03:14
@ARaybould @AmeetSharma @Conifold I feel like I need to say a bit more about how the idea of qualia is analogous to the idea of the life force. There's no undetectable life force and being alive is just being defined as alive because you have metabolism, reproduction, and so on. Likewise there's no undetectable qualia and being conscious is just being defined as conscious because you have responses of a certain kind to stimuli, you make plausibly human utterances in response to other human
utterances, you laugh at right time when someone makes a joke. When I say you, I mean the body people call "you". Thus, like being alive, being conscious is a property that in practice is ascribed to an entire body, although in theory an ancient Roman might have thought the soul was in the abdomen, and and a hundred years ago they might have thought it was in the pineal gland, and now scientists at least think of it as being associated with the the brain. In fact, there is not need to mention
the brain, or the CNS, and philosophers and psychologists can simply deliberately ignore, most of the time, the question of what parts of the body are involved in consciousness. I got this idea from a Frankish tweet from two or three days ago, and I love it.
Being conscious is thus when your behaviors taken together fit the definition of being conscious. There's no "pearl", to use a word Dennett used once, of consciousness, just as there's no pearl of personal identity, or even of identity. Which ship is the ship of Theseus? There's no pearl of identity, says Dennett. It is a matter of definition which ship is the ship of Theseus. So it will be a matter of definition whether an AI system is conscious, likewise. There is no undetectable qualia to be
had by AI, because they don't exist. To sum up, life and consciousness are matters of definition. Life is being judged to have the behaviors of life, and consciousness is being judged to have the behaviors of consciousness, with nothing undetectable, no life force, and no qualia.
Besides being matters of definition, they may also be matters of degree. One lump of matter can perhaps be more alive, and/or more conscious than another.
If you are thinking this sounds like behaviorism, you are smart. But I think the behaviorists made a fatal mistake that illusionism doesn't, which is to ignore utterances made subjects in experiments.
Illusionists pay attention to utterances, and consider it data. What is not data is experiences described by those utterances. Qualia for example reported by a subject are not data, not true scientific observations, because only one person can detect them. The utterances are data, and the qualia are hypothetical, theoretical, supposed, or fictional entities. The subject concludes or theorizes that he has seen red, or smelled roses. The subjects statement is the only data. And of course anything
3 hours later…
06:31
"Illusionists pay attention to utterances, and consider it data. What is not data is experiences described by those utterances."
Are the illusionists saying this first person thing "experience" does not exist? Are "qualia" and "first person" experience the same? Do they both not exist in the illusionists worldview?
Is there any distinction between "experience" and "qualia" ? I assume they are the same thing because you consider both as non-data?
Are the illusionists saying this first person thing "experience" does not exist? Are "qualia" and "first person" experience the same? Do they both not exist in the illusionists worldview?
Is there any distinction between "experience" and "qualia" ? I assume they are the same thing because you consider both as non-data?
"But almost none of us is a consciousness illusionist. Maybe "qualia illusionist" would be a better term."
So first person experience does exist? But qualia doesn't? How is qualia different from first person experience? You said experience was non-data. Or are you redefining consciousness to be non-experiential?
So first person experience does exist? But qualia doesn't? How is qualia different from first person experience? You said experience was non-data. Or are you redefining consciousness to be non-experiential?
"@ARaybould "Some people might say illusions are real[...]". What would that mean in the case of the illusion of the woman being cut in half?"
This is not the right analogy. The woman at the very least "appears" to be cut in half. So there's some show going on. Something is being observed. The illusionists are saying that "phenomenal experience" does not exist. There is literally nothing being observed. Observation itself does not exist. Frankish is pretty clear about this. So "illusionist" is really a deceptive term. If it really was an "illusion" then by standard vocabulary there is some…
This is not the right analogy. The woman at the very least "appears" to be cut in half. So there's some show going on. Something is being observed. The illusionists are saying that "phenomenal experience" does not exist. There is literally nothing being observed. Observation itself does not exist. Frankish is pretty clear about this. So "illusionist" is really a deceptive term. If it really was an "illusion" then by standard vocabulary there is some…
07:18
I find the "selective doubt" hard to understand from the illusionists. Ok, we doubt first person experience... so why don't they doubt science? It requires far more assumptions. If you doubt your own experience, why don't you doubt your own knowledge of science or your own memories of reading science journals or whatever... If you doubt your own first person experience, then logically you should be doubting everything...
9 hours later…
16:14
@AmeetSharma I think illusionists are saying there's no such thing as first person experience, or it is merely part of third person experience. I mean, a driver can experience a smell of smoke in the car and react by pulling over to the side of the road. But the driver's experience in this case can be observed by a dashcam, in behaviors such us sniffing the air and looking worried, as well as harder to observe but still objective behaviors such a chemical reactions in the nose, nerve impulses
in the nose, activation of the scent identification parts of the brain in a certain way, utterances such as "I smell smoke". This is however, all that there is to the experience. There's nothing that can't be observed in principle by a third party. Qualia, therefore don't come into it. Furthermore, qualia is an incoherent concept. It makes no more sense than a woman being cut in half and then being totally fine a minute later.
@AmeetSharma "Is there any distinction between "experience" and "qualia" ? I assume they are the same thing because you consider both as non-data?" I'm not a hundred percent sure, but I think qualia is what illusionism says is an incoherent concept. I think qualia is an aspect of experience. There is no division in half and rejoining of a woman on the stage, but there is a woman, and there is movement and living, and aging of a woman. The division would be the qualia, while the woman's living would
be analogous to experience I guess. Maybe first person experience and qualia is the same thing. That seems to make sense. I admit that I haven't sorted out the exact meanings of some the terms used by illusionists. I'm not sure that that is entirely my fault. The terms are a bit weird. It might not be the fault of the illusionists either, though. Human language, as illusionists found it, seems to contain all sorts of hidden assumptions about "qualia" and "experience" and "persons", and so on.
