[HN Gopher] Key Consciousness Connections Uncovered
       ___________________________________________________________________
        
       Key Consciousness Connections Uncovered
        
       Author : isaacfrond
       Score  : 85 points
       Date   : 2024-05-02 08:37 UTC (14 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (neurosciencenews.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (neurosciencenews.com)
        
       | soderfoo wrote:
       | Just to confirm: this paper focuses on the 'awakeness' aspect of
       | consciousness, not self-awareness, correct?
       | 
       | My science literacy is lacking.
       | 
       | Personally, I find self-awareness the more fascinating area of
       | study, but any brain research pretty fascinating.
        
         | b800h wrote:
         | Yep. It does frustrate me that they use the term this way.
        
           | nicklecompte wrote:
           | In the past we used the word "sentience" for this, but sci-fi
           | confused "sentience" with "sapience," and now we have four
           | terms that are meaningless, causing pointless arguments
           | because different people interpret them in different ways.
           | 
           | - consciousness
           | 
           | - sentience
           | 
           | - self-awareness
           | 
           | - sapience
           | 
           | (It really doesn't help that 3/4 these are too poorly-
           | understood to even have a good formal definition.)
        
             | glenstein wrote:
             | I'm okay to live and let live and not litigate differences
             | here as long as usage is meaningful and contributes to
             | precision (although it would be perfectly fair to insist
             | that's exactly what's being lost here).
             | 
             | I understand, for instance, that for some people there's an
             | important difference between morality and ethics, but
             | modern scholarship in meta-ethics that is perfectly up to
             | speed on this vocabulary sees no benefit to policing that
             | particular distinction.
        
         | groestl wrote:
         | Obligatory book recommendation in that regard "I Am a Strange
         | Loop", by Douglas R. Hofstadter
        
         | denton-scratch wrote:
         | > Just to confirm: this paper focuses on the 'awakeness' aspect
         | of consciousness, not self-awareness
         | 
         | That's how I read it. I'm interested in consciousness, but
         | neither in terms of "self-awareness" or of "awakeness".
         | Awakeness just means you aren't asleep. The term "self-
         | awareness" implies awareness, which _might_ be what 's meant by
         | consciousness, and it assumes there's a Self, which is a
         | metaphysical concept, not susceptible to scientific
         | invetigation.
        
           | coldtea wrote:
           | > _and it assumes there 's a Self, which is a metaphysical
           | concept, not susceptible to scientific invetigation._
           | 
           | I don't think this is correct.
           | 
           | Not only because metaphysical concepts can still be
           | suscpeptible to scientific investigation (as can e.g. time,
           | reality, and so on. For example for reality "do we live in a
           | simulation" could be something some scientists do try to
           | determine), and because some metaphysical concepts just
           | turned into practical concepts this way.
           | 
           | But also because self-awareness and the concept of self can
           | be defined in quite practical terms too (e.g. a higher level
           | loop on top of regular thinking referencing the lower level,
           | or similar ideas like in Hofstadter).
        
             | glenstein wrote:
             | Made the point better than I could. Also I would just
             | contribute that a long line of anti-science apologism has
             | taken the form of declaring that certain concepts are
             | beyond the reach of scientific investigation. Evolution,
             | human nature as understood in evolutionary terms, orbital
             | mechanics past a certain point of Newtonian modeling,
             | anaesthesia, etc.
        
             | NayamAmarshe wrote:
             | Time is not exclusively a metaphysical concept, the
             | perception of time is.
             | 
             | Reality, again is a very vague word in physics. One
             | definition is, real is that which always is, not that which
             | is not. Material nature is subject to constant change,
             | there is nothing in the material universe that is
             | immovable, unchanging and eternally static and stable.
             | 
             | Eastern philosophy describes the reality as the 'Self', the
             | self is eternally existing without a causation but this
             | Self, the observer, requires an observation and hence the
             | concept of material nature comes into place to justify the
             | existence of the observer but the Self is mutually
             | exclusive to the material nature. The Self is not an
             | manifestation of the material nature, otherwise it would be
             | ever changing, like material nature.
             | 
             | For science to explain consciousness, it has to drop the
             | idea of a controlled experiment. You cannot empirically
             | verify certain thing to be true, this is what metaphysics
             | is for.
        
