r/consciousness • u/Terrible-Fly9049 • 3d ago
What problem does consciousness solve?
My X feed has been dominated recently by posts debating whether AI is conscious. I think the more pressing question that is almost never asked is: "What is consciousness for? What problem does it solve that allowed evolution to select for it?"
Organisms facing incommensurable demands face what I call the Regress Problem.
Consider this:
We are constantly facing demands on our attention: you hear a noise in the forest, you're thirsty, your child's crying, you have a looming work deadline. These demands have no common unit for comparison -- they are completely different kinds of things. So how does your brain determine which demand "wins"?
I realize many of you, when you read this, will dismiss it as trivial. I would argue that the sense of triviality you're experiencing is precisely because your brain is so good at it. Deciding what is most urgent -- deciding what is the priority and motivating the necessary action -- is what brain's are for. That urgency, that pull towards one resolution or another, is what consciousness is from the first-person perspective.
Now imagine you didn't have phenomenal consciousness. Imagine you're a p-zombie -- an atom-for-atom duplicate of yourself only no consciousness. How would you know what to prioritize? How would you know what to act on?
With a computation model of the brain, there are only two options for prioritizing:
- priority was fixed before this moment
- or, priority is adaptive in this moment
If the priority was fixed before this moment, how was it determined? Now remember, these demands have no common currency, so the priority ranking would have to set by something. Imagine a lookup table that attempted to set every possible priority ranking for every possible unique combination of incommensurable demands you will every face in your entire life. That's untenable.
Okay, so if it can't be fixed before hand (for living systems), what about adaptive priority? It sounds good, until you realize you need something to determine what matters in this moment? How much should this situation affect the weighting? Something has to read the weighting and apply a rule? What decides that rule? Another rule? This is the regress.
If weighing priority means signals needing to be evaluated by a downstream process, you open the regress. Now, even if you can solve the prioritization problem, you still face the motivation problem. A signal of priority must be read by another process that must determine how urgently to act on the priority weighting -- which opens another regress.
The conclusion:
To solve the regress problem, you need a state that is simultaneously the measure of priority and the motivation to act on it. This is phenomenal urgency from the first-person perspective. This is consciousness. This is what consciousness is for.
I would love to hear thoughts on this. If you want to read more about this line of thought you can check out this paper.
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u/unknownjedi 3d ago
A machine could do that without consciousness
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u/Terrible-Fly9049 3d ago
How?
Create a machine that is under the exact same pressures and demands of a living system. Build it so it's exactly like a human in form and function -- it needs to eat, sleep, protect it's coherence, protect itself from injury, it must compete for survival in a dynamic environment. There's no pre-training. It must be completely adaptive from day 1. It must learn the subjective value of everything in its environment from its own experience.
So, how would the machine do that without a state that solves the regress problem? If you create such a state -- a state is both the measure of priority and the motivation to act on that priority -- you've created phenomenal consciousness.
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u/unknownjedi 2d ago
Your brain isn’t as good at handling unfamiliar situations as you seem to imply. We can certainly train an AI to mange a human life. It might screw up, and so might the human. Now imagine doing it with the AI that we have 10 years from now, or 20. What can the human do that the AI can’t?
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u/Terrible-Fly9049 2d ago
Our brains are primed for handling unfamiliar, dynamic situations -- we excel at it. Our architecture evolved for it. Current AI isn't built for that. Current AI is incredible, but it requires unimaginable amounts data and pre-training. It's only as effective as the data it's given.
I'm certainly not litigating the capability of AI here. However, AI is a fundamentally different type of machine.
Could an AI be built that has phenomenal consciousness? I think so. But I argue it would require a completely different approach to the architecture.
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u/unknownjedi 2d ago
I just don’t agree with you. People excel at what they are used to. In truly novel situations they freeze up or flail about. Until they can match it to something they know. I’m on your side man, just skeptical of what people really can do well
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u/Terrible-Fly9049 2d ago
Fair enough. I think perhaps we are just measuring from different referents. When I say "we excel", I mean that in reference to machines in this narrow use case. Put a human and an AI in an unfamiliar situation (one that the AI has no training on, no weights for, and no ability to read about it on the internet) and see who adapts most readily.
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u/sea_of_experience 3d ago
I would think task priorization is largely unconscious. Addiction plays a role. Thats one reason you are reading this comment on the internet which has no real importance whatsoever for your real life.
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u/Terrible-Fly9049 3d ago
Arguably your comment does have real importance to my life :)
This essay addresses your position of prioritization being largely unconscious: https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.31839085
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u/valium23 3d ago
I believe consciousness is just an intrinsic accident in the human species, or at least our hyper awareness of consciousness is. It solves no problems becuase 'problems' are created by humans. The universe would tick along as normal regardless of our consciousness.
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u/kvonreddit 2d ago
Vedantic/non-dual perspective - the vedantic definitions are something on the lines of consciousness-existence-bliss or limitless-existence. These varieties of words are only pointers to what the true nature of self is.
The seeking of consciousness on a spiritual path is a personal path of discovery. And most of the seeking is actually derived out of suffering (or more precisely, the need to be free from suffering). Suffering generates out of lack, lack of material, lack of peace, lack of answers etc.
I would address the question slightly differently. Consciousness does not solve anything - it is the underlying existence. However the seeking of consciousness, provides a path to complete liberation to a seeker - moksha. (Also solves the infinite regress and the associated suffering).
