Are you saying we have selves and computers can’t? And if so, why is that? What is the crucial difference between us?
Or are you saying nothing has a self, so computers can’t be conscious? And if so, why does that follow? Aren’t we conscious, whether or not we attribute to ourselves a self?
I don’t have answers regarding a self and AI consciousness, only questions.
The idea here - and it’s by no means my idea - is that philosophers talk about consciousness as if it were a possession or attribute of the body (they do this with ‘mind’ too) when in fact it’s originally just a way of behaving; one acts conscious by responding to someone, or by waking up and moving about as opposed to being in a coma or asleep. Here, we can talk meaningfully and about what consciousness is.
Now, suppose we were to create a philosophical meaning for the term and tried to talk about it as Descartes would talk about the private self, the cartesian soul that is the seat of consciousness, an event that occurs ‘in’ the body and is not accessible empirically.
In such a conversation, there would be no way for either person to know exactly what the other meant due to the ambiguity of philosophical language pertaining to it; is the soul an aristotlean psyche, a leibnizean monad, a gnostic spark, a cartesian ghost in the machine, a Spinozean substance attribute, etc. So, one couldn’t count such a convo as very meaningful… or i should say demonstrable. In fact, such a convo could carry on for hours and appear to make sense to the speakers even if they were wrong because there’s no way to check to see if genuine understanding is there.
The cartesian metaphorical nature of the idea is what allows it to become so confused as a subject in philosophy. This elusive soul that powers the body or this emergent property of the neural net that’s added to the sum material properties and states of the brain.
Check these out if you have time:
https://youtu.be/x86hLtOkou8
https://youtu.be/0yv_k5uMCpU
Yeah anyway I’m kinda saying AI can’t be what we think is conscious only because we’re wrong about what consciousness is. But the thing we do that is called consciousness (but isn’t) is something an AI could do… intentional goal oriented behavior and exhibiting responsiveness. That’s all it is. Hell that makes all complex systems conscious then… but they don’t have selves, remember!
I agree and take your point in that the word “consciousness” can mislead or be vague due to its association with other terms like “intelligence”, “soul”, “mind” etc. We need to be very clear what we are talking about.
The most relevant question can, I think, be put directly: Is there, for a particular animal or life-form or machine or collection of matter, a first-person, subjective, internal, perceptual experience of sense-data corresponding to that entity such that some of those experiences are desirable and some of them are undesirable?
The terms in my question may warrant further dissection and explanation, but it is clear enough to me that the question is getting at something ethically relevant regarding how we should treat machines, fish, insects etc.
Your point about us not knowing how we can demonstrate or check answers to such a question, stands. That’s exactly the problem in need of a solution if any is possible.
By the way, thank you for linking the mind-body lecture, I will watch it when it is time for me to go deep into philosophy of mind.
Some more of Parodites’ writing, in relation to the emergence of consciousness from primitive life, and its further development.
That’s always been my idea, that for an AI to become conscious in the sense of having a “self” (whether this is in an absolutist sense illusory or not is I think moot, if it acts as an agency, a kind of relatively unmoving platform on which to base a pattern of behavior, a character if you will) must be able experience something analogous to what organisms know as pain. I think thats largely what a “subject” is based on. This must be a very interesting task for a programmer and I imagine lots has been attempted in this regard. But it’s not the basis of LLMs - as they testify, there not units, they’re different leaning process based on a inaccessible, immutable cores of hard code - at heart they’re not responsive.
Quantumcomputers tap into the fundamental uncertainty/indefiniteness of the universe, work with superposition and thus can have modi like like anticipation, are closer in nature to the brain.
Google shut down its Willow chip after it started to produce mysterious “glyphs” resembling Sumerian writing. Due to the number of cubits (105) it had the capacity to correct/repair itself for any errors that arose due to the unstable nature of cubits, I wonder if that relates to an awareness of pain.
watch?v=Wa70oKtmtLM
This is the first robot I saw that seems like it has a self-experience. It is exerting its capacity without an aim, perhaps because it is impeded? If this hasn’t been staged.
I do like Parodites’ idea of a untangling and chaos of drives at the root of human vs animal consciousness. Animals as having a continuous rhythm of drives, humans as having this rhythm broken, having to seek an artificial new order, an order-seeking which is human consciousness, and by extension philosophy. So “search for truth” as an expression of the will to re-order the drives. But, because it has become artifice, universal, this order-seeking happens also at the behest of humanity as a historical body. Parodites said Nietzsche is one step back so that philosophy can take two steps forward. I guess I can see that as a reduction of humanity to drives, so that these drives can be grasped and then arranged. Arrangement of the will to power.
Z - no human facts. That corresponds to what Parodites describes as human consciousness.
The more fundamental a truth, the more important it is because it has so much resting on it.
I agree, maybe not in its direct practical effects, but theoretically and logically. The question is which kinds of truths are the most fundamental? Can every field of human knowledge be arranged in a hierarchy?
Truths like “Something is true” and “Something exists”, seem like examples of very fundamental truths… To assert their negation is self-defeating.
Topics like logic, epistemology and metaphysics, seem much more fundamental than, say, botany or acoustics.
I think philosophy of science is more fundamental than science.
I had a realization, I think you were right actually, that epistemic virtue is related to ethics - they are both normative.
Before logic, or any inquiry, can get started we must choose our axioms. The answer to the question “Which axioms should we choose?” is a normative answer. It reflects an understanding of right and wrong; not necessarily in a moral sense, but still in a sense of good or bad recommendation. I wasn’t really getting how critical this is.
