Comment on Our understanding of reality might be a result of the way cousciousness works
ageedizzle@piefed.ca 2 weeks agoHow 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.
CannonFodder@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
I think it is unique. Consciousness of anyone but yourself is immediately an unknowable thing. There are no related effects we can measure. There is nothing we can predict based on it. You can do pseudo science with it and that could have great value, but it will always fall apart under proper scientific method. Other sciences require assumptions, like that logic holds, math is consistent, the world exists etc. and so they are tested under that caveat implicitly. You can also make an assumption that consciousness exists in some cases - but it doesn’t lead anywhere. Like arguing whether a computer can be conscious leads back exactly and only to your original assumptions and so they add no value.
ageedizzle@piefed.ca 2 weeks ago
Are you suggesting that consciousness is the only science that has to contend with extreme skeptical scenarios?