             | denton-scratch wrote:
             | > But also because self-awareness and the concept of self
             | can be defined in quite practical terms too (e.g. a higher
             | level loop on top of regular thinking referencing the lower
             | level, or similar ideas like in Hofstadter).
             | 
             | I treasure my dog-eared copy of GEB. Having said that,
             | Hofstadter sets out to argue for a "emergent phenomenon"
             | explanation of consciousness, and I don't think his "loops
             | within loops" argument works. It's not really an argument;
             | it's finger-painting. He's trying to point in the direction
             | of an argument (which is fine, even admirable; GEB is
             | almost entirely concerned with allusion and suggestion.
             | It's supposed to make you ask questions).
             | 
             | It's quite easy to argue that the idea of a self (or the
             | sense of being a self) is emergent, or an illusion; it's
             | much harder to explain "idea" and "sense" in those terms,
             | unless you resort to non-conscious[0] senses and non-
             | conscious ideas.
             | 
             | Basically, I agree that you can explain everything in terms
             | of emergent phenonemena, _except_ the subjectivity of
             | consciousness /awareness. We experience it directly, we
             | know it's real (it's the only thing we know!), and nobody
             | has come up with a way of showing that it's real, or even
             | saying what it is, or how we could show it's real. Dougie's
             | loops are just a distraction.
             | 
             | [0] I say "non-conscious" rather than "unconscious" because
             | I don't want Freudian woo to intrude.
        
           | HarHarVeryFunny wrote:
           | Objectively self-awareness is just inner-awareness vs outer-
           | awareness - what you might consider as another sense, but
           | where the sensory inputs are parts of the brain rather than
           | external (eye, ear, etc). So, the watcher and the watched are
           | both the same - the brain.
           | 
           | The "self" is just a psychological construct - the actor
           | behind our actions, which in fact is just the brain. This is
           | just the way our brain has evolved to understand/predict an
           | evolutionary landscape full of autonomous agents, who we need
           | to model to predict their behavior. There's no fundamental
           | difference between "self" (my-self) and "you" (your-self) -
           | our brain observes some (inner or outer) entity as a causal
           | entity, and models it.
        
           | raincom wrote:
           | Self-awareness = awareness of oneself. The moment one thinks,
           | feels in terms of "I think, I feel, I see, I hear, etc".
        
             | denton-scratch wrote:
             | Yes, of course. I think I was suggesting that "awareness"
             | and "consciousness" could be considered to be synonyms. If
             | that's correct, then you can't use self-awareness as
             | evidence of consciousness, because it begs the question
             | (i.e. circular reasoning).
        
         | Symmetry wrote:
         | Right, and not qualia either.
         | 
         | I'ts a bit more complicated than just awakeness, though. If you
         | flash an image on a screen for a very short period of time, you
         | won't ever be able to remember what it said or be able to tell
         | someone what it said, but it can still have a slight effect on
         | your behavior for about a second. There is information that are
         | senses are providing to our brain that never makes it to
         | conscious awareness.
         | 
         | Sometimes people have brain injuries that prevent the transfer
         | of information from some parts of their brain to their
         | consciousness. Someone with blindsight has an injury that
         | prevents them from being consciously, in this sense, aware of
         | their visual field. They can still pick up items in front of
         | them when asked. But they can't describe what is in front of
         | them, and if the close their eyes they can't remember where
         | something is and still pick it up like a normal person can.
         | 
         | I'd highly recommend _Consciousness and the Brain_ for an in-
         | dpeth look at research in this area.
        
