Is consciousness a computation? If not, then what is it? Is consciousness mathematical or beyond math?
is just a recursive cognitive loopall in all, it's very effective
>>16828973probably just some computation were not aware of
>>16828973>Is consciousness a computation?Claiming that consciousness is a computation equals claiming that it isn't a real phenomenon. >inb4 computations are real phenomenaShow me any other "phenomena" that can be arbitrarily stopped and restarted, arbitrarily distributed across time and space (up to sequential dependencies), summoned by jotting shit down in a notebook etc. It's nonsense. Computationalism is either magical thinking or consciousness denialism.
>>16828973anon I dont think youre going to solve the hard problem of consciousness on this basket weaving incel forum.
>>16828981>werenot much computation going on in your brain bud
Might as well share a thought experiment here. Let's imagine you have a perfectly identical twin, a perfect, atom-by-atom copy of yourself occupying the same world. I think we would all agree that you two have separate minds despite being identical clones. Let's imagine your clone gets incinerated and dies; now he's obviously no longer conscious, but you still are because you're still alive. Now let's imagine that every atom in your body is swapped with its respective atom that was originally in your clone's body. The question is whether after this procedure you're still conscious and your clone is still unconscious, or whether you're the one who just lost consciousness and your clone just came back to consciousness. How is this procedure different than if you were to just kill yourself and your clone were to take your place? It seems that the specific atoms in your clone's body have a unique, distinct identity from their respective atoms in your body, such that they don't produce your exact consciousness despite taking the exact shape of you.
>>16829030Yes, I'm aware of how potentially retarded this sounds.
>>16829030>you have a perfectly identical twin, a perfect, atom-by-atom copy of yourselfTwo continuous streams of experience.>your clone gets incinerated and diesOne continuous stream of experience remains.>every atom in your body is swapped with its respective atom that was originally in your clone's body.The continuity of the one remaining stream of experience is presumably unbroken.>How is this procedure different than if you were to just kill yourself and your clone were to take your place? There is no "take your place". If a person dies, the continuity of that stream of experience is broken.>It seems that the specific atoms in your clone's body have a unique, distinct identity from their respective atoms in your body, such that they don't produce your exact consciousness despite taking the exact shape of you.Nothing to do with unique atoms.
>>16829020but there is some at least
Man I literally just had discussion with someone in a discord call I'm in today.The bottom line is that consciousness is an objectively real process which means that even though our brains participate in the computational part of it that contains our phenomenological representations of it which are by necessity themselves also computational, there is still the non-computational, physically real event taking place which is something emergent which arises natually out of quantum indeterminacy given an unimaginably large spacetime framework to use to generate the neccesary probabilistic fluctuations that underlie our "finely tuned" universe.
>>16829242Ah yes, the "emergence" cope. So-called emergence of consciousness is unlike any other example of emergence. Consider the emergent behavior of an ant colony. You can observe everything from the same perspective. You can see the ants, and you can see that somehow the colony exhibits complicated behavior. You could say the same about a brain, in terms of behavior. You can observe the neurons, and they appear to give rise to complex behavior. The problem is that behavior is not consciousness. You can't observe a brain being conscious. There is no way to observe consciousness at all, except for your own. Saying consciousness is "emergent" is meaningless bullshit that relies on conflating it with behavior. Calling something "emergent" requires you to actually observe it "emerging".
>>16828973it's probably just a hallucination if you've ever had anesthesia then you know
>>16829286>you can't observe a brain being consciousMaybe not your brain, buddy. And, to be fair to all the idiots like you, you do make up the imitative, unimaginative bulk of human civilization, so I can totally understand why you have such a cynical perspective.Consciousness is an objective process taking place in nature. It is something that physical things do. The mistake here is thinking that consciousness is something ONLY one thing is doing at a time, i.e, my consciousness, your consciousness, a cat's consciousness, cpnsciousness in general, etc. These are all exclusive definitions of consciousness, because they exclude all but one object or system as "having" or "being" an example of consciousness. But that would trap consciousness in being purely subjective, not objective. No, I am saying consciousness MUST BE a COLLABORATION between at least two things: an OBSERVER and the ENVIRONMENT. Consciousness doesnt just "exist" somewhere "inside" the brain or some retarded childish concept like that. You directly observe consciousness as an objectively real process when you observe brains integrating external information into internalized chains of signification and the exchange takes place via the number induction of first-order logic that is fundamental to any meaningful description of physical reality.
consciousness doesn't exist, chud
>>16829339I knew this place was full of pseuds, but dam...
