Comment on Our understanding of reality might be a result of the way cousciousness works
ageedizzle@piefed.ca 2 weeks agoThere is a lot of data that is out of reach (such as the experience of a dog) but we can generalize from the data we do have access to and see if we can pick up any meaningful patterns and then generalize from there. That’s how all science is done
CannonFodder@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Science is done by observing, theorizing, predicting and then testing. We cannot test anything on consciousness.
ageedizzle@piefed.ca 2 weeks ago
How do we know that certain wavelengths of light produce certain visual experiences (the colour red, green etc)? How do we know that electrical stimulation to certain parts of the brain can cause certain experiences (such as the hallucination of sounds or smells etc.)? That’s because we test on consciousness indirectly all the time, through first-person reports. So to say that we cannot test any hypothesis related to consciousness is demonstrably false.
CannonFodder@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Not really. We know that a human can detect those frequencies and output information related to them. Like any transducer. Like any computer. We cannot know what the experience is. The best we can do is describe our own experience, and compare the description to that which other people give, but that’s not really better evidence than what we’d get from a current llm ai which can do the same. It’s logical to assume other people have conscious, but we cannot test it empirically.
ageedizzle@piefed.ca 2 weeks ago
This is not unique to the science of consciousness. Extreme scepticism can kill any science from the get-go. Sure, we can’t prove that other beings are conscious. But we also can’t prove that the external world exists, either. Does that mean we’re doing to stop doing physics? No, because some forms of extreme scepticism are simply unreasonable. If we wait around for solutions to these radical sceptical scenarios then we’re never going to get anywhere.