           | glenstein wrote:
           | Right, and I think the key here is that we should be ready to
           | see key elements we believe are necessary for conscious to be
           | distributed across numerous systems, rather than uncovering a
           | singular unitary thing. And so it's not a matter of "oh, this
           | study only found XXX but it didn't find _consciousness_ ".
           | 
           | But it might be that the process of coming to full empirical
           | understanding is that we take an idea that used to be black-
           | boxed, and open it up to find numerous particular mechanisms,
           | numerous layers. Kind of like how originally we thought there
           | was one Vitamin B but then came to learn there were numerous
           | subclasses that were different in important ways.
        
             | Symmetry wrote:
             | That's true, but its also true that some connections might
             | be reasonably said to be key for sensory information to
             | find its way into working memory so I wouldn't dismiss the
             | title.
        
         | glenstein wrote:
         | >Personally, I find self-awareness the more fascinating area of
         | study
         | 
         | I know what you mean by that, and fundamentally I agree with
         | the basic idea. But (!!!) I don't think the idea of _self_
         | awareness is nearly so critical as its made out to be, and I
         | think it gets conflated with the other thing, described as the
         | something-its-like-to-be (SILTB) quality.
         | 
         | I think outward, worldly awareness is enough, and whether or
         | not a 'self' is among the things that fall into awareness (1)
         | isn't strictly necessary, as that self might be backgrounded
         | and unconscious, and (2) is sometimes just adopted as phrasing
         | to indicate the presence of the SILTB quality even though I
         | don't think it necessarily has anything to do with that.
        
         | taneq wrote:
         | That's my reading, arousal/somnolence as opposed to being
         | insensate vs. sentience.
        
         | m3kw9 wrote:
         | One can be awake and still not be conscious
        
         | rytill wrote:
         | Why do you find self-awareness to be the more fascinating area
         | of study? It makes complete sense that something could be self-
         | aware if it could be aware of anything at all. What more do you
         | need to research/understand about self-awareness?
         | 
         | It is far more interesting to me that there is "awakeness" to
         | experience than that we can be aware of our selves (in the same
         | way we can be aware of anything else).
         | 
         | A complete understanding of sentience including its causes
         | would be a far more satisfying and ethically impactful body of
         | knowledge than a complete understanding of self-awareness
         | (assuming they are not inextricably linked somehow).
        
       | librasteve wrote:
       | afaict this is novel research that has found a "default
       | application loop(?)" in our brains that is associated with being
       | awake ... and differs from goal oriented states - i have wondered
       | if/when such an inner loop would be found since it is quite easy
       | to turn consciousness on/off (sleep, anaesthetics, drugs ymmv)
       | and then fMRI can be used to find differentiated activity
       | patterns. This is pretty good evidence that Panpsychism is
       | bollocks, if you needed it.
        
         | loafer-project wrote:
         | Interesting find on the "default application loop," but it
         | hardly debunks panpsychism. Panpsychism suggests that all
         | matter has proto-conscious traits, not just brain-like
         | consciousness. The brain patterns we're identifying with fMRI
         | are just how human consciousness manifests, based on our
         | specific neural setups. This doesn't necessarily exclude other
         | forms of consciousness inherent in different forms of matter,
         | which might be beyond our current detection capabilities. Let's
         | not conflate our present understanding of human consciousness
         | with the broader, philosophical nature of consciousness itself.
        
           | glenstein wrote:
           | >Panpsychism suggests that all matter has proto-conscious
           | traits, not just brain-like consciousness.
           | 
           | I think a cornerstone of panpsychism is that none of the
           | concepts presently available to any physicalist explanation
           | is sufficient or on the horizon, _therefore_ it is necessary
           | to entertain such ideas as a universe-spanning proto-
           | consciousness.
           | 
           | I find this position to be pre-emptive, not in the spirit of
           | scientific open mindedness, not compatible with any research
           | program that could prove or disprove it, and _completely_
           | emptyhanded in any conversation that seeks to understand
           | consciousness in functional or structural terms as well as
           | completely emptyhanded in even beginning to explain the
           | combination problem.
           | 
           | Until it gets its act together and gets out of alpha-testing,
           | I fault pansychism proponents for bringing a "teach the
           | controversy" approach to a table of scientific investigation
           | at which they are yet to have earned a seat.
        
