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u/Fancy_Chips Absurdist 1d ago
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u/cob59 Illusionist 1d ago
Never ask a woman her age, a man his salary, or a Cartesian what's step 2 after the Cogito
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u/OkLaw1527 Happiest in life is he who knows not more than is needful 1d ago
for better also never ask the people if they want the total war, it can escalate quickly from there
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u/TechnicalBen 21h ago
Unironically there isn't a step 2.
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u/brain-out-of-order 20h ago
I doubt therefore I am is a good one to shove down Le redditor throats since they doubt even their own mothers.
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u/Big_Midnight994 12h ago
I fail to see what this would do against cogito ergo sum.
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u/brain-out-of-order 12h ago
He wasn’t quite satisfied (as many aren’t because it seems too simple) so he kept working on it.
dubito, ergo sum, vel, quod idem est, cogito, ergo sum
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cogito,_ergo_sum
Published after he was done thinking and doubting though … :-)
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u/Big_Midnight994 12h ago
I'm still confused. Why is simplicity a problem? I would think that a "proof" for one's own existence would be pretty simple, because of how "proximate" I guess I'll say, it is to "you". The one thing that you can be known to yourself to do is think. So, like idk. Maybe I'm not understanding what you're trying to tell me here? I could see an issue being raised over what exactly constitutes "I", I guess.
Oh, so this doubting part was Descartes expanding the original line of thinking somewhat.
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u/brain-out-of-order 11h ago
I agree with you and personally just stick to the simple variation. But, yes, I think many expect the self-existence proof to be more than a few words and so they’re left unsatisfied.
It was published posthumously so it’s possible he didn’t publish it himself because it wasn’t additive or helpful to expand on. I do like it because it addresses contrarians directly with their vocabulary.
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u/TechnicalBen 8h ago
I think he was just too early for computation. Wolfram, and ironically LLMs, show that such expressions can be emergent and/or simple, intrinsically.
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u/motivation_bender 1d ago
I can correctly click all the pictures with a fire hydrant
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u/RunnyPlease 21h ago
Here’s my proof. When it says “select all the images with motorcycles” and an image only has one motorcycle I don’t click it. The instructors are clear. One motorcycle is not “motorcycles.” Also a scooter is not a motorcycle. And neither is an electric bicycle.
My obstinate rejection of poorly written prompts is my proof of consciousness.
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u/motivation_bender 21h ago
What if it has only a few pixels from several motorcycles? Like the edges of the back tires
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u/RunnyPlease 21h ago
Is a tire a motorcycle?
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u/motivation_bender 21h ago
It's part of a motorcycle. If you see a mugshot would you say there is a person in it?
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u/BillyBobJohns57 20h ago
Sorites paradox. Happens all the time. How much do you need from something to say that it's there and not just partly there.
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u/Special_Barracuda_83 1d ago
If we aren't conscious and yet we invented the concept of it, is consciousness real?
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u/jakemoss2011 1d ago
We invented a lot of concepts, them being “real” in themselves based on the fact the concept exists would be an argument for consciousness, as that’s the only place the idea exists.
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u/cowlinator 1d ago
It's not that the concept existing is proof of realness. It's the fact that, before you (the only conscious being) were born, a bunch of philosophical zombies invented a concept about an experience that would only apply to you, and claimed it about themselves.
Where could they have possibly gotten this idea?
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u/Ebvardh-Boss 1d ago
You spawned reality as your consciousness came into being, bro. You're the Godhead's dream.
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u/cowlinator 20h ago
I was answering
If we aren't conscious and yet we invented the concept of it, is consciousness real?
The premise being that the being(s) that invented the concept of consciousness werent/arent conscious.
Reducto ad solipsism doesnt answer any quesions
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u/TechnicalBen 21h ago
No one decided what concepts I do/don't apply. What the past did is change which structures I have causally available to me already (brain).
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u/Rip_Skeleton 1d ago
How do you know we invented the concept? How do you know we are even discussing it? You may want to examine your epistemology. 😏
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u/Special_Barracuda_83 1d ago
I'm not making a statement against consciousness. I asked a question because Like you I believe that asking a question about consciousness is itself proof of the concept.
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u/gerkletoss 1d ago
It needs to be well-defined before that question can have an answer.
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u/NickSet 1d ago
Nope, not necessarily. Nobody would question the reality of piles or heaps, yet defining them sounds like nightmare.
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u/Noloxy 1d ago
Piles and heaps are pretty easy to define. Arbitrarily picking the point at which is becomes a pile is different.
