News for hackers. Stuff that matters.

A comment on The Consciousness of Invertebrates. Parent comment

Re:The Consciousness of Invertebrates by dTal on Wednesday June 09, 2021 @06:27AM (#27446311)
Proving that "consciousness" exists by introspection strikes me as being a bit like proving phlogiston exists by burning something. No one questions our surface experience, but is "consciousness" (whatever that means) a good framework for understanding that, or even a coherent concept?

Practitioners of meditation often describe a process of silencing a chorus of inner voices, one by one, and being faced with an existential crisis upon realizing that there is no singular "self" or "I" - a concept that "consciousness" implicitly relies on, because if there is no "I" then what is the thing that is conscious? So the idea that consciousness is an illusory phenomenon is also something you can directly experience.

(By the way - what's the other phenomenon?)

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:The Consciousness of Invertebrates by betwixthewires on Wednesday June 09, 2021 @03:19PM (#27451941)
Free will.

It isn't simple introspection. It is a rigorous scientific experiment, Descartes' evil demon thought experiment.

Additionally, you can only prove your own consciousness exists, not consciousness in general. But that's OK, classic materialism will suffice to determine that the world probably isn't an illusion and other beings like you probably experience similar phenomena.

Meditation is not a rigorous experiment, if someone can formulate a reproducible experiment like Descartes' thought experiments that produces this phenomenon then there's something. Further, there's no requirement that a voice be a singular one for the self or consciousness to exist. We can deduce that they exist, how they work or what exactly they are is not known.

[ Parent | on HN ]