             | altruios wrote:
             | I mean, experiments should be able to test this? Maybe in
             | the future someone will find a way to adapt the double slit
             | experiment to test for 'choice' on a fundamental particle
             | level. "Can a particle choose for itself?"
        
               | glenstein wrote:
               | That's a very creative potential experiment, and I do
               | hope some such experiments can be proposed!
               | 
               | However, my understanding of the double slit experiment
               | is that the "observer" in the experiment means something
               | more like measurer or measurability, which can be done by
               | devices. And it shouldn't be construed as being deeply
               | tied to consciousness in philosophically important sense.
        
               | altruios wrote:
               | My understanding was 'measuring is touching' with light,
               | imparting energy into the delicate system, and no
               | measurement can be done at that scale (thanks to the
               | rules of light frequency/energy) that can both detect it
               | and be weak enough to not bother the result.
               | 
               | So when I say like the double slit needs to be adapted,
               | it would need to account for such. It would need to test
               | for 'choice' from a particle... somehow...
               | 
               | Or... maybe randomness as a concept is flawed. Maybe
               | randomness === '(some level of informed?) choice' from
               | particles we are not privy too. not some 'hidden
               | variable' but a dynamic ability to 'choose'?
               | 
               | How would we prove random is random and not a
               | choice/decision we can't see or understand?
        
           | nathan_compton wrote:
           | My problem with panpsychism is that its scientifically
           | vacuous. A brain is conscious in an obvious, observable way.
           | An equivalent amount of sand is not. We need an account of
           | why the brain behaves the way that it does, but panpsychism
           | furnishes no such account and the content of that accounting
           | would basically _be neuroscience_ as we know it, including
           | all the philosophical difficulties of why things feel like
           | things at all (this, I feel, is also vacuous, but a different
           | question). Thus panpsychism is of no help at all for
           | explaining anything so what precisely is the point of
           | believing it?
        
             | glenstein wrote:
             | I also think that once you prod for explanations of
             | combination, or why consciousness seems to be deeply
             | associated with a specific kind of structural function and
             | complexity rather than such things as size and mass,
             | panyschist answers about where consciousness "shows up"
             | just start to more closely approximate ordinary
             | consciousness research we are already doing.
        
           | tasty_freeze wrote:
           | Panpsychism is as necessary to explain consciousness. Why
           | can't it (and qualia) just be emergent behaviors?
           | 
           | We might as well posit pancandleness in order to explain the
           | candleness of candles. Without such a thing, why call a
           | candle a candle? It would merely be just a temporary
           | arrangement of molecules.
        
         | llamaimperative wrote:
         | 1. You're definitely still conscious when you're asleep --
         | dreams are certainly conscious experiences
         | 
         | 2. We don't actually _know_ what the internal subjective state
         | of apparently-unconscious people are e.g. in drug-induced
         | states
         | 
         | Even if all of that were different, it still is not a disproof
         | of panpsychism.
        
           | exe34 wrote:
           | That's a new use of the word "conscious" for me. How do you
           | personally define consciousness?
        
             | llamaimperative wrote:
             | Internal subjective experience. To "have" a point of view,
             | not in the argumentative/opinion sense but in the "there is
             | experience being experienced" sense.
        
               | exe34 wrote:
               | What does it mean to have a point of view? Does a kalman
               | filter qualify? Why not?
        
               | llamaimperative wrote:
               | I've never been a Kalman filter so I have no idea.
               | 
               | The thing that is inscrutable to me by virtue of not
               | having been a Kalman filter myself is what I'm referring
               | to as "point of view."
               | 
               | I don't _really_ know that anything or anyone at all is
               | conscious (except for me), but it sure seems like lots of
               | other things are, based on the way they behave.
        
