That's a new use of the word "conscious" for me. How do you personally define consciousness?

Internal subjective experience. To “have” a point of view, not in the argumentative/opinion sense but in the “there is experience being experienced” sense.

What does it mean to have a point of view? Does a kalman filter qualify? Why not?

I’ve never been a Kalman filter so I have no idea.

The thing that is inscrutable to me by virtue of not having been a Kalman filter myself is what I’m referring to as “point of view.”

I don’t really know that anything or anyone at all is conscious (except for me), but it sure seems like lots of other things are, based on the way they behave.

So for some things, you are happy to watch the way they behave and assume they have this magical property of consciousness like yourself, but for a kalman filter, you'd have to be one to determine if it has a point of view?

You still haven't said what a point of view is in this context, if you can have it, and some other unspecified beings have it but you can't say upfront if a kalman filter has it.

There’s nothing incoherent here. Whether talking about a human, a dog, or a Kalman filter, the only mechanism by which I can infer (not fully determine) whether it’s conscious is by observing its behavior. Some things behave in ways that look more conscious than other things. Motor control, goal-seeking behavior, and doing things that imply self-awareness all point in the “probably conscious” direction, but none is dispositive. Other humans certainly give the appearance of being conscious while Kalman filters don’t appear that way. But you can imagine a totally believable robot (a la Westworld) that behaves outwardly identical to a conscious human but is not conscious. We don’t know enough about consciousness to determine whether it actually is or actually isn’t, which also applies to the Kalman filter question: it doesn’t appear to be conscious (unlike the robot) but we don’t have a way to determine whether it is (like the robot).

I’ve said multiple times what a point of view is, I think you’re just too caught up in argumentation to read the text in front of you.

You agree that you have experiences, correct? Your ability to experience experiences is what it means to have a POV. The name of that characteristic is “consciousness.”

It is probably the case that some objects experience experiences (like you presumably do and I definitely do), and other objects do not.

> and I definitely do

Prove it.

Are you trying to make my argument for me? Because that's my argument.

No I get the impression you really want to say qualia, but don't want the backlash.

What would the backlash be? Has “qualia” fallen out of favor among people who think being asleep == not being conscious? Frankly given that opening confusion I am surprised you’ve heard the word qualia.

Qualia is magical thinking. It implicitly assumes a Cartesian theater, and leads to infinite regress.

And yet here I am having continuous, direct interaction with subjective experience and yet I have zero evidence for a Cartesian theatre… simply claiming one implies the other is not the same as proving it.

> with subjective experience

So you claim. I can prompt an LLM to do the same.

Correct, you have no way to verify my claims, which is exactly my argument. Thanks!

It's like playing chess with a pigeon. My fault really.

Haha, indeed :)

Right. If we weren't conscious we wouldn't know we had slept. It is an experience of nothingness.

> If we weren't conscious we wouldn't know we had slept.

How do you figure? It’s not uncommon to fall asleep, wake up, and be convinced that you never fell asleep even when people next to you tell you that you were unresponsive, snoring, talking in your sleep, etc.

There is a difference between what is experienced in the mind and consciousness. What you're describing are aspects of emptiness (and content or lack of content) as experienced by the mind waking/dreaming/deepsleep. But consciousness / Atman is always aware and awake.

>You’re definitely still conscious when you’re asleep — dreams are certainly conscious experiences

I would say yes and no. I think we all feel there's something different about wakeful consciousness vs sleeping consciousness, and also, it seems that we are indeed sometimes "out cold" and that something like an "activation loop" (new term to me) might be necessary to play a role in distinguishing these various states.

> I would say yes and no.

Why would you say that? Why can't you say "I don't fully agree".