What is consciousness for? | Robert Wright & David Chalmers [The Wright Show] (full conversation)

[@jeff-onedayatatime.2870]

I am using KZbin to record the fact that, before I heard of Dr. Chalmers' ideas, I had been thinking I live inside of a collapsed wave function. There's problems with it, but it makes more sense to me than Many Worlds. I knew of Dr. Chalmers, and I've read many of Mr. Wright's books, but it was an original thought to my mind about me being inside a collapsed wave function. :)

[@workingTchr]

I wish people would use the word "sentience" (ie, experiencing qualia) rather than "consciousness" because sentience where the hard problem lies. Consciousness is too close to self-consciousness and when people talk about consciousness they frequently slide over into consciousness.

[@workingTchr]

woops.... "slide over into SELF-consciousness."

[@andsoon1511]

Oners82 That’s not true, they’re talking about any experiential aspect to reality, the awareness of self is immaterial to the problem, really. If an entity is conscious of externalities, and those qualia exist in the form of internal sensations but are not accompanied by an understanding of the existence of self, they don’t go away by principle of the conscious entity’s failure to conceptualize itself. The hard problem is fundamentally concerned with explicating subjective experience regardless of this higher order apprehension and categorization of self as distinct from experience. They are in essence the same problem, and manifest differently only by virtue of the difference of their complexity.

[@andsoon1511]

Dennis Higgins I agree with you, but I actually think the word sentience further exacerbates the semantic issue at play here. I like the use of the term experience.

[@andsoon1511]

@Oners82 I’m open to being wrong, but could you explain the equating of consciousness and self-consciousness? I see that in some sense you could see them as being the same thing because qualitative experience, even if it is ostensibly an experience of some outside reality, is essentially an entity experiencing itself or its own internal state. But the distinction being made in the above comment is between the experience of self via qualia and the categorization of self as an entity after the fact. In other words, there is a difference between self-experience and self-awareness. All experience is self-experience, but it is a much higher order task to actually conceive of the self as being a self. I think the issue that Dennis is getting at is that despite these two things being manifestations of essentially the same phenomenon, to say that the aim of the hard problem is to explain self-consciousness (as distinguished from any phenomenological experience that might fail to recognize the self as distinct from the world like, say, that of a mouse or a... bat 😉) alone is an error, and one that the employment of the particular semantic tic named above perpetuates.

[@vampireducks1622]

@Dennis Higgins. That's actually a great suggestion. It would clear up a lot of the confusion over terminology.

[@Pashyanti]

You are so accustomed to think of yourselves as bodies having consciousness that you just cannot imagine consciousness as having bodies.

[@Sampsonoff]

Pashyanti Very well said.

[@mechannel7046]

3:40 Descartes view on consciousness, interactive duality 5:00 consciousness cannot be explained by processes in the brain 30:00 Lee Smolin, universe selected to create black holes

[@RatzRatzRatz]

great fun listening to You guys. thanks.

[@lifeofbob2896]

Robert keeps trying to defend this threshhold where the epiphenomenon is strong enough to actually start affecting the physical world, and thinks that's the part David is criticizing. THAT'S NOT WHAT DAVID IS SAYING. Robert's theory doesn't do anything to make interactive dualism any more logical than any other version. Whether consciousness interacted a long time ago or just started interacting recently, it's still INTERACTING, and so David is telling him it has the identical problem any interactionist theory anyone has ever proposed has. Robert keeps saying "well I can't sketch that part of the theory in detail". No shit. Neither could Descartes. All he's done is compounded the problem by adding the question of how an epiphenomenon could possibly be selected for. David sums it up when he says that like most hybrid theories, it suffers from the biggest faults of both theories its trying to join.

[@charlesdavis7087]

When we talk about consciousness, it seems to me we are actually talking about consciousness reflecting upon consciousness. In other word, are we talking about consciousness as a 'thing' independent of matter or are we talking about consciousness as a process dependent upon matter (neurons/brain)? Might it be that "me" consciousness arises as a survival mechanism for the human body? When consciousness begins to reflect upon the fact of consciousness itself (without a "me") gives consciousness the ability to modify and/or change the (our) future. Questions give rise to potentials and potentials give rise to new forms-of-activities, thus new worlds-of-consciousness.