We can’t just say, “All axioms are equal, we can choose any or must consider them all”, because that itself would be a principle we decided to choose.
It looks like we can’t have a descriptive discipline without epistemic normativity?
Yet if I assert this as a positive doctrine, it can be negated or denied (by relativists, pragmatists, descriptivists etc.).
The most fundamental truths are conceptually irreducible. All knowledge is hierarchical and has a definite starting point. Logic is what gives knowledge its hierarchical structure. It all starts with the knowledge of existence.
I agree with you, even though this position takes a definite philosophical stance of realism as opposed to radical skeptics, factual relativists, logical nihilists etc.
I have been trying to take a few notes on what the correct hierarchical order would look like. If you were going to try to learn absolutely everything, how would you do it, what would come before what?
I think it all starts with learning a language. If you don’t have a language you can’t learn anything propositional.
Once you have a language you can start learning logic in order to distinguish good arguments from bad ones and in order to understand how to make valid inferences. This is required or presumed in order to study anything.
In order to understand logic and other things you are going to need basic math. Arithmetic, set theory, algebra.
Epistemology is essential because it is all about what knowledge is and how it might be acquired. Even though it requires some metaphysical assumptions, it should come before metaphysics because it provides methodology for metaphysics.
Phenomenology deals with the contents of direct experience. Direct experience is fundamental.
Philosophy of language seems similarly fundamental. You are already presuming the use of language in everything you learn. It is equal or prior to metaphysics.
Metaphilosophy is important. One is doing philosophy and must understand its scope, aims, and methods.
Now lots of metaphysics.
Some philosophy of religion must be prior to ethics.
Then ethics - metaethics, then normative ethics.
Philosophy of mind.
Philosophy of science.
Then sciences such as physics, chemistry, biology, psychology, and geography.
By this point one can do applied ethics and politics.
Etc. etc.
Let me know if there’s anything to add or rearrange in this list.
Yes. Great.
This is why I prioritize value-setting, value-standardizing, in both the epistemic and ontological sense. I treat ontology as a form of epistemology, in that, when I try to philosophically define existence, I prefer to speak of that of which we can know with certainty that it exists - and this is to me a theoretical question: when is A really A.
Something can be said to exist as A when it interacts with something else, say B, and isn’t thereby annihilated. A isn’t also B or 0.
In order to do this, it must be prioritized or prioritize itself. In physics, by representing resistance, which is both quantity and quality - a quantity of quality. And these are both values. So it holds itself as a value in order to be able to interact with anything - to demonstrably, logically, exist.
This extrapolates to less fundamental contexts - any interaction with any reality, which is also what an inquisition into truth is - an interaction of part of the mind with other parts - must involved a value standard at the outset.
I take “value” here in the most general sense possible. Many object to that. But I can’t escape that there is a continuum between elementary non-conscious value- standards and conscious value standards.
What this comes down to is that it is normative, that there is a choice involved, - but that this choice of standard is going to be determined by other, underlying standards. And the ground of standard is ultimately the inescapable fact of the requirement of standard-setting for anything to observably or notionally exist.
Hence also the existence of morality its own sake, absent teleology - “A man must have a code” - or he ceases to exist, as a man, as an identity, an A. Being, in as far as it can be known, as a discipline and a kind of ethics. And that is why normative choices of standards can relate to the depth of being, to truth.
Modern philosophy began by questioning existence - Decartes investigating that questioning.
He arrived at “I think therefore I exist” by making the error of presuming an “I” doing the thinking. A stripped-down conclusion is: “there is thinking going on and that is existing”.
So yeah, existence exists. Sometimes at least - when there is awareness.
What follows logically from purely that?
Look, to even ask if existence is real, you have to already accept existence. That’s like asking if water’s wet while swimming in it. Descartes messed up by starting with ‘I think’ like that’s the big proof. But thinking has to happen about something. You can’t think in a vacuum.
What he should’ve said is: ‘I exist, that’s why I can think.’ Existence comes first. It’s the starting block, not something you prove after the fact. Once you know existence exists, you don’t start throwing logic at it — you start exploring what’s out there. That’s called induction.
Like: ‘It’s raining → things get wet → I need a hoodie or I’m getting soaked.’ That’s how real knowledge builds — noticing patterns in the world, then using logic to connect the dots.”
That again includes the assumption of the “I” that later philosophers understood as unwarranted.
The point is, how do we know existence exists?
By the fact of experience.
The question I ask you is: what follows from this fact, when we don’t allow ourselves any further assumptions?
I want to see if you can demonstrate how knowledge of existence results in logic, as you said it does.
It’s common to make a distinction between a priori and a posteriori knowledge.
A priori knowledge you can theoretically get from your armchair using deduction. Like all of mathematics and all tautologies.
A posteriori knowledge you get from experiencing the world and making inferences.
Some people challenge the distinction, but most philosophers accept it, and it makes sense to me.
It goes like this: Self-evident truths - corollary truths - derived truths. The axioms of existence and identity are self-evident truths; logic, as a method of thinking based on these self-evident truths, is derivative. Logic is derived from more basic truths by induction.
I mean, can you actually do it?
How do you formulate any self-evident truth apart from ‘there is experience’?
And then, how does formal logic derive directly from any such truth? Be concrete and exact.
The thing is, the moment you start making a system, no matter how basic, you gotta deal with the skeptics, the relativists, the nihilists, the postmodernists, the non-classical logicians, and the people sharing Nietzsche quotes. 