Sometimes terms are overloaded, because that’s how language works. It doesn’t imply that, given the right context, the intended meaning can’t be teased apart. Words are containers of meaning; the substance is what matters, not the form.
“Bull” can mean both a male cattle and a member of r/WSB who believes the stock market will continue to trend upwards. But when I’m in a car with someone else and we’re gazing out at the countryside and they start talking about all these big, beautiful bulls they’ve just seen, I must confess it doesn’t make me think of stock options and futures at all. Nor does it make me think “bull” is a conflationary alliance term between farmers and hedge fund managers.
The extent to which LW cares about consciousness is we’re trying to solve the Hard Problem of Consciousness and understand the fundamental nature of qualia, subjectivity, and personal identity, among other related ways of putting it. In this context, the meaning of “consciousness” we’re interested in differs tremendously from what an MD would use to describe whether a patient is out of a coma or not.
To the extent responses to Critch’s questionnaire talked about consciousness outside the context of what LW users care about discussing on this site, talking about that stuff here distracts from what’s most important, and from what this post should be interpreted as being about.
Yeah, you and I agree that people can clearly distinguish between my senses 1 and 2. I was responding to Paradiddle, who I read as conflating the two — he defines “conscious” as both “awake and aware” and as “there is something it [is] like to be us”. I could have been clearer about this.
I believe grad students and Less Wrong users in these conversations are usually working with sense 2, but in fact sense 2 is multiple things and different people mean different things, to the extent they mean anything at all.
Paradiddle claims to the contrary that practically everyone in these conversations is talking about the same thing and just has different intuitions about how it works. But you seem to disagree with Paradiddle? Are you saying that Critch’s subjects aren’t talking about what you mean by “conscious”?
Paradiddle, who I read as conflating the two — he defines “conscious” as both “awake and aware” and as “there is something it [is] like to be us”
Or it could be that believes, as a factual matter, that one necessarily implies the other. I won’t pretend to mind read him, though.
Are you saying that Critch’s subjects aren’t talking about what you mean by “conscious”?
I’m saying I suspect Critch was not careful enough in how he posed his questions to the people he was interviewing to ensure that they understood[1] the question was about “consciousness-LW” and not “consciousness-general,” which includes “consciousness-MD.”
Sometimes terms are overloaded, because that’s how language works. It doesn’t imply that, given the right context, the intended meaning can’t be teased apart. Words are containers of meaning; the substance is what matters, not the form.
“Bull” can mean both a male cattle and a member of r/WSB who believes the stock market will continue to trend upwards. But when I’m in a car with someone else and we’re gazing out at the countryside and they start talking about all these big, beautiful bulls they’ve just seen, I must confess it doesn’t make me think of stock options and futures at all. Nor does it make me think “bull” is a conflationary alliance term between farmers and hedge fund managers.
The extent to which LW cares about consciousness is we’re trying to solve the Hard Problem of Consciousness and understand the fundamental nature of qualia, subjectivity, and personal identity, among other related ways of putting it. In this context, the meaning of “consciousness” we’re interested in differs tremendously from what an MD would use to describe whether a patient is out of a coma or not.
To the extent responses to Critch’s questionnaire talked about consciousness outside the context of what LW users care about discussing on this site, talking about that stuff here distracts from what’s most important, and from what this post should be interpreted as being about.
Yeah, you and I agree that people can clearly distinguish between my senses 1 and 2. I was responding to Paradiddle, who I read as conflating the two — he defines “conscious” as both “awake and aware” and as “there is something it [is] like to be us”. I could have been clearer about this.
I believe grad students and Less Wrong users in these conversations are usually working with sense 2, but in fact sense 2 is multiple things and different people mean different things, to the extent they mean anything at all.
Paradiddle claims to the contrary that practically everyone in these conversations is talking about the same thing and just has different intuitions about how it works. But you seem to disagree with Paradiddle? Are you saying that Critch’s subjects aren’t talking about what you mean by “conscious”?
Or it could be that believes, as a factual matter, that one necessarily implies the other. I won’t pretend to mind read him, though.
I’m saying I suspect Critch was not careful enough in how he posed his questions to the people he was interviewing to ensure that they understood[1] the question was about “consciousness-LW” and not “consciousness-general,” which includes “consciousness-MD.”
Even though most (but not all) of them seem to have grasped the task regardless