[@johnnnyutahq]

what if consciousness is the dark matter

[@alexandermonday]

Robert should interview Graham Priest, Jay Garfield, or Mark Siderits (maybe John Dunne)-- to get a better picture of how modern analytic philosophers are interpreting and engaging with ancient Buddhist philosophy. I don't think Chalmer's claim that buddhism is a form of Idealism, is entirely accurate. As I understand it, some ancient buddhist philosophers were idealists (the Yogācāras) but others (Madhyamakas) were not.

[@matthiasstaber9216]

yes - I am a translator for a Geshe and studied a lot of Buddhist Philosophy, the Madhyamaka interpretation is very powerful on many levels (not just as something to meditate on to overcome afflictive emotions) He did talk with Prof. Garfield (that is how I found this channel) - they did not touch on the yogacara - Madhyamaka distinction

[@backwardthoughts1022]

john dunne, everyone else can leave also yogacara is not idealism, since they do not negate causally effective physical form that is causally distinct from sensory awareness. what they negate is its being independently selfestablished in its own separate domain. in other words long prior to madhyamaka u already empirically observe the causal basis that extends between physical form and mind. nothing to do with idealism.

[@GUPTAYOGENDRA]

Ask three questions from yourself after waking from a dream. 1. The observer of my dream was conscious or unconscious? 2. The observer of my dream was in my dream or in the universe? 3. Is the observer of my dream still conscious? If so then where? Answers of these questions will enable us to understand that Consciousness is singular and fundamental and exists independent of the brain.

[@karamitros20]

It's like.if you're playing a video game , everything loads and exists when you go there and examine , videogames and VR is an easy way to understand how consciousness can exist in a totally different spectrum of reality . It also makes sense

[@jackshultz2024]

Many years ago, I was watching a documentary film about insect called Microcosmos. In it a dung beetle was rolling a ball of dung along a path. Unfortunately the ball got stuck on a thorn. At first the beetle pushed and pushed, to no avail. Finally it gave up, surveyed the situation, walked around, and pushed the ball off the thorn. I was astounded that a creature so small, with a brain comprising of a few million molecules could reason and problem solve. It left me wondering, how small a brain must a creature have before such things are possible? The answer came more recently, when I heard that researchers found that green mold, a brainless creature, could solve a maze to reach a food source. This tells me that the question isn't where consciousness begins, but rather, where it ends. Jack Shultz, Point Claire, Que. Canada

[@jonrutherford6852]

Can't resist saying Microcosmos is one of my favorite films. Glad you enjoyed it, too. I, too, admired the dung beetle.

[@Joshua-dc1bs]

38:30 the brain is NOT a closed system. It is also influenced by its environment which is inherently random and unpredictable.

[@vicp7124]

The main reason why they get into a muddle because they can't separate out phenomenal properties that occur in specialized critical areas of the brain and consciousness which is an overriding function for the areas. They do not have a solid model of brain structures and interaction. I realize this is a philosophical discussion because they constantly reference 'the brain', when the brain is actually a system of 30 suborgans and numerous subfunctions.

[@marekdrzewiecki3780]

How about definition of consciousnesses: aware inner 'space' that subjective experience is taking place and is made of. I think from subjective experience consciousnesses is fundamental as the 'person and matter' is part of subjective experience within the consciousnesses. Another question is the attributes of 'the aware apace'.

[@jeff-onedayatatime.2870]

Isn't it interesting that, at the cosmological level, things began with a Big Bang, and at the quantum level things begin with a "big bang" called an observation.

[@elysium619]

I find that Wright's rambling explanations of points he's trying to articulate are arduous and frustrating to listen to. Chalmers, on the other hand is very focused and concise on points he is addressing. He does so with an economy of words and well compressed responses. When listening to Wright, I find myself often thinking, "Where the in world is he going with this?! " Eventually he gets to his point but takes too long. Also, I find his points of argumentation not nearly as sophisticated as Chalmers.