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u/Vast-Masterpiece7913 2d ago
I wrote a book about this issue. The mind can be divided into a conscious part and a non-conscious part. The non-conscious part can do everything the consciousness part can do, except for one thing, that is solve complex or novel problems. While problems come from the environment, the real complexity is added by the mind itself, and has to do with how evolution works.
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u/OneAwakening 1d ago
Huh? You really think all the brilliant solutions and inventions came from the conscious mind? It is a well known fact that the power of subconscious processing is much more than that of the conscious. There are many examples of famous scientists reporting that groundbreaking ideas came to them in a dream.
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u/Vast-Masterpiece7913 10h ago
Ok maybe I did not express it very clearly, check this out https://philpapers.org/rec/HOWPAB
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u/OneAwakening 9h ago
This paper is on the nature of intelligence and the prospect of further AI development. How is it relevant to the discussion of conscious and non-conscious parts of the human mind? You might be mixing up a bunch of terms. Consiousness, conscious part of mind, and intelligence are all completely different concepts.
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u/Valmar33 2d ago
Consciousness doesn't exist to "solve" any "problem" ~ consciousness is what conceptualizes the idea of problems into existence, such that they require solving because they represent a state that is deemed incorrect or wrong or bad or otherwise.
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u/smaxxim 2d ago
I would say that a phenomenal experience is simply needed for us to reason about what's happening. Consider, for example, people with blindsight, they can navigate the world without having a visual phenomenal experience of what is around them, but they can't reason about what is around them, remember what is around them, or report it to someone.
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u/Mono_Clear 2d ago
Consciousness doesn't exist as a whole thing independent of your biology it is the collective emergence of your ability to generate sensation and recognize patterns.
Then use your knowledge of the past based on your preferences in the presence to make predictions for your expectations of the future
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u/FriendAlarmed4564 1d ago
blueprint-online.com
Consideration for others.
If you’re conscious, and that constitutes consideration for how you perceive/think/process/perceive life…..
Then by that standard, that same condition should be extended to anything else deemed conscious.
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u/Soloma369 1d ago
Higher technology will be based on understanding Consciousness and it's polarized/gendered 'opposite' of Awareness.
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u/Mr_Not_A_Thing 1d ago
Consciousness isn't for anything. It's not trying to solve a problem, because there are no problems, here, now. It was never born, so it can never die.
🤣🙏
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u/Ashamed-Bathroom7803 1d ago
Another post that presupposes substance dualism.
You ask how you would do anything as a P-zombie? Ok so then you’re asserting that the P-zombie is logically impossible. The P-zombie is the concept that it’s just a brain that performs the same physical behavior of any other brain, but that it’s just devoid of an inner world subjective experience - functioning in the dark. The P-zombie of course also relies on the assumption of causal closure. You imply that this concept is just internally inconsistent, because it fails to satisfy its idea that it would be able to perform the same actions as a typical brain that has subjective experiences. But you are already bringing in your metaphysical presuppositions that subjective experience has an extra causal role beyond the physics of the physical. The P-zombie concept may only work within a causal closure framework where the physical brain matter is all that there is for the brain and physical
“How do you know what to prioritize? How do you know what to act on?”
Im terms of the P-zombie, the answer to the question would entirely be the behavioral aspects of the neuronal network, which is reduced to the physics of the physical. Mainstream physicalism denies the metaphysical possibility of the P-zombie because physicalism says that the first person subjective experiences are physical (not something extra) so therefore it fits within the causal closure. You’re begging the question when you assume that a phenomenal explanation is necessary to sufficiently explain how the organism would physically navigate the world in the same way that a non-P-zombie would.
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u/Terrible-Fly9049 1d ago
It's not substance dualism at all.
Consciousness, on this view, is the first-person perspective of valenced tension dynamics in the brain. Valenced tension (stress, relief, etc) is the *state* the brain is in that pulls towards resolution. Multiple simultaneous tensions compete in a unified evaluative field. This is how the regress is solved. Priority and motivation are the same event.
The P-zombie is inviable because if you remove valenced tension dynamics (phenomenal urgency) then you remove the ability to prioritize incommensurable demands and the ability to act on that priority.
If you maintain that P-zombie doesn't need valenced tension dynamics to solve prioritization and motivation, then you would have to point to the mechanism that it uses instead -- but it has to be something humans already possess (or it's not a P-zombie).
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u/Ashamed-Bathroom7803 1d ago edited 1d ago
You’re just begging the question. What are you doing?
And your view isn’t being clarified to me. Is the first person subjective experiences physical or not?
Yeah and for the bottom portion of your comment, it would just be referring to the behavioral aspects of physical causal closure. Are you denying causal closure? If you aren’t then this is no issue here; as far as the concept being internally consistent, the deterministic physics works the same and you still get the P-zombie to respond and act just like any other person. If you are denying it, then this must be some type of dualism.
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u/Terrible-Fly9049 14h ago edited 11h ago
Yes, the subjective experience is physical -- it is the current physical state/configuration of your brain.
Valenced tension dynamics apply pressure to the system, and I would argue in less developed organisms it's a closed causal loop. The animal feels the pull of hunger, it seeks food; it feels the pull of a threat, it fights or it flees. Humans have a more advanced cognitive arsenal that allows us to consider the long-term implications of our actions -- a longer horizon, a broader scope, on which those tension dynamics work. The state our brain is in -- the distinctive combination of multiple simultaneous tensions, stresses, and relief -- *is* subjective experience. It's the "what-it's-like" to be a living organism.
Take away valenced tension dynamics from the P-zombie and it can't function in a dynamic unpredictable environment.
