What do you think of this short pitch? Leave a comment below You can watch this short pitch, The Hard Problem of Consciousness, in full at iai.tv/video/donald-hoffman-in-depth-interview-reality-perception?KZread&

A question for materialists: What is the evolutionary purpose of subjective experience if p-zombies are just as good at survival as conscious humans?

@terminator900000

3 жыл бұрын

Useful things happen to stick around there need be no overarching purpose generally. Daniel Dennet has a more specific answer to this with an analogy he gives about consciousness being a brain interface. This analogy remains unconvincing for me. As an empircist myself we can only go by what we experience and can reproduce scientifically. There are many proposed answers to the hard problem but none have yet been verified (the fear is that by its nature it may be something we can't verify, see Sam Harris' take on this)

@williamverhoef4349

2 жыл бұрын

"p-zombies are just as good at survival as conscious humans" That implies that you have detected p-zombies while simultaneously implying that they are undetectable.

What if free will was really a quantum process but to culminate into an actionable circuitry that is measurable by EEG to action taking, 7 seconds needed to elapse. Maybe the person did make a choice but she couldn't vocalize it before 7 seconds because the biology was busy during that time figuring out how to fire the neurons that will allow speech of report to be generated. We know this is true because action always has a measurable delay. We take action after sometime that we've thought of it.

@roshsurana

3 жыл бұрын

But it cannot be a completely quantum process because that's purely random. The fact that he says it can be predicted, sort of means vaguely that most of our decisions are reactive to our past experiences and registered in the brains neural network as a general guideline. But there is a natural divergence in the ideas.

The way I see it, everyone is separating consciousness from data. I say don't! Don't separate conscious from data. The moment you do that you have the hard problem and problems with free will. I reckon the two are one and the same. Think about what you are experiencing as consciousness. Analyse it. What is it you are experiencing? Can any of it *not* be broken down to be data? When I analyse my consciousness the answer always comes down to data. Absolutely everything I am experiencing as what I define as consciousness *IS* data. Therefore consciousness *IS* data. You ARE that data. You are not something else that experiences that data, you ARE that data. THIS is what it is like to BE data. An inevitable consequence of that theory is that all data processing machines, natural *and* artificial, are conscious. Even a calculator. Of course a calculator is not *AS* conscious as we are, but that is the only difference. It is such a simple form of consciousness, so astronomically different and limited compared to our *level* of consciousness that we even think it ridiculous to consider it conscious, but .... if I am right that consciousness *IS* data, then it follows that a calculator is indeed conscious. Remember we used to think other animals were not conscious. They just worked by instinct, in other words by cause and effect, but then does not everything work by cause and effect? Even us? They have to, if something does not work by the process of cause and effect then you are saying that some effects do not have causes. We must stop comparing our *level* of consciousness with other levels of consciousness and deciding that because a certain brain cannot do this or that therefore it is not conscious. What a brain can or cannot do is totally irrelevant when it comes to consciousness. Such things only decide *HOW* conscious it is. The fact that a calculator knows nothing at all of its surroundings or of itself, only calculates (thinks) when we make it do so, always gives the same answer to a given question, I cannot see has any relevance whatsoever to consciousness. We say 'Oh a calculator is just following a series of cause and effect processes' ... well ... so are we are we not? We say a calculator or laptop is not thinking, it is just following a set of rules. Well, is not our brain also following a set of rules, those rules developed over millions of years via the process of evolution? Our brain is a mass of billions of causes and effects, but the thing is, we ARE those causes and effects. Therefore free will is *not* an illusion. Those causes and effects decide our 'wants' - we ARE those causes and effects - therefore we are doing what we want to do, we do have free will, it is not an illusion. Edit:- I think there is a great tendency to confuse consciousness with awareness of our surroundings and ourselves. The latter two things I do not see as a definition of consciousness. They are just extra data to increase the *level* of consciousness, that's all. Because a laptop is not aware of itself and its surroundings I do not see as deciding it is therefore not conscious. All it decides is that it is not conscious of those things. They are just extra data. Nothing to do with whether something is conscious or not.

@BugRib

10 ай бұрын

Would you consider this a form of panpsychism?

