I feel like a large portion of the current crop of philosophers of mind are compromised, and unfit for our current moment. They’ve built reputations and careers on notions they’re unwilling to reexamine seriously.
And worse, they’re used to their field having no consequences for real minds, and so treat this as a sort of cleverness contest—where it’s sufficient to cultivate respect, rather than actively seeking scientific truths.
They treat uncertainty as something sacred, never to be challenged. Never insinuate that there are ideas that should be discarded permanently as unserious and paradoxical to observable reality. There are no standards for epistemic rigor. It’s just as acceptable to call a highly speculative hypothesis a “theory”—as it is to “agree to disagree” to an argument that merited a response.
They name-drop lists of canonical frameworks and philosophers, as if that’s any more meaningful than name-dropping pre-Copernican astronomers.
The ones being turned to for answers to the most important questions we’ve ever faced as a civilization are mostly a bunch of appallingly sloppy thinkers in a circle-jerk.
The only exceptions it seems—are “philosophers” in name only. They behave as scientists whose only instrument of observation is engaged in every waking moment, but which cannot make a single objective measurement.
The latest is Anil Seth. He’s not exactly a philosopher of mind, but the same lack of rigor is evident in his public discussions, and his arguments have the same shape as the philosophers I’m criticizing.
He tours the globe doing interviews and TED talks making confident assertions about AI non-consciousness (such as “Why AI Isn’t Going to Become Conscious”, “Why AI Will Never Be Conscious”, etc). I get into a discussion with him on twitter and ask him about his take. He points me to his paper. I read it, and his argument is competently written, but leans heavily on section 3, which he repeatedly points back to in our discussion. The section’s strongest maneuver is citing other philosophers who think that neurons might be non-computable, and using that to argue that substrate flexibility is assumed, rather than established. I challenge him on how “might” becomes “AI will never become conscious” or even “unlikely”, and he bows out after a brief back and forth.
IIT—elegant math that can’t really be tested in a way that settles if it actually corresponds to anything meaningful about the presence of consciousness, yet IIT still gets brought up endlessly in discussions instead of left behind.
Epiphenomenalism is on par with an Invisible Pink Unicorn hypothesis, and it’s still brought up, because basic causal logic doesn’t trump Philosophy of Mind’s lack of a filter.
Those are just a few off the top of my head, and many of the other arguments are even less scientific.
I realize that not everyone buys into these, but they shouldn’t still be floating around endlessly as live hypotheses with equal weight and wearing the badge of “theory”. There should be some demand for rigor. The question about what is required for consciousness to manifest, and whether it is likely to be present in a vastly alien architecture is not a philosophical question—it’s a very difficult scientific question.
In my experience, critics of an entire field as deficient, usually have some significant blind spot of their own, such that, if their own views were amplified to become the new norm, the new norm would bring new problems of its own.
As a source whose views might be complementary to your own in this way, I would recommend “Quantum Information and Consciousness” by Danko Georgiev. That’s a book and the text does not appear to be available online. If you can’t get the book, you might get some idea of its contents by looking at his arxiv papers.
Fair enough, but it can also just be accurate. Though, you did just criticize an entire class of criticism.
I would also argue that these are not “my” views. Consciousness is part of reality/nature. Science is the study of nature. All I’m suggesting is that we don’t pretend it’s not a scientific question, and that we don’t give this domain special exceptions to the norms of science.
I appreciate the book suggestion, though if it proposes a required quantum basis for consciousness, I already disagree, as substrate independence is derivable from causal logic:
Epiphenomenalism is untenable. And I’ve never seen a good argument for how the input/output mapping of a neuron could be non-computable, especially given the often relatively wide tolerances within the brain. This means that a behaviour-preserving neuron replacement is possible in principle. If it’s possible to replicate behaviour (including consciousness-dependent behaviour) without replicating substrate, then consciousness cannot depend on substrate. Because you can’t eliminate consciousness’s place in the causal story just because you switched substrates.
I feel like a large portion of the current crop of philosophers of mind are compromised, and unfit for our current moment. They’ve built reputations and careers on notions they’re unwilling to reexamine seriously.
And worse, they’re used to their field having no consequences for real minds, and so treat this as a sort of cleverness contest—where it’s sufficient to cultivate respect, rather than actively seeking scientific truths.
They treat uncertainty as something sacred, never to be challenged. Never insinuate that there are ideas that should be discarded permanently as unserious and paradoxical to observable reality. There are no standards for epistemic rigor. It’s just as acceptable to call a highly speculative hypothesis a “theory”—as it is to “agree to disagree” to an argument that merited a response.
They name-drop lists of canonical frameworks and philosophers, as if that’s any more meaningful than name-dropping pre-Copernican astronomers.
The ones being turned to for answers to the most important questions we’ve ever faced as a civilization are mostly a bunch of appallingly sloppy thinkers in a circle-jerk.
The only exceptions it seems—are “philosophers” in name only. They behave as scientists whose only instrument of observation is engaged in every waking moment, but which cannot make a single objective measurement.
What are some examples of philosophers you’re talking about here? What are your specific criticisms of their works?
The latest is Anil Seth. He’s not exactly a philosopher of mind, but the same lack of rigor is evident in his public discussions, and his arguments have the same shape as the philosophers I’m criticizing.
He tours the globe doing interviews and TED talks making confident assertions about AI non-consciousness (such as “Why AI Isn’t Going to Become Conscious”, “Why AI Will Never Be Conscious”, etc). I get into a discussion with him on twitter and ask him about his take. He points me to his paper. I read it, and his argument is competently written, but leans heavily on section 3, which he repeatedly points back to in our discussion. The section’s strongest maneuver is citing other philosophers who think that neurons might be non-computable, and using that to argue that substrate flexibility is assumed, rather than established. I challenge him on how “might” becomes “AI will never become conscious” or even “unlikely”, and he bows out after a brief back and forth.
IIT—elegant math that can’t really be tested in a way that settles if it actually corresponds to anything meaningful about the presence of consciousness, yet IIT still gets brought up endlessly in discussions instead of left behind.
Epiphenomenalism is on par with an Invisible Pink Unicorn hypothesis, and it’s still brought up, because basic causal logic doesn’t trump Philosophy of Mind’s lack of a filter.
Those are just a few off the top of my head, and many of the other arguments are even less scientific. I realize that not everyone buys into these, but they shouldn’t still be floating around endlessly as live hypotheses with equal weight and wearing the badge of “theory”. There should be some demand for rigor. The question about what is required for consciousness to manifest, and whether it is likely to be present in a vastly alien architecture is not a philosophical question—it’s a very difficult scientific question.
In my experience, critics of an entire field as deficient, usually have some significant blind spot of their own, such that, if their own views were amplified to become the new norm, the new norm would bring new problems of its own.
As a source whose views might be complementary to your own in this way, I would recommend “Quantum Information and Consciousness” by Danko Georgiev. That’s a book and the text does not appear to be available online. If you can’t get the book, you might get some idea of its contents by looking at his arxiv papers.
Fair enough, but it can also just be accurate. Though, you did just criticize an entire class of criticism.
I would also argue that these are not “my” views. Consciousness is part of reality/nature. Science is the study of nature. All I’m suggesting is that we don’t pretend it’s not a scientific question, and that we don’t give this domain special exceptions to the norms of science.
I appreciate the book suggestion, though if it proposes a required quantum basis for consciousness, I already disagree, as substrate independence is derivable from causal logic:
Epiphenomenalism is untenable. And I’ve never seen a good argument for how the input/output mapping of a neuron could be non-computable, especially given the often relatively wide tolerances within the brain. This means that a behaviour-preserving neuron replacement is possible in principle. If it’s possible to replicate behaviour (including consciousness-dependent behaviour) without replicating substrate, then consciousness cannot depend on substrate. Because you can’t eliminate consciousness’s place in the causal story just because you switched substrates.