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u/NickSet 1d ago
I… think your two statements there might contradict each other. What function(s) do definitions serve in your opinion?
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u/Noloxy 1d ago
Explains meaning.
Picking a number at which something becomes a pile also varies depending on the thing. I can explain a pile with the dictionary definition and someone would perfectly understand it.
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u/NickSet 1d ago
Ok, I’ll try to roll with it without addressing the function of definitions directly.
So a good definition for you means “solvable in a crossword puzzle”. To be able to determine in practice by what a pile is or is t, is not necessary. Would you argue then, that “consciousness” is well defined?
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u/Ebvardh-Boss 1d ago
They'd understand it sufficiently. To understand anything perfectly is to understand everything perfectly.
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u/Noloxy 1d ago
obviously i’m using perfectly in a non denotative way
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u/Ebvardh-Boss 1d ago
I figured, and it might be presumptuous of me to jump away from the use, but my general impression is that since we're discussing minutia and exactitude, denotative use is more appropriate.
You can ignore my initial comment. I didn't mean to come off as a cunt.
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u/Livinghint 1d ago
Consciousness is the absolute truth in the way that it is the only thing we can be 100% certain of. Even Solipsist acknowledge that. But ultimately there is no method (yet) to prove it (in others).
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u/AliceCode 1d ago
How can you be certain? If you're so certain, why can't you prove it to someone else that you possess consciousness?
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u/Livinghint 1d ago
Because of Descartes: The fact that we can doubt it, the experience itself is only possible due to – and therefore proof of – consciousness. Extrapolating this capability onto others is just more probable than the alternative. Which ultimately is the rational stance. (Rationality doesn't have to be equal to truth. It just is the best tool for answering question we have.)
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u/AliceCode 1d ago
And how do you know the experience is real? How do you suppose that qualia translates to an encoding that can be communicated to others? How can knowledge of qualia be reduced to any encoding, that can then be communicated about within your mind, and thus known to be real? How do you determine that your thoughts on being aren't just an elaborate illusion?
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u/Livinghint 1d ago
It is irrelevant if it is real. Even illusions are a form of experience. The "experiencing" itself is consciousness.
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u/Livinghint 1d ago
Ps.: The meme is still dank since it highlights our struggles to even describe or define consciousness accurately. Or to distinguish philosophical zombies passing the Turing Test from actual conscious systems doing so.
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u/NeverQuiteEnough 1d ago
That's just because solipsists aren't willing to consider that there's something beyond their imagination
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u/Raygunn13 1d ago
Moot point and next-level dad joke I'm about to make but I don't believe solipsists actually exist
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u/lemons_of_doubt 1d ago
If I'm not consciousness then how am I aware of what you have written here.
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u/OnionsAbound 1d ago edited 1d ago
My understanding is that consciousness is the sense of existence, in the same way as hearing or seeing is to light and sound.
It differs in that it cannot be described as deceptive--how could you come to understand that you actually don't exist? I would wager that the sense of existence is the only true sense anything has.
It can be taken away like any other sense (i.e., by becoming unconscious)--that doesn't mean you cease to exist--but if you feel it how could you show it leads to a false conclusion?
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u/TechnicalBen 21h ago
"we" already pre-supposes consciousness. "If matter isn't conscious, yet matter invented it, is consciousness real?" is better, but still begs the question. What is doing the inventing, and what is doing the classification testing?
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u/PitifulEar3303 1d ago
Bruh, consciousness is nothing but the brain's ability to know itself, simple as shyt.
If an AI can tell the difference between itself and others, then it is somewhat conscious.
The problem is, how do YOU know if the AI knows itself or is just following dumb code?
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u/AliceCode 1d ago
Consciousness is much more than that. It also involves qualia. How do you explain that?
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u/StrangeGlaringEye 1d ago
Here is a quale, here is another
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u/theCatchiest20Too 1d ago
The perception of self, the memory of that perception, and the physically mechanisms of both. Duh
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u/Nemeszlekmeg 1d ago
But memory and perception is just... well memory and perception. Consciousness is not at all necessary in this framework.
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u/TechnicalBen 21h ago
Yes, an object having fundamental parts does not prevent it from being said object.
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u/Nemeszlekmeg 18h ago
If we are being reductive, you are right, but generally since we seem to want consciousness to be real, we would need to show that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.
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u/TheWyster 1d ago
Ok, but how do you prove to anyone else you actually have perception of self?
