Comment on Our understanding of reality might be a result of the way cousciousness works
ageedizzle@piefed.ca 2 weeks agoConsciousness can never be the subject of science since it cannot be measured. It’s all conjecture and metaphysics
Notice that I said this is a very active topic in academic philosophy (not science). I literally sent you links to what professional metaphysicians have to say on this topic. Do you really think you can contribute more to this topic in one lemmy comment than experts who have studied this problem for their entire careers?
it cannot be measure
This is exactly one of the reasons why it poses a problem. Physical things can be measured but consciousness can’t.
CannonFodder@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
So what’s the point of saying AI can’t be conscious? That’s where we started here. It’s a stupid argument that’s clearly wrong.
ageedizzle@piefed.ca 2 weeks ago
I’m not discussing whether AI could be conscious. I’m responding to your claim that consciousness must be a physical phenomenon, which is a separate issue.
CannonFodder@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Sorry, my bad - wrong thread.
But if it’s not physical - what else could it be? Are you implying some magic that follows no laws and isn’t based on anything that can be measured or modeled?
ageedizzle@piefed.ca 2 weeks ago
No. No one is suggesting that it’s magic. One popular idea is that consciousness is an irreducible and fundamental (and, crucially, nonphysical) constituent of the universe. It must still follow laws even if this was the case, because it works with such regularity in our day-to-day lives (certain wavelengths of light reliably produce the same colour experiences, etc) which wouldn’t be the case if there were no laws at play.
An analogy can be made here to electromagnetism. For a while it was thought that electricity and magnetism could be reduced to other physical forces. We now know that’s not true. Electromagnetism is one of the fundamental forces of nature. Its irreducible. Similarly: it was thought for a time that consciousness could be reduced to the physical. A growing number of researchers are now seeing that this can’t be done, so it might just be the case that consciousness is a fundamental constituent of the universe. Its nonphysical, and irreducible to anything but itself.