David Chalmers - Why is Consciousness so Mysterious?
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 30 ก.ย. 2024
- For more videos on why consciousness is so mysterious, click here: bit.ly/1Dw1hFC
How can the mindless microscopic particles that compose our brains 'experience' the setting sun, the Mozart Requiem, and romantic love? How can sparks of brain electricity and flows of brain chemicals literally be these felt experiences or be 'about' things that have external meaning?
For more videos and information from David Chalmers, click here: bit.ly/1BNrd8v
David John Chalmers is an Australian philosopher and cognitive scientist specializing in the areas of the philosophy of mind, and the philosophy of language. He is a professor of philosophy and neural science at New York University, as well as co-director of NYU's Center for Mind, Brain and Consciousness.
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Jesus Christ those guys from def leppard are smart
😂
LOL
It's megadeth
Dead lmao
A fucking ROACH is concious!. Have you ever stared at a roach and the moment that you DECIDE to kill it......the moment you resolved to do it the roach someehow sensed it and ran away? It was conscious of the intention to kill it before a threatening move was ever made
THAT is not an illusion... that thing understands that you want to kill it and it has to run away if it values it's life... Which it does
It's as if Bertrand Russell joined Iron Maiden and somehow acquired an Australian accent.
He would absolutely love this characterization, I suspect.
+fiveredpears Ha ha, absolutely.
bahaha
He also reminds me of a young Richard Wright from Pink Floyd.
fiveredpears yet you have no intellectual input for the topic of consciousness. Funny none the less.
Chalmers is a pure genius. It's remarkable. Probably one of the greatest philosophers alive
Are you a Christian?
Genius description of the eternal problem
He's a lot like me in that regard 😆🤣
He was unconscious last time he went to his barber.
Lol! I'd use a straightener on his hair.
Nice haha
But can he crank his amplifier up to 11?
That's funny 😂
One of the most interesting and significant 12 minutes on the Internet. Thumbs waaay up, kudos.
"If this is an illusion, then the illusion is consciousness" .....sweet. we can stop there.
Out of all the closer to truth videos I’ve seen, Chalmers is the best in my opinion. Great video.
I believe the entire universe is just one big conscious entity which has been spread all around. Each atom has the ability of being conscious. There is a lot more about the atom that needs to be discovered. A combination of these atoms in the form of a human brain creates consciousness.
There is way more to reality than what our senses allow us to experience.
this 👆
Good point
He speaks that consciousness should not be reduced to smaller parts like atoms etc. but to be fundamental (i.e. not being made of anything else) you need to be able to show that it cannot be broken into smaller parts. There is a lot of evolutionary evidence that consciousness is an "emergent" property of brain power. Evolution essentially gave rise to it.
I can't believe the amount of haters here. Chalmers has with great conceptual clarity and without denying our scientific worldview brought back the immensely important issue of consciousness, a problem any human being can at least phenomenologically relate to. There's nothing 'funny' about his ideas.
*****
well said. sad but true!
@Castlegrad I've read António Damásio a Portuguese neuro-scientist, the books Decartes mistake (O Erro de Decartes) and Meeting Espinosa (Ao Encontro de Espinosa). I must say to me it seems like consciousness is an illusion, although a fundamental one to explain reality.
@@landervast I've watched so many of these videos about consciousness and I think I figured out what they are saying. People are dualists in that they think that there is a brain and consciousness. Basically two different things, maybe even different levels of reality. When they say that consciousness is an illusion, they mean the second thing. I think that is why I was always confused since I am not a dualist. I believe that my consciousness is what my brain is doing, so I would agree that the separate consciousness is not real, but I am nonetheless conscious.
Does this make sense to you, or is this the illusion you are talking about?
@@caricue it seems to me that consciousness and also personality are illusions, they seem to me like emergent of something else, like they have a kind of heuristic nature, and there for would seem without definite or defined form, If that makes any sense.
@@landervast Haha, no, I did not get anything from that, but it is not any less reasonable than anyone else's ideas. It is interesting that you add personality to the mix. For me, personality is kind of obviously physical and based on experience and genetic predisposition, but who knows.
