/sci/ - Science & Math

>>9870497
>all i really know is that IM conscious
You don't really know that. You believe that.
"Conscious" is a poorly defined informal term that gets used to refer to all sorts of distinct processes in a sloppy and misleading way.

>>9870497
>technically all i really know is that IM conscious
Sounds like something an unconcious NPC would say

>>9870673
>Sounds like something an unconcious NPC would say
Sounds like something an unconcious NPC would say

>>9870497
google solipsism.

Fuck all you guys. I'M the one conscious person here.

no, there is no experiment that allows you to determine if other people are conscious. hence continues is not observable, nor testable, therefore consiousness is not science

http://boards.4chan.org/x

You can’t actually prove that you’re conscious either under the assumption that other humans either are or are not, unless you attempt quantum immortality and prove the solipsistic ideologies in one move.

Some times it’s just better to assume certain things are true without seeing them. I assume everyone around me isn’t some sort of biological NPC and is actually as alive as I am, and act on such thinking even if I can’t prove it to myself.

you can't prove anything that is in the natural world (because of quantum indeterminacy). constructed ideas are fantasies which may never exist but even these do not get a pass because they emerge from your thoughts which are rooted in physical matter. therefore the real problem is measurement, which is advanced approximation with modern technology (computers, lasers, satellites) and engineering (material sciences, precision machining, 3d modelling and simulation).

the bottom has fallen out of the theoretical world view, having been convincingly outdated by statistical approaches and systems (information) control theory. this replaced the 19th century steam pump with the 20th century von neumann tape machine. likewise the big problem has shifted from energy containment and power generation to decideability and completeness.

this process was championed by practical minded inventors, which inspired mathematicians, which inspired physicists which inspired the engineers who went on to advance the modern world into the digital and wireless era. the next step in this process will be a deconstruction and rewiring of an individual human brain, putting in new and taking out old ideas through a more efficient automated process. this will be necessary to prevent another world war between religious and irreligious extremists, both sides will develop mind weapons and deploy them to the effect of self-neutralization. out of this technology will come a deeper understanding of how to control large populations and keep them entertained, happy and oblivious. this should create a homeostatic civilization with zero growth for a few thousand years until some group of savages previously undetected will destroy stability and plunge the world into pre-technological hell. this seems to occur every 30 thousand years or so.

>>9870497
>proving anything with absolute certainty
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cromwell%27s_rule

I can’t even tell if I am conscious.

Consciousness does not exist

>>9873289
Can't wait for next episode

>>9870674
>Sounds like something an unconcious NPC would say
Sounds like something an unconcious NPC would say

>>9870497
How do you know that you are conscious though? I never got why people assumed this to be true. For all we know non of this is real and are experiencing literally nothing right now.

>>9870497
Nigga a guy literally starved to death trying to prove 2+2=4 was logical. As far as we know we have no actual knowledge and this plane of existential actually acts completely irrationally with no set patterns, but our former views of reality persist because nothing too out of order has happened yet.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kurt_G%C3%B6del

>>9873396
The matrix is real.

>>9870497
Other people can keep secrets from me. Therefore they aren't me.

>>9870497
philosophers have known that for a long time. it's called the problem of other minds. solipsism is still kinda unmerited though: extrapolating knowledge about my own consciousness to other beings is no less valid than postulating that the contents of my consciousness come from an objective world that exists outside of my mind.

>>9870506
consciousness is certainly used in different meanings, but that doesn't make each of them sloppy or poorly defined. at least in philosophy of mind and neuroscience, all of the more complex uses (e.g. self-consciousness) build upon the core concept of **phenomenal consciousness**.

phenomenal consciousness is no other than the capacity to feel/experiencing any kind of sensation/the existence of a subjectivity in some physical system.

it's the difference captured between dreaming and normal waking life on one hand vs dreamless sleep, vegetative states, coma and death on the other. this is as solid a distinction as it gets. in one of them you intrinsically exist; on the other you are just a bunch of objects. literally all of science, art and much of ethics hinges on the uses of experience/consciousness.

