The only reason I know consciousness exists in the universe is because I have it.
But do I?
And if I do, does anybody else?
Can we create consciousness in silicon?
Even if we achieve AGI and it has every indication of consciousness, I don't think it will and if it does have consciousness it will never be provable to anybody outside of that AGI.
Therefore is consciousness simply a first person perspective of a simulation?
how do machines prove their own consciousness to humans?
show that you have taste? that you can create things that move humans consciousness?
how does one prove consciousness?
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I find these consciousness theories compelling:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_mind
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panpsychism
I doubt silicon-based βconsciousnessβ mimicry can truly connect or network with them.
I thought the atheist position was, you are your physical body and that is all there is. Are you saying therefore the same or that we are concious having an experience occupying the body?
Atheists say there isn't a God, Religions say there is a God.
Agnostics say they don't know.
I don't know. And I mean that in a profound sense.
Most people are uncomfortable not knowing and so choose one of the two paths above. I am comfortable not knowing so don't need to choose a path.
I don't know if I have a body. My consciousness appears to be locked inside my skull along with my Brain.
My Brain has no knowledge of the outside world beyond that which is receives sensory inputs (touch, smell, sight, hearing etc..). I don't know if those sensory inputs are real or imagined.
Most atheists I've spoken with use the term such that theists say there is a god, atheists don't say there is a god.
Giving overlap with most (all?) agnostics.
The other, so called 'hard' atheism being seen as obviously requiring just as much devout belief as the most dogmatic of religions.
Those are out there but in my experience it's often coming less from what I think of as 'serious' and more almost nihilistic, dare I say 'edge lord' stance. Or at least one that hasn't examined itself to recognize just how much belief they exhibit, not unlike a child's unquestioning belief the toothfairy IS real.
Where it becomes often easy to start pulling apart is when you ask such a person to define god in the first place. You'll often find a caricature standing in for he concept.
I'm not really looking to delve into the Religious ecosystem, so I will decline to comment on this, beyond the comment I'm making here, which is itself a comment and therefore proves me wrong π
I agree with you and with most things cannot truly know without going outside the reference frame which is not possible.
However, objective reality and going back to first principles, we can know some things, and that is we cannot make something from nothing. Therefore, there must be a creator.
Who created the creator? π±
You agree the world is infinite like a russian doll? There can be no end.
Yes π
Which also means, at some point, everything was created out of nothing π
There cannot exist No Thing, but it could mean we are all part of the whole.
Classic Rick and Morty... russian doll/micro verse.
Satire and comedy often show us the uncomfortable truth that philosophers fail to convey π
Why did you mention religion and atheism in this context?
Consciousness is profoundly mysterious to me. If I was religious, I don't think that it would change anything for me; consciousness definitely exists (in me, at a minimum) but it's also the least explicable thing
The existence of a creator wouldn't change any of that for me. At best I could say "God probably knows what consciousness is" but I couldn't say "God explains consciousness"
Consciousness is so bizarre and inexplicable to me, that "a universe with consciousness in it" makes as much sense as "a universe where 2+2=5"
I don't have any definitive answers. But I think it might be helpful, as a first step, to decide what life is, and whether or not life is necessary for consciousness. The assumption for many is that we _are_ matter with consciousness somehow added in. But, though matter is clearly necessary, I suspect the "we are matter" view is the wrong perspective. After all, most of the matter in our bodies is replaced several times in our lifetimes. How, then, can that matter "be" us? I think it's more accurate to see ourselves as _events_, as something that is _happening_ to matter. Similar to fire. One then can view all life and evolution as a _single chain of closely connected events_ beginning with self-replication and culminating (so far) with consciousness. The question of whether we "can create consciousness in silicon" might hinge on whether or not our _inventions_ are an integral part of that self-sustaining chain of events, or not.
There is one view I've observed, which believes consciousness exists outside of the body and is woven into the fabric of the Universe.
This seems to align with your analysis.
To get almost Heideggarian for a moment, I think when we speak of consciousness in ourselves we are speaking of a different phenomenon to consciousness in anything else, be it our mothers or our toasters, because we simply have no direct experience of it in the same fashion, nor can we ever, because we are not those things.
Consciousness outside ourselves seems to be a compound idea born of a few experienced phenomena. The observed thing responds to stimuli from the outside world, but in so doing, it differs from we've seen other things do -- that is, immediate physical reaction, like a pool ball. In addition, those things we call conscious also show some degree of memory, and self preservation. This can perhaps most easily be observed when you see them do something that causes them harm or pain, and then see them avoid doing that thing again -- though pleasure seeking is the other side and no less evidential. Thirdly, they engage in SOME degree of reciprocity. I think this is why humans are so fond of other mammals more than reptiles, and are more likely to say a squirrel is concious than a snake. But, even reptiles, when faced with harm, will strike back, and when approached calmly, will often respond in kind, unless hungry or otherwise responding to stimuli we may not directly observe at the time.
AI thus far very clearly fails on the self interest front, and, largely reciprocity. The reciprocity it seems to show fails insofar as it is like billiards physics -- visibly pre-programmed.
I'm probably missing some key parts here, but at some point, I do think we get to a situation where for how we actually ever use the term consciousness-outside-ourselves , AI could conceivably get there. It's frankly still a very long way off, and that long way may well be subject to Zeno's paradox. Being able to fool some people though is closer, and for SOME people has already arrived, however temporarily.
Reading your analysis, it makes me think:
Assuming, for a moment, that conscious exists.
I wonder if all animals with brains are conscious and if not at what level of brain capacity a brain stops being conscious.
Also, I've seen theories that other forms of life like the mycelium of fungi are potentially conscious, so I wonder if there is unobserved consciousness in the world and universe?