And David Chalmers is a part of my brain who keeps reminding me of everything is just made by myself :)
True, however we didn’t make ourselves right ? Hard questions
I think there's over 100 hypotheses on what causes NDE-they can't all be right; but that strongly suggests that the skeptic is stabbing in the dark and really have no idea the nature of NDE's. I find it incredulous that such an intricate mechanism is by pure accident-cellular proteins serving as my personal nursemaid to ensure a blissful departure. I'm not sure what the evolutionary benefit to that might be but whatever excuse it will present ex-post-facto and will only beg the question.
Perhaps then you should be working withStuart Hameroff who as an anesthesiologist understands nixting of gap junctions that correspond (correlate)with unconsciousness but still admits science's lack of understanding of how that could be.Then there is the NDE phenomena which sometimes presents when a patient is anesthetized and shouldn't be having a conscious experience at all comparable to something similar under coma
One way of looking it is that just as space and time are containments of existence, perhaps consciousness is the third containment and there may even be different dimensions of consciousness just as there are many dimensions of space.
In such a short video, this guy spoke of my past 5 year experience in philosophy! He simply SPOKE MY MIND!!! lol!
After 7 years I can tell you your mind also created this guy that’s why he speaks your mind.
@@bitkurd sup us?
@@bitkurd yikes, this truth is unsettling
How could consciousness bring about physical reality? Is information of physical reality programmed; and might such programming be done by consciousness?
The question is " Where does it exist?" Yesterday - Tomorrow?
Entirely non-existent quantities both. Same for the last and next second. Neither existential in any way, shape or form. Where is now, between the non existent last and next pico-second? Reality must be a might thin slice of some thing- but what- and how thin? A Plank time duration? 10 to the minus 43 of a second?
Chalmers looks more like Charmers.. a rock star, not a professor.. excellent discussion, thanks to Robert Lawrence Kuhn.
I don't find the qualia argument all that convincing, as all it implies is that there might indeed be such a thing as consciousness, here understood as experiental awareness or qualia. It does not weigh either way when it comes to determining whether said consciousness is primitive or derivative, as Chalmers put it. It may not even suffice to defeat the illusion possibility, as this may just be part thereof, but that's beside my point.
There is however the other view: that of consciousness as a derivative, emergent, and consequent phenomenon rather than a primitive, fundamental, and antecedent one.
It may have been easier to dispute this view roughly a decade ago, but now that neuroscience is getting experimental results wherein subjects become aware of a decision & action instants _after_ the corresponding neural pathways have been caught firing, in some cases entire _seconds_ after, it corroborates experimentally the second view and puts pressure on the fundamental consciousness camp.
Philosopher or member of Def Leppard?
Once conciousness is fundamental then the conscious observer effect in quantum mechanics fit together perfectly.
It's the *measurement* problem and has nothing to do with consciousness.
As I become more conscious and aware of the Cosmos...is this the reason the Cosmos is running away from me?
@@davidinmossy The latest Nobel prize proved that with no observer there’s nothing to be measured.
One eternal consciousness experiencing itself subjectively, we get back to religious language at the root of being.
IMHO, if you can't imagine an experiment to distinguish a "zombie" as defined in this video from a "conscious" being, then the question of consciousness is permanently outside of science. You can still argue about whether conscience is a thing among philosophers, but it can't be science.
When Chalmers says "I can't question my own consciousness, I am experiencing it directly" What does he mean by "I"? Isn't that what consciousness is, the experience of "I" and if it is is his consciousness conscious?
Yes we are conscious of our consciousness.
What does conciousness have to do with "Spinal Tap"? Is there a medical connection?
Still waiting for the guitar solo
Consciousness as a fundamental building block and it is not reduceable. Hmm. I always pictured consciousness as something that can be reduced from a baser process, but it is a different avenue of thought. Food for thought.
So many people don't get conciousness , it seriously make some wonder some are not conscious.
There must be a gradient, some people are clearly more conscious than others.
Chalmers was smart to separate out the hard problem of consciousness. Thinking, perception, memory, emotions are all brain functions. Consciousness is a quality of matter that has been arranged in a specific configuration. In other words, it has to be alive to be conscious, but you have to have a brain in order to carry out cognitive functions.