               | exe34 wrote:
               | So for some things, you are happy to watch the way they
               | behave and assume they have this magical property of
               | consciousness like yourself, but for a kalman filter,
               | you'd have to be one to determine if it has a point of
               | view?
               | 
               | You still haven't said what a point of view is in this
               | context, if you can have it, and some other unspecified
               | beings have it but you can't say upfront if a kalman
               | filter has it.
        
               | llamaimperative wrote:
               | There's nothing incoherent here. Whether talking about a
               | human, a dog, or a Kalman filter, the only mechanism by
               | which I can _infer_ (not fully _determine_ ) whether it's
               | conscious is by observing its behavior. Some things
               | behave in ways that look more conscious than other
               | things. Motor control, goal-seeking behavior, and doing
               | things that imply self-awareness all point in the
               | "probably conscious" direction, but none is dispositive.
               | Other humans certainly give the appearance of being
               | conscious while Kalman filters don't appear that way. But
               | you can imagine a totally believable robot (a la
               | Westworld) that behaves outwardly identical to a
               | conscious human but is not conscious. We don't know
               | enough about consciousness to determine whether it
               | actually is or actually isn't, which also applies to the
               | Kalman filter question: it doesn't _appear_ to be
               | conscious (unlike the robot) but we don't have a way to
               | determine whether it is (like the robot).
               | 
               | I've said multiple times what a point of view is, I think
               | you're just too caught up in argumentation to read the
               | text in front of you.
               | 
               | You agree that you have experiences, correct? Your
               | ability to experience experiences is what it means to
               | have a POV. The _name_ of that characteristic is
               | "consciousness."
               | 
               | It is _probably_ the case that some objects experience
               | experiences (like you _presumably_ do and I definitely
               | do), and other objects do not.
        
               | exe34 wrote:
               | > and I definitely do
               | 
               | Prove it.
        
               | llamaimperative wrote:
               | Are you trying to make my argument for me? Because that's
               | my argument.
        
               | exe34 wrote:
               | No I get the impression you really want to say qualia,
               | but don't want the backlash.
        
               | llamaimperative wrote:
               | What would the backlash be? Has "qualia" fallen out of
               | favor among people who think being asleep == not being
               | conscious? Frankly given that opening confusion I am
               | surprised you've heard the word qualia.
        
           | 2snakes wrote:
           | Right. If we weren't conscious we wouldn't know we had slept.
           | It is an experience of nothingness.
        
             | tshaddox wrote:
             | > If we weren't conscious we wouldn't know we had slept.
             | 
             | How do you figure? It's not uncommon to fall asleep, wake
             | up, and be convinced that you never fell asleep even when
             | people next to you tell you that you were unresponsive,
             | snoring, talking in your sleep, etc.
        
               | 2snakes wrote:
               | There is a difference between what is experienced in the
               | mind and consciousness. What you're describing are
               | aspects of emptiness (and content or lack of content) as
               | experienced by the mind waking/dreaming/deepsleep. But
               | consciousness / Atman is always aware and awake.
        
           | glenstein wrote:
           | >You're definitely still conscious when you're asleep --
           | dreams are certainly conscious experiences
           | 
           | I would say yes and no. I think we all feel there's something
           | different about wakeful consciousness vs sleeping
           | consciousness, and also, it seems that we are indeed
           | sometimes "out cold" and that something like an "activation
           | loop" (new term to me) might be necessary to play a role in
           | distinguishing these various states.
        
             | ryan69howard wrote:
             | > I would say yes and no.
             | 
             | Why would you say that? Why can't you say "I don't fully
             | agree".
        
         | BlueTemplar wrote:
         | My own concern is more about how Dualists can justify their
         | metaphysics, and where does consciousness stops when
         | considering less complex systems than humans. (Also
         | aggregations of systems, like a country !)
        
       | gilbetron wrote:
       | A great book on this topic is Consciousness and the Brain (
       | https://www.amazon.com/Consciousness-Brain-Deciphering-Codes... )
       | 
       | It really shows how a lot of who we are is unconscious and
       | happening without us being aware.
        
