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TheOtherDave comments on Rationality Quotes June 2013 - Less Wrong
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I'm splitting up my response to this into several pieces because it got long.
The key bit, IMHO:
And I would agree with you.
"No," replies A, "you miss the point completely. I don't ask whether a container can contain things; clearly it can, I observe it doing so. I ask how it contains things. What is the explanation for its demonstrated ability to contain things? Containership is not just a function," A insists, "though I understand you want to treat it as one. No, containership is a fundamental essence. You can't simply ignore the hard question of "is X a container?" in favor of thinking about simpler, merely functional questions like "can X contain Y?". And, while we're at it," A coninues, "what makes you think that an artificial container, such as we build all the time, is actually containing anything rather than merely emulating containership? Sure, perhaps we can't tell the difference, but that doesn't mean there isn't a difference."
I take it you don't find A's argument convincing, and neither do I, but it's not clear to me what either of us could say to A that A would find at all compelling.
Maybe we couldn't, but A is simply asserting that containership is a concept beyond its parts, whereas I'm appealing directly to experience: the relevance of this is that whether something has experience matters. Ultimately for any case, if others just express bewilderment in your concepts and apparently don't get what you're talking about, you can't prove it's an issue. But at any rate, most people seem to have subjective experience.
Being conscious isn't a label I apply to certain conscious-type systems that I deem 'valuable' or 'true' in some way. Rather, I want to know what systems should be associated with the clearly relevant and important category of 'conscious'
My thoughts about how I go about associating systems with the expectation of subjective experience are elsewhere and I have nothing new to add to it here.
As regards you and A... I realize that you are appealing directly to experience, whereas A is merely appealing to containment, and I accept that it's obvious to you that experience is importantly different from containment in a way that makes your position importantly non-analogous to A's.
I have no response to A that I expect A to find compelling... they simply don't believe that containership is fully explained by the permeability and topology of containers. And, you know, maybe they're right... maybe some day someone will come up with a superior explanation of containerhood that depends on some previously unsuspected property of containers and we'll all be amazed at the realization that containers aren't what we thought they were. I don't find it likely, though.
I also have no response to you that I expect you to find compelling. And maybe someday someone will come up with a superior explanation of consciousness that depends on some previously unsuspected property of conscious systems, and I'll be amazed at the realization that such systems aren't what I thought they were, and that you were right all along.
Are you saying you don't experience qualia and find them a bit surprising (in a way you don't for containerness)? I find it really hard to not see arguments of this kind as a little disingenous: is the issue genuinely not difficult for some people, or is this a rhetorical stance intended to provoke better arguments, or awareness of the weakness of current arguments?
I have subjective experiences. If that's the same thing as experiencing qualia, then I experience qualia.
I'm not quite sure what you mean by "surprising" here... no, it does not surprise me that I have subjective experiences, I've become rather accustomed to it over the years. I frequently find the idea that my subjective experiences are a function of the formal processes my neurobiology implements a challenging idea... is that what you're asking?
Then again, I frequently find the idea that my memories of my dead father are a function of the formal processes my neurobiology implements a challenging idea as well. What, on your view, am I entitled to infer from that?
Yes, I meant surprising in light of other discoveries/beliefs.
On memory: is it the conscious experience that's challenging (in which case it's just a sub-set of the same issue) or do you find the functional aspects of memory challenging? Even though I know almost nothing about how memory works, I can see plausible models and how it could work, unlike consciousness.
Isn't our objection to A's position that it doesn't pay rent in anticipated experience? If one thinks there is a "hard problem of consciousness" such that different answers would cause one to behave differently, then one must take up the burden of identifying what the difference would look like, even if we can't create a measuring device to find it just now.
If A means that we cannot determine the difference in principle, then there's nothing we should do differently. If A means that a measuring device does not currently exist, he needs to identify the range of possible outputs of the device.
This may be a situation where that's a messy question. After all, qualia are experience. I keep expecting experiences, and I keep having experiences. Do experiences have to be publicly verifiable?
If two theories both lead me to anticipate the same experience, the fact that I have that experience isn't grounds for choosing among them.
So, sure, the fact that I keep having experiences is grounds for preferring a theory of subjective-experience-explaining-but-otherwise-mysterious qualia over a theory that predicts no subjective experience at all, but not necessarily grounds for preferring it to a theory of subjective-experience-explaining-neural-activity.
different answers to the HP would undoubtedly change our behaviour, because they would indicate different classes of entity have feelings impacting morality. Indeed, it is pretty hard to think of anything more impactive.
The measuring device for conscious experience is consciousness, which is the whole problem.
Sure. But in this sense, false believed answers to the HP are no different from true believed answers.... that is, they would both potentially change our behavior the way you describe.
I suspect that's not what TimS meant.
That is the case for most any belief you hold (unless you mean "in the exact same way", not as "change behavior"). You may believe there's a burglar in your house, and that will impact your actions, whether it be false or true. Say you believe that it's more likely there is a burglar, you are correct in acting upon that belief even if it turns out to incorrect. It's not AIXI's fault if it believes in the wrong thing for the right reasons.
In that sense, you can choose an answer for example based on complexity considerations. In the burglar example, the answer you choose (based on data such as crime rate, cat population etc.) can potentially be further experimentally "verified" (the probability increased) as true or false, but even before such verification, your belief can still be strong enough to act upon.
After all, you do act upon your belief that "I am not living in a simulation which will eventually judge and reward me only for the amount of cheerios I've eaten". It also doesn't lead to different expected experiences at the present time, yet you also choose to act thus as if it were true. Prior based on complexity considerations alone, yet strong enough to act upon. Same when thinking about whether the sun has qualia ("hot hot hot hot hot").
(Bit of a hybrid fusion answer also meant to refer to our neighboring discussion branch.)
Cheerio!
Yes, I agree with all of this.
Well, in the case of "do landslides have qualia", Occam's Razor could be used to assign probabilities just the same as we assign probabilities in the "cheerio simulation" example. So we've got methodology, we've got impact, enough to adopt a stance on the "psychic unity of the cosmos", no?
I'm having trouble following you, to be honest.
My best guess is that you're suggesting that, with respect to systems that do not manifest subjective experience in any way we recognize or understand, Occam's Razor provides grounds to be more confident that they have subjective experience than that they don't.
If that's what you mean, I don't see why that should be.
If that's not what you mean, can you rephrase the question?
I think it's conceivable if not likely that Occam's Razor would favor or disfavor qualia as a property of more systems than just those that seem to show or communicate them in terms we're used to. I'm not sure which, but it is a question worth pondering, with an impact on how we view the world, and accessible through established methodology, to a degree.
I'm not advocating assigning a high probability to "landslides have raw experience", I'm advocating that it's an important question, the probability of which can be argued. I'm an advocate of the question, not the answer, so to speak. And as such opposed to "I really can't see why anyone should care one way or the other".
Ah, I see.
So, I stand by my assertion that in the absence of evidence one way or the other, I really can't see why anyone should care.
But I agree that to the extent that Occam's Razor type reasoning provides evidence, that's a reason to care.
And if it provided strong evidence one way or another (which I don't think it does, and I'm not sure you do either) that would provide a strong reason to care.
He may have meant something like "Qualiaphobia implies we would have no expereinces at all". However, that all depends on what you mean by experience. I don't think the Expected Experience criterion is useful here (or anywhere else)