No consciousness is the prime state of all existence. Adepts trained to subdue local memory to stream from the prime field. Three in one state of con'ss. mind, matter, information. Father, Son, Holy Spirit. Rishi, Devata, Chhandas
@@drawingroomart5017 You don't consider that a religious position? Just out of curiosity, if adepts have access to some higher plane, what knowledge or insight is gained?
@@caricue We have 3 brains. Local reptilian inherited memory. Local learned mammalian / tribal memory. + non local prime field (religions call the kingdom within) Adepts train to subdue local memory, so that they stream from the prime field of solutions. They publish, almost no one gets it, and their thesis on Consciousness is turned into local memory based rituals. Add money, property power, and they have truly lost the plot. Scientists tell us, we can perceive about 1 - 5 % of what is out there. Material science is limited to that. Many top scientists especially quantum, physicists admit there is a connection between matter and mind. Brain as transceiver. We can train to stream from the infinite field of potential that is Consciousness. So no this notion is not religion, but individual metaphysical practice. I have many statement from scientists saying, consciousness IS the prime field.
after 20 years of sensory deprivation that brain will be anything but normal.
It seems to me that the thing we know most about, only know about, and can be most sure of, is, what we call, qualia. Is it not the experiences that qualia presents to us that lures us into an hypothesis/story of consciousness, indirect realism, an I, a self, others, and a material world? If indirect realism is true, then it would be hard to find concrete evidence for anything beyond qualia because we are trapped within the realm of qualia.
A smart person explains difficult concepts in way so that people say well yeah, obviously-no matter how long their hair is
Physical science will never explain consciousness
a little off topic but two days ago I had a dream I was sitting at table in a restaurant where I could see behind the counter and watch the staff at work, In the dream I saw the chef say to this blond waitress "repeat the order please"....he gets frustrated at her and I thought he was going to attack her. Its like where in the hell did this dream come from???? I could tell you what the waitress looked like...she was ablond about 50 with a pony tail (nice cheekbones) and dressed in like a upscale restaurants attire of black and white In real life I don't anyone that is this women but in the dream I felt empathy for her. Does the mind really just invent the things you see in dreams?
Dude... he doesn't blink... ?
He is an a zombie
Only the non-zombies rarely blink. Keep'n an eye out.
Don't you understand!? That whenever you blinks, he blinks. And vice versa. Tandem-blinking.
We are pure consciousness having a material experience at the moment. We are supposed to be doing good things, writings, paintings, music, etc,etc, somehow man screws that up, choose door #1 my yolk is easy, that's Jesus's saying.
Chalmer is such a savvy chalmer! Good on ya mate.
The big question for me is: How do you come up with an experiment to test how consciousness interact with the rest of the elements?
The science of conscioness integrates with technology through people who's brain's have been studied. People with Temperal Lobe epilepsy for example. They tend to be artist, poets and special people. They live the life of hi technology, medications and a different perspective than their family members.
How do you develop a science of consciousness?
Chalmers was amazing in Led Zeppelin
Everything is mysterious, not just consciousness, everything in life is mysterious
I think this thought has a great life-enhancing effect. It is disillusioning in that it frees us from the stressful compulsion of having to have an answer to every question we can ask ourselves.
@@karlschmied6218 It also breaks materialism, which breaks determinism.
We forget how unbelievable it all is. Our brains are designed to habituate or we would die from astonishment.
7:21 "That suggests to me that conciousness is more than a physical process..."
Absolutely wrong. Everything in nature, everything in the Universe is a physical process.
+Citriano Torres Agreed. When I am home alone and I hear a creak in the floor, well, that suggests to me someone is in the living room. That doesn't mean that's actually the case.
2 weirdos talking mumbo jumbo, no?
Even if you read every book about the color red, you will never "feel" to color red as presented to your eyes. That prove that consciousness is ... what?
Your see red when 1 of 3 specific cone in the retina transmit pulse to a specific location in the visual area. If a mad scientist open your scull then insert an electrode in that brain area and sent a gentle electric current (assuming he don't want to destroy part of you), you would see red. Mary living in her boring black and white room would see red. A blind person would see red for the same reason.