         | xjay wrote:
         | See also: The Elephant in the Brain [1]
         | 
         | > The main thesis of the book is that we are very often not
         | aware of our real reasons for most of our behaviours. Our
         | behaviors are optimised for living in a social group and very
         | often, from the point of view of natural selection, it is
         | useful if we are not consciously aware of our real motivations.
         | [1]
         | 
         | [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Elephant_in_the_Brain
        
           | Crontab wrote:
           | That's sounds interesting. Thanks for sharing this.
        
         | hvs wrote:
         | A related book that I found interesting is "The Ego Tunnel" by
         | Thomas Metzinger [1]. He's a philosopher but also brings in
         | current (for 2010) neuroscience research into the study of
         | consciousness and the feeling of a "self".
         | 
         | [1] https://www.amazon.com/Ego-Tunnel-Science-Mind-
         | Myth/dp/04650...
        
         | yboris wrote:
         | My favorite is _Consciousness Explained_ by Daniel C. Dennett
         | 
         | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consciousness_Explained
        
       | bschmidt1 wrote:
       | It's always exciting when new correlates are discovered, but this
       | doesn't really uncover anything about consciousness per se. At
       | least not as classified by David Chalmers and others who use the
       | term _The Hard Problem of Consciousness_ - which seems to show
       | that consciousness is impossible to understand in our current
       | paradigm. Understand meaning - to the point we could reproduce
       | it.
       | 
       | The Hard Problem is contrasted with the so-called Easy Problems -
       | which are still very hard to solve, and many of them still aren't
       | - but they are ultimately of a class of solvable problems, like
       | neural correlates, the role of dopaminergic pathways, and so-on.
       | These everyday neurological findings are needed to make progress
       | toward understanding the brain, but they don't really have
       | anything to do with consciousness.
       | 
       | Some definitions:                 let intelligence mean the
       | acquisition and understanding of knowledge            let self
       | mean who you refer to when you say "I" or "me"             let
       | consciousness mean raw sensations/happenings: *the aroma of
       | coffee*, *the taste of chocolate*, *the sound of a drop of water*
       | 
       | Intelligence and selfhood fall under the Easy Problems - both
       | philosophically and neurologically. We have machines that for all
       | intents and purposes are intelligent. Even though it's not
       | perfect, we know what kind of problem that is and how to solve it
       | mechanistically. While nobody has invented a true "self" yet, if
       | we ever find out exactly what conscious experiences are,
       | scaffolding those experiences with self/identity becomes an
       | organizational task (an Easy Problem). Still a very hard one
       | involving neural correlates, cortical pathways, etc. from which
       | we may derive new algorithms and paradigms, but ultimately
       | solvable.
       | 
       | So that leaves the mystery of raw experiences ("the aroma of
       | coffee") which do not seem solvable in any scientific sense. You
       | could say that a digital camera that detects faces in its
       | viewfinder is intelligent, but it doesn't "see" the face, we know
       | that it only unconsciously "detects" the face. So a mystery
       | arises when we examine the human eye, because we see basically
       | the same hardware as the camera: Lens (lens), sensor (retina),
       | wire (optic nerve), chip (visual cortex). Even after mapping the
       | entire visual cortex to all visual features, it just doesn't get
       | us any closer to understanding that raw experience of "sight"
       | that happens when you look at something. It's not the same thing.
       | 
       | I applaud all progress toward understanding the brain, and
       | sometimes wonder why the whole of humanity are not all focused on
       | solving problems like death and aging (by way of solving
       | consciousness), as it seems like pretty much the most important
       | possible thing to all of us!
       | 
       | Favorites on the topic: Donald Hoffman, John Searle, David
       | Chalmers, Dan Dennett, Colin McGinn, Susan Blackmore, Sam Harris.
        