>>9873250
>no, there is no experiment that allows you to determine if other people are conscious
> hence continues is not observable

non sequitur. you can observe and experiment your own consciousness, theorize about it in scientific terms and extrapolate to others. in fact, everything you observe is, by definition, part of your own consciousness.

everything scientists, phenomenologists and lay-people have ever experimented is an exercise in consciousness. the whole endeavor of science can be described as providing the best conceptual descriptions that will account for and predict your conscious states.

>>9870497
That pic makes me laugh.
>psst, hey kid... wanna take down postmodernism together?

>>9873435
>literally all of science, art and much of ethics hinges on the uses of experience/consciousness
That's the problem. Very old and deeply ingrained language is the hardest to have serious, well defined discussions about because the implicit assumptions they make have long since contaminated how everyone speaks / writes.
>the core concept of **phenomenal consciousness**
>this is as solid a distinction as it gets
>in one of them you intrinsically exist; on the other you are just a bunch of objects.
So three instances just in those couple of sentences alone where you're emphasizing how fundamental and irreducible this concept is.
That's exactly the problem.
You can't hope to have serious progress on topics like this if you're stuck on an assumption you've already hit bedrock and can reduce no further.
https://web.media.mit.edu/~minsky/eb9.html
>At the same time signals from the sensors in your ears, nose, and skin will travel along quite different paths, and all these streams of information may come to affect, in various ways, the descriptions the rest of your mind is using. So, because those pathways are so complex and indirect, when you try to tell someone about what sensation you feel, or what you are experiencing, you’ll be telling a story based on sixth-hand reports that use information that has gone through many kinds of transformations. So despite what some philosophers claim, we have no basis to insist that what we call our ‘sense of ‘experience’ is uniquely direct.
>The old idea that sensations are 'basic' may have been useful in its day, the way the four kinds of 'atoms' of antiquity were supposed to be elementary. But now we need to recognize that our perceptions are far less 'direct,’ because they are affected by what our other resources may want or expect. This might relate to the fact that we sometimes clearly’ see’ objects, which do not ‘really’ exist.

>>9873448
hhmmmmmmmmmmm

>>9873595
>So three instances just in those couple of sentences alone where you're emphasizing how fundamental and irreducible this concept is.
>That's exactly the problem.
>You can't hope to have serious progress on topics like this if you're stuck on an assumption you've already hit bedrock and can reduce no further.
You mean like electricity was before Faraday/Maxwell?

Charge was included into the scientific picture of the world without philosophical reduction (same for the rest of the fundamental physical properties). That doesn't make them unscientific or useless to have and discuss about.

In fact, as someone who has actually read some of the literature in consciousness studies and philosophy of mind, the best theory of consciousness so far is one in which it is equated with local-maxima of irreducible intrinsic cause-effect power. I am speaking of Tononi's Integrated Information Theory:

http://journals.plos.org/ploscompbiol/article?id=10.1371/journal.pcbi.1003588

>>9870506
>You don't really know that you exist.

cogito ergo sum

>>9870497
wow nice revelation idiot

>>9873250
>consiousness is not science
>only science can give us truth
>consciousness must be regarded as magic
>the absolute state of scientism
call me a strawman if you must, you're yet another autistic fedora faggot.