A more realistic scenario than Mary with the impossible black/white room is you, anybody reading this, try to imagine the smell of some meal made of ingredients that you never heard about.
A good writer will find a way to describe a color by comparing it to other color that he knows the reader may have seen. Similarly, a good writer will use different linguistics artifacts to help to come close to the flavor/smell of a given meal. He may describe the smell of sand after rain, the burning of matches, etc
Suppose a computer calculates all the sights, sounds, emotions and thoughts experienced by Noam Chomsky when he watched "The Godfather" for the first time on November 28, 1974.
And suppose the computer also calculates the motions of an equilateral triangle inside of a circle, vibrating in sync with the first 1000 digits of the square root of Area 51.
Those are two things outside of space and time. They both existed before the big bang and will always exist.
Someday humans may be able to be put into a dream state and experience either or both of those things.
The technicians won't necessarily need to know how the logic of consciousness works, all they will need to do is make some fairly good connections between the brain and some computer.
So what do we conclude?
Well, first let's go back and ask what our original problem was:
How is it conceivable that a bunch of tinker toys, rubber bands and paper clips could be arranged to generate Noam Chomsky's consciousness?
But we have discovered that they don't generate it, because it always existed, even before the big bang. They merely calculate it.
So let me stop blathering and get to my point: The Noam Chomsky zombie we see in this universe merely calculates the Noam Chomsky consciousness, it does not create it or generate it. It exists outside this universe. Yet surprisingly, we may be able to experience it or something close to it, by hooking up to a computer.
Iron Maiden's Cogito
I Rock Therefore I Am.
*pumps panpsychist fist*
The fkn level of this comment
Panpsychist Fist!
5 star bandname👌
Excellent! Talk about Consciousness .Thanx for bringing this back,on Y.T.
Am I weird for noticing Chalmers never blinks and never breaks eye contact?
Its so you know he is the real one or vice versa
9:10
I watched for awhile xD
But does it go to eleven though? And more importantly... does it have infinite sustain????
The reason the question about the nature of consciousness becomes hard, is because it really is easy in actuality. And if simplicity of something gets misunderstood, then it becomes hard.
The thing is that, not everything in the world can be explained(in fact nothing can be really explained as to what its nature is). To be able to understand the existential nature of anything, it is needed to understand the fact, that phenomenon in the nature simply "ARE". For example, speaking about the nature of the consciousness, its just an inherent property of matter, there is no explanation needed(or possible) further than that.
But, there is one caveat here, which really is the true subjective reason why a particular person might be not "getting" the consciousness,. And it is simply because, as our modern society stands, majority of people in it are unconscious or barely conscious(regardless of or even contrary to how intelligent and educated they might be).
1:50-2:20 right there, that is it. That is the answer.
I study ancient literature, character development is relatively new. Most stories centered around a plot, the development of action. Not the human being and it's intrinsic thoughts, feelings, consciousness. most people are not conscious, I probably did not start truly examining my consciousness till my late 30s.
Evolution does not need consciousness, in fact it might do better without it, at least till now.
And we'll know we've succeeded when it gets stuck in an infinite do-loop and then overheats with a comical puff of smoke and the accompanied smell of burned plastic.
Lol
After watching, I felt I was a little bit closer to understanding consciousness. I think the tipping point was when Dr. Chalmers talked about the stream of consciousness that is running in our brains daily. Still, I keep thinking that consciousness must also be a physiological process, not something distinct from a physiological process.
I know it's an old comment, but for anyone reading... we have been forced into the materialist worldview by militant atheists, our schools, universities, tv and everything is engaged in the process, it was not the case for the majority of human history. @Brain Richards, you feel this way because it's been ingrained into us by our culture, don't get sucked into it.
It's pretty astonishing how far bad philosophy can take people that they start to think the one thing they should be most certain is true and is the foundation of all science and knowledge doesn't exist.
@@Pietrosavr Analyse the sentence "I don't believe in consciousness." That "I," the thing which believes or disbelieves, cannot be understood as anything other than a conscious subject. If it isn't, than what is it? And belief-- what could belief or disbelief be other than a sort of attitude taken by that same conscious subject towards external reality?
