He gets into the CONSCIOUSNESS topic in more depth in sections 5 & 4 where he discusses the NEURONS in the brain and talks about HINDSIGHT BIAS:
Contemporary neuroscience suggests a mechanism: the human brain is a cognitive miser. It does not retain any more than it expects to need. Thus, we can easily recall the end result of our deliberations – that we decided on a red car, or to vote for a particular politician, or that we didn’t like a certain movie – but we have difficulty recreating the full range of considerations that took us to that conclusion. (When prompted, we'll make something up.) Once a decision is made, our hindsightful, miserly brain sees no reason to waste energy retaining all our foresightful uncertainties and dead ends.
We tend to forget, then, just how much uncertainty there was, how easily things could have been different. After all, history never reveals its alternatives
Slavery, torture, the Holocaust, apartheid, and so on were all legal in their time. Some of them still are. Legality is a matter of power, not rectitude, though it's never presented as such. It's presented as just the way the things are, the way they've always been, maybe even the way they're supposed to be – even when in truth they could have easily been different.
And still could be.
SECTION 4 (he discusses having ALZHEIMERS and other ISSUES):
the self is encoded somewhere in our billions and billions of neural connections. But then, new neural connections are forming all the time as we age and gather experience. What happens as they change? What happens after serious damage, say from a stroke? Or what about someone who gets into an accident and has a traumatic brain injury that changes their personality? What about someone with Alzheimer's? Are they literally not the same person after the onset of disease?
Defining ourselves by the emergent property of our neural connections, our consciousness, fares no better. What about when we're sleeping? Or those in a coma? Do they cease to exist? Are those in a persistent vegetative state no longer people? Do they no longer have any legal rights? And if you’re defined by the contents of your mind, what happens as you accumulate more memories and others fade completely? Is someone with full retrograde amnesia not liable for crimes committed before their illness? What about people taking psychoactive medication, illicit drugs, or other substances that significantly alter consciousness? What about those with multiple personality disorder? Are they really and truly made up of multiple people inhabiting one body?
Meanwhile, Here's the section of # 8 that means the most to me:
Today, computer-controlled cars receive data about their physical state. That information is carried along wires that are analogous to human nerves. Certain actions are then triggered. For example, an engine light might come on. But even though the car's computer receives these electrical impulses from its extremities, it doesn't feel hungry when it's almost out of gas. It doesn't have a headache when the engine light comes on. It doesn't feel pain when it runs over a nail.
Note, we're not saying machines can't be conscious. But if they ever are, it will be because they have some emergent quality not yet identified
Because my car does seem to have some kind of an emergent issue due to the way it has HISSY FITS whenever one doesn't drive it the way it's use to being driven. And then it will behave like there's a little ghost sitting next to me with it's foot on the gas pedal and the mechanic has to ERASE the COMPUTER CODE with an OCD reader to get it to behave normally again.
In other words, it's also kind of like RAINMAN in the film where he had a HISSY FIT when he didn't have 8 FISH STICKS (so then his brother cuts them in half to get him to stop freaking out).
So whenever my car isn't driven the way that it's use to being driven, then it also has FITS and ACTS UP.
And even when My mechanic also reminds me that it's an INANIMATE OBJECT when this was explained to him, I still also have some doubts about how INANIMATE it may be.
And if one day it also begins talking back to me, then I'll also know it's EMERGENT (unless it also means that I've gone insane).
>>note that advances into AI go along with modern philosophers who are mimicking how humans operate
But don't we also already have some AI machines that TALK BACK to us again???
😊
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Solastine (1104)
3 years ago
You missed the entire point. He is begging the question, he assumes consciousness exists and from that assumption makes various claims that require consciousness to actually exist as evidence consciousness exists.
My issue isn't that he hasn't mentioned consciousness, it's that he makes no argument to prove it exists, or even define it, before using the property of "consciousness" to support his claims.
"Meanwhile, Here's the section of # 8 that means the most to me:" Read my prior post again, because section 8 is complete layman drivel, ESPECIALLY the part you quoted.
This is an attack against functionalism, saying a car might function like a human, but it isn't a human because... I said so. What we define as hunger can be explained not as a feeling, but an electrochemical reaction. A fuel low indicator on a dashboard.
He is greatly strawmanning the functionalist and determinist models. Absolutely no one anywhere argues that nature vs nurture is nature vs random factor. "It's worth thinking about not least because it's not always clear what would even count as an answer." More strawmen... a true determinist sees the entire world as a system of functions all interacting with each other, LaPlace was the one who argued that given a model that could describe the universe and the capability of knowing the exact state the universe was currently in that he could predict the future. The entire universe plays a role in the interactions we have. If you account for every variable in the universe, then you can determine the exact cause of events... which usually are the influence of many many variables.
"Contemporary neuroscience suggests a mechanism: the human brain is a cognitive miser." So can I pull out the libet experiment and claim the opposite? You can find attempts to prove or disprove consciousness, but nothing definitive.
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joi2049 (5581)
3 years ago
You're right about missing the point, because I thought he was proving that it's a mistake to assume CONSCIOUSNESS exists??? In other words, what about when we're SLEEPING, have a MAJOR STROKE causing brain damage, or we're in a COMA, or have ALZHEIMERS, etc.??? Can we claim to be CONSCIOUS then???
As for the deterministic view, DOSTOEVSKY's "NOTES FROM UNDERGROUND" illustrates the reason why it's WRONG to assume anyone could ever come up with what you describe as:
"a model that could describe the universe," that had "the capability of knowing the exact state the universe was currently in" meaning "he could predict the future," and "account for every variable in the universe," and "determine the exact cause of events..."
Because HUMANS also have the OPTION or the FREE WILL to CHOSE to do something completely IRRRATIONAL or ILL-LOGICAL, even though they also know doing so would be a VERY STUPID thing to do. And for that reason "the MODEL and it's ability to PREDICT an OUTCOME also becomes OBSOLETE and USELESS."
Look at those who refuse to get VACCINATED. There's no RATIONAL reason for that, but still they persist in their STUBBORNESS, and in their REFUSAL to do what's best for them. Same situation with the UNDERGROUND MAN who also keeps doing STUPID things throughout the story as a way to PROVE that he's not a "PRE PROGRAMMED PIANO KEY" and has INDIVIDUALITY.
can I pull out the libet experiment and claim the opposite? You can find attempts to prove or disprove consciousness, but nothing definitive.
By all means, please feel FREE to pull out anything you like.
And I also agree that the attempt to prove or disprove CONSCIOUSNESS is problematic.
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