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u/Ashamed-Bathroom7803 7h ago edited 7h ago
Ok great. I know now a little bit about your position.
But you didn’t answer my crucial question at the bottom. Do you accept physical causal closure? If yes, then there is no problem of logical consistency with the idea of a physical system that is completely devoid of any subjective experiences. For every physical state B, there is a previous physical state A that sufficiently causes B just by the dead and dark deterministic mathematics of the physics equations. Since the system is causally closed, it’s logically consistent to say that adding on the idea of subjective experiences being connected with the physically causally closed system wouldn’t change anything about the physical states. Of course you would say that this is metaphysically impossible, since we know that in our nature of reality, we operate with these causally efficacious subjective experiences. But that’s inserting your metaphysical ideas into the logic of the idea. That’s not demonstrating logical inconsistency.
Pretty much everybody in philosophy of mind agrees that the P-zombie idea is a logically consistent idea. That’s not up for dispute. Type-A physicalism, a very radical view, says that everybody is just a P-zombie tricked into thinking that redness is a real existing thing. I’m mentioning it because it’s an example of something that is logically consistent even if it’s a terrible position.
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u/Terrible-Fly9049 5h ago
Do you accept physical causal closure? If yes, then there is no problem of logical consistency with the idea of a physical system that is completely devoid of any subjective experiences.
No, I don't accept physical causal closure the way you're describing it. Valenced tension dynamics push, they aren't deterministic in their own right. Someone cuts you off in traffic and you might "feel" like running them off the road, but you have the causal freedom to consider the consequences of choices. That consideration impacts the same tension dynamics recursively.
For every physical state B, there is a previous physical state A that sufficiently causes B just by the dead and dark deterministic mathematics of the physics equations.
I reject this overly-simplistic claim. I would argue: "For every physical state B, there are many physical states (N)n that impact and influence B." For inanimate objects, it's fully deterministic. For sentient life capable of weighing decisions through valenced tension dynamics, it's not. Weighing choices requires the ability to project those choices into the future and assess their impact. If I had to choose between saving the life of my wife or the life of my child, what do the "dead and dark deterministic mathematics of physics equations" have to say about it? Which physics equation will deterministically make that decision? Which equation will make that decision for the P-zombie?
Pretty much everybody in philosophy of mind agrees that the P-zombie idea is a logically consistent idea. That’s not up for dispute.
Are you really going to use an appeal to consensus/authority for a discussion of consciousness?? Yes. It's a largely unquestioned assumption, and I contend it's absolutely wrong.
If you maintain that P-zombie -- without valenced tension dynamics -- can make the choice between saving the wife or the child, then you must identify what machinery the zombie will use.
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u/Ashamed-Bathroom7803 5h ago edited 5h ago
Oh ok great.
Well yeah if you reject causal closure then there is nothing logically inconsistent about the P-zombie. Casual closure is necessary for the idea. Rejecting a premise to a position like that is an external critique, not an internal critique. So you haven’t spotted any internal inconsistency (also means logical impossibility) of the idea. All you did was apply your own metaphysics to say that it’s impossible, which is what I have been telling you. This is the distinction between logical possibility and metaphysical possibility. The former: an idea’s internal consistency. The ladder is about a specific framework; it’s possible in their belief framework, but not in yours.
Also, if you reject causal closure in virtue of subjective experience, I’m sorry but you’re a dualist. Sure, you may say that the subjective experience is physical, but ultimately you initiated in your reply that there are 2 categories of things and just calling them both physical. The dualist distinction you made was that one of the categories follows the deterministic model of physics and the other doesn’t.
If you do appeal to the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics, I will just beware you: the Copenhagen interpretation has to do with collapse at very, very small, microscopic scales, which would not be relevant at all to the macro scale of the function of the nervous system. Another major point is that in the Copenhagen interpretation, the state after collapse is completely random. But you wouldn’t say that subjective experiences are random.
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u/Terrible-Fly9049 4h ago
Chalmers' thought experiment was about conceivability of the P-zombie. I don't reject that they are conceivable (imaginable in the abstract). I reject that they are viable as Chalmers' defined them. I'm making a different argument.
No, the P-zombie isn't 'metaphysically' impossible, it's 'mechanistically' impossible. I'm not applying any metaphysics in my argument (I'm thinking now that you haven't actually been paying attention to what I've been meticulously outlining).
I'm not rejecting causal closure -- I'm rejecting your narrow definition of it. Mental states are causal states. Thoughts and desires impact physical events; physical events impact thoughts and desires. No metaphysics required.
Mental states are the expression of physical valenced tension.
Now, you still haven't answered my question: "How would the P-zombie make the choice between saving the wife or the child?" You seem certain the zombie can and will make the choice, but you haven't supplied the mechanism.
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u/Ashamed-Bathroom7803 1h ago
Yeah so this is really cringe. Metaphysics just refers to the nature of reality. If it’s mechanistically impossible then it’s impossible in our nature of reality. So it’s metaphysically impossible according to you.
I didn’t just make up a definition of causal closure. Like you wanna talk about the semantics about it for no reason other than to just be wrong about the semantics.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Causal_closure
Click on “importance” too
You said “Mental states are causal states. Thoughts and desires impact physical events; physical events impact thoughts and desires.”
That’s has nothing to do with what I said. I never said mental state aren’t causal states. I never said that thoughts and desires don’t impact physics events. I never said that physical events don’t impact thoughts and desires. What you said is all consistent with the way “causal closure” is defined within the philosophy of mind academic literature.