>>16829030nta but accepting the premise here of a perfect atom-by-atom copy in the first place is retardedhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No-cloning_theorem
>>16829303>it's probably just a hallucinationan illusion of what, consciousness? retard
>>16829408yeah its literally just a brain tricking itself into thinking its experiencing something that isnt actually happeningretard
Rationally, there is no reason my brain couldn't be just "computation", but on the other hand I know I am seeing through my own eyes, but this is also exactly what a purely mechanical brain would explain its experience as.It is an unanswerable question, the concept of consciousness is kinda bullshit anyways, for practical purposes we are a meat computer and can be evaluated as such.
>>16829515>there is no reason my brain couldn't be just "computation"Ignoring your mistaken conflation between brains and consciousness, there is a very good reason why consciousness can't be a computation, unless you're one of the meatbots who claim consciousness is just an illusion. See >>16828985
>>16828973The only thing we can reliably say about consciousness is that we are experiencing it. Everything beyond that will always be speculation.This is what Descartes meant with "Cogito, ergo sum". Most people think it's a celebration of consciousness and human intellect, while it's actually a concession that the only truly verifiable statement that can be made, is that we're here experiencing it. All of your life could be a dream, a hallucination dreamt up by some alien taking a psychoactive substance, we could be in the Matrix, you could be a God that's having an existential crisis and this "life" is your mind's instinctual attempt to resolve it, life could also be just exactly what you believe of it. You don't KNOW, you can't verify any of it with ultimate certainty. So, the only way to make any sense of consciousness is to make as many observations as possible. Whatever existence you live in, reality or illusion, adheres to certain rules and principles. Make observations about how that consciousness interacts with those rules in principles. Make more observations, generate models and theories. That's it.
>>16828985>what are emergent properties
>>16829604Did you reply to the wrong post or are you the mandatory mentally ill retard that plagues every consciousness-related thread?
>>16828973>Is consciousness a computation?Yes, the universe is most likely a simulation and consciousness is just an emergent property of complex lifeforms.
>>16829681>universe is most likely a simulationHow did you determine that?
>>16828973no.it is irreducible, a first principle.It is mathematical, but it is conscious.It is the universe/god/self/source/dao etc.Obvious stuff.more fully- there are 2 forms of consciousness, the lower form IS computation, the higher form is NOT.separated conscious is a computation, data processing, AI like, mathematical, time and space based, limited, attached, prideful. unified consciousness is intuitive, creative, aware, present, peaceful.There's no need for people to act like consciousness is "muh big unknown problem".Consciousness knows itself.And the nature of consciousness is well-studied and documented in mysticism, always has been. (though you dont need external literature, the answers are within you). /sci/ is ascending hard :)
>emergence, hallucination, illusionthe material illusion is a hallucination that emerges from and within consciousness,by means of ignorance, separation, mirrors, and opposing forces pressing against each other
>>16828985>>16829286based. I support you bro.
>>16829286>Calling something "emergent" requires you to actually observe it "emerging".Pretty much. All noncontroversial examples of "emergent phenomena" are abstractions on top of more basic elements that make up their actual substance. If there is an objective reality, its laws are agnostic to such made up, higher-level phenomena. They are patterns contingent upon the minds that perceive them. The mind can't be in the same category because it would have to precede its own emergence. It's also unclear what basic elements the mind emerges from. Abstracting over neuronal activity only produces a more abstract model of that activity.
>>16828973https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/computational-mind/
>>16828973Theta.
>>16829595>The only thing we can reliably say about consciousness is that we are experiencing it.No, you can only speak of you not of "we", everyone else could be a pzombie who can't possibly experience anything for all you know.
>>16829607Do you have a refutation or are you just the ad hominem retard who has to show off your derogatory name database in every thread?
>>16829695Computation
>>16830438>Do you have a refutationOf what? You didn't say anything remotely relevant.
>>16830458So basically, you only resorted to ad hominem because you are the one that didn't understand what the other anon was saying?
>>16830460Basically, you are samefagging because you didn't comprehend the post you tried to "refute" and sharted out a generic string of words instead because your primitive bio-LLM says it's statistically associated with the discussion.
>>16830461Thanks for confirming that the text looked "generic" to you because you couldn't comprehend what you were reading.
>>16830474>retarded meatbot shits out another irrelevant postOk, let me spoonfeed you. Take this post: >>16828985 and replace "phenomena" with "emergent phenomena":>Show me any other "emergent phenomena" that can be arbitrarily stopped and restarted, arbitrarily distributed across time and space (up to sequential dependencies), summoned by jotting shit down in a notebook etc. It's nonsense. Computationalism is either magical thinking or consciousness denialism.You're still at a dead end. Your kneejerk reaction accomplished absolutely nothing.>inb4 it's about properties, not phenomenaSee:>>16828985>Claiming that consciousness is a computation equals claiming that it isn't a real phenomenon.
