Say, let’s admit consciousness is the result of a physical process.
Then say this process only goes “forward” when our time coordinate increases. Just like an egg gets cooked when it’s temperature coordinate increases, but it doesn’t get more or less cooked when it’s temperature coordinate decreases.
This would mean that going back in time doesn’t result in any perceptible change, since your consciousness hasn’t evolved from it’s “former” state.
Thus making it possible for us to be travelling through plenty of dimensions in varied directions, only ever experiencing the brief times when you happen to be moving in increasing time. Or whatever combination of movement along varied dimensions makes it possible for you to be conscious.
TLDR: i need to take shorter showers
We don’t have proof that consciousness is the result of a physical process. But there’s no reason to think it isn’t. You can make up anything and say it’s unknowable, and nobody can prove this false; but it’s pretty much useless. Sure you can stick with ‘I think therefore I am’ as the only knowable thing, but it won’t get you very far. The physical world as science has self-consistently explained has been shown to be very practical, specifically with prediction of observation. Consciousness seems different, but there’s no real reason to assume it is.
Thing is that science cannot prove matter is prior either, yet that is taken as the core assumption that all other assumptions must align to.
This is the scientific version of Christians saying “god is real, says so in the bible, and because bible was written by god, it must be true”.
Science can’t prove anything. It seeks to build comprehensive models that agree with observations by disproving those that don’t. It is specifically built in a way that uses predictions based on theory and then tests them. This process is used to avoid making useless and unknowable additions. That, and its inherent nature to question everything, is what makes it fundamentally different from religeon. However, it is based on an assumption that the universe makes sense as a physical construct. And that is because there is no other useful starting point. You can try to build a model of the universe based on any gibberish of feelings, but it isn’t useful in any way.
Useful to what end? The very idea that you need to build a model is based on believing in a system that thinks the model is important.
A model is an understanding of how it works. It allows one to predict how things might react in different general cases, which can be very useful for innovation. You don’t need to try understand things if you don’t want to, but it’s a bit ignorant sounding.
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“Models work because they help us make better models, and we know better models work because… they’re better models.”
I think maybe you misunderstand what a model is in this context. It’s any way of mapping observations to a theory of how things work. I would say a good model is one that can create useful testable predictions. This tests the accuracy of the model, and it also provides for innovation. You can have a model based on a random sky fairy magically doing stuff and writing a book about it. But that model is untestable, and useless.
Again, define useful/useless? To what end do you create these models?
Again, to understand our observable reality and make predictions.
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Yeah thanks, you can keep that naval gazing. Consciousness can never be the subject of science since it cannot be measured. It’s all conjecture and metaphysics. I don’t see the point of trying to classify it, since one can never test a theory.
The argument that consciousness isn’t based on the physicality of the brain is silly. When you attribute consciousness to magic, if magic is real, then magic is a part of physics - it’s just physics that isn’t understood. We cannot know if something is or isn’t conscious. So we cannot know if AI is or can be conscious. Any argument that it definitely isn’t or can’t be conscious is therefore wrong.
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So what’s the point of saying AI can’t be conscious? That’s where we started here. It’s a stupid argument that’s clearly wrong.
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Sorry, my bad - wrong thread.
But if it’s not physical - what else could it be? Are you implying some magic that follows no laws and isn’t based on anything that can be measured or modeled?
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If there’s a new force or field, then it’s still physical, it’s just unknown. But that’s not what you’re talking about, I think. It’s more like the notion of life, which is self organizing matter - which appears at first to go against the laws of entropy. But we can see how a chance configuration that self replicates is a natural phenomenon and actually accelerates entropy in the longer term. Life is still physical even though we can describe it as a concept that might seem to transcend physicality. Consciousness can just be the same. And yes, you can consider consciousness as some sort of other fundamental order, but it’s not scientific - it specifically cannot be since we can not measure it.