[HN Gopher] Insects and the origins of consciousness (2015)
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       Insects and the origins of consciousness (2015)
        
       Author : hardmaru
       Score  : 56 points
       Date   : 2021-11-29 00:52 UTC (3 days ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (www.pnas.org)
 (TXT) w3m dump (www.pnas.org)
        
       | bondarchuk wrote:
       | > _Consciousness is marked by the presence of subjective
       | experience: In the philosopher's term of art, there is "something
       | it is like" for us to be aware of the world (1)._
       | 
       | This is exactly what I find the most baffling and amusing about
       | almost every academic writing on consciousness today: this
       | definition of consciousness which uses the weird phrasing "there
       | is something it is like". It is so unusual, yet ubiquitous, yet
       | almost nobody who uses it ever examines this phrase closely or
       | expands on what precisely they mean by it. Maybe it's just a
       | cargo-cultish stand-in for "you know what the fuck I mean".
       | 
       | Ah, I did find a paper about this which seems like a good entry
       | point: _' What it is Like' Talk is not Technical Talk_ by
       | Jonathan Farrell.
        
         | wzdd wrote:
         | This specific usage comes from a foundational paper on the
         | philosophy of mind by Thomas Nagel titled "What is it like to
         | be a bat?" and was made popular by David Chalmers in his
         | writings on the "hard problem" of consciousness (https://en.wik
         | ipedia.org/wiki/Hard_problem_of_consciousness#...). That origin
         | is really the key to the phrase: Nagel's point was that there
         | is no way of talking about subjective experience objectively.
         | Rather, we always have to relate it to our own (think about how
         | you might define subjective experience to someone else, for
         | example).
         | 
         | If you buy into Nagel's argument then "something that it is
         | like" makes perfect sense when talking about subjective
         | experience, because the only basis for comparison that speakers
         | have for it is themselves.
        
       | hardmaru wrote:
       | This article is from 2015, and there's some good discussion about
       | it on this thread:
       | 
       | https://twitter.com/WiringTheBrain/status/146464127264431308...
       | 
       | Also response to the article:
       | 
       | https://www.pnas.org/content/113/27/E3813
        
         | ghostbrainalpha wrote:
         | So was the basic understanding before this article was
         | published that insects didn't have consciousness?
        
           | mellosouls wrote:
           | No. There are various different schools of thought on
           | consciousness, including some that posit consciousness as a
           | fundamental constituent of the universe - far below the
           | domain of insects.
           | 
           | A "basic understanding" of consciousness - in the sense of
           | being generally accepted across the scientific base - did not
           | exist then, and does not exist now.
        
       | aussieguy1234 wrote:
       | We have AI that can detect when a human is thinking of something
       | they've seen before by monitoring their brain (1).
       | 
       | What if this was applied to an animal, then we could see if they
       | are thinking of a previous experience?
       | 
       | (1) https://www.news18.com/news/tech/new-ai-system-can-read-
       | your...
        
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