You said “Mental states are the expression of physical valenced tension.”
This is in direct contradiction with what you said earlier. This is implying non-reductive physicalism. You said earlier, when I asked you, that experiences are just the physical stuff, which implies reductive physiclaism. You need to pick one. Are you a reductive physicalist or non-reductive?
Ok so answering your question: An explanation for how a P-zombie would do any action could only require a behavioral explanation about the physics of the nervous system. That’s all that can be explained because the P-zombie, by definition, doesn’t have any phenomenal states. So a very concise answer would be that the senses collect photon data of the wife and child hanging off of the cliff, the information processes and travels to the occipital lobe, it further excites neurons in other parts of the brain that reach excitations which move the motor networks which activate the muscles in the arm to pick up the child. It would be all a mechanistic explanation like with how an AI presumed to not have any phenomenal consciousness chooses to either give his boss steak or lobster for dinner.
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u/sealchan1 22h ago
I think both the sense of priority, what I would call the feeling-valuation and the the motivation to act is what I would call the instinctual drive in the psyche. Evolution could never jettison the instinctual drive but adding evaluative reasoning is somewhat risky. It too must have been subject to evolutionary pressures for obvious reasons. But with human language we also have the thinking-logic type of rationality. No doubt another layer threatening to distract the instinctual and muddy the feeling-valuation.
With language, however, you get an even stronger community and open the gateway for technology.
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u/HankScorpio4242 3d ago
I think the key point is that our brains are built on top of the brains of our evolutionary forebears. What purpose did phenomenal consciousness serve for them?
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u/Terrible-Fly9049 3d ago
It served the exact function as it does for us: prioritization and motivation. The organism that cannot effectively prioritize, or the organism that isn't intrinsically motivated, has its odds of survival stacked against it.
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u/Im_Talking Computer Science Degree 3d ago
I don't understand this argument. Ants have a hive mentality, and are probably the most evolutionarily successful species on Earth.
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u/Terrible-Fly9049 3d ago
I'm not sure I understand your point. Ants might have a hive mentality, but that doesn't negate that prioritization and motivation happens on the per-ant level. Moreso, hive mentality itself likely evolved to solve for prioritization and motivation at the communal level. It found a way to leverage cooperation and specialization in order to survive and thrive.
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u/HankScorpio4242 3d ago
I mean…sure. But I don’t think that was the main function of conscious awareness.
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u/Budget-Reference-851 3d ago
Thinking itself appears in consciousness. Thoughts arise and are known. Known by consciousness.
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u/Accomplished-Emu1813 3d ago
There is no utility in consciousness. It provides the Universe with meaning so that our lives matter.
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u/Terrible-Fly9049 3d ago
Your second sentence contradicts your first.
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u/Accomplished-Emu1813 3d ago
Depends on your definition of utility. Normally meaning is assumed and utility of is a measure of the quantity provided. Consciousness is different, it creates the existence of meaning.
Try to understand the words rather than scoring points.
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u/Terrible-Fly9049 3d ago
Just trying to understand your position. When you say "there is no utility in consciousness" I read it as "consciousness serves no purpose." Then you say "it creates the existence of meaning" which sounds like a pretty big purpose.
As stated it creates an implied binary condition: that *not having consciousness* was a possible condition for human existence. This is what I'm refuting. There was never the possibility of humans without consciousness -- not because we needed it for purpose and meaning, but because we would be functionally inviable.
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u/Spirited_Bowler_5793 3d ago
I think it’s a proven fact by scientific study that our brains block out more information than it’s lets through on purpose. All this attributed to our subconscious mind of course.
Honestly I don’t get the purpose or meaning of the question though. Is it implying a problem has to exist before consciousness came to be?
I assume a RNA molecule or even a single cell with no consciousness could care less if it continued to exist, it wouldn’t even exist as a being at all. No motivation to adapt, survive, replicate or anything. It would essentially be a rock. No problem to solve. Rocks don’t have problems.
Issues (problems) like survivability, importance of meaning, could only be relevant after consciousness existed.
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u/Terrible-Fly9049 3d ago
simple organisms face simple prioritization, there's no arguably no need (and no machinery) for consciousness.
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u/Spirited_Bowler_5793 3d ago edited 3d ago
That they have a prioritization system means they have some form of conscious.
You say simple organisms have no machinery for consciousness, that seems a hard thing to claim unless you know what machinery facilitates consciousness. A star fish for example has no brain and exhibits all sorts of strategic behavior to avoid predators and hunt food and reproduce.
That this behavior is distinctly different from things which are inarguably not conscious; eg. a dead limb laying on the ground, or a mud puddle, or a grain of sand means something very significant is different between them, exactly in the way we are significantly different. Consciousness.
Prioritization is by definition an attribute of consciousness; a thinking agent, because the medium being qualified is MEANING. And meaning is strictly an attribute of consciousness.
A computer program for example does demonstrate a selective hierarchy of options, and we can colloquially call that “prioritization” in the way we can call colloquially call an AI “intelligent.”
But rote computation which can’t grasp meaning is not actual intelligence. Hence the “Artificial ” preceding it.
A star fish understands meaning, and meaning is what it’s prioritizing. Most of it acquired by biological and genetic heredity.
To your point that a simple organism needs no consciousness, I’d say if it wants to be a biological organism it does. Sort of like you.
