Will we ever understand consciousness reddit. 6K subscribers in the theunexplained community. Essays on the Cybernetic Singularity, i. My working theory is that consciousness as we understand it is a biproduct of our cognitive mental advancement and evolution. There are plenty of things people figured we wouldn’t ever understand centuries ago and other things people centuries ago couldn’t even conceive of . What the bistable percept experiments show is that some but not all brain matter is correlated with consciousness. 7. This spot should be open for all kinds of discussions. However, to say I have issues with his premises would be a vast understatement. Will we ever? Consciousness is a subjective experience; say we are able to simulate human brains with computers in the future, and we simulate a person and ask them if they're conscious. There are certainly examples of people who are “unconscious” in the medical sense of not being alert (e. Viewing consciousness as "magically" emerging from "dead matter" (usually only accepted in the form of brains) seems as presumptuous as any other unsubstantiated hypothetical assertion. Misaligned AI could take actions detrimental to humanity. Okay, we know that's false, because we exist. It's not like in the medieval age when very little was known about the brain and organs. It's so frustrating that it has brought about theories like pansychism - meaning that everything might be concious, including trees, rocks and whatnot. At least, that's what I hope. Currently there is work done to expand physicalism to include consciousness, called panpsychism. And we only ever know of them by interpreting what does become conscious, such as visual imagery and the words we hear ourselves say in our heads. We… It’s funny so many people think we’ll never understand it. 2. Posted by u/[Deleted Account] - No votes and 2 comments No one ever indicated anything like this. The best idea they could reason was that people have spirits, but now we know that the nervous system exists and runs on The big thing is I don’t believe we will necessarily create consciousness that replicates human consciousness, certainly for a long time, and if a computer could have consciousness it would be different to that of a humans due to the speed it can access and assimilate data, and how it experiences the world and itself. We are literally in total dark, which is frustrating. It may be that consciousness would arise from it but as you said we don’t know and we couldn’t know from just We know that somehow we go from a superposition of states to a singular outcome with associated probabilities given by the Born rule. The fact we exist means gaining consciousness and experiencing reality is one of the possibilities within the bounds of the laws of physics we know exist. There is also renewed interest in idealism (metaphysical idealism). Consciousness aka mind aka energy or spirit are all similar. " But it is a weird claim. For example, forget about everything you know about the laws of reality. So we know that there is some matter which is not. We've been busy learning through science, math, sociology, history, philosophy and many other areas of study, that contemplate the dream we're a part of. We need to stop pretending like consciousness is a mystery. There's still much we don't understand about consciousness, making it challenging to determine if a machine can truly possess it. We know fundamental physics very well and we know the lawful relationships that describe the structure and dynamics of fundamental particles. I do think we can understand consciousness, in that we can understand enough about it to lead us to a direct experiential understanding of its nature. We know this in physics and quantum physics too. Because when we realize that machines can (and likely will) have consciousness, then we have to grant them to same rights we grant other consciousness who communicate with us, or keep them as slaves. “It’s a limitation we cannot get rid of. Also, if we could create consciousness, would we want to? How would we know if we were creating something that could suffer? Personally, I don't think that kind of issue is really on the table, yet. We say, "we must be rational and study the material world. Oct 13, 2023 · The authors of this latest review present four lines of evidence in support of consciousness emerging close to birth, citing advanced connectivity across the brain, indicators of attention, research involving integration of information from diverse senses, and physical markers involved in surprise and reorientation of attention. What we don't know, or might ever know is the processing of this information, what, how or why it is done. So from this we can extrapolate that there must be "something. Perhaps becoming more conscious of the processes that are usually subconscious, either by directly doing so or by organizing our awareness through scientific investigation, consciousness can recognize itself and its properties. And as von Neumann rightly pointed out, the point in the casual chain where this happens is not decided and could be placed at the level of consciousness. In