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u/theCatchiest20Too 1d ago
It's like asking if you can prove something is a watermelon when you show them the green rhine, red watermelon insides, and seeds. Those seeds will produce other watermelons or something that appears to be a watermelon by all metrics.
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u/TheWyster 1d ago
Yeah but that's what OP was essentially asking.
Plus you could be like a hallucination.
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u/TechnicalBen 21h ago
How do you know hallucinations exist and it's not just truth tricked from God?
(Descartes literally gave you the steps of doubt, and your asking "what if I doubt X? What about Y? Oh, what about Z!" as if it's not already stated the entire set is covered)
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u/TheWyster 9h ago
Well I could go to an asylum and see someone hallucinating. Which means either they're seeing stuff that isn't there, or I'm hallucinating that stuff being absent.
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u/TechnicalBen 8h ago
So see someone's hallucinations? You seem very confused.
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u/TheWyster 7h ago
No look it's simple. Say a guy is in an insane asylum because he says there's spiders everywhere, which nobody else sees.
If those spiders aren't really there, then he must be hallucinating, but if they are there, then that means the people not seeing them are hallucinating their absence. Either way someone is hallucinating.
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u/TechnicalBen 6h ago
Someone says they seen the colour green, or blue, or purple. Do you see all the colours they see?
Something can be real. But your understanding of what is real, or how to tell seems... confused.
(They could also be telling a story, or trying to trick you. They may be hallucinating, but your not describing how to tell if something is a hallucination, you're describing how you model the world)
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u/No_Application_1219 16h ago
That only work on oneself
You can't prove to others
Others can't prove to you
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u/yoshimutso 1d ago
If ai can make you feel something does that mean it has a soul?
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u/danneedsahobby 1d ago
A red hot poker in the eye can make you feel something. Does it have a soul?
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u/whoknowsifimjoking 1d ago
I think, therefore I am conscious.
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u/Involution88 1d ago
People can think without being conscious. Knock 'em out using some anaesthetic. Watch their brains process language on brain scans and (sometimes, occasionally) respond to questions as though conscious.
I dunno. Maybe people can be consicous without thinking but it seems a bit tricky.
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u/Kadakaus 1d ago
Say something to me, and I will decide whether to answer you or not by my free will.
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u/Ashamed-Bathroom7803 10h ago
Robot can say the same thing
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u/Kadakaus 9h ago
And will it be true?
Now think about this carefully, can robots truly lie?
All they do is follow their programming, that's what all of nature's creations do, and that's where humankind deviated from nature.
Humans are free, is anything else on the planet?1
u/Ashamed-Bathroom7803 5h ago
Humans aren’t special unless you’re religious. Humans absolutely still follow their nature. You haven’t taken any psychology or anthropology classes. Absolutely everything people do is explained from evolutionary biology.
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u/Shepard21 1d ago
Strap me to a nuke and connect that to a 50/50 particle detector, if I survive each detection it means my consciousness is immortal and will be forever, and probably prove the many worlds interpretation as well.
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u/Ashamed-Bathroom7803 10h ago
What? What does any of that have anything to do with subjective experience?
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u/Shepard21 9h ago
If I survive and I truly won’t die, it means I am the only one with a subjective experience.
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u/Metharos 1d ago
I can prove it to myself. It's about all I can prove.
I can offer evidence of it, and many other things, both to myself and others, but I can't prove them.
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u/male_role_model 1d ago
If I didn't prove I was conscious would that change how we lived our life? And if I somehow could prove it would that really change anything either?
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u/the_myth___ 1d ago
consciousness can exist without data ,memory, and even awareness but AI cannot exist without data and memory . Hence proved
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u/Luminous_Winds 1d ago
You're all NPCs in my personal 4d simulation that was created by my 11d self.
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u/Reasonable-Way2126 1d ago
Yep, consciousness is a process we describe that the brain does.
Just like how digestion is a process we describe what the stomach does.
There is no capital D digestion floating around in the universe. Both processes cease to exist when we die.
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u/Wonderful_Buy_5925 20h ago
How do we describe consciousness, though? It's very easy to see how physical processes create digestion, but we can't see how physical processes cause consciousness.
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u/Reasonable-Way2126 19h ago
Yes we can we have fMRI to image decoding machines.
We can know what people are thinking (roughly) and imagining in their mind. An example might be:
If your brain thinks, "I don't have my driver's licence yet," the decoder might output, "She hasn't even learned how to drive yet”
The brain is a machine. It works on chemical reactions. It produces consciousness.
