this post was submitted on 25 Sep 2023
173 points (84.7% liked)

Asklemmy

43848 readers
642 users here now

A loosely moderated place to ask open-ended questions

Search asklemmy πŸ”

If your post meets the following criteria, it's welcome here!

  1. Open-ended question
  2. Not offensive: at this point, we do not have the bandwidth to moderate overtly political discussions. Assume best intent and be excellent to each other.
  3. Not regarding using or support for Lemmy: context, see the list of support communities and tools for finding communities below
  4. Not ad nauseam inducing: please make sure it is a question that would be new to most members
  5. An actual topic of discussion

Looking for support?

Looking for a community?

~Icon~ ~by~ ~@Double_A@discuss.tchncs.de~

founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
 

Interesting article didnt know where it fit best so I wanted to share it here.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] stingpie@lemmy.world -3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I'm not sure I entirely understand your argument. "We decide it exists, therefore it exists" is the basis of all science and mathematics. We form axioms based on what we observe, then extrapolate from those axioms to form a coherent logical system. While it may be a leap of logic to assume others have consciousness, it's a common decency to do that.

Onto the second argument, when I mean "what signal is qualia" I'm talking about what is the minimum number of neurons we could kill to completely remove someone's experience of qualia. If we could sever the brain stem, but that would kill an excess of cells. We could kill the sensory cortex, but that would kill more cells than necessary. We could sever the connection between the sensory cortex and the rest of the brain, etc. As you minimize the number of cells, you move up the hierarchy, and eventually reach the prefrontal cortex. But once you reach the prefrontal cortex, the neurons that deliver qualia and the neurons that register it can't really be separated.

Lastly, you said that assuming consciousness is some unique part of the universe is wrong because it cannot be demonstrably proven to exist. I can't really argue against this, since it seems to relate to the difference in our experience of consciousness. To me, consciousness feels palpable, and everything else feels as thin as tissue paper.

[–] bloodfoot@programming.dev 5 points 1 year ago

Science is built upon repeatable experiments that can be used to test hypotheses. It is not built on axioms and logical extrapolation- those are used to form new hypotheses but they are insufficient by themselves. We don’t decide something exists, we hypothesize that it exists and make predictions based on that hypothesis. If experimental results line up with our predictions then we call that a theory. If new data contradicts the theory or hypothesis then we revise and try again.