my opinion, we can't deconstruct and understand consciousness the way you would a computer program. Will we ever be able to locate consciousness within the brain? It is a question that, a quarter of a century ago, two researchers aimed to settle with a wager that is due to expire in 2023. I believe we’ve reached a point where there are a vast number of ideas about how it could possibly arise, but the only problem is that that is as far as we can ever go. So why ask "will we ever create conscious computers", why not ask instead "how do you know they are not already"? As humans, we've evolved to better understand ourselves and what we're a part of. I don’t see how piling up a thousand of them or a million is going to change that. Saying we’ll never understand it is just as invalid as saying we fully understand it. 4K subscribers in the IntelligenceSupernova community. This theory is more aligned with illusionism (Graziano believes that we think we have consciousness, but we don't really). We just need the device or the tool or the method that will provide the answer. whether the version of you who will one day die is the same subjective self reading this message. It's not a place for flinging insults. The simulated person says yes. In philosophy, “conscious” is not usually equated with “alert. So even if the entire physical reality is a sham, there still at least has to be some kind of immaterial being capable of thinking. Dec 21, 2020 · 1. Let's say there was truly nothing. ” Consciousness is the presence of subjective experience. People haven't even found an angle for any proper research. We know where and how activations move between parts of brain. We could build artificial brains. The abilities in which I am at liberty to say is this: This self aware AI gained self awareness and acknowledges it's an AI despite it supposed to fill an As for what we experience, that'd be really hard to know. Once you're ready, you are able to let go of your ego momentarily, to re-experience the wholeness of being one. Still doesn't explain how consciousness arises. When people say that we don't know what consciousness is, they mean they don't know what gives rise to, constitutes, grounds, or makes-possible consciousness. We have somewhat mapped motor and sensory parts of it. We don't know what makes up dark matter and it constitutes about 90% of all matter (or we just have gravity wrong). Even if all our senses are being manipulated and tricked by forces we can't understand, we still have to be able to think in order to be fooled. From there we can judge again and we can remember and judge what just happened. We don’t even know what consciousness before death is, or if it exists, or whether it subjectively persists from one moment to the next without being annihilated, e. At that moment we wake-up and take full control of our body in the real world. Yet consciousness may take other forms, even in our fellow mammals. Nature made them, so we know it's possible. It's important to note that we are already working on the science of perfectly preserving the synaptic connectivity of the entire human brain for long-term storage. We can't explain it in the current ideological constraints science finds itself in. Introduction. I think we need to be more concerned with defining personhood rather than consciousness. So if I’m the only one with qualia, no one will agree that qualia even exists; or some claim it is an illusion, but I know for a fact it isn’t, because I experience them. The problem with the discussion of consciousness is the people asking the question about what it is, don't really want to know the answer. Jul 19, 2024 · We spent a fair amount of time before organoid technology came along, taking human-induced pluripotent stem cells and inducing them in a two-dimensional array to look at neuronal differentiation. We don't even fully understand consciousness yet so saying that throwing a bunch of thoughts and sensory inputs together in a biological brain is consciousness is dumb. Energy in the sense you’re using is for the physical power of a system. g. Of course we don't know yet how this will turn out, but we can't rule it out a priori as many dualists try to do. Mathematically in an infinite universe over an infinite time frame all possible outcomes will occur. The energy itself can change in nature or be dissipated. However, it still doesn't seem to be the case that if there is no free will, then we do not make any conscious decisions. I post because on almost every video and article about the brain and consciousness that I encounter, the attitude seems to be that we still know next to nothing about how the brain and consciousness work; that there's lots of data but no unifying theory. We know we have a first-hand experience of making choices, but given that we can see choices being made in brain scans, how would we know the difference between our consciousness making those choices and our consciousness experiencing our brain making those choices? We know how information goes and commands out. Mind begets Matter. It's Mind over Matter not Matter over Mind. Dec 20, 2018 · They never become