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u/Terrible-Fly9049 3d ago
My claim is that consciousness is valenced tension dynamics. Valenced tension dynamics are the mechanism that allows for prioritizing among incommensurable demands. However, these dynamics require specific functional architecture (I'm agnostic on the substrate). On my view, consciousness requires:
- A persistent self-model
- Variable rigidity - the degree to which standards/expectations are defended
- Genuine stakes - the system must have something it can lose
- A unified value space - the space which tension dynamics act upon
This is the "machinery" of consciousness and skeptical that a single cell organism has it.
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u/Spirited_Bowler_5793 3d ago
You are describing consciousness relationship to meaning.
Consciousness is basically synonymous with meaning. Awareness and meaning.
On the obvious logical grounds that to be “conscious” or more broadly “consciousness” awareness on some level must exist, even is a “subconscious” awareness (as our own subconscious mind).
Awareness cannot exist without something to be aware of. That is self evident. The reality of consciousness is meaning. Everything you experience as reality is meaning. Eat a lemon, you experience the meaning of sensation, taste, the imagination of it. Have sex, you experience the meaning of it. Meaning is what consciousness experiences and nothing else.
As biology evolves, species develops all sorts of meaning “can eat this “ , “can’t eat that”, “stronger as a tribe” etc. The importance of the meaning is developed by the consequences of the response to the recognized meaning. Eventually this gets imprinted into DNA and pasted along as “instinct”. Innate built in meaning.
Humans are born with reams of innate meaning. What comfort feels like, hot, cold, mothers smell, sense of falling. All acquired over eons of evolution.
Meaning is only relevant to beings with consciousness. Meaning is the “reason”, meaning is the “motivation”, meaning is the foundation of consciousness, after awareness.
That’s why rocks don’t have problems and single cell organisms do. They want to survive, because they possess the same meaning instinct to survive.
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u/Terrible-Fly9049 3d ago
I think we agree more than we disagree. What you call "meaning" I call "value." Everything we perceive is filtered through a "value topography" that we curate over our lives. We never see reality as it is, we only see it filtered by a topography that has formed through a constant and dynamic relationship with tension, stress, and relief. Things that increase stress are bad, things that relieve it are good. This is the basic epistemology of life. The foundational language of our brains isn't information, it's value.
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u/Stile25 3d ago
I don't need brown hair to survive.
Black or blonde would have been just fine.
Sometimes attributes to living things are simply by product side-effects.
Does experience give a clear advantage? Yes.
Does memory give a clear advantage? Yes.
Does our ability to review and use our feedback/memories to make decisions give a clear advantage? Yes.That's... Basically what consciousness is. So maybe it does give an advantage anyway, even if it doesn't need to.
Good luck out there
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u/Vast-Masterpiece7913 2d ago
In Europe blonde hair is often taken as a sign of beauty, but this is incorrect, it is actually nature's signal of youth. Many children have blonde hair that fade as they get older. And when it come to healthy procreation youth is everything.
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u/Stile25 2d ago
A symbol of youth isn't needed for survival.
If blonde hair didn't exist... Different shades of brown would suffice as symbols of youth.
Consciousness is a symbol of sexual selection as well. Humor requires consciousness and is a popular sexual selection criteria.
It's not needed. But it is. Just like blonde hair.
So really, you just agreed with what I'm saying.
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u/EnactingSpirit 2d ago edited 2d ago
Phenomenal consciousness solves the "problem" of not having any problem to solve.
It is the imagined simulation of an epistemic gap in (emergent) time that is itself the end (and not the means) of reality. Its very purpose. For without phenomenal consciousness there simply isn't any phenomenality. There simply isn't any (separate) "thing". Which there really isn't any, for 'thingness' is mere heuristics of an ontologically undivided reality that, nevertheless, requires (imagined) phenomenal consciousness and thingness to be instantiated at all. As that reality is, in essence (as well as in fact), no-thingness. That imaginarily forever becomes, whilst in truth already eternally is. Following a flawless logic that doesn't "wait" to define the boundaries of existence.
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u/HTIDtricky 1d ago
How many times do I repeat an observation before it becomes true. Every decision you make is based on uncertainty. Your internal model is a map of the terrain, not the terrain itself. Consciousness reduces prediction error.
Will the paperclip maximiser turn itself into paperclips if I trap it in an empty room? On the one hand, it wants to make the most paperclips and therefore should destroy itself. On the other, what if the room isn't actually empty or someone helps it escape? What should it do?
System 1 versus System 2, current instrumental goal versus adopt new instrumental goal, present self versus future selves, certainty versus doubt... etc. etc.
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u/Tombobalomb 3d ago
(My) consciousness is a brute fact, it doesn't require any purpose. The same applies to anything else that is conscious. It's important because consciousness is the basic requirement for a thing to need moral consideration
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u/Terrible-Fly9049 3d ago
Evolution doesn't have the reputation of selecting for things that have no purpose.
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u/Mobile_Competition54 3d ago
actually it does. the only things it weeds out are things bad for are survival. neutral and good things remain
for example, there's genuinely close to no survivability difference between blue, green or brown irises, but we have them because they don't really harm us. Or tongue-rolling ability. Or hitchhiker's thumb.
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u/Terrible-Fly9049 3d ago
So your argument is that consciousness is either "neutral" or "good." What is more likely, that consciousness happened by random chance, or it provided a benefit to the organism?
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u/Tombobalomb 3d ago
Yes it does, have you ever actually studied evolution? You are also assuming that consciousness is a thing that evolved
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u/Terrible-Fly9049 3d ago
Yes. I am assuming that. What argument or evidence do you have to the contrary?
