Comment by bluefirebrand
15 hours ago
> But you could create a church of your teddy bear and, with some grit, you could get people to widely assign consciousness to it
That's not really the same as it having actual consciousness, even if people will wind up treating it similarly though
Humans have consciousness whether or not anyone believes we do
Or at least I do. I don't really know about the rest of you. I prefer to believe that you all have consciousness too though
> That's not really the same as it having actual consciousness,
It's trivially easy to come up with definitions of consciousness that support your point. But there isn't one of them that it is trivially singular and above all others from a scientific point of view. If you say, "I know consciousness when I see it," you are just making the point that consciousness is attributed by the beholder. Idem if you affirm "I'm conscious". If you say, "only humans are conscious", you are socially attributing consciousness. Now, I don't want to be argumentative, I honestly haven't been able to figure this matter in a decade of armchair internal debate[^1], and it seems I have some company.
[^1]: Having this internal debate makes me believe I'm conscious, but now that I have seen LLMs in action whose "internal debate" is more lucid than mine, I honestly question that "internal debate" is sufficient.
There's social factors in developing an understanding because it's a hard topic, but the definition can only stretch so far before you've invented your own term that is clearly not the original intent. You enter this territory if you include the unmodified teddy bear.
If you modify the teddy bear enough that's a totally different situation, so let's not confuse the two. In the modification case we don't even need to worry about simulacra, we can stretch it into pajama shape and use an entire human as the stuffing of the teddy bear.
I once had a 2 day long argument in work slack with the CEO of my company over whether a thermostat is conscious.
maybe a teddy bear does have consciousness too, in the same way you do.
Well, maybe, but I find this pretty unlikely?
It seems more likely to me that e.g. the individual fibers of the teddy bear are conscious than that there is a consciousness associated with the teddy bear as a whole. And I don’t find it particularly likely that the fibers do.
Like, by what mechanism is the teddy bear “one thing” in a way relevant for consciousness to be associated with that thing.
When people have stuff happen to their brain, this has an effect on their conscious experience in a way that isn’t true of e.g. their hair being cut, or their nails being clipped. In this way, the consciousness of a person seems associated more with their brain than to parts of their hair or nails. But, the way that a persons hair and nails is related to the rest of a person’s body (including their brain) seems more similar to how one bit of fluff is related to the rest of a teddy bear, than the way a part of someone’s brain is related to the rest of their body (including the rest of their brain).
Like, [bit of fluff]:[rest of bear]::[bit of hair or nail]:[rest of body (including brain)] is a better analogy than [bit of fluff]:[rest of bear]::[bit of brain]:[rest of body (including rest of brain)] is, and so, in the same way that removing a bit of someone’s hair or nail in a way that they don’t notice does not seem to alter that person’s conscious experience, while removing or altering a bit of their brain very much can alter their conscious experience, I would expect that removing a bit of a teddy bear would have no impact on any conscious experience it might have, and this goes for, every part of it? Like, any way that you cut it in a (n/(2n+1)), ((n+1)/(2n+1)) split, I would expect that to be more like the “removing some hair” to whatever conscious experience it might have, and so, I expect that it probably has no overall conscious experience?
I find the idea that a single thread has an overall conscious experience to be a little more likely than a teddy bear having one. Like, if you cut a thread, that’s always a pretty fundamental change.. idk. Again, I don’t think that’s like either.
It doesn't.
If you want to make that argument, I promise I'll read it, give it honest consideration and offer a thoughtful reply.
Otherwise don't be stupid. Come on.
if you're interested it's called panpsychism, the idea that consciousness is a fundemental trait of the universe. it's an idea a little like solipsism, in that people have a reflex against it, but it's pretty hard to make a case against it any stronger than "come on man don't be stupid."
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