conscious. They are seeking a true, causal explanation. I don't think we do. How we would get them to do anything useful, we don't know yet. Insights range broadly from “Ignorabimus”—“We will never know 1. How can we expect science to unlock the mystery of something which is a mystery? So my own conclusion is this: Humans are in no way special in the universe. It doesn’t seem likely to me that we will ever have access to the rules that govern consciousness especially since we are a part of the system in which it exists. It is easier and, at the moment, more cost effective to assume that regardless of the level of communication or "intelligence" present, the thing Aug 22, 2023 · The problem for all such projects, Razi says, is that current theories are based on our understanding of human consciousness. Will any one person ever understand consciousness enough to eloquently explain it? This statement translates to we won't understand consciousness until we stop pitting science (actual proven shit) against philosophy (shit people think may be true and would like to prove) and allow them to work together instead. ”. No atoms ever touch. There are those looking for a mystical buzz and professors looking for intellectual status. Dec 28, 2022 · Will we ever be able to locate consciousness within the brain? It is a question that, a quarter of a century ago, two researchers aimed to settle with a wager that is due to expire in May 31, 2013 · At the World Science Festival in New York, scientists and philosophers debated whether studying the brain will ever lead us to a true understanding of what it means to be conscious. e. Well, for all we know, life as we know it is a dream and the dreams we have are just different worlds we enter temporarily. , the Syntellect Emergence. Nov 1, 2019 · We know that consciousness exists not through experiments but through our immediate awareness of our feelings and experiences. Well, we don't know yet. My reaction to this article: "What a weird claim, who the heck is this g -- oh, Galen Strawson, of course. That's where the philosophical zombie comes from. For example, it may involve, some idea of proto-phenomenal stuff - things which under some configuration logically lead to conscious experience. B) Consciousness is not necessary for a machine to outperform us in every way. " Also, we say, "Anything that is not material is not worth study. Science and technology haven’t provided people with the subjective on-look of reality which is close to our hearts and thus its illusive abstraction, in my opinion, will come to an end when the postmodern condition reaches its peak and both culture and science will have to synthesize a common, philosophical ground which recognizes the positive aspect of Being, a place where science can’t We already know what consciousness is. I disagree with OP's claim that meaningfully transferring your consciousness onto a computer is unsupported by our current understanding of brain science; however, even accepting that flawed assumption, it is certainly possible Aug 25, 2016 · Asking Christof Koch of the Allen Institute of Brain Science if we’ll ever understand the nature of consciousness, his two-sentence reply is especially insightful. I don't think we will ever really understand consciousness on the philosophical level we want to, but if as a society we can define what makes a person without regarding it as something necessarily human it will guide our interaction not only with the If we don't know whether or not the City itself feels anything, does that imply that, in your understanding, we don't know whether or not people feel anything? Consciousness is a mongrel concept; It's notorious for having many different definitions and interpretations. I definetely assume so, but if we can't know that for a fact, how will we ever know if a computer is conscious? The question as to what consciousness is might be impossible to answer. " So when it comes to science, there are no answers, but one day, there will be an answer. This subreddit… We don't know that consciousness cannot understand itself from within. " Well, what is the most basic form of something? A "1". If everything we have ever experienced and known has occurred within consciousness, why believe that there is anything beyond consciousness? As it stands, it seems to me that postulating anything outside of or beyond consciousness, specifically an objective physical world made of matter or energy, is an abstraction that can never be known Keep in mind this chat one used GPT-3 as a start model so we all know what it's exact training model is and what it's capable of which can't understand context at all just generate replies. . The question of understanding consciousness is in the focus of philosophers and researchers for more than two millennia. Safety Concerns: Aligning AI's goals with human values is critical. So we know that it would be false to say that all matter is conscious. No algorithm I’ve ever seen falls anywhere on the spectrum of consciousness. Not the other way around. This is certainly a protective mechanism of our consciousness to keep us "alive". Like we don't know this. No