@richardarcher3435

10 ай бұрын

@@BugRib I had to look up that word. It's the view that all things have a mind or a mind-like quality. Well, a mind I see as what appears when a brain works. The word 'mind' and 'consciousness' I think mean the same thing. So you need a brain. A brain is something that manipulates data. Do "all things" have a brain? Do even plants have the tiniest fraction of a brain? As far as I know they do not. Is that right? So I would say my theory is not panpsychism, and I'm thankfull for that because that means I don't have to try and say it :) It might be something called compatibilism but not sure. I believe our free will is not an illusion, it is real.

interesting

I would argue that the nature of software is such that, to users and creators, it seems abstract, but it is in fact a physical operation. In fact, inputs to the controller really _are_ the cause of the virtual-world results, in a less direct but in absolutely as certain a cause and effect chain as that which exists in the real world, between real steering wheels and wheels. In my real-world automobile, the steering is electrical, which is to say it uses an electric motor modulated by a microprocessor--no hydraulics. Is the control of my real wheel in my real car a fictive one?

@mattd8725

4 жыл бұрын

In order for your control of the computer controlled car to be "verified" by you as being reliable it must react to your input within a certain amount of time in a way that you feel follows the intent of your input. In essence a computer controller of the car is a fiction creating machine that tries to create the "virtual reality" experience that you are directly in control of the car. You can argue that if the computer always reliably does what you want then the fiction is so perfect that it makes no sense to say that it is any different from reality. Unfortunately a hard problem of computer science is that many processes cannot be mathematically proven to finish fast enough.

@dahawk8574

4 жыл бұрын

WWJumbo & @@mattd8725, You both are arguing from the Physicalism perspective. Donald Hoffman's theory is that Physicalism has the cart before the horse. This worldview will always lead to erroneous conclusions, and this is why consciousness is seen to be a Hard Problem. But only within that backward worldview. Hoffman turns Physicalism on its head to theorize that Consciousness Is Fundamental. In the Idealism worldview, there is no hard problem of consciousness. Our awareness is the ground floor upon which all these other constructs which you two are talking about are built upon. Our minds are not emergent from our brains. It is our brains which emerge from our mind. And we can experience this creation of fictional worlds every night when we dream. And so to, it is these computers which we have built and everything else, including the entire universe, have all emerged from our collective mind. This is not only Hoffman's worldview, it is the understanding that's been popularized by The Matrix. And you can go much further back, as this is the concept of illusory Maya in Hinduism. And also the takeaway from Zhuangzi's dream that he was a butterfly. Upon awakening from this dream, he could not be sure which 'reality' was real, the one where he was a butterfly, or the one where he was a human being. But he was clear that one experience taken to be 'reality' was a projection from the other. So the short answer, according to Hoffman, is 'yes'. The control of your car is a fictitious one. And you have bought into the illusion by so much as referring to your car and steering wheel as 'real'. The control is illusion. The car is illusion. The wheel is a product of your mind. The computer also. Richard Bach's Illusions is one of the best books on this understanding. The breakthrough Hoffman is working toward is quantifying this view which has been taught for several thousands of years. He is formulating the entire Matrix.

@mattd8725

4 жыл бұрын

@@dahawk8574 The concept of Maya doesn't imply that the apparent real world is an illusion but that its apparent reality tricks us into not believing in things that are not right in front of our noses. In the example of the car the connection between the steering wheel and the wheels on the tarmac is apparently real. Functionally it is real in as much as it functional. But the Maya of steering would trick you into not considering that the computer control system at any moment might become faulty, might be hacked by an enemy into freezing, might develop its own consciousness and decide to drive in a totally different direction. I don't like subjective idealism myself but have more time for the idealism of Kant or Hegel.

The example of a train coming after people congregate at the station does not seem good. True, if one were to simply observe people and trains coming and going, one could not say that people showing up at the station causes a train to come. However, you could figure this out by sending a bunch of people to a train station and seeing if, for instance, a train appears within 10 minutes. If you repeat this over and over again, sending the people at random times, and withholding people too for prolonged periods, you could determine if there is a causal relationship.