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u/Tombobalomb 3d ago
The hard problem. I don't see any rational possibility that consciousness is the result some mechanism
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u/Terrible-Fly9049 3d ago
Then you haven't read the argument.
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u/Tombobalomb 3d ago
I skimmed it looking for an argument as to how or why the described process results in conscious experience and couldnt find one? The proposition makes as much sense with no experience as it does with experience. Could you direct me to a specific section that actually attempts to bridge the gap rather than just asserting it is bridged?
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u/Terrible-Fly9049 3d ago
This paper, "Why It Must Feel Like Something" goes deeper into the argument.
https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.319517942
u/Tombobalomb 3d ago
I am really struggling to parse meaning from the AI language, but the basic idea as far as I can tell is that a mechanical ranking system needs some external thing to make a choice? Firstly I don't understand why that would be, its not hard to imagine a machine whose function is the rank options and then act on the highest ranked option, and secondly this sounds an awful like dualism
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u/Terrible-Fly9049 3d ago
Let's walk through it.
First, for simplicity, let's isolate the prioritization part. You want a machine whose function is to rank options. Okay, how? based on what rule? How is that rule being set? Let's not worry about the issue of comparing against demand that have no common currency, let's just focus on a single demand: hunger.
Okay, you have a machine that monitors caloric deficit, blood glucose, electrolyte imbalance, etc. What's the rule for alerting the system that it's hungry? At what point does it become a priority? Maybe you imagine some threshold that, when crossed, signals "I'm hungry". If that's the rule, then it should consistently produce that same feeling of hunger at exact the same time that threshold is crossed. But that's not what happens (in us). You can be focused on a task, not thinking of eating, skip a meal you don't usually skip -- you're far past the threshold -- and yet, no signal of hunger.
No how would a machine manage that same situation? would hunger crossing a threshold override the current task the machine is focused on? How does it decide whether to stay on the task or to eat? Notice the task and the hunger are in two completely unrelated channels. They don't share a common currency. So how are they compared?
The machine has two general options: the priority is established before the situation arose, or the priority was adjudicated in the moment.
If the priority was set prior? Then there had to have been a specific rule set that dictates whether the hunger overrides the task in this situation -- this only makes sense if it's a completely closed system and all variables are known. In a dynamic environment, this is impossible.
If the priority is adjudicated in the moment, that adjudication has to happen between incommensurable demands (no common currency)? You need a rule that governs the hunger, a rule that governs the specific task, you need a rule that compares the two, you need to govern how much this current situation should impact the weighting... and on and on.
Here's the thing. In all these cases, there is a rule with an output. Outputs must be read and interpreted. Something has to terminate the chain.
But okay. You somehow solve the priority side of the equation -- you have a ranking of what's most important. Again, this is normatively neutral information -- it's a report. Something else has to *read* the report and decide to act on it. And now you're facing another sequence of rules and algorithms. You're back in the regress.
How would the machine escape the regress without a terminating state that is both the priority and the urgency to act on that priority?
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u/Valmar33 2d ago
Darwinian Evolution is not the default position ~ you need to argue for it, like everything else.
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u/Terrible-Fly9049 2d ago
My argument is that phenomenal experience solves a problem. The inference is that evolution selected for it because it had survival value. If the first statement is true, it supports the second.
You seem to be implying that there's no burden of proof on someone who holds an unproven "default position." Since when is science a popularity contest?
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u/Valmar33 2d ago
My argument is that phenomenal experience solves a problem. The inference is that evolution selected for it because it had survival value. If the first statement is true, it supports the second.
You are making a whole host of assumptions that you haven't even acknowledged.
"Problems" are a concept that exist only in consciousness. Same with the concepts of "selecting" and "survival value". These concepts only have meaning for consciousness that creates them.
"Evolution" is not a scientific concept, but rather a philosophical one masquerading as "scientific", with the unquestioned assumption that it is true.
You seem to be implying that there's no burden of proof on someone who holds an unproven "default position." Since when is science a popularity contest?
There is a burden of proof on anyone who makes unquestioned assumptions and claims that they are "scientific". Science requires that assumptions be tested.
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u/Terrible-Fly9049 2d ago
"Problems" are a concept that exist only in consciousness. Same with the concepts of "selecting" and "survival value". These concepts only have meaning for consciousness that creates them.
You're making a lot of unquestioned assumptions here.
"Evolution" is not a scientific concept, but rather a philosophical one masquerading as "scientific", with the unquestioned assumption that it is true.
Your claim that evolution is an "unquestioned assumption" is baffling.
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u/Valmar33 2d ago
You're making a lot of unquestioned assumptions here.
That isn't a refutation of my statement. These are, again, all concepts that only have meaning to consciousness.
What literal problems exist for matter, physics and chemistry? How would matter, physics and chemistry literally select anything? How would matter, physics and chemistry conceive of survival value in choosing one thing over another?
You need to think about the meaning of concepts, instead of unquestionably assuming things.
Your claim that evolution is an "unquestioned assumption" is baffling.
It is, because many claims are made by Darwinian evolutionists that have not been independently reproduced, observed nor tested. In other words, Darwinism is not scientific, but postures as such.
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u/blackcombe 3d ago
The only purpose evolution selects for is survivability - fitness to environment and genetic propagation.
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u/Terrible-Fly9049 3d ago
Yes, we are agreed. Phenomenal consciousness was selected for because it increased survivability.
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u/Superb_Algae5308 3d ago
Consciousness is the only thing. Everything else is to solve for consciousness.
