Comment by wat10000
5 days ago
There’s nothing in known physics that explains consciousness. I agree about the rest, but consciousness not only defies explanation by known physics, it’s so far beyond what’s known that there isn’t even any concept of what it could be. We barely have the ability to describe it, let alone explain it.
What's special about consciousness? I assume it is just a sequence of thoughts/images inside the brain and that's all? Like when a cat sees a cheese and an image of its taste appears instantly and motivates it to come closer. Human is the same, I think.
What’s special is qualia. Subjective experience. Thoughts and images could occur within a brain without that, and there’s no explanation for how there’s a subjective experience of those things, or even a serious notion of what is doing the experiencing, beyond vague handwaving about “consciousness.” But something is.
Consciousness is very interesting because if you postulate that you can't possibly create it by running a Turing machine, then anything that is simulatable can't be the mechanism behind it. Which would raise the followup question, what is? My money is on some quantum effect.
Or rather that the whole premise is wrong? I say, take Wittgensteinian stance on the matter, and who cares it's been 50 years.
You can produce some rich audio and visual effects in the form of music and movies that can be played on the turing machine that is a laptop. I think it's possible that consciousness is along those lines.
But is consciousness even a thing? Shouldn't the burden of proof be on the one making a claim that there exists something called consciousness? If they cannot show evidence that such a thing exists or may exist, then for all purposes it does not exist.
If you want to pretend you don't exist, that's your business. I think we both know you do.
That's not how science works. You have to devise an experiment that can independently validate the assertion.
I don’t need to prove it to anybody. I know it’s a thing, that’s good enough for me.
It's not good enough for science. How do you approach it so it can be independently verified?
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