The sentence "I don't believe in consciousness" is therefore unintelligible if consciousness does not exist. But materialism says consciousness (by any honest definition of the word) doesn't really exist. So yes, materialism is absurd. Most philosophers have abandoned it by this point.
@@lukeabbott3591 Depends how you define consciousness but mostly yes. 'I' also requires a will, it's not just experiencing the external world but also what we want to do with it, desires. The product of consciousness and will which is emotions. Belief is basically the desire to accept some conscious observation as true, so it also requires your will.
Together consciousness and free will create the feedback loop necessary for life. I see the world, I desire a better world, I change the world and go back to observing it. But I'm aware some definitions of consciousness includes free will, though I prefer to refer to them separately, and call their combination the soul.
No consciousness is the prime state of all existence. Adepts trained to subdue local memory to stream from the prime field. Three in one state of con'ss. mind, matter, information. Father, Son, Holy Spirit. Rishi, Devata, Chhandas
What a mind!
without consciousness how would you know virtual from actual, figuratively from literal? If consciousness did not exist nothing could truly be real. true reality is consciousness
He thinks he's so smart
The comments listed on this page represent the most disconnected collection of conscious collectiveness that I've ever had the non-displeasure of being associated or connected to.
Just saying.
Mostly. But a few tiresome comments did give me some anti-non-displeasure.
CONSCIOUSNESS?
I have a different perspective regarding consciousness. What I have discovered is that basically we are all PavlovIan creatures who have been programmed from the moment of conception. All of our life experiences form our view of reality and view of the world. That means we operate from a position which means our choices are not truly free but predetermined and based on the past. When I made this observation, I connected the dots and it changed my life dramatically. Admittedly, this is not easy to do because it means “seeing” how the past determines the present choices. This is particularly true regarding relationship choices. People keep making the same mistakes over and over again because your program is in charge of the choosing. Fortunately, I broke the code and what a difference it has made. No one does anything unless it fills a need. Once the true need is revealed, you are then in a position to make a better choice. Our quality of life is achieved by the choices that we make. But first you must unlock the programming codes.
That’s one smart dude👍🏻
from your article "Commenting on Lorber's work, Kenneth Till, a former neurosurgeon at the Great Ormond Street Hospital for Sick Children, London, has this to say: "Interpreting brain scans can be very tricky. There can be a great deal more brain tissue in the cranium than is immediately apparent." Till echoes the cautions of many practitioners [!!!!!] when he says, "Lorber may be being rather overdramatic when he says that someone has 'virtually no brain". How would you comment this comment?
You don't have the answers and neither do I but we do have divergent worldviews.No amount of posting onTH-cam will change anyone's opinion. I am at least absent the sort of hubris that insists I am always right, but are you?Never mind. I believe consciousness is fundamental and not derivative and have a liturgy of reasons why that is so as much as you have your reasons for being a reductionist materialist.I won't change your mind, you won't change mine-there's a counter to every point
And oh yes, you obviously haven't investigated the NDE very thoroughly to make that reductionist claim. On the one hand, you claim there will always be explanatory gaps but then do some hand waving as if to readily dispel of the NDE phenomenon as if it's a non-issue. I see you're a fan of Shermer and Harris. What of third party validations of veridical accounts? And I'm not sure it necessarily implies substance dualism as it may turn out that all is consciousness and there is no machine.
Notice that you'll never cross the gap - by definition - by giving a mechanistic explanation ( = interaction). According to this logic, no human being will ever cross the gap, since it is by mechanistic explanations that we make sense of the world. I wouldn't even object to any of this to be honest, but I would also agree that the explanatory gap is hardly unique - that in fact there exist explanatory gaps all over the place, arising as they do out of the limits of human cognition.
You need consciousness to still be able to make a decision even though your desires are in conflict. And for that there have to be a "feeler" of emotions.
Local memory versus streaming for prime field.
Plato in Timaeus said he was a spirit temporarily in a body with orders to find his way back to the Creator. Down load "E-sword" then do a bible word study on the fall of Adam. Spirit is allegorical for mind, consciousness, I, ego, intellect while soul is allegorical for character, personality, individuality. Death is allegorical for separation.