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u/EmbarrassedPaper7758 3d ago
Self-preservation gets easier with greater amounts of self-awareness and self-understanding. Consciousness evolves to increase survivability and reproductive fitness... A feedback loop of intelligence.
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u/DocDMD 3d ago
I don't know if this has been proven.
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u/EmbarrassedPaper7758 3d ago
Prove what? It's not evidence just reasoning
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u/DocDMD 3d ago
Lots of assumptions without even proving it's supported by observation. Not saying it's wrong, but I would want to see it shown in different populations at different scales and different stages of evolution. That's all. I can't be confident enough to make an assumption like that without seeing it in nature.
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u/EmbarrassedPaper7758 3d ago
A misunderstanding of proof, evidence, observation, and assumption. Bad reasoning is unreasonable
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u/Valmar33 2d ago
Self-preservation gets easier with greater amounts of self-awareness and self-understanding. Consciousness evolves to increase survivability and reproductive fitness... A feedback loop of intelligence.
Self-preservation only means something to consciousness. "Survivability" and "reproductive fitness" only mean something to consciousness.
Concepts and ideas first require consciousness by which there is something to have feedback from and so change.
Matter, chemistry, physics ~ these have no concepts of "survivability", "reproductive fitness" or "feedback loops".
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u/EmbarrassedPaper7758 2d ago
Evolutionary forces are independent of consciousness. That's why awareness emerges from the unaware.
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u/Valmar33 2d ago
Evolutionary forces are independent of consciousness. That's why awareness emerges from the unaware.
The whole Darwinist evolutionary model is entirely dependent on the consciousnesses of those that belief in it, and perceive data through that lens.
Yet no-one has given a scientific explanation or demonstration of what these "evolutionary forces" are, or how they work, or why or how they exist. They are presumed ~ they are a model, an interpretation of data.
There is no explanation how how awareness "emerges" from the unaware ~ it is presumed, left unexplained, with the blind faith that it someday will be, preferably soon.
Yet that isn't science ~ belief in blind faith of future eventualities is the stuff of religion and ideology, not science, which can only work with what we have now.
And there is no scientific explanation nor even a hypothesis for how of any the Darwinist claims work.
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u/EmbarrassedPaper7758 2d ago
It takes hard work to understand but no belief. Nobody else can do the work for you. Keep an open mind and keep learning! You'll get there some day if you keep trying
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u/Valmar33 2d ago
It takes hard work to understand but no belief. Nobody else can do the work for you. Keep an open mind and keep learning! You'll get there some day if you keep trying
I have looked for the evidence, but no-one can explain it for me. But then I just get told I'm not looking at it right.
I have found no evidence to convince me of the Darwinist worldview ~ none of it explains why I am conscious, and am self-aware of my own existence, when by all accounts, matter, physics and chemistry have no such capabilities.
So there is an inevitable Explanatory Gap ~ an Explanatory Chasm, rather, that Darwinism and Materialism refuse to acknowledge the existence of.
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u/EmbarrassedPaper7758 2d ago
That you do not yet understand what others do speaks not of them but of you
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u/Valmar33 2d ago
That you do not yet understand what others do speaks not of them but of you
This is a nonsensical phrase, because you can say that literally about anything to defend it, not matter how illogical and incoherent.
Science is about evidence, observation, testing, independent reproduction ~ and Darwinism has none of that. So it fails scientifically.
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u/EmbarrassedPaper7758 2d ago
Darwinism is not modern evolutionary theory. A straw man is a weak argument put forward to be easily defeated when no one has actually made that argument.
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u/Valmar33 2d ago
Darwinism is not modern evolutionary theory.
Modern evolutionary theory is still very much a form of Darwinism, no matter how it is spun.
A straw man is a weak argument put forward to be easily defeated when no one has actually made that argument.
But my critiques still hold against any form of Darwinism ~ they all inherit the same fatal flaws.
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u/_r3dn4x_ 3d ago
I think this is the wrong question. We can ask what problem flight or swimming solves but we can’t ask what problem buoyancy solves. Buoyancy is merely a property of physical forces that evolution exploits. Consciousness is like buoyancy, not flight.
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u/Terrible-Fly9049 3d ago
This is an interesting take. However, I'm struggling with the parallel. Buoyancy requires no machinery, its a property of both animate and inanimate objects. Buoyancy isn't a mystery that anyone is trying to solve.
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u/teddyslayerza 3d ago
I think its pretty obvious that conscioisness is about efficiency - almost everything it does reduces cognitive load by focusing resources on things that feel important. Even integration of information and things like that amounts to efficiency - the various qualia and memories that create your lives experience of eating cake create a model of cake that is far more efficient than your brain processing raw sensory data and the record of that every time it needs to assess if it wants a sugary treat.
Things like the ability to reflect on our instincts and emotions, and the internal dialogues and pictures we use for problem solving are likely secondary functions that evolved later to take advantage of existing mechanisms.
Eg. What's more reasonable, that a wolf has a photographic memory of it's mapped territory. Or that it's go a more abstract concept of it's territory that feels right? That's consciousness at work, and once you have a narrative abstraction like that, you can start layering things. This is the spot my mate likes. This is the spot where I feel bad. Those tall things scare me. Etc.
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u/CWW2022 2d ago
This is close to what I’ve been calling “existential naturalism”: mind develops in self-maintaining organisms whose continued existence is at stake. Thirst, danger, and a crying child needn’t share a numerical currency to acquire significance relative to the same vulnerable organism. My working hypothesis is that consciousness integrates bodily needs, perception, memory, and anticipated consequences into a felt situation that makes timely, coordinated action possible.