[@PolishedLake]

does robert not realize we're here for chalmers?

[@psychologyis]

PolishedLake trippin. This conversation was great. Wright is just as versed on this topic. I respect your opinion though.

[@pontifrancesco439]

Nick Fortino is just as versed as chalmers? Seriously?

[@mismos00]

Don't we store Conscious experience in memory, thereby affecting the physical? And therefore doesn't reflecting on our past experiences and feelings influence our future actions? Just a passing thought, I maybe missing something here

[@Joshua-dc1bs]

That is true. But they're postulating why we would need consciousness to behave in such an adaptive way.

[@chewyjello1]

And our memories are reconstructed and edited every time we access them. So in a way, we do not store the experiences at all. The memories we have are just memories of memories of memories of memories....

[@aqabdulaziz]

Robert says feelings do not feedback to affect physical properties of the brain. How wrong he is. Hasn't he heard of placebo and nocebo effects?

[@kingsandassociates7176]

what makes us think that we're leading to higher and higher levels of organization and complexity? sure, we can associate what appears to be an objective view of this on our surrounds through all sciences, but ultimately is this just subjective and limited to a single dimensional assessment...that being from the very consciousnesses we're discussing? you see the dilemma is that there is no place to firmly fix our objectivity to... BTW.....I think David's hypothesis on consciousness being the ultimate mechanism that collapses the wave function is the most obvious idea when you part from the traditional reductionist scientific model....further, this, I would suggest is more of a Christian model of reality than anything else....great vid...!!

[@vampireducks1622]

27:40 "Like the Manchurian candidate or something." :)

[@ccarson]

Yep, take care.

[@nimim.markomikkila1673]

Wright seems to think we can have self-awareness before consciousness... which seems non-sensical.

[@robbie_]

You don't need to invoke zombies to understand what consciousness is for. People can suffer from a lack of pain registration (congenital analgesia) for example. If you're not conscious of pain you're less likely to survive, so any animal that has it has a huge advantage over one that doesn't. Consciousness instantiates the *aversive* nature of pain in a way that simply registering the stimulus does not.

[@TheKstuart]

Yes, but why is it aversive? Red and blue are not motivating, why are pleasure and pain motivating? You are just pushing the unsolved question onto another level (just as scientific creation theories do).

[@cpwm17]

@@TheKstuart Pain is averse since it hurts. That's why. How it is possible for the brain to create the experience of pain is a separate issue and question, which is ultimately impossible to answer. Red and blue don't hurt, though they do have some emotions attached to them that depend on the context of the color experience. Emotions have feelings attached to them which are different types of feelings than pain. Ultimately, conscious experience involves experiencing constant feelings, most of them subtle. This is the driving force that forces and allows the brain to operate, without which we would be just tubs of inanimate goo.

[@backwardthoughts1022]

u missed the point. the point is if mind is just a physical emergent property in the brain, the system should have evolved merely responding to pain stimulus without the useless superfluous illusion of awareness. learn ur goddamm system properly.

[@plzdfet25]

Replace matter/energy with "consciousness" and suddenly the mind/body problem disappears. We are organized consciousness, leading to our "self-consciousness." Our mind is intricately patterned "conscious stuff." There is no secret mystery when one makes this move. Interesting in this model consciousness is "material" in a certain sense and that leaves dualism completely unnecessary.

[@backwardthoughts1022]

u are not sitting on ur mind when u pull out a chair and sit on it

[@uncoiled0furnace]

Mr Wright; I believe you should be more respectful of your guest and the format, and not overemphasize your own theory.

[@raphaelsako9033]

hello Robert! upload your videos in a more spread way is better for my feed, maybe it can be better for others too. If someone agree, up this comment. Thanks for share your investigations!

[@jordanbickett4062]

this looks rotoscoped like the movie Waking Life, which works .

[@LogicalBelief]

Machine -> Senses -> Qualia -> Memories -> Machine -> Senses -> ...

