I think the reason we can’t define consciousness beyond intuitive or vague descriptions is because it exists outside the realm of physics and science altogether. This in itself makes some people very uncomfortable, because they don’t like thinking about or believing in things they cannot measure or control, but that doesn’t make it any less real.
I’ve always had the opposite take. I think that we’ll eventually discover that consciousness is so explainable within the realm of physics that our eventual understanding of how it works will make people very comfortable… because it will completely invalidate all of the things we’ve always thought made us “special”, like a notion of free will.
nednobbins@lemmy.zip 2 weeks ago
This definition of consciousness essentially says that humans have souls and machines don’t. It’s unsatisfying because it just kicks the definition question down the road.
Saying that consciousness exists outside the realm of physics and science is a very strong statement. It claims that none of our normal analysis and measurement tools apply to it. That may be true, but if it is, how can anyone defend the claim that an AI does or does not have it?
arendjr@programming.dev 2 weeks ago
It does, yes. Fwiw, I don’t think it’s necessarily exclusive to humans though, animals and nature may play a role too.
Sure, but I have an entire philosophy set up to answer the other questions further down the road too 😂 That may still sound unsatisfying, but feel free to follow along: philosophyofbalance.com
I believe that to be true, yes.
In my view, machines and AI can never create consciousness, although it’s not ruled out they can become vessels for it. But the consciousness comes from outside.
nednobbins@lemmy.zip 2 weeks ago
I think this is likely an unsurmountable point of difference.
The problem is that once we eliminate measurability we can’t differentiate between reality and fantasy. We can imagine anything we want and believe in it.
The Philosophy of Balance has “believe in the universal God” as its first core tenant. That makes it more like a religion than a philosophy.
arendjr@programming.dev 2 weeks ago
Yeah, I think I see where you’re coming from. It’s a fair point, and we need to be very careful not to loose sight of reality indeed.
The idea of the Universal God is very tolerant towards “fantasy” so far as it exists in the minds of people, yet it also prescribes to align such belief with a scientific understanding. So the thing I’m trying to say is: believe what you want to believe, and so long as it’s a rational and tolerant belief, it’s fine. But it does explicitly recognise there are limits to what science can do for us, so it provides the idea of Universal God as kind of a North Star for those in search, but then it doesn’t really prescribe what this Universal God must look like. I don’t see it as a religious god, but more a path towards a believe in something beyond ourselves.
In the book I also take effort to describe how this relates to Buddhism, Taoism, and Abrahamic religions, and attempt to show how they are all efforts to describe similar concepts, and whether we call this Nature, Tao, or God, doesn’t really matter in the end. So long as we don’t fall into nihilism and believe in something, I believe we can find common ground as a people.