If you don’t like the word “proof” then replace it with the phrase “conclusive evidence”.
> Yes, it was [1]. Still is, as this work is on-going [2].
Sorry, how does any of that show that “minds arise from chemistry”?
> Yes. Have you heard of the Turing test?
Yes, and a Chinese room would pass the Turing test by its very definition.
> The person inside the room would be dead long before it emitted its first symbol.
Replace the person with a powerful CPU.
> And philosophical zombies are IPUs [3].
In this context a philosophical zombie is an instance of a Chinese room, which are fairly real things. Take a sufficiently advanced LLM, or an emulation of human brain, and you get one. (Showing that it is not a philosophical zombie would call for some conclusive evidence showing that the phenomenon of consciousness is caused by whatever entities feature in models from today’s natural sciences—so that manipulating them in a particular way is enough to cause consciousness to magically arise.)
> Perhaps you are unaware that I am the author of TFA [5]? Did you read it?
That slipped my mind after a while, but I don’t think it invalidates the discussion. I skimmed it back when it was posted and generally I have been familiar with the illusionist takes on consciousness for a while. As monistic materialism (as well as cartesian dualism) in general, they always strike me as inelegant and needlessly contrived. (When competing hypotheses cannot be falsified due to limitations of scientific method, beauty and elegance remain as qualities we can judge them on, and I find that beauty inversely correlates with the number of entities a given hypothesis must magically conjure into existence.)
> how does any of that show that “minds arise from chemistry”?
That's too long a story for an HN comment (which is the reason I referred you to an entire field of study) but the TL;DR is that the only reason we have to believe that minds exist at all is the I/O behavior of things that purport to have them (i.e. people) and that I/O behavior can (as far as we can tell) be completely accounted for the the behavior of neurons, which can be completely accounted for by chemistry.
> Replace the person with a powerful CPU.
That completely eviscerates the experiment. The whole point of the Chinese Room is that there is a conscious person inside who does not speak Chinese. Without that, the Chinese Room is just a run-of-the-mill AI.
> Showing that it is not a philosophical zombie would call for some conclusive evidence showing that the phenomenon of consciousness is caused by whatever entities feature in models from today’s natural sciences—so that manipulating them in a particular way is enough to cause consciousness to magically arise.
Where is your "conclusive evidence" that this "phenomenon of consciousness" actually exists?
If an AI exhibits I/O behavior that is indistinguishable from a human (i.e. can pass the Turing test) then on what basis can you call one a "philosophical zombie" and not the other?
> they always strike me as inelegant and needlessly contrived
> that I/O behavior can (as far as we can tell) be completely accounted for the the behavior of neurons, which can be completely accounted for by chemistry
Thing is, this can be explained the other way around. If neurons & chemistry were merely how conscious phenomena appear (a map of the territory), the observed outcome would not change. (Most of chemistry, physics, etc. all work equally well in that scenario, by the way, but there may be implications in other fields.)
By the way, reducing everything to I/O behaviour is also a philosophical position, I believe it’s called behaviourism.
> The whole point of the Chinese Room is that there is a conscious person inside who does not speak Chinese.
Neither does a powerful CPU/an LLM—the point of putting a slow person that doesn’t speak the language is to illustrate on an intuitive level what happens with a fast program that does the same, just in the blink of an eye.
> Where is your "conclusive evidence" that this "phenomenon of consciousness" actually exists?
You want to attribute me a claim I do not make. There is no conclusive evidence either way, and it could be impossible to obtain any (at least within the framework of scientific method). However, a theory where it does not exist has major logical flaws in my view.
> If an AI exhibits I/O behavior that is indistinguishable from a human (i.e. can pass the Turing test) then on what basis can you call one a "philosophical zombie" and not the other?
Hinges on the hard problem. If you claim consciousness does not exist, then you have your answer and I have mine, but I would object to treating it as a fact.
> What is your alternative?
I would not claim to have my own, but variants of monistic idealism as I understand them presuppose the objective existence of consciousness and go from there. I find that way we may have to magically conjure out of nothing much fewer entities and arbitrary rules, and don’t have to explain away the only phenomenon we have direct access to.
> reducing everything to I/O behaviour is also a philosophical position, I believe it’s called behaviourism
I'm not "reducing everything to I/O behavior", I'm just saying that you have no evidence for the existence of consciousness in entities other than yourself other than their I/O behavior.
> the point of putting a slow person
You have completely misunderstood the point of the Chinese room. The speed at which the person operates is completely irrelevant to the argument, it is only relevant to my counter-argument. The whole point of my counter-argument is that the original argument is invalid because it ignores the speed at which a human can execute the rules. The speed matters. It's not the only thing that matters, but it's one of the things, and the fact that Searle ignores it enough to invalidate his argument.
> There is no conclusive evidence either way
There is for me. Consciousness is something I directly experience. Maybe it's different for you, but I'd be really surprised. But (and this is where I predict we will diverge) I believe that this experience is an illusion, just as my experience of motion when looking at Moving Snakes is an illusion.