         | qudat wrote:
         | I'm of the opinion that the thalamo-coritcal loop, combined
         | with chaotic brain activity, and randomness, give rise to
         | consciousness. The "hard" problem is only hard when we put
         | consciousness on a pedestal. If we have learned anything from
         | LLMs it's that some clever statistics and data compression
         | which predicts the next word can give rise to complex and
         | seemingly "intelligent" behavior. LLMs are not conscious, but
         | they lift the veil of our conceit. There's no hard problem of
         | consciousness, it's an artifact of a chaotic thalamo-cortical
         | loop that recursively processes inputs -- including outputs
         | from previous neuronal activity.
         | 
         | https://bower.sh/what-is-consciousness
        
           | bschmidt1 wrote:
           | Has nothing to do with a pedestal, it's a scientific
           | observation.
           | 
           | > a chaotic thalamo-cortical loop
           | 
           | The _aroma of coffee_ is not explained by the words  "chaotic
           | thalamo-cortical loop" - those are words used to loosely
           | describe which neurons activate _when_ I experience the aroma
           | of coffee, but they are not _the_ aroma of coffee, and there
           | 's no proof that they are even causal to that experience.
           | It's a logical fallacy because many correlations are not
           | causes but effects, and some are entirely unrelated. Example:
           | 
           | The green stoplight correlates with cars driving, but they
           | don't _cause_ a car to drive. No amount of learning about
           | stoplights will teach you about how a car moves. From far
           | away you simply noticed that the green light is loosely
           | correlated with the cars moving, but that 's all you know.
           | That's what is meant by the phrase _correlation is not
           | causation_ -  "False Cause Fallacy".
           | 
           | LLMs have nothing to do with consciousness, that's artificial
           | _intelligence_ which as I defined above is _not_ the same as
           | having a sensation. Intelligence (and selfhood, and other
           | psychiatry) are all happening _within_ the conscious process,
           | they shouldn 't be conflated with it.
           | 
           | > There's no hard problem of consciousness
           | 
           | If there's no problem - meaning, it's well-understood to the
           | point you can reproduce it - then why has nobody been
           | successful at producing it in isolation? The answer is, we
           | don't know what consciousness is to the point we can
           | reproduce it.
           | 
           | To deny consciousness outright is to deny the first-person
           | observation that you're having right now. Empirical science
           | is based on observational evidence, and there is
           | observational evidence of an experience from your perspective
           | - the fact of your experiential existence owes a grokable
           | explanation - even if it is caused by or correlated with
           | neurons in brains.
        
         | mpartel wrote:
         | > Even after mapping the entire visual cortex to all visual
         | features, it just doesn't get us any closer to understanding
         | that raw experience of "sight" that happens when you look at
         | something. It's not the same thing.
         | 
         | Seems plausible that a detailed enough mapping of correlates
         | one day uncovers a single
         | thing/feature/location/architecure/pattern/whatever that is
         | present only when qualia are, and absent in all other
         | processes. That would at least point us in a concrete
         | direction.
        
           | bschmidt1 wrote:
           | Yeah but that's like saying what propels a car forward is a
           | green stoplight, it's just a correlation you can observe that
           | could have nothing to do with it - might not even be
           | indirectly causal.
           | 
           | When you think deeply about the Hard Problem, it's really The
           | Impossible Problem because there's no way to solve it within
           | our subject:object and "self" paradigms. Yet the problem
           | persists.
           | 
           | Take something like _the memory of the first time I tied my
           | shoes_ - maybe you can find the exact neuronal correlations
           | to that experience I have when I think of that, but they won
           | 't _be_ that memory, nor do they even give up the ingredients
           | to engineer that in some alternate setting. The memory itself
           | seems like a completely different phenomenon that the neurons
           | (themselves, concepts in consciousness) can never explain on
           | their own.
        
             | mpartel wrote:
             | I agree in the sense that answering "what really are
             | qualia" may be as impossible as answering "what really are
             | quantum fields". At some point we may be forced to accept
             | "it just is", but that doesn't mean we can't make
             | meaningful progress first, just like in physics.
             | 
             | For instance, either new physics is involved or it isn't.
             | Finding solid evidence for or against it does not seem
             | impossible, and it would definitely constitute meaningful
             | progress, at the very least by ruling some theories out.
        
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