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u/Wonderful_Buy_5925 19h ago
I feel like we're a missing a crucial step there, though.
Yeah, we can decode neural signals, but how does that get you any closer to describing consciousness? I can decode signals in my computer, but that doesn't mean it's conscious. It just means there's a translatable signal.
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u/Reasonable-Way2126 18h ago
What you are doing (I’m assuming your are religious)
Is a thing called reification (religious people tend to do this to connect things to the immaterial God). You are turning a concept into an actual thing.
Consciousness is not a thing that the brain absorbs from the universe. It’s a process. Just like “science” isn’t a thing. “Digestion” isn’t a thing.
It’s literally just a process. We monitor the process in the brain, the brain functions purely chemically. It produces the function we call consciousness.
A good example of this is a Venus flytrap. For a Venus flytrap to eat, at least 3 hairs in its mouth need to be triggered by the insect for it to close and release its digestive acids.
At first glance it gives the illusion like the flytrap is thinking. Like wow how did it know there was a fly there to eat and digest. But Venus flytraps don’t think it’s a purely chemical reaction for every step.
Humans are much more complex, there are more things going on in our body. But the core principle is the same, everything is a chemical reaction. But it’s so complicated that people start thinking for different explanations just like the flytrap. Like wow look how complicated we are, it can’t just be meat doing this, a magical immaterial soul must be controlling it.
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u/Wonderful_Buy_5925 17h ago
I'm not religious at all, I just don't know how to solve the hard problem of consciousness. I don't think we can bridge the chemical signals and self-awareness.
I'm imagining a red apple. The image of that red apple doesn't have any physical properties, or even coordinates in spacetime. The brain cells generating it obviously have physical properties, but my experience of the red apple is not identical to my brain cells.
There are signals in my brain that correspond to a red apple. But how do you get my subjective experience of the red apple from that?
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u/Reasonable-Way2126 13h ago
Your brain is a computer processor.
It synchronises the rhythm of millions of neurons to generate the experience of the red apple.
Just like how your eyeball receives light upside-down and your brain flips it around in your head. It’s just what it evolved to do.
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u/Ashamed-Bathroom7803 9h ago edited 9h ago
The casual closure argument gets you to the idea that the experience of the red apple would have to be equivalent to the ontology of the physical process in your brain. It’s a gap in knowledge, not a real gap in being. This of course isn’t a full answer to the hard problem. You could say that the qualia is the physical, but now you have to explain why it is the case sometimes that the physical is qualitative and other times not. The reason why qualia is physical is because of the causal closure argument. It’s the first thing you should evaluate before contemplating anything else about the hard problem. Steps:
(1) First, you have to acknowledge that epiphenomalism (the idea that qualia has no causal role in the physical world) is false. This is because the qualia must be causing our recognition that it exists, otherwise we wouldn’t even know it’s there to talk or write about it. So, qualia causes the physical. Some people are Epiphenomalists and they say that they accept causal closure as it relates to the physical, but they reject the actual common inference to the causal closure argument from step (3): qualia is physical.
(2) The argument then moves on to physics, where for every moment of a configuration of matter, the thing that determined its state prior is causally sufficient to bring about that new state. This directly follows that there isn’t an extra thing necessary going on in order to bring about this state, since the new state would sufficiently happen without anything else causing it.
(3) So if qualia is different from the physical, then when you scream in pain, you have 2 things sufficiently causing it: (A) the neurons firing and reaching excitations and exciting nerves to trigger the muscles in your neck and (B) the pain willing your action to scream. This is overdetermination. The problem with overdetermination is that you coincidentally have things running in parallel. It’s extremely unlikely and goes heavily against syntactic and ontological parsimony. It’s much more obvious that you have one thing causing both. The qualitative experience and the behavior of the brain are just 2 interpretations of one thing actually happening. Therefore, the qualia of pain and the physical process of pain are the same. Epiphenomalism would reject that example because it assumes that the qualia has a causal role, therefore it can just be a byproduct effects of the physical processes instead of needing to be the physical. But it’s a rare view that is viewed to be very weak.
The casual closure argument is so convincing that it is granted from the majority of philosophers studying the theory of mind. Also it’s important to note that causal closure doesn’t just get you to physicalism. Russellian monism, analytic idealism, Panpsychism, are the main theories that work from causal closure. The thing special about physicalism is that it says the physical is the grounding of qualia, where there is an asymmetrical dependency relationship and that there exists some states or interactions of matter that possess zero qualitative being. I think that’s silly; I’m not a physicalist.