@dahawk8574

4 жыл бұрын

Your comment is entrenched within the paradigm of Physicalism. Hoffman's fundamental premise is that Physicalism is mistaken. I have not watched the full IAI interview yet, but I expect this point is made far more clearly in that complete video.

@chris65536

4 жыл бұрын

I haven't watched it either but I will do so today or tomorrow. A cursory search of youtube for his name shows a bunch of longer videos.

@chris65536

4 жыл бұрын

I tried to but stopped in the middle of it because I found it so ridiculous. I'm going to try again now and keep a more open mind this time.

@chris65536

4 жыл бұрын

I tried to but stopped in the middle of it because I found it so ridiculous. I'm going to try again now and keep a more open mind this time.

@chris65536

4 жыл бұрын

I'm not religious, though I used to be. Buddhism always interested me. I cannot take this guy seriously, though. He claims he is a scientist, but he rejects it. You cannot have it both ways. I think this guy is being disingenuous, actually. There is nothing at all convincing about his "case against reality." Kant wrote about something like this. It wasn't bad. It's been said that scientists make bad philosophers. I would say that this guy is exhibit A for that assertion.

Why we are not conscious during sleep. Answer is there.

@vjnt1star

4 жыл бұрын

we can be conscious during sleep. I know I have been many times, I make decisions to this or that and sometimes I even know I am in a dream and check my environment the trees, the rocks etc...it seems so real

@chris65536

4 жыл бұрын

Me too, although I'm not sure if that's technically considered consciousness or not. Sometimes I am quite aware that I am dreaming and marvel at how creative my mind is, forming detailed landscapes, people, etc., out of whole cloth. I am never that creative when awake. Sometimes though when I am dreaming I ask the question if it is a dream and am unsure. But never have I been awake and doubted whether I was awake or not. Or do I know anything? How do we know dreams exist? (or do we?) And that there is a difference between dreaming and non-dreaming? How do we know anything? These are questions the idealists should answer, especially those who call themselves scientists.

@chris65536

4 жыл бұрын

Me too, although I'm not sure if that's technically considered consciousness or not. Sometimes I am quite aware that I am dreaming and marvel at how creative my mind is, forming detailed landscapes, people, etc., out of whole cloth. I am never that creative when awake. Sometimes though when I am dreaming I ask the question if it is a dream and am unsure. But never have I been awake and doubted whether I was awake or not. Or do I know anything? How do we know dreams exist? (or do we?) And that there is a difference between dreaming and non-dreaming? How do we know anything? These are questions the idealists should answer, especially those who call themselves scientists.

@chris65536

4 жыл бұрын

Me too, although I'm not sure if that's technically considered consciousness or not. Sometimes I am quite aware that I am dreaming and marvel at how creative my mind is, forming detailed landscapes, people, etc., out of whole cloth. I am never that creative when awake. Sometimes though when I am dreaming I ask the question if it is a dream and am unsure. But never have I been awake and doubted whether I was awake or not. Or do I know anything? How do we know dreams exist? (or do we?) And that there is a difference between dreaming and non-dreaming? How do we know anything? These are questions the idealists should answer, especially those who call themselves scientists.

@vjnt1star

4 жыл бұрын

@@chris65536 Whether or not we are conscious during a dream boils down to the definition given to consciousness. I take the bare minimum of being aware of having an experience whatever the nature of the experience. Under this definition wake state and dream state are just different kinds of experiences. If one argues that there is "more" to it to be conscious then one must clarify what this "more" includes and why it is absolutely required.

So what he's talking about is why do certain brain states correlate with certain experiences. I guess that's tangentially related to the hard problem but he doesn't actually talk about the hard problem in this video. the hard problem is concerned with finding out what experience itself actually is and how it's possible.

@Ali-nr3lr

3 жыл бұрын

Agreed!

@mattmanpro

2 жыл бұрын

Right. It's not just a "missing link" problem-how is neural activity linked to conscious experience-it's "how the hell could neural activity give rise to ANYTHING LIKE conscious experience?" Consciousness is an insane mystical crazy thing that science has no explanation for whatsoever. According to science as we currently understand it, we should just be robots with nothing it is like to be us.