> If you claim consciousness does not exist
I do not claim that it does not exist, I claim that it is an illusion. Illusions exist, they are just not what they naively appear to be.
> we may have to magically conjure out of nothing much fewer entities and arbitrary rules
What entities and arbitrary rules need to be "conjured out of nothing" to support Dennett's thesis? In fact, it's the exact opposite: presupposing the objective existence of something for which there is no evidence, and quite a bit of evidence that our perception of it is an illusion, that seems more like "conjuring something out of nothing" to me.
Why do you think it matters? If you didn’t think so, presumably you would not yourself be arguing for a particular explanation (e.g., neurons causing consciousness).
I can pick between a few reasons why it matters to me. One of them is probably similar to why you or I would think that believing or not believing in a deity matters.
> you have no evidence for the existence of consciousness in entities other than yourself other than their I/O behavior.
I don’t need that evidence if I assume consciousness exists in the first place. You need it if you believe it arises from some configuration of entities in external reality.
> The whole point of my counter-argument is that the original argument is invalid because it ignores the speed at which a human can execute the rules
Why does the speed matter?
> I do not claim that it does not exist, I claim that it is an illusion. Illusions exist, they are just not what they naively appear to be.
Would it be fair to say that time-space is an illusion? It seems that “it is not what it naively appears to be” is a true statement about it, doesn’t it?
> presupposing the objective existence of something for which there is no evidence
The evidence of consciousness is empirically supplied every moment of your existence, though. Empirical evidence of anything else by definition requires consciousness, too.
> I don’t need that evidence if I assume consciousness exists in the first place.
I think you're missing the point here. Let me repeat, with some added emphasis: you have no evidence for the existence of consciousness in entities other than yourself other than their I/O behavior. It's not that you have no evidence. You do. But that evidence takes the form of I/O behavior, which can be completely accounted for by physics. Yes, you can assume that consciousness is a real thing independent of physics, but you can also assume invisible pink unicorns. Neither is necessary to explain the data. The only thing that is problematic is your subjective sensation of consciousness, which kinda sorta feels like it should not be possible if physics is all there is. That's the problem that Dennett solved.
> Would it be fair to say that time-space is an illusion?
> The evidence of consciousness is empirically supplied every moment of your existence, though.
Yes, I don't deny that. And I don't deny that accounting for it is a Very Hard Problem. The fact that Dennett was able to solve it is one of the many things that made him noteworthy.
> you can assume that consciousness is a real thing independent of physics
To make that claim is to engage in Cartesian dualism, don’t you see it? I find Cartesian dualism not a particularly elegant theory (even less so than monistic materialism). If you believe you are arguing with a Cartesian dualist, then we are talking past each other.
(This is, I guess, an illustration of why I find complete lack of philosophical rigour so frustrating when arguing with monistic materialists.)
I have no idea who I'm arguing with here. And I have no idea what distinguishes a "monistic materialist" from a non-monistic materialist. AFAIK, there is dualism and there is materialism, and that is an exhaustive partition of the philosophical idea space regarding consciousness.
I also know that you think it's necessary to assume that consciousness exists rather than inferring its existence from (physical) observation, which makes you sound like a dualist to me.
(I also find it rather frustrating that you complain about a lack of philosophical rigor while at the same time being so cagey about your actual position.)
But please set me straight: what is your actual position?
As per above discussion starting with https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40316040, I find dualism dubious, and monisms of materialist sort inelegant. It is frustrating if I need to refresh that regularly. Perhaps you are trying to keep up with too many threads :)
Monism in philosophy of mind means assuming the fundamental existence of one sort of thing (e.g., material world) as opposed to two (e.g., body and soul).
If you don’t like the word “proof” then replace it with the phrase “conclusive evidence”.
> Yes, it was [1]. Still is, as this work is on-going [2].
Sorry, how does any of that show that “minds arise from chemistry”?
> Yes. Have you heard of the Turing test?
Yes, and a Chinese room would pass the Turing test by its very definition.
> The person inside the room would be dead long before it emitted its first symbol.
Replace the person with a powerful CPU.
> And philosophical zombies are IPUs [3].
In this context a philosophical zombie is an instance of a Chinese room, which are fairly real things. Take a sufficiently advanced LLM, or an emulation of human brain, and you get one. (Showing that it is not a philosophical zombie would call for some conclusive evidence showing that the phenomenon of consciousness is caused by whatever entities feature in models from today’s natural sciences—so that manipulating them in a particular way is enough to cause consciousness to magically arise.)
> Perhaps you are unaware that I am the author of TFA [5]? Did you read it?
That slipped my mind after a while, but I don’t think it invalidates the discussion. I skimmed it back when it was posted and generally I have been familiar with the illusionist takes on consciousness for a while. As monistic materialism (as well as cartesian dualism) in general, they always strike me as inelegant and needlessly contrived. (When competing hypotheses cannot be falsified due to limitations of scientific method, beauty and elegance remain as qualities we can judge them on, and I find that beauty inversely correlates with the number of entities a given hypothesis must magically conjure into existence.)