>>9875370
>You mean like electricity was before Faraday/Maxwell?
No, more like Minsky's example of everything in nature being made up of combinations of the classical elements of earth, wind, water, and fire.
>as someone who has actually read some of the literature in consciousness studies and philosophy of mind, the best theory of consciousness so far
I don't think it's very reasonable to declare anything "the best theory of consciousness so far," not even just because of my terminology complaint but because of how much disagreement there is for these topics.
Anyway, here's another example of my problem with this term here:
>>9875393
This anon believes "consciousness" is either another word for "existence" or else a somehow necessary for existence.
And here:
>>9875396
Is "consciousness" a word for the act of thinking (cogito)?
A lot of cognition happens without our awareness, true? If I had to characterize what I think of when I come across the word "consciousness," it would be something much closer to "awareness" than to thinking. I wouldn't say you're "conscious" of every thought you have, let alone that your thoughts are synonymous with "consciousness."
And aside from thoughts, existence, and awareness, what about the possibility of "qualia" as real yet non-physical phenomena e.g. the notions of blueness or sourness?
All of that is still super- high level and not even beginning to scratch the surface of what's really going on with all the different things our brains do that fall under the massive umbrella of what people call "consciousness."
Personally I find it pretty suspicious that anything seemingly dependent on an elaborate underlying physical nervous system would be a fundamental / irreducible force of nature. I think a better explanation for why we want to call it irreducible has a lot more to do with our biased position as the organisms operating with these processes than it does with the natural world itself.

>>9875527
Do you even Renal Dickart, anon?

I cogito, therefore I ergo sum.

I can't speak for any of you philosophical fag-zombies out there.

>>9875530
>therefore I ergo sum
cringe

>>9875544
>cringe
>not even a reaction face
>on an imageboard

Go to reddit with your autism you cum sucking cock sneeze

i hate you all.

>>9875561
Not as much as I hate myself.

I think people get too tied up in semantics. If you have a subjective experience and the mental capacity to realize that, that's good enough to qualify whatever you want to call the weird shit that happens in our head.

There's still no way to tell if anyone else is tho.

>>9873226
I can't see through your eyes like I can see through mine, therefore I'm the only conscious person in existence.

>>9873816
What an insightful reply, you brought a lot to the table here.

>>9875648
We're all just pieces of the broken mind of God experiencing itself subjectively

>>9870497
Its quite easy to do this, and it should be readily apparent they are. The problem is, of course, that you're more then likely infected with a certain subset of philosophical ideas that have impressed themselves upon you and made you unable to see out of their narrow ideological confines. Making such realizations impossible, no matter what is presented.

>>9875867
Get the fuck out of here with your word salad Jordan

>>9875941
Dont trouble yourself trying to decipher it, Cleatus, thoughts of this magnitude are only comprehended by the initiated, and only after years of rigorous study in cloistered confinement.

>>9870497
>all i really know is that IM conscious
You’re not, you’re just reacting to the stimuli around you according to your predisposed nature

>>9875393
Define "exist"
Define "you"

>>9870497
Animals have souls but no spirit. Plants have spirit but no soul.

>>9876567
>isn't able to discern himself from the environment
>his self does not exist for complete dissolution within the pleroma killed it
>is absolutely dead inside

ishygddt

>>9875527
>Is "consciousness" a word for the act of thinking (cogito)?

No.

>>9875530
Based and redpilled

>>9876654
>redpill signalling
kek

Are intelligent brains more conscious than less-intelligent brains?

>>9870497
If you look into the astral while they are sleeping you can see their souls wandering around.

>>9876603
Define any of those in some way that is testable and doesn't rely on taking things on faith.

You can't.

>>9876746
I don't know what the fuck you're on about so I'll just call youa dirty fucking kike and call it a day.

>>9877130
I loled anon thanks. I like you too

>>9877125
Well, if you can't rely on faith, maybe you really are dead inside.

>>9870497
Think about yourself much do you?
What are your accomplishments?

>>9870497
metaphysics is a >>>/lit/ question

>>9870497

Find a Raven/Corvid/Parrot/Intellegent Ape.

Teach them human language alongside their wild animal bretheren.

Have them translate other corvids/apes for you.

Have apes/corvids translate other animals for you.

The ultimate game of Chinese Whispers.

>>9878539

Nobody is willing to put in that much effort to translate animals.

https://youtu.be/AfsnHVaScjg

>>9878544
>He hasn't heard of The Grey Crows.

lmao.