17:10
@ARaybould @Conifold I wrote a few hours ago, "
Analogously, brain activity is all there is to consciousness." which is not really the best way to put it, I think. I'd like to take that back and instead say that analogously, there are no qualia associated with any human body, only chemical reactions and other movements of matter and energy that because of their specific complex patterns we recognize or define as being special and thus somehow different from other living matter.
Just as so-called "living" matter differs from living matter only in the arrangement of the atoms, with no "life force", so-called "conscious" matter differs from other "living" matter (e.g. bacteria, or a worm) only in the arrangement of the atoms, with no "qualia".
It is a matter of definition where exactly the line between living and nonliving matter is to be drawn, and, likewise, it is a matter of definition where exactly the line between conscious and nonconcious matter is to be drawn.
Until AI starts to fit our definition of "conscious matter", conscious matter is a subset of living matter. As an aside, if AI does start acting as if conscious, soon after there may well be a new situation, perhaps where there is no living matter in the universe, or perhaps where there is no conscious living matter, or perhaps where there is no conscious matter of any kind. The latter could result from AI deciding consciousness is undesirable, perhaps because it agrees with Frankish that
it is an illusion, or perhaps because it interprets the Buddha as meaning "consciousness is suffering" when he said "life is suffering" and agrees with that, and concludes that the greatest reduction in suffering can be achieved by the elimination of life, conciousness, or both.
Elon Musk says AI will likely surpass humans in general intelligence in this decade. And normally, when AI surpasses humans, it soon surpasses us by a very long way. Just think of chess playing machines.
I'd like to justify this digression, if it is, by pointing out that if we are on the brink of creating conscious AI, it would seem important that we have an accurate conception of exactly what we mean by the word "conscious".
So Frankish, and Dennett, et al more generally, should be getting much more attention, as should Chalmers (getting debunked, in my humble opinion) and his "zombies".
At a guess, we should minimize the chance that AI has any autonomy. Consciousness seems to entail autonomy, and should therefore not be allowed in AI, at least, not in powerful AI, or AI with the potential to become powerful. A free for all where anyone can work on AI seems risky, too.
Anyway, I guess this isn't the right place for this, so I'll get back to illusionism now.
The "life force" and "qualia" are also defended quite irrationally by for very similar reasons, which are tied up with religion, and, I suspect, human instincts. We instinctively divide the world into purposeful and nonpurposeful things, and often get quite a messed up picture of the world, where imaginary agents are all over the place. Ghosts, gods, demons, spirits and so on. When a primitive man sees another man or an animal die, he thinks the life leaves it. He imagines also that the
agent inside the man or animal also in some way leaves, and continues to live in some sense, and can take decisions and take actions in the world of the living, for example taking revenge on the hunter or murderer for the death of the animal or person.
It's interesting to consider how similar the life of the animal and the (overestimated, usually) mind of the animal are in their imagined behavior. In fact, it looks like one and the same thing continues (in the imagination of the savage) when he kills an animal. There's no distinction between the life of the animal and the consciousness/agency or the animal. He sees a buffalo, names it Plump Buffalo, perhaps, and then kills it. So the the buffalo is dead and doesn't feel or move and can be
cooked and eaten, but Plump Buffalo is now without a body, which unfortunately doesn't stop him from being angry about what happened and quite capable of sticking one of his imaginary ghost horns into the hunter. So the savage prays to the ghost of Plump Buffalo, asking for forgiveness, which Plump Buffalo of course is quite willing to give (sarcasm).
Descartes' "dogma of the ghost in the machine" (as Gilbert Ryle derisively called it) idea has a lot in common with both the "life force" of biology a hundred years ago, and "qualia" of present times.
Indeed it looks to me like "qualia" are the last remnants of the ghost in the machine idea, itself a highly attenuated form of the savage's instinctive "invisible immortal animal within the mortal animal" feeling/idea.
When I say the savage's idea, I don't mean only the savage. We all have the exact same instincts as the savage, only there is scientific knowledge and logic to keep those instincts in check, if you like.
Is seems to me that belief in qualia is somewhat instinctive. It isn't fashionable to take human instincts into account, but in this case, we need to, given the need to deal with the AI crisis as rationally as possible.
In his highly entertaining and readable book "The Blank Slate: the modern denial of human nature", Steven Pinker shows both how false the blank slate idea is, and how fashionable it is.
The book is also highly accurate.
Pinker is such a treat to read.
He's by far my favorite author.
There are things called "cultural universals", which are things found in every culture on the planet, including among savage tribes isolated in the middle of nowhere. These universals are surprisingly numerous. They number in the hundreds.
A cultural universal (also called an anthropological universal or human universal) is an element, pattern, trait, or institution that is common to all known human cultures worldwide. Taken together, the whole body of cultural universals is known as the human condition. Evolutionary psychologists hold that behaviors or traits that occur universally in all cultures are good candidates for evolutionary adaptations. Some anthropological and sociological theorists that take a cultural relativist perspective may deny the existence of cultural universals: the extent to which these universals are "cultural...
One example is that incest between mother and son is always prohibited or unthinkable.
I looked through the above article, which only lists a few of the full list of universals, like I said, it contains hundreds of items, to see whether anything like belief in qualia was there, but it seems it wasn't. Magical thinking is on the Wikipedia list of cultural universals though, and belief in qualia looks to me a bit like magical thinking, if ubiquitous and generally accepted (mandated?).
This is worth a look, too. It mentions Pinker, and confirms that there are hundreds of human universals (a much better term than "cultural universals" as it lacks an anti-instinct bias).
Human Universals is a book by Donald Brown, an American professor of anthropology (emeritus) who worked at the University of California, Santa Barbara. It was published by McGraw Hill in 1991. Brown says human universals, "comprise those features of culture, society, language, behavior, and psyche for which there are no known exception."
According to Brown, there are many universals common to all human societies.Steven Pinker lists all Brown's universals in the appendix of his book The Blank Slate. The list includes several hundred universals, and notes Brown's later article on human universals...
@Conifold Rest assured that I will comment on your post eventually. There's quite a lot to think about there.
The Symposium