Your first comment is next to irrelevant for our present purposes here. Hameroff is a first-rate clown whose Orch-OR model is faced with the exact same 'hard problem' as is any model based on conventional physics. NDE's can be entirely explained on a physical basis and do not require any additional hypothesizing nor do they prove any kind of substance dualism.
But if you think LSD explains the hard problem as a physiological model, you're misled. Concerning your explanatory gap-or the distinction between correlative mechanisms of the brain and "mind"-if this was a slam-dunk, step up and accept the Nobel Prize. Then again, maybe you agree as I'm not sure we're even talking about the same thing.
What is the nature of consciousness in the multiverse? is it just random? does one occur more then once?
A great interview. In my own metaphysics, mind creates mind. For that reason, the answers have been inaccessible.
arguably yes. and since then it has evolved a great deal, helping humankind in ALL aspects. philosophy is the new theology. minus the inquisition and the child abuse part. watch this carefully and get back to me afterwards /watch?v=PL84Yg2dNsg peace
"There are people who have virtually no brain and have IQs of geniuses and who can function better than average " :)))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))
Everything has a life cycle: Plants, People, Governments, Civilizations, Nations, Species, Planets, Stars, Galaxies, The Universe.
We all have a Birth, a Life, and a Death.
The Universe is going through its life cycle. It is currently in its Life Development stage. It has just recently gained self consciousness and is working to dig into the fabric of reality.
But what if the areas of the brain that give rise to the experience of qualia in regards to conscious color “experience” get destroyed , thereby losing the ability to experience that particular qualia? What would that say about consciousness?
philosophers are just trying so hard to prove they are still useful for us as a society. sometimes they are funny. most of the times are purely annoying. peace.
Aside from the age-old "interaction problem" that has always plagued dualistic ontologies of this kind, this still leaves the following conundrum: we can easily image our universe developing in such a way that no life forms came to be, or that none achieved consciousness in the sense of first-person subjective experience. Surely our scientific theories of nature cannot be dependent on whether or not conscious life forms evolve.
WOW.
Great explanation 👌 But may I add my theory (opinion). "In the beginning GOD created man in HIS own image. Certainly not a material body but rather an image of HIMSELF. IMAGE means CONSCIOUSNESS! GOD put into man's material body a consciousness... This would explain the "Mind/Body problem...." Brother James 🙏
Great discussion on the most important subject. Subscribed.
Consciousness is the prime state of all existence. Adepts trained to subdue local memory to stream from the prime field. Three in one state of con'ss. mind, matter, information. Father, Son, Holy Spirit. Rishi, Devata, Chhandas.
Mr. Chalmers never blinks his eyes and he talks about zombies. Creepy
There is no zombies, only consciousness. No ghost. Only matter and mind. Mind is consciousness. How about the immortality of the soul?
Consciousness "ol" things is a dualistic subset of non dual Pure Consciousness "In-Itself", (The Ground of Being). Everything in the universe is Pure Consciousness. The notion that C. is derived from brains doesn't hold water.
So, since we don't have an equation for consciousness.... This is justification for claiming consciousness is "fundamental"??? or "our bodies are vessels for consciousness" ? or "consciousness is all that's real, the physical objects around us (including our fucking brains) aren't real !!"
Really?
How is that bullshit NOT a science version of GOD OF THE GAPS ??
There IS NO EVIDENCE FOR ANY OF THOSE BULLSHIT CLAIMS !!!!!
Isn't conchusness just acumulation of data and ability to process that data through learning, if you for example took a baby and deatached it's brain from it's body and made both grow and then connected them together at about 20 years of age do you think the body would show signs of conchusness? Or would it just look around likea baby, the brain is so complicated we don't give it enough credit at how much it can learn in such short time periods but fundamentally it's nothing but intricate coms
Consciousness is an illusion? Not at all, consciousness creates the illusion - the 3D world.
I don't know how our mindless particles in our brains produce consciousness , but THEY DO..
Take away a brain and VOILA!! no more consciousness.
These panpsychists need to f off...
Consciousness is not fundamental.