16:54
@AmeetSharma Maybe the key to understanding that illusionism could be right, and deserves a decent amount of attention, and a bit less scorn, is to notice how humans have been totally wrong, but hundred percent sure that they are right about things very similar to qualia. Denying qualia produces a strong emotional reaction in many people, and it's clearly visible. Probably in many others the effect is more subtle. Probably some people don't even realize how much of an effect their own emotional
reaction to the denial of qualia has on their perception of its plausibility. To many its obvious that there is a God, or that we must have an immaterial soul, or that an action can be intrinsically wrong (as if wrongness were a sort of as yet undetected physical property that would be something like electric charge, or mass.
@AmeetSharma For me, the key realization was that how sure we are that something is obvious has no bearing on the likelihood of its being true. We must listen to science, and not to our emotions.
Also, how things appear to us also should not carry undue weight. The sun appears to go around the earth, and for a long time, anyone who said that was an illusion was considered wrong, or even crazy, or even a sinner guilty of heresy.
Sure, it does seem to me in daily life that I'm enjoying a Cartesian Theater complete with color, sound, touch, smell, three dimensional motion. I totally get that it seems very weird, even absurd to think that it might not exist, that we just think that these experiences have happened.
Maybe it would help to consider dreams. I think only recently, in the last fifty years or so, for the first time doubt was cast on the idea that we experience dreams. It seems dreams are more likely false memories. What really happens, it seems, is that on waking, your brain starts thinking about some random information that was floating around in it when it woke up. It latches onto this information, and tries to make sense of it. It then constructs a sort of story that sort of makes sense.
It feels like you are remembering a series of experiences from before you woke up, but really, you are not. Ever recalled a dream bit by bit? That's likely you constructing the story bit my bit. In fact, I've noticed, sometimes, cases where I'm remembering a dream bit by bit, and I can look at it as constructing a story bit by bit. I tend not to bother "recalling" dreams any more, ever since I came to see their existence as illusory. I now often really do see it as going to the effort of
creating a story out of some bits of informational garbage that happened to be flying around in my brain when I woke up. It seems like a pointless task. Psychologists have done experiments where they wake someone with say the sound of running water, and the subject reports a dream about a flood, say, for an extended period of time, with the dream reported as lasting for at least thirty seconds.
Anyway, if the experiences in dreams never happened, and we accept that, then we are some way towards accepting than no experiences happen, right?
If we can wrongly interpret random info in the brain on waking as an experience that happened before waking, it seems a bit more plausible that what we think are waking experiences also never happened.
And there is evidence, I think, that when you remember an experience it is different from when you were there at the time. For example, how much suffering happened to you at the time and how much suffering happened to you as you recall it after it is over are differently calculated by the brain. It's as if there are two experiences. At the time, it's the total pain, maybe, but later, it's the peak of pain, something like that. Or so I remember reading. I think it was maybe that author who got
17:50
@Conifold "I am skeptical of illusionism (about consciousness), but not for the usual reasons that it is counterintuitive or “crazy”." Are you saying illusionism not counterintuitive or at least, not crazy? Also, would you mind explaining why you put "crazy" in quotes? I would appreciate that very much.
@AmeetSharma The argument from queerness comes to mind. If there were qualia, they would be very strange things, ie very queer, in a somewhat similar way to objective ethical values.
Moral nihilism (also known as ethical nihilism) is the meta-ethical view that nothing is morally right or morally wrong.Moral nihilism is distinct from moral relativism, which allows for actions to be wrong relative to a particular culture or individual. It is also distinct from expressivism, according to which when we make moral claims, "We are not making an effort to describe the way the world is ... we are venting our emotions, commanding others to act in certain ways, or revealing a plan of action".Moral nihilism today broadly tends to take the form of an Error Theory: The view develope...
Qualia nihilism would perhaps be an alternative name for illusionism. Ethics illusionism might be another name for ethical nihilism. Not sure. I'm a bit rusty on this topic.
It sure is hard to believe that when I think I am experiencing red and blue qualia, really I am not, and all that is happening is the light coming into my eyes, and the words "red and blue" coming out of my mouth, and some processing in betweeen, and I only think I am having that first person experience. But no matter how hard it is to believe, how vivid the impression, we need to look at it scientifically.
18:17
We need to, if we want to be correct. And being correct about consciousness (and ethics, come to think of it) is of urgent importance as AI is about to dwarf human intelligence. According to Elon Musk, that will likely happen before the end of this decade.
2 hours later…
20:00
@AmeetSharma I only wrote about the woman-bisection illusion because @MatthewChristopherBartsh asked a question about it. For an example (not an analogy) of how illusions can be causal, see my link about spatial disorientation in aviation.
I have no intention of advocating for illusionism, but I will give its proponents (most of whom have a doctorate and an academic position in a relevant field) the courtesy of assuming, so long as the assumption can be maintained, that they don't hold views that are utterly and obviously nonsensical - even when they say something which seems to be just that!
In a rather cursory search, I have not tracked down where Frankish says there's no such thing as phenomenal experience, but in the paper I discussed earlier, Kammerer almost says that they do not really exist (close enough that I assume that it is his position.)
Taken in context, it seems pretty clear to me that "they don't really exist" is just a shortened paraphrase for "they don't really exist in the form they seem to us" or, perhaps "they don't really exist in the form some philosophers assume they do." Having established that he is writing on the premise that they are illusory, continually remaking that qualification may seem redundant.
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