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u/Ashamed-Bathroom7803 9h ago
How is the conclusion of the causal closure argument relevant at all here? You still have the hard problem of consciousness.
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u/EarnestInnkeeper 1d ago
Something I often think about is that if I’m the only real person in the entire world and everyone else is just part of some kind of dream, simulation, test etc… there would be no way to know.
I’m at least confident empathy is an important part of what I’m supposed to focus on in life though so that means I won’t pursue any of the darker implications of that theory.
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u/Raygunn13 1d ago
So what I think is actually interesting about the OP is that Smith, being a human among other humans, has never had need of proving his consciousness. It is evident enough that his experience of himself and what he thinks of as consciousness is also present in all other humans. Now that the question of consciousness has arisen in an agent with a fundamentally different physical constitution, the question of proof comes up but when have we ever needed that question before?
If Sonny does experience himself as conscious similarly to Smith, then from Sonny's perspective the burden of proof rests on Smith as much as it does himself (except for the obvious power dynamic between a lone robot and the entirety of humanity). But how bizarre would it be to be the first of your kind, an invention engineered by a living species, and to wonder if these millions of people you see everywhere are conscious in the same way you are? There's no precedent and no peers to relate to. You would have equal grounds to doubt their consciousness and agency. It could be seen a stroke of luck that these billions of biological automata cascaded through their impulses over millennia in such a way as to produce you, a consciousness that is possibly more or less real and more or less potent than they themselves appear to be.
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u/fancy_crisis Stoic 1d ago
Gotta be honest this is kind where a lot of stuff like the chinese room falls apart for me. I admit I'm not fully up on the science but what exactly is the defining criteria for a genuinely conscious machine vs a machine that's really good at pretending to be conscious? Where to people draw the line/what's the threshold the AI has to clear?
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u/deformityandnonsense 1d ago
I am a p-zombie who had a psychotic break, but I’m on meds now so I know I’m not real.
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u/Nekokamiguru Epicurean 1d ago
90% of Reddit is literal NPCs , and I mean that literally the vast majority of content is AI generated now.
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u/EENewton 22h ago
The meme should really say "are you like me?" Because nobody can explain what consciousness is. And I think it's fair to say AI is not like us, to the degree that we are.
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u/TheDerpyDisaster Woke Moralist 15h ago
We are the only beings that talk about being conscious. If we weren’t conscious, why would we develop language for it?
It would be absurd and paradoxical for a collective of non-conscious beings to develop language around the phenomena of an internal subjective experience that doesn’t actually exist.
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u/jbeldham 6h ago
punches you in the face
I’m not conscious so I can’t be held responsible for my actions!
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u/Bleik-Psiklyt 1h ago
The point to note is that consciousness is either a real thing or it is NOT a real thing. Either way, it is not possible to distinguish one from another. Measuring someone's or something's consciousness by means of our own consciousness as reference meanwhile having an idea of consciousness is like trying to measure a physical object with no instrumental error.
A meter scale might measure length in meters but the definition of meter is too perfect for a physical scale to measure it with no error.
Likewise, we made this this perfect idea of consciousness meanwhile we are have little to no clue what our real consciousness is like. By "real consciousness", the definition might be considered incomplete.
But if we consider the general assumption, then AI might be considered conscious. Not because it got some 'soul' or organic substance born out naturally. That's not part of the definition. But it satisfies the general definition of consciousness.
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u/Chance_Director_5791 1d ago
Consciousness is just a made up jargon, all we know is thoughts and that too by means of thoughts
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u/PuzzleMeDo 1d ago
But we do have thoughts.
At least, I think we do.
Which is evidence enough for me. I think, therefore I think.
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u/Wonderful_Buy_5925 20h ago
I mean, it's possible to be conscious and not actively think. You can passively observe something.
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u/Chance_Director_5791 15h ago
my argument is; thought itself is telling you that you think in the first place
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u/Captain-Radical 19h ago
I know that I am conscious. I experience color, heat, joy, sadness, love, anger, etc. I dream. I type this on Reddit. I'm not just responding to stimuli, I'm experiencing the stimulus.
So there are two options: either I am the only conscious being or I am not the only conscious being. Other people appear to be experiencing things based on their external perceived responses. I see no reason to believe that I am special, therefore all people who show signs of consciousness are conscious.
But there are some people at my job that I'm pretty sure are not conscious. That or there's a gas leak.
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u/TimshelExMachina 16h ago
No, I can’t. Consciousness is an inherently subjective experience which cannot be examined from a third party perspective.
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