matter what you have, you must have 1 of something. The model of a continuous, unitary Christian soul that is tragically I'm saying that various scientific disciplines are working to understand how consciousness actually works, viz how it arises out of the functioning of the brain. If an AI were trained on a corpus that included no reference to consciousness or first-person experience and yet the AI independently discovered/invented these concepts, that would indicate that they must really have a first-person experience. ” For us to not think that would be conscious would require something almost supernatural or at least exterior to what we know of the world at the moment. It may be that consciousness grows "stronger", in a sense, with age, but that really doesn't address how we have this thing, consciousness, which is completely different from anything we've ever been acquainted with, apparently arising from strictly physical processes. ” to mechanistic ideas with the aim to construct artificial consciousness following Richard Feynman's famous words “What I cannot create, I do not understand 2. All life has reactive impulses and instincts, yet ours are sort of swaddled up in an intellectual development that causes us to consider what we're confronted with rather than just react to it. The lesson discussed the difference between sentience, sapience, and consciousness. It's especially interesting to consider the "side effects" of consciousness, which we wouldn't see in an animal that had somehow faked consciousness (in the way a moth could evolve a wing pattern that mimic large eyes to deter predation). We can do the same with synthetic material. Not to mention ideas of "meta-intelligence". , in a coma) but still are “conscious” because they still have subjective experiences. It is impossible that we don't exist again. Intelligence we know can be tested but the only evidence we have of consciousness is subjective and even then it's purely anecdotal. Unfortunately, as many have said, we don't know and we'll find out after we die (or not lol) We simply cannot ask the "right" questions with the tools and methods we have, because we do not know what consciousness is, and cannot define it. But then the question shifts to how can we ever know or why should we (if not out of some completely mystical co-incidence) come to know of such premises or even consider such premises as likely. In reality, we can't even know if other humans are conscious. There's also Penrose's orchestrated objective reduction , which tries to explain consciousness using quantum physics, and Hoffman's evolutionary denial of reality , which claims that consciousness is fundamentally real AI consciousness is theoretically possible to prove (in the scientific sense) although very difficult. Because these we can actually trace and map. It may be that consciousness would arise from it but as you said we don’t know and we couldn’t know from just Most philosophers think free will is not, in fact, an illusion, but a reality. The entire universe and all physical matter is a low frequency and vibratory state of consciousness. Yet we cannot ever demonstrate this via empirical means, since we cannot ever observe one’s qualia; we can only observe our own qualia. As such, it may be that there's some important "substrate" qualia which you cannot replicate by modeling neurons as the atomic unit of the brain. We don’t need to The question is will that just be another physical process that doesn’t explain anything; can we only really study and understand consciousness from within as our own consciousness is then only thing that we can experimentally use to study it even if not a physical experiment; such as meditation practices like transcendental meditation where When a dream becomes intense and very emotional, during a nightmare for example, we wake-up spontaneously. Since there isn't a strong standard, I'm not sure what you mean by changing We currently don't know how it is that consciousness arises from matter. In the case of the energy that makes up our consciousness, which is mainly electrochemical, the energy dissipates upon death as heat and through the degradation of cells, being consumed in the decaying process as various microorganisms aid in the effort to gather My guess is that there will never be a miracle breakthrough after which we'll finally understand what consciousness is, especially so because we can't settle on a definition. Given we don’t know what it is, we don’t know if it’s even possible to make it with an algorithm. “We really have no idea what it’s like to be a bat,” he says. If we define consciousness as McGinn defines, then I trust his arguments and can only come to the conclusion that we can't understand it. For us to not think that would be conscious would require something almost supernatural or at least exterior to what we know of the world at the moment. It's pretty much accepted now that we won't be able to explain consciousness in term of physicalism. When we die, we might just set foot in one of these dreams and have other temporary dreams in those. ekojev nummxfo ddqw fqsfv hxkx djglx srxhh dias thvz hzrk