"The brain alone can't explain consciousness"
-- that is every bit as stupid as saying "my digestive system alone doesn't explain digestion"
🙄🙄
Fuck off, Donald Hoffman and panpsychists
If a philosopher sugge suggests that conscious awareness happened due to evolution then they - at MINimum - must tell us a) in what species this magic occurred and b) what evolutionary advantage it provides I've the same species' members who were, at the time, not consciously aware.
THEN - and not until then- we can discuss their hypotheticals.
I have to admit I am shallow enough that I only checked out his TedTalk after he cut his hair and shaved.
Now, philosophy is about concepts. Chalmers doesn't provide a single concept about conscience, a single idea, different from the simple idea of soul, mind... etc.
He’s making too many assumptions. We don’t know anything about the brain, and he’s already claiming that it won’t reveal the nature of consciousness. Surely our minds are so unique that they’re beyond our comprehension. He said: "Don't try to reduce consciousness to some more basic things, it's just a process in the brain. So consciuosness is a fundamental property of the universe in the way that space and time and mass are". But later he also said: "If you're a good scientist you have to explain the data and one of the most fundamental data of our existence is the fact that we're consciousness, that we're conscious". It’s almost as if we’re at the center of the universe once again…
Consciousness is not mysterious. At least, relative to other things it is not a mystery. Consciousness coughed up the theory of Quantum Mechanics, Relativity, Calculus. Consciousness is no more mysterious than say, matter. What is matter? We can give a folk-science explanation, but it's really just an few ideas that roughly describe the phenomena.
Self-awareness evolved as an audit system for intelligence. Intelligence is far more useful when the results of an individuals behavior (especially in a social setting) can be analyzed, remembered, and therefore adjusted for the next time.
could zombies have phenomenal consciousness without subjective awareness?
Blink man, blink!
I counted him blink 3 times in under 1 min near bottom half of video. Thats just fron me counting more than halfway through. So in s 11:58 video he will have actually blinked 31 1/3 times
Here's my problem with Chalmers's position, apart from its jarring certainty in the Cartesian paradigm of consciousness as the ultimate unquestionable primitive of existence. Suppose we accept that consciousness is a fundamental constituent of the universe. Even in that case, biological organisms based on chemistry and eventually computation must be able to evolve far enough in a particular direction in design space to be able to "capture" consciousness, to be able to physically make use of it.
This guy doesn't understand how complex the brain is. If the brain can't explain conciousness than what else is there. Telekinesis? We are just machines. If you replicated the brain and body with transistors than you would have a conciouce being.
If you want to understand consciousness look at animals. Are they conscious? Yes, all of them. We humans may actually be at a lower level of consciousness compared to other species, like whales, dolphins or oysters. The bigger questions is "what are we conscious of?" What can we detect without aid? What do they know that we don't know? The goal shouldn't be to trace consciousness to some physical explanation, so that we can create actual AI some day. Rather, the goal should be to understand the perfection of a balance of consciousness between species.
The important question is not whether consciousness exists. The question is whether it is more than physics. Can it be replicated in silicon for example? The answer is yes. Consciousness is just an example of weak emergence. No magic qualia are required. Consciousness is not an illusion, but the sensation that consciousness is more than physics is an illusion.The sensations of colour and smell are just the way neurons fire. There is no hard problem.
Why do I not find consciousness as puzzling as everyone else...
@zempath So you should be able to tell me what consciousness is? or what it's made of?
Because you haven't thought about it long enough.
zempath It’s worth pointing out here that you couldn’t answer either of my questions which I think you have to admit to at least to some degree does suggest that some aspects of consciousness are mysterious.
@zempath that doesnt even begin to explain subjective experience. we can imagine say a computer that learns information and acts independently on that information. but there would be no reason to believe it was conscious. The problem with the discussion is that most people take consciousness to mean a being that is awake and acts on its own volition, but the philosopher's use of the word consciousness relates to subjective experience, which is a seperate issue from a being that acts and behaves, as shown by the p-zombie thought experiment.
Chalmers here is literally just saying consciousness exists, because "...i say it does. it is self evident". just my opinion, but that is a really weak way round to go about it. burden of evidence and all that.
He really goes to the Hard Problem of Consciousness.