at least I, certainly am aware of this world and imagine myself being the driver of all my actions. In other words I am conscious.
So the implication, if one accepts materalism, would be that if you make something complex enough - then at some point consciousness just whiffs into existence somehow.
He argues that something is conscious only if there is "something it is like" to be that thing. "Something it is like" meaning an answer to a question like "what was it like to speak on stage for the first time?", implying that there is some subjective character to the experience.
You have a subjective internal experience. A thermostat does not. An LLM presumably does not. A dog or a bat [0] presumably does.
[0] https://ia800100.us.archive.org/5/items/thomas-nagel-what-is...
As always, reading Eric is a treat and if you enjoy reading about the oddities of our world and the weird conclusions that fall out of our best theories, then you would enjoy reading his work.
0: https://keithfrankish.github.io/articles/Frankish_Illusionis...
The U.S. definitely takes actions to defend and protect itself. Seeks growth. I'm not so sure about inner dialogue... but is that a requirement? Or maybe the dialogue between the humans in the system qualifies?
https://faculty.ucr.edu/~eschwitz/SchwitzPapers/USAconscious...
The real question for Panpsychism is not whether something is or is not conscious, but conscious of what. If everything is aware, what is this thing we have that a rock doesn't seem to have (but LLMs might have)? I'm basically sold on the premise of Panpsychism, but we do have to recognize that when we say "consciousness", we aren't always talking about the same thing.
The argument that consciousness suddenly arises due to a particular configuration of atoms is also suspect; all forms of consciousness we routinely accept are fairly robust to many configuration changes. It seems to me that consciousness hinges on the discussion of degree or content, not on the material form. A soup of atoms certainly could be aware, but not aware of in the same way that "I" am aware.
This is one of the main things that made me seriously doubt my prior assumption that consciousness supervenes over computation.
Post modernism abhors objective truth, and now this? Consciousness compressed to conscious compressed to acts like must be like?
Intelligence is not compression, proof of point.
Nothing has been “figured out” here, only mulched for compulsive and over saturated appetites.
It's a little cheeky and seems a little undergrad-ish to me, but I wouldn't call that either absurdist or postmodern.
Also what's wrong with the ship of theseus? If _you're_ tired of hearing that kind of argument, that's fine, but why dismiss it? It's thought-provoking at least, and the kind of thought it provokes has, in my opinion, some practical import
As for the rest, it is sad, for it is provoking a casual sarcastic hand waving appeal in the near fraudulent guise of constructive thought. Maybe the person has a publication quota? Or just wants to get their name out.
Not constructive. I accuse it as alluring to those who cannot take their ideas seriously.
But all that actually does is abuse the question being asked and the definition of consciousness. The question isn’t even “does a for loop have qualia” it’s actually “what does it mean if a for loop has qualia”. The individual asking if LLMs are conscious is concerned about the implication of the answer. To which a yes based upon a very improvised definition doesn’t actually resolve.
And you hazard to mix qualia as a synonym. Is this not a separate aspect of a phenomenon?
I will challenge with the simple yet equally provocative idea that consciousness is a feedback mechanism between our biotechnology and the quantum holographic nature of existential reality. Everything alive is made of consciousness and awareness (to be “conscious”) is the tip of the idea-berg.
Qualia is the hologram, or shadow cast upon the wall, and consciousness the echo chamber.
The real question is, how does this scale among diverse embodiments?
Anyone who thinks humans are exclusive, or that existential awareness may arrive from bit state interpolation is a mountain range away form the chasm of philosophy and conjecture.
Existential reality is not numbers of states. It is universal potential resolving into state through constructive and destructive interference in the moment of now. Our consciousness is a part of this, not the bit state rendering of modern computation no matter how useful and impressive these have gotten.
Quantum holographic memory will explain consciousness, when science catches up with a means to measure such a thing.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Egregore
doing sports photography as-a-fox [1] I am a bit scared of clusters of people screaming hard for their team, like I picture they'll attack me like a pack of wolves. I really gotta get over this and chat them up at half time and get a group photo.
[1] https://mastodon.social/@UP8/tagged/foxwork
The Egregore is a supporting point for the emergence of higher forms of embodiment and identity.
Nor does it make any claims about the nature of intelligence, for that matter.
Did you even read the abstract?
Also, the last 'representant' was Baudrillard, and he died in the early 2000s, probably a bit sad that 'Matrix' misrepresented his philosophy so much. Baudrillard never worked on consciousness, but if he did, I think he would be a materialist (an illusionist probably. At least reading his books made me one, and hopefully I didn't misunderstood him).
This paper doesn't look like continental philosophy at all though, so I don't understand why postmodernism comes up.
My point exactly.
Bertrand Russell made the great point a very long time ago.
Most of what we think of as “truth” is merely what we agree to among ourselves (my paraphrase.)
Couched in a generation that subtly rejects objectivity of truths in their “investigations of science” there are these meandering conjectures of poor disguise.
You’re impressed. Fine.
The read is like a hypotonic act. First if a then alphabunny. And then yes to zetahumanity, and United Stated for keyword associativity.
Okay folks, like what you like.
I take my ideas seriously, and this is rubbish! I blame the lack of vigorous debate, not the lack of “choices.”