While I take no position on the general accuracy or contextual robustness of the post’s thesis, I find that its topics and analogies inspire better development of my own questions. The post may not be good advice, but it is good conversation. In particular I really like the attempt to explicitly analyze possible explanations of processes of consciousness emerging from physical formal systems instead of just remarking on the mysteriousness of such a thing ostensibly having happened.
Since you seem to grasp the structural tension here, you might find it interesting that one of EN’s aims is to develop an argument that does not rely on Dennett’s contradictory “Third-Person Absolutism”—that is, the methodological stance which privileges an objective, external (third-person) perspective while attempting to explain phenomena that are, by nature, first-person emergent. EN tries to show that subjective illusions like qualia do not need to be explained away in third-person terms, but rather understood as consequences of formal limitations on self-modeling systems.
Thank you — that’s exactly the spirit I was hoping to cultivate. I really appreciate your willingness to engage with the ideas on the level of their generative potential, even if you set aside their ultimate truth-value. Which is a hallmark of critical thinking.
I would be insanely glad if you could engage with it deeper since you strike me as someone who is… rational.
I especially resonate with your point about moving beyond mystery-as-aesthetic, and toward a structural analysis of how something like consciousness could emerge from given constraints. Whether or not EN is the right lens, I think treating consciousness as a problem of modeling rather than a problem of magic is a step in the right direction.
While I take no position on the general accuracy or contextual robustness of the post’s thesis, I find that its topics and analogies inspire better development of my own questions. The post may not be good advice, but it is good conversation. In particular I really like the attempt to explicitly analyze possible explanations of processes of consciousness emerging from physical formal systems instead of just remarking on the mysteriousness of such a thing ostensibly having happened.
Since you seem to grasp the structural tension here, you might find it interesting that one of EN’s aims is to develop an argument that does not rely on Dennett’s contradictory “Third-Person Absolutism”—that is, the methodological stance which privileges an objective, external (third-person) perspective while attempting to explain phenomena that are, by nature, first-person emergent. EN tries to show that subjective illusions like qualia do not need to be explained away in third-person terms, but rather understood as consequences of formal limitations on self-modeling systems.
Thank you — that’s exactly the spirit I was hoping to cultivate. I really appreciate your willingness to engage with the ideas on the level of their generative potential, even if you set aside their ultimate truth-value. Which is a hallmark of critical thinking.
I would be insanely glad if you could engage with it deeper since you strike me as someone who is… rational.
I especially resonate with your point about moving beyond mystery-as-aesthetic, and toward a structural analysis of how something like consciousness could emerge from given constraints. Whether or not EN is the right lens, I think treating consciousness as a problem of modeling rather than a problem of magic is a step in the right direction.