>>16828973Why are people so obsessed with reducing consciousness to math & physics or to algorithm? it has already been shown that all those attempts to identify consciousness with some analogical object(computer for example) or to reduce it to physical laws get you to no results at all. You do that and you get all those shitty concepts such as physicalism, behaviorism etc which plagued science with absolute nonsense and will do it in future if done again
>>16830487People already pointed out its a bad analogy, consciousness is not arbitrarily stopped and restarted when you sleep or you would just shit and piss yourself instead of waking up to do so.
>>16828973In my opinion it is quantum computation versus animal instinctive behavior and human's moral values.
>>16830492>consciousness is not arbitrarily stopped and restartedThen it's not a computation. You're literally too dumb to read.
>>16830494Computation is not arbitrarily stopped and restarted either, if you stop a computation, you have to start a new one, not restarting the exact same computation, otherwise having children is the same thing.
>>16830491>Why are people so obsessed with reducing consciousness to math & physicsBecause everything you see or touch, every single thing that's ever been measured or observed has existed in physical reality. It would be insane to believe in some kind of "spirit realm" when there is zero evidence of such a thing existing.
>>16830497>Computation is not arbitrarily stopped and restarted eitherIt can be, as well as all the other decidedly unphysical properties I listed.
>>16830499>everything you see or touch, every single thing that's ever been measured or observed has existed in physical reality.This is a pointless statement that expands "physical reality" to include stuff that doesn't logically tie in with physics and isn't amenable to empiricism.
>>16830501No, you can stop doing a computation, then do a similar computation such that it appears to restart but that is just as much an illusion as the people inside your monitor when you watch a film or play a game.
>>16830506>you can stop doing a computation, then do a similar computationThis is literally just your mentally ill head canon which has no bearing on reality.
>>16830506Show me any other "emergent phenomena" that can be stopped in such a way that a new one can be started after an arbitrary time interval, yet appear continuous with the former, despite their not being the same phenomenon. (And make sure it also adheres to all the other unphysical properties I listed, which characterize computations.)No amount of semantic flailing salvages your position. It always fails this test, which at most requires a minor rewording.
>>16830499>>every single thing that's ever been measured or observed has existed in physical reality>Can't answer what grounds the physical reality itselffrom this, you are basically assuming that physical laws are ultimate, independent reality of all-encompassing objects. You are literally giving physical reality a divine status. How is that not a religious stance? how is that any different from believing in some kind of 'spirit realm'?
>>16830545>you are basically assuming that physical laws are ultimate, independent reality of all-encompassing objects.Sounds like a fair assumption.>You are literally giving physical reality a divine statusNo, he isn't. None of the properties you listed are "divine".
>>16830547You didnt get my point. Something is divine if it is assumed to be of independent character grounding all the scales of reality (meaning all the other objects are dependent on it but this substance itself is not dependent on anything whatsoever). So yes, he basically gives physical a divine status.
>>16830568>Something is divine if it is assumed to be of independent character grounding all the scales of realityYour definition of "divine" is retarded and irrelevant and I'm sure your definition of "religious" isn't any better. This renders your accusation completely moot. Calling something "religious" doesn't do much when you redefine words so that it has nothing to do with faith-based belief in deities.
>>16830579>>Calling something "religious" doesn't do much when you redefine words so that it has nothing to do with faith-based belief in deities.Fundamentally it does. Just because the context is different, doesn't mean the principle must be different too
>>16830601>no faith-based belief>no deities>but it's "religious" under my delusional head canon ("a different context") with its special definition ("the principle").Ok, retard.
>>16830602>>No deitiesBtw, in buddhism there are no deities yet it's still considered as religion>>No faith based beliefFaith based belief could be applied to literally any domain. It's not restricted only to belief in God. For example ancient greeks(particularly Pythagoreans)did have faith based belief in numbers and mathematics.Try better next time, chud
>>16830665>in buddhism there are no deities yet it's still considered as religionThis is just your ignorance speaking. Buddhism isn't uniform. Some variations have deities, others aren't considered to be religions proper.>Faith based belief could be applied to literally any domainNotice how you're forced to shit out generic rhetoric instead of demonstrating how faith applies in this case. Your next post will contain no further elaboration, either.
>>16830676>>How faith applies in this case...To continue on the example of Pythagoreans, faith there is applied to mathematics and numbers. Surely numbers do not explain every sort of phenomena, but with faith based belief it worked and covered basic reality of objects. >>Buddhism isnt uniform. Some forms of buddhism have deismsBuddhists do not worship deities retard. They dont assume a creator exists at all. Do i need to go on to expose how rotten your brain actually is?
>>16828973>Is consciousness a computation? If not, then what is it?Regardless of whether God/Soul/Religion is real or not, I think the answer is yes based on what we know about chemical and electrical signals in neurons. It is a very complex finite state machine, regardless of whether it has some kind of "supernatural" interactions or not.>Is consciousness mathematical or beyond math?I think it can be at least approximated with probability functions based on inputs, but that's unknown.
