But note that just because it’s hard to ask about and currently not detectable, does not mean that it doesn’t exist and more sensitive instrumentation and better sub-neural measurement and modeling won’t reveal what makes for an experience.
Yes, and I believe narrowing the first-person/third-person gap is one of the most ambitious and important things science could achieve. There is a fantasy of being able to recreate e.g. my conscious experience of seeing blue to a very close approximation in an external system, compare my experiences to those of others, and even share them. This is in principle possible.
I think we could potentially have knowledge of the mathematical and physical structures that give rise to particular types of experiences in general. In this case, a first-person experience could indeed be defined. However, I don’t think that consciousness is a concept which is coherent enough formally define even if we hypothetically had good third-person knowledge of the structures of consciousness.
The gap cannot be fully closed because that would require a sort of lossless recursion. Approaching it might look like augmenting ourselves with artificial senses which feed our brains with near-lossless real time information of our own bodies at appropriate level of abstraction. It’s obvious why this is difficult. Fully lossless would be actually impossible.
I think we could potentially have knowledge of the mathematical and physical structures that give rise to particular types of experiences in general. In this case, a first-person experience could indeed be defined
Only as the subjective thingy that arises from.an objective thingy. We can do that already—red is what you see when you look a tomato. That isn’t a definition of a subjective quality in the Mary’s Room sense.
However, I don’t think that consciousness is a concept which is coherent enough formally defined
I think the word “consciousness” labels several concepts that can be coherently defined.
I tend to find that sort of thing underwhelming. You can point at some objective thing, and say it’s subjective..but why? Explanations need to be explanatory.
Or you can.adopt some.camp.#1 definition of consciousness that doesn’t include the subjective.
What comes to mind, however, is that given that the Galabren are more advanced than humans they might have already solved the “hard problem of aelthousness” (assuming that its difficulty is comparable to the difficulty of the “hard problem of consciousness”).
(I assume we want to stay agnostic on whether these two concepts actually point to the same thing, just with different sets of qualia, or whether they actually point to different things.)
Yes, and I believe narrowing the first-person/third-person gap is one of the most ambitious and important things science could achieve. There is a fantasy of being able to recreate e.g. my conscious experience of seeing blue to a very close approximation in an external system, compare my experiences to those of others, and even share them. This is in principle possible.
How?
Then I don’t understand why you dismiss first-person concepts as “not something that can be defined”?
Narrow ≠ fully close.
I think we could potentially have knowledge of the mathematical and physical structures that give rise to particular types of experiences in general. In this case, a first-person experience could indeed be defined. However, I don’t think that consciousness is a concept which is coherent enough formally define even if we hypothetically had good third-person knowledge of the structures of consciousness.
The gap cannot be fully closed because that would require a sort of lossless recursion. Approaching it might look like augmenting ourselves with artificial senses which feed our brains with near-lossless real time information of our own bodies at appropriate level of abstraction. It’s obvious why this is difficult. Fully lossless would be actually impossible.
cc @TAG
See related ideas from Michael Levin and Emmett Shear.
Only as the subjective thingy that arises from.an objective thingy. We can do that already—red is what you see when you look a tomato. That isn’t a definition of a subjective quality in the Mary’s Room sense.
I think the word “consciousness” labels several concepts that can be coherently defined.
I tend to find that sort of thing underwhelming. You can point at some objective thing, and say it’s subjective..but why? Explanations need to be explanatory.
Or you can.adopt some.camp.#1 definition of consciousness that doesn’t include the subjective.
Right.
What comes to mind, however, is that given that the Galabren are more advanced than humans they might have already solved the “hard problem of aelthousness” (assuming that its difficulty is comparable to the difficulty of the “hard problem of consciousness”).
(I assume we want to stay agnostic on whether these two concepts actually point to the same thing, just with different sets of qualia, or whether they actually point to different things.)