David, if you posit consciousness as fundamental, then the black hole or explanatory gap that materialism entails goes away in a jiffy and now you have the hard problem of matter.

@millenialmusings8451

2 жыл бұрын

What is the hard probl m of matter?

@alpacamaster5992

2 жыл бұрын

It is possible that matter is an illusion but it is not possible that consciousness is an illusion

The idea that correlation does not imply causation does not seem right to me. If event B always precedes event C, then there are two possibilities; either B caused C, or another hidden variable A caused both. If it is true that putting the magnet to a part of the brain did not cause the color loss, then some unseen variable caused both the color loss and the decision of the researcher, at the exact time, to apply the magnet to the subject's head. That does not sound reasonable to me.

@dahawk8574

4 жыл бұрын

The disconnect is totally understandable, because this short video clip never presented Hoffman's fundamental premise. He rejects the notion of 'reality' entirely. Everything we seem to take in via our senses is a construct of our mind. And that includes your apparent observation that the researcher did this action, and that the researcher and the subject actually exist. It would help if you were to start with this scenario... You have a dream. And in this dream, you see a researcher placing a magnet to a subject's head. The subject reports that the moment the researcher turns on this powerful magnet, they no longer see color on one entire half of their visual field. Hopefully now you can see how this magnet caused absolutely nothing. Everything you experienced was all produced by your own mind imagining everything. All of the apparent causes and effects were a complete fiction. All conveniently happening in sequence to give you the impression that things all flowed logically, and that it was all real. But then you wake up, and you gain this awareness that absolutely none of it was real. This is what Hoffman is saying regarding the "Hard Problem". It is no problem at all. The only problem is that we have all bought so deeply into this physicalism illusion that we cannot grasp that matter and the entire universe are not real. It is all created from our mind. And it is such a compelling illusion that we accept it as being real when it is not. It does not sound reasonable to you. Nor does it sound reasonable to anyone who remains asleep.

@chris65536

4 жыл бұрын

I see. I actually neglected two possibilities. One of them is that event C caused B. There are actually some on the fringe who think that's possible. The other possibility is that there is no correlation either because we live in a kind of computer simulation, or that some extreme form of idealism is true, or that there is some conspiracy in the universe whereby some demon makes us believe color loss and putting magnets to heads are correlated. It seems to me that in order to hold this view, you must reject all of science.

@relaxandfocus5563

4 жыл бұрын

@@chris65536 no, you don't have to reject all science. Not at all! Physicalism is not science.

The 'hard problem', is that it is not so easy to understand that We are Eternal, and that We always had our Consciousness. The Nature or Structure is somehow quiet simple, when You know it, but to 'see it' is not at all so easy. But, when man is making devices as can do mental functions, man must copy the way Life does. We recognize some of the Eternal ablities, - Instinct/automatic, - Gravity/power, - Intelligence/logic-order, - Memory/storage, The Life-side of Feeling, is emotions, the Stuff-side is sensing, We can also add some sensors, - Feeling - to our devices. Intuition is also one of the six eternal abilities, but it is not commonly understood. Memory,- Instinct, - Gravity, - Feeling, - Intelligence, - Intuition, - Memory, - (structure/circuit) The Motor of the Eternal Life, are the Life-Desire, in direct extension We have the Will (Life-side) and Gravity (Stuff-side) By the Will, We do balance Gravity of Earth, with our own, when We lift the cup. Well, the Compass of the Eternal Life, are the 'Hunger-Principle' and the 'Satisfaction-Principle'. So, 'the brain' , is actually not need'ed to give this eternal perspective of the consciousness

I am this so called hard problem

@relaxandfocus5563

4 жыл бұрын

Exactly

@millenialmusings8451

Жыл бұрын

Me too. That means I'm trying to understand myself. But to understand myself I will have to saperate myself from myself. I don't think that's possible. The philosophical position is called new mysterianism. Look it up

Is there a Higher Consciousness? The experience of neuroscientists at Univ. of Sussex proved that there are levels higher than human. Will there be a way to reach that limit of Sup. Con.? What would be the consequences? Certainly extraordinary, isn't it?

