A proof against epiphenomenal consciousness

[gfish]

For the last couple years, I have found myself thinking more and more about the nature of consciousness. It's just weird that we don't have any theoretical understanding of the single most evident fact available to us -- that we exist, and that we are experiencing things.

Comments

[tylik]

So, how much actual neuroscience do you have, as opposed to the sort that assumed that neural nets are actually a thing?

I think a lot of poor analogies get made on the assumption that brains are a lot more digital and a lot more like the computers that we think we understand (though a lot of that tends to be a hand approximation, AFAICT, too, but I know brains better at this point) than the messy sloppy weird slow but parallel and did I say weird analog thingies that they are.

(Part of what I want to talk about is about how neurons work, and part is about things like how learning works, which is way more about the limbic system than data processing in a computational sense, really... Unless your computational sense is really broad.)

[gfish]

I guess I'd say a lot more than most people, but far less than you. :) Enough to know that biological neural systems are messy and slow and massively parallel, yes. I personally come from a perspective that assumes they could still be simulated to whatever level of precision is desired in a Turing Machine given enough time and a big enough tape, of course.

I don't think it really matters, though. The way cognition is implemented doesn't matter for these purposes. Analog, digital, serialized, parallel, whatever. They're all material systems with no even halfway convincing explanation of how one gets from that to subjective experience.

[tylik]

I guess "subjective experience" is still this big undefined thing for me, so I'd had to have a better idea what you find surprising.

For me, it's not, anymore. And a lot of that came from pulling apart the emotional basis of learning... but I don't know that we're coming to it with similar questions, and it's also a very personal process of accretion that has developed over a number of years. Be fun to talk about, though.

BTW, how to do you feel about the piracy of textbooks? (I am general anti-book piracy, but moderately pro-textbook piracy due to specifics of that market.)

[gfish]

I'm generally in favor of keeping short (~5 year) copyrights, which weirdly feels like an extreme position now. With technology having made the legal fiction of copyright utterly ridiculous and late-stage capitalism simultaneously pushing for absolute, unending protections, I have no idea where we end up. Normally I just try to deal with it on the level of tackiness -- I can afford to buy media, so I do so if it is made available in my market. I don't actually see much evidence that piracy is hurting creative output (note: not the same thing as people getting paid to be creative), but I'd just as rather not be tacky. But, yeah, textbooks manipulate the market in such ugly, exploitative ways, it's particularly hard to get too worked up over piracy there.

[mosinging1986]

(Here via the Home Page)

The core problem of consciousness is that it makes absolutely no sense if you look at it from a purely materialist perspective.

Well, obviously! That's why purely materialistic worldviews make no sense and are demonstrably false.

[gfish]

I certainly can't rule it out, though. Coming from a background in the sciences, I'd personally find expanding our concept of physics slightly a lot more comfortable than grafting on metaphysical frippery. I can handle an empty, meaningless universe a lot more easily than one with occult properties that can't be objectively tested! But I'll just have to follow this rabbit hole where ever it takes me. :)

[mosinging1986]

I can handle an empty, meaningless universe a lot more easily than one with occult properties that can't be objectively tested!

I would suggest those aren't the only two options. Anyway, all the best to you on your search.

[randomdreams]

I'm not entirely sure that consciousness exists. I think our brains have a big chunk of equipment that makes snap judgments on a neural processing basis, and then a second more complicated set of equipment that attempts to match the patterns and decisions coming from the first chunk against past decisions and results, and then rationalizing the choices we make based on the snap judgments as a system for forming yet more patterns and results and establish a system that incorporates all the past choices/decisions/patterns. That process, in humans, and likely in other animals, is snazzy enough to start analyzing the analysis process, and that's what's going on when we're thinking about how we think.

[randomdreams]

(which is to say that if we have free will I suspect we virtually never actually use it: we're just choosing based on pattern-matching. But at some point, that just asks what we mean by 'free will'.)

[tylik]

Oo, so a) you read at least some of the literature and

b) some aspect of the amorphous consciousness thing you're concerned with is "free will". Let's carve that chunk off, put it on a meat tray under plastic, and put it on the table.

[gfish]

I'm definitely not talking about "free will". I think that's an empty term that can't be used in any serious way, like "omnipotence". It's just self-defeating and pointless.

[eub]

" Following that line of thoughts has now lead us to the point of deciding that those thoughts were never about consciousness in the first place."

We may need to go back and talk about "about". Those thoughts can't be causally downstream of consciousness (as epiphenomenon taken to be causally downstream of physics), but does that mean they can't be about consciousness? I believe a professional epiphenomenalist would play it that way.

[gfish]

They could accidentally be about consciousness, sure. But the input that they were trying to explain wasn't consciousness, there just happened to also be a completely invisible phenomenon a lot like the thoughts. Which there would be no way to know or prove, so it all seems pretty pointless to me. If I write about a fictional alien species and happen to get a lot of it right, am I actually writing about them? No one would claim my fiction could be used to drawn conclusions about the real aliens.

[peteralway]

"Those thoughts can't be causally downstream of consciousness (as epiphenomenon taken to be causally downstream of physics), but does that mean they can't be about consciousness?"

Wait--if our thoughts about consciousness are upstream of the actual perception of consciousness, at least for the most part, would that explain why thinking about consciousness seems to always lead to dead ends? That the part of our mental process that percieves conciousness can't think effectively about it because it just plain doesn't think at all? And the part of our mental process that experiences conciousness can only feed a vague signal to the part of our mental process that thinks? So that the thinking part of our brain is getting bad or incomplete data on the experience of consciousness, so that the thoughts are completely unsatisfying?

[eub]

"They could accidentally be about consciousness, sure."

That's your argument, indeed, that it would be accidental. But an actual epiphenomenalist will come equipped with a colorable argument otherwise. (It sounds like you probably have some familiarity with the philosophical literature on "intentionality" which is their term for "aboutness"?)

But I'm not into this "causal cul de sac" epiphenomenalism -- I just don't see how it's of any use except as a defensive position -- so that's all I'll speak for them.

[sistawendy]

This reminds me of something an AI prof in grad school once said. It was fashionable for decades to ask, "Can machines be intelligent?" His take on that, which I agree with, was, "Who cares as long as they do what you want them to do and not what you don't?" There's an analogy here with the question, "What, if anything, is consciousness?" I say that the answer doesn't matter if it doesn't impact human survival, happiness, or whatever other goal you want to optimize life for.

And even if you do still care, I think the answer may be disappointing. randomdreams mentioned animals. There's a whole range of complexity from great apes to the organisms tylik studies; there may even be a few organisms whose behavior people can realistically simulate by now. The question of whether a given organism is conscious or not is going to look like the one for whether it's living or not; basic, mechanistic answers have won out for the latter.

[eub]

Well but hold on a minute, isn't that like coming in to a discussion of Jewish halacha, and saying the answer doesn't really matter? Doesn't matter to whom? It seems like something that interests gfish, and that's okay.