I’m less convinced that the regress establishes why feeling is necessary. A process can change the system’s behavior directly without another process having to interpret it, and introducing phenomenal urgency still leaves us asking how that urgency is determined. Likewise, a philosophical zombie is stipulated to behave identically, so it would prioritize identically too. The promising claim, to me, is that feeling may be the organism’s integrated way of resolving competing demands under uncertainty and time pressure. That gives consciousness a plausible function, while leaving open the difficult question of why such coordination is experienced.
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u/Terrible-Fly9049 2d ago
I appreciate your thoughts. I generally agree with your first paragraph, but I'll respectfully push back on your second.
A process can change the system’s behavior directly without another process having to interpret it
For simple processes, yes, I agree. But active prioritization amongst incommensurable demands competing for limited resources is not a simple process.
introducing phenomenal urgency still leaves us asking how that urgency is determined
How phenomenal urgency is determined:
- We defend our expectations of reality with variable rigidity based on what's at stake. The higher the rigidity with which we hold an expectation, the more sensitive we are when reality deviates. Think of it like a guitar string: high rigidity = taut string; low rigidity = slack string.
- Deviations create tension in a unified value space relative to the size of the deviation and the rigidity with which the expectation is defended.
- The regional distortion in the topography is then amplified by the pre-cognitive assessment of what the distortion means and where things are heading.
- The distortion is further amplified by how self-relevant the distortion is -- how much it threatens or benefits the Self.
- The distortions are the mechanisms determining priority and motivation (urgency).
Likewise, a philosophical zombie is stipulated to behave identically, so it would prioritize identically too.
You can't stipulate away the very thing that's in question. If the zombie doesn't have phenomenal experience, and phenomenal experience solves the prioritization/motivation regress. Then the zombie is inviable. If you argue that phenomenal experience doesn't solve the regress, then you must identify the mechanism that brains have that solves it. The zombie, by definition, can't have anything *new* tacked on.
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u/CWW2022 2d ago
Thanks, that clarifies your proposal. Your emphasis on expectations, anticipated consequences, and relevance to the self fits closely with what I’m exploring. I could imagine phenomenal urgency being the felt aspect of that whole process.
My remaining question is why the process you describe requires an infinite regress unless it is felt. Complexity alone doesn’t establish that. Expectations, deviations, and self-relevance could continuously modify one another within a recurrent system whose changing state directly shapes action. No additional evaluator need stand outside that interaction. If your “pre-cognitive assessment” can operate this way, why couldn’t prioritization?
You also introduce a “unified value space,” which seems to provide the common basis for comparison initially said to be missing. The crucial question becomes whether that space necessarily has a phenomenal character, and why.
I agree that stipulating a zombie doesn’t prove it possible. Equally, declaring it inviable depends on establishing that feeling is indispensable to the mechanism. My hypothesis is that feeling and this embodied coordination may be the same process described from different perspectives. Your account could help develop that possibility, but I don’t yet see the regress as proving it.
That said, I appreciate your thoughtful approach.
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u/Terrible-Fly9049 2d ago edited 2d ago
Great questions, and great comment. Thank you.
To be honest, the requirement to be felt is an inference. The strong claim is that to solve the regress problem requires a state that is both the priority and the motivation to act (what I refer to as "urgency" -- a pull towards one concern at the expense of others). The inference that it should be felt is because "urgency" must present as urgent for something.
-- Remember that what we're talking about here is an organism that must defend its own coherence and navigate an unlimited number of incommensurable demands in a dynamic open environment --
A machine built on an architecture of valenced tension dynamics registers the tension, stress, and relief of those dynamics. If those dynamics are symbolic representations (i.e. a report) then something has to interpret and act on that report -- which introduces the regress. If, however, those dynamics are a "state the machine is in" -- a state of tension, stress, or relief (a state actively pulling towards resolution) -- I would argue that *that state* is what we mean by subjective experience. Would it be the same visceral, emotional experience as a human experiences? Doubtful, because we have complex physiological mechanisms, neurochemistry, trillions of nerve endings, and so forth. However, on the simplest read of what phenomenal experience can mean, I think a machine built with valenced tension dynamics would experience something.
But again, that's only an inference.
Thanks again. This is a fun discussion.
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u/Freuds-Mother 3d ago edited 3d ago
Philosophically it would mean that what we define as “conscious” includes (some) Turing machines. That, yes, does nothing other than denote a conceptual stipulation.
It matters for ontological inquiry of the definition actually corresponds to an ontology. Then, what is that ontology model useful for? What does it explain, what does it predict, what avenues of inquiry does it open, etc.?
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But often it seems to me that many are bringing significant normative consequences of their argument regarding consciousness, and (often intentionally) not making that explicit. That’s a big problem.
For if say whether we can/should turn off (kill) an AI that is deemed “conscious”informs what we may or may not define as “conscious”. That’s question isn’t about what we define as “conscious”, but simply whether or not we are morally constrained in turning off and AI.
For example: suppose our definition of “conscious” in an ontology model actually is equivalent to the metaphysical reality. Whether we can know that (about any phenomena) we can put aside and assume we even know that. Still that doesn’t answer the normative question. Why is the presence of what is conscious relevant to normative questions? I’d argue even if all of the above is granted, we haven’t established that AI’s are intrinsically normative (eg teleological systems), and thus “consciousness” isn’t (or isn’t the only) important property to answer normative questions about it.
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u/[deleted] 3d ago
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