[@SandipChitale]

I think there is confusion about the role of conscious observer in affecting the quantum system when it is measured. To clear the confusion think of it this way. For example, run a quantum experiment and let a electronic memory store the result of the measurement of the outcome. Store that recording for million years. Then let a conscious observer read off the result from the memory. I think you will see the absurdity in expecting that the reading by a conscious observer a million years later cause the quantum superposition to collapse million years in the past. Another scenario that will demonstrate the absurdity is if you imagine that another conscious observer reads off the reading in two million years. Now which one of the observer made the superposition to collapse? First one or second one or both. We can keep playing this game by sending the two copies of the recoding to physically opposite locations and have two observers read off after same elapsed time. Which one collapsed the superposition. Why is this all absurd? Because the superposition of the quantum system collapsed (event 1) when the macroscopic, non-conscious electron device did the the measurement. It was done. The event 2 i.e. the superposition of the electronic device reading collapses with respect to the conscious observer when they read off the reading. The event 2 is many times confused to be same as event 1 because it is naively assumed that the conscious observer was there in the lab at the same time the measurement was done. But it does not have to be that way as shown above. In a nutshell this idea that conscious observer is needed to collapse the wave function is not what quantum physics says. The cause of the collapse is attributed to any macroscopic system interacting with a (fragile) quantum system.

[@Mattknight75]

Drinking game: Down a shot every time someone says ‘consciousness’.

[@ccarson]

I'd quickly become unconscious.

[@backwardthoughts1022]

when discussing a topic the topic tends to be the main thing discussed

[@felipeblin8616]

Maybe consciousness can be in superposition It's just that any possible conscience state can be conscious of itself and not of the others. So It can't detect other states of consciousness possibles all existing at the same time. And that would lead to the many worlds option

[@jonwo6092]

I don't quite follow what's the idea behind this "zombie" thought experiment. First of all the "Z" would have to be more complex in build and just as complex in action while having less 'substance' to it. It would have to replicate accurately not only general consciousness, but one specific consciousness, yet lacking one by definition. There is absolutely no reason to believe one exists until you build one, at which point you run in to a problem. It claims to have a consciousness, because you claim to have one, but there is no way to verify it, just as you can't substantiate yours or verify anyone else'. You just assume without any real reason, other than you are, that everyone is a real person and not a "zombie". Then he seems to believe, or at least suggests in wording, that consciousness isn't something material, which is a matter of faith. So, not only are you set in one kind of thinking, but you have also created an unnecessary complication that proves nothing nor helps in understanding the phenomenon. Is this the state of philosophy? Wonder why we don't understand consciousness... How about this: We know for a fact that evolution is real, creatures of different species indicate different levels and kinds of consciousness to the very simplest of forms. Assuming consciousness is a trait of life build in complexity through evolutionary process isn't a far strecth. Learn from the basics up, like science is and has been done, leave the magical thinking out and you just might be on your way to learning something about our consciousness. Just like we gave up attempts to create human level artificial intelligence through programming the damn thing. It's just too complex a problem to tackle straight up.

[@LogicalBelief]

The Qualia influences the machine

[@blisteredvision]

More of Robert shouting at his guest.

[@vicp7124]

The greatest straw man argument in the history of philosophy is the idea that consciousness and experience is epiphenomenal. This is the Flat Earth Principle of modern man.

[@cseeger1]

Nailed it.

[@aarguitar64]

@Oners82 I agree.

[@rooruffneck]

@Neil Mcintosh Neil, I'm genuinely looking for a rational justification of radical emergentism in any field. Seriously. I get emergence within an ontological class, but show me actual argument for jumping ontologies. A math problem that eventually emerges into a chicken... Or a zygote that eventually emerges into a pure math problem.... Those make no sense.

[@ytehrani3885]

OMG - I wish a real physicist was invited to this talk. The woo is unbelievable, especially towards the end of this interview.

[@Sampsonoff]

Y Tehrani I think perhaps you’re unfamiliar with these conversations, there are a lot physicists who argue for certain interpretations of QM. Check out Penrose, Stapp, Umezawa & