This is a linkpost to a short article that I published on PhilPapers. I hope to get some useful feedback here.
The article was borne out of the frustrating observation that many scientists working on the problem of consciousness seem to just deny that there is something fundamentally perplexing about the topic (I guess that places them in camp#1, according to Rafael Harth). As if by doing science as usual it will automatically all work out in the end.
I argue that what makes consciousness so perplexing is its fundamental subjectivity, which comes down to the impossibility of external observation under any circumstances (which I called strong subjectivity). This might seem like a bold statement, since hundreds of years of philosophy of mind and many convoluted thought experiments have not settled this matter beyond doubt.
Yet, the strong subjectivity of consciousness is a suspicion that appears true as far as our observations go. I, for one, have never heard of anyone observing someone else’s conscious experiences. I can not even imagine what that could possibly mean (I guess one would have to be the person whose consciousness one is observing, which does not seem to make sense). However, I am also not aware of any definitive logical argument proving the absolute impossibility of such a feat.
We don’t seem to get much further trying to come up with ever more convoluted thought experiments and even more convoluted ways to avoid their conclusions. Instead, I suggest to treat the suspicion of strong subjectivity like a conjecture in mathematics: something that seems true as far as everything that we have ever observed, but that has not yet been formally proven to be true.
The truth or falsehood of this conjecture is pivotal for any theory of consciousness. Most current theories that I know of do not take the conjecture as a core assumption, which I suspect goes a long way in explaining why none of them has managed to provide a satisfactory explanation.
As a recent initiate to LessWrong, I am now very aware that absence of evidence is evidence of absence. All the more reason that it seems unwise to discard the conjecture of strong subjectivity at this point. Instead, the most reasonable thing to do appears to assume strong subjectivity for any viable theory of consciousness.
If you assume pure subjectivity (it’s unmeasurable and incomparable), there’s not much to study or say about it. That’d explain by a selection effect why most researchers choose to focus/redefine to problems they can make progress on. Camp #1 has something to publish.
Camp #2 may well be correct, but it’s a very uncomfortable position for moderns. If you can’t measure or define consciousness, what are you basing all this talk of human rights and respect-for-others on? If you say this in the wrong crowd, you’ll be booed or assumed to be a eugenicist or something.
A good post!
However, I do suspect that the conjecture is wrong.
There are three lines of reasoning hinting at that, all associated with various “non-standard states of consciousness”:
various synchronization effects people report
various novel (for them) qualia people report
upcoming “merge” experiments
A bit more details are at https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/DCW7FjmP66Ahz3RLu/what-if-we-actually-want-to-solve-the-hard-problem-of and in the essay it references.