@ManicuredSavage

Brewing Insights while Exploring Culture, Human Nature, and Society

[@ManicuredSavage @ManicuredSavage]

Well, I’m not claiming an LLM *IS* conscious. I’m saying I don’t know that it’s impossible. Those are different claims.

If I say “I don’t know whether there’s life elsewhere in the universe,” I’m not the one who need evidence that aliens exist. The person claiming extraterrestrial life is impossible needs an argument for the impossibility.

[@ManicuredSavage @ManicuredSavage]

@Noir28196 @WB_Baskerville So I said “she may not love him, but she’s still experiencing something” to engage with the argument.

You replied: “The only thing she’s feeling is…”

Thank you for your support 😂 😂 😂

[@ManicuredSavage @ManicuredSavage]

@subtardpoet @robkoons Obv not - just have a small bit of education and won a few debates…

So I’m not going to let you get away with avoiding the direct question:

What is the principle that makes conscious experience impossible for ANY/EVERY organization of matter.

[@ManicuredSavage @ManicuredSavage]

I did interact with your argument.
I understand your argument to be:
(1) purely physical states cannot intrinsically possess conceptual content;
(2) conscious minds possess intrinsic conceptual content;
(3) therefore conscious minds cannot be purely physical.

I'm challenging premise one!

Showing that symbols like ink marks need interpretation doesn’t mean EVERY physically created state does. You still need to show why NO arrangement of matter could ever be the interpreter.

And “which cannot be material” doesn’t provide that proof. It simply inserts your conclusion into the premise!

So…let’s do this…. Because both of us are acting in good faith here…forget airplanes, reductios and whether I’m a bot.

Give me the argument for this proposition: no possible organization of matter can possess consciousness.

That’s the bridge your conclusion requires.

[@ManicuredSavage @ManicuredSavage]

But none of differences are necessary for consciousness?

I can program an AI to run continuously, give it persistent goals, memory, sensors and autonomous actions. Have I now made it conscious? We can do that today.

So “it stops when you stop prompting it” can’t be the relevant distinction…

[@ManicuredSavage @ManicuredSavage]

Okay, the entire argument is hiding inside your parenthesis… ‘which cannot be material.’

That’s the proposition I keep asking you to establish, not restate.

It’s like my plane example. Imagine this is pre-Wright brothers and someone tells me, “In principle, no arrangement of nonliving matter can ever fly.” I’d expect an argument demonstrating what principle makes artificial flight impossible.

Pointing me to Aristotle and then saying “because flight is grounded in life” doesn’t get us there.

Likewise, saying consciousness/conceptual understanding “cannot be material” doesn’t establish that it cannot be material.

***That’s the bridge I’m asking you to build.***

[@ManicuredSavage @ManicuredSavage]

Corncobbing? Not sure what that means but to answer your question…. both are physical information-processing systems, both have large interconnected networks, etc, etc.

I'm not claiming any of these are *sufficient* for consciousness. I'm asking which properties are sufficient… and, crucially, how you know it requires biology.

[@ManicuredSavage @ManicuredSavage]

You’re just moving the mystery up one level. If neurons need an interpreter to have meaning, then what interprets the interpreter? Eventually something must ground meaning without another little interpreter behind it, right?

I think the issue is that you’re treating a brain state like ink on paper. But brains aren’t passive inscriptions like that; they’re cause&effect systems embedded in the world.

The question is whether those causal actions in the brain can ground meaning, and if they can’t why can’t we do that in non biological systems.

Just simply saying that they can’t is not enough…

[@ManicuredSavage @ManicuredSavage]

@tallstaff @radiofreenilbog @WB_Baskerville No. This is like hearing ‘some arrangements of matter can fly’ and you replying ‘then apparently chairs can fly too.’ No. The entire question is WHICH properties of the arrangement matter.

[@ManicuredSavage @ManicuredSavage]

Okay, but your premise is doing all the work… why should I accept that no physical system can have “intrinsic conceptual content”?

And rejecting your first premise doesn’t mean nihilism… it could just mean that once your organize physical systems the right way (be it neurons or be it atoms or be it bits) they instantiate meaning rather than borrowing it from an external interpreter.

You still need to show why that’s impossible.

[@ManicuredSavage @ManicuredSavage]

@subtardpoet @robkoons I’m asking you for the argument. What observation about consciousness entails that something immaterial exists?

[@ManicuredSavage @ManicuredSavage]

@elonmusk Is SpaceXSi pronounced “Space Sexy”

[@ManicuredSavage @ManicuredSavage]

@two__fold @WB_Baskerville “It’s just matrix multiplication” has the same explanatory power as “bro, your brain is just ions crossing membranes.”

[@ManicuredSavage @ManicuredSavage]

@radiofreenilbog @WB_Baskerville Then explaining where the argument fails should be trivial. Go ahead…

[@ManicuredSavage @ManicuredSavage]

Oh. I just realized you have never been exposed to the argument properly.

Think of it like this, a rock is a bunch of atoms, and a human brain is a bunch of atoms. Yet somehow one arrangement of matter produces conscious experience and the other apparently doesn’t.

What is that arrangement and how do you know that areangement necessarily requires biological life?

Better yet, compare a living brain with that same brain after death. It’s still made of the same neurons, atoms and tissue… but consciousness is gone.

So ‘being biological’ clearly isn’t all we need right?

[@ManicuredSavage @ManicuredSavage]

@radiofreenilbog @WB_Baskerville Sorry, what?

I’m asking, “How do you know that machines can’t be conscious?’”

Your answer is ‘Because it’s a machine and isn’t conscious.’

May need to workshop what an argument is….

[@ManicuredSavage @ManicuredSavage]

@radiofreenilbog @WB_Baskerville Yes, she’s a living person. Gold star for you!

Now explain why “actual living” means you can have subjective experience while a nonliving information-processing system necessarily cannot have it.

That’s the entire question!

[@ManicuredSavage @ManicuredSavage]

You’re still missing my point…. I fully agree the tool is irrelevant to the output.

What you haven’t established is that it’s irrelevant to consciousness.

‘These two systems compute the same function’ does not mean ‘neither system has subjective experience.’ That’s the very thing we’re debating.

Again, with the right physics and instruments, we can model a brain perfectly and predict its output… there’s no “magic” to that system.

[@ManicuredSavage @ManicuredSavage]

@ChrisChattin @UnmarredReality Right… and replicating AI output on paper is not AI.

[@ManicuredSavage @ManicuredSavage]

Your painting analogy is exactly my point. A paper calculation of an AI isn’t the AI either. Your ability to represent a system on paper tells us nothing by itself about whether the system represented is conscious.

And we don’t need a complete Theory of Physics. We only need whatever physical description is sufficient to predict neural state transitions…in the same way we don’t need full quantum mechanics to perfectly model a heart beating...