Human consciousness as a tractable scientific problem

lukeprog

Human consciousness as a tractable scientific problem — LessWrong

Comment Permalink

Not react to pain as if it did feel pain, but to actually feel pain in the same sense as a human does?

Do you know how to distinguish "actually feeling pain" from "acting as if" it feels pain?

If so, do tell.

If not, would you perhaps also claim that a machine which passes the Turing test is not "actually" conscious, but merely "acts as if" it is conscious ?

Anti-reductionists are always quick to point at "qualia", "subjective experience", "consciousness" (or the subjective experience of pain, in this case) as examples of Great Big Unexplained Mysteries which have not been/can not be solved by science, but they can never quite explain what exactly the problem is, or what a solution would look like.

ArisKatsaris14y00

Anti-reductionists are always quick to point at "qualia", "subjective experience", "consciousness" (or the subjective experience of pain, in this case) as examples of Great Big Unexplained Mysteries which have not been/can not be solved by science, but they can never quite explain what exactly the problem is, or what a solution would look like.

A solution would help dissolve our confusion about how the territory of our consciousness can be produced by the map that is our brain's computation.

I feel I've made some small progre... (read more)

0CuSithBell14y

Well, I suppose you'd do it the same way you'd distinguish "actually has a cat in a box" from "pretending to have a cat in a box" (without checking the box). I do think there's something weird going on with consciousness - why there is something that thinks it has the experience of having thoughts and experiences is as yet unexplained, and is tricky to talk about given the inability to directly access the subject matter - but I imagine it's in principle explicable. And saying we need to find a "mysterious" way of understanding it... well, there are all sorts of reasons why that's not going to work.

-2Ghazzali14y

The fact that the problem cannot be explained is because of the limitations of language/logic/reason....the tools that we rely on to explain mechanical phenomenon. Things that require equal signs. The fact that this subject is not easilly explainable is not a hit against our side, it is a hit against your side. It is the non-rational aspect of consciousness that makes it seemingly impossible to explain in the first place. The reaction of reductionists and some rationalists (I argue that it is quite rational to conlude that this is indeed a mystery as of present time) that because we cannot explain what that sensation of 'pain' is then it may not exist to begin with is dubious at best.

See in context

17

Human consciousness as a tractable scientific problem

17

17

17

Human consciousness as a tractable scientific problem

17

17