@johnmartin7346

3 жыл бұрын

Very good video!

@Pheer777

3 жыл бұрын

Do you have a source for that study I could check out?

@johnmartin7346

3 жыл бұрын

@@Pheer777 Professor Anil Seth, Co-Director of the Sackler Centre for Consciousness Science at the University of Sussex.

@SeanJepson7

Жыл бұрын

Let you into Hemi-Sync if you’re not aware of it.

And I will probably tell you what (qualia) is - feelings. This is the energy of the stars - and living from there. And consciousness is a projection of genetic memory onto a module that receives external signals. In general, this is all briefly. Small is big, big is small. Mass is energy, energy is mass. -;)) I would say that consciousness is always a new birth, something alive. Maybe even revives. Because it exists in time, and time is not static. If it is not reborn every minimal fraction of a second, then it will not be. A process that thinks differently - thinks over time will not be carried out. Qualia is probably such a peculiar melody. The music of the soul.)) The one that calls to be born, resurrects, revives a variable IMPULSE. Well, and reprograms the gene.

@user-kf1yg9kk5y

3 жыл бұрын

sorry for the poor translation of the text

...and the rooster that crows at 3 AM ? This deviance may also be associated with the firing of shotguns.

around 6:15 +/- This guy says that operating a video game controller, such as turning the controller to the right, does not cause the reaction within the game where the controlled character turns to the right. That's like saying pressing the 'A' key on your keyboard while a word processor or text bar is open and selected doesn't cause an 'A' to appear onscreen... which is like saying that plugging an electronic device into an electric power grid doesn't cause the electronic device to receive electric power. Weird way of putting things into words. This guy probably knows what he means to be talking about but is a very poor communicator; doesn't come off as understanding real world logic too well.

@dahawk8574

4 жыл бұрын

I would not be as quick as you to conclude that he is a poor communicator. There is only so much that can be conveyed in a 6 and a half minute video on an extremely complex topic. In order to understand what Hoffman is saying here in this clip, it is necessary to suspend your notion of everything that you take to be real. If you've watched The Matrix, then this should be easy to do. You can start this video over from the beginning with this view that someone has pulled the wool over your eyes completely, and that your understanding of pressing the 'A' on your computer keyboard shows how deeply you have bought into this illusion which you take to be reality. In the words of Morpheus... *_"You think that's air your breathing now?"_* kzread.info/dash/bejne/q3ZhrNyJcq3HnKQ.html The problem is not Hoffman's lack of understanding of "real world logic". This disconnect is happening because you take this to be the real world, without question, whereas Hoffman knows "reality" to be a fiction. "Wake up, Neo." Wake up, zerooskul.

@GustavoOliveira-gp6nr

9 ай бұрын

What he means is that: Inside the video game, the wheel is not the direct cause of the car turning direction. It appears to be so, but both the car and the driving wheel are generated by the eletromic circuit outside of the game screen that is actually causing all the phenomen you see in the video game. So, even though at first glance, it seems like the driving wheel is causing the car to move to the side, this is incorrect. The same could be the case of the mind. The brain acrivity causes sensations? Or are both sensations and brain acrivities connected to a third mechanism we are not aware of that is causing both phenomena?

There is no 'hard problem of consciousness' - sure ... providing the complete domino chain of causality from stimulating V4 and loss of colour, IS VERY VERY HARD ... but (Hoffman) says this in the sense of, formulating a theory is hard because the brain is complex. Mr PHILOSOPHER on the other hand supposes the 'hard problem of consciousness' is something entirely different ... he says the problem is of a different type, not just complexity. He will never be satisfied with the fact that 'he' reports loss of colour when you muck with his neurons, he will always protest 'that he has qualia' and is now experiencing black and white. He will say 'it FEELS this away' .... he doesn't get it, so does everybody else who is experimented on, these very protests are part of the causal chain.... LOL ... That is every time I show a philosopher I can control his experiences ... he says 'but I'm so special, I'm still special aren't I, surely I'm not just a biological Turing machine' .... LOL

@Hythloday71

4 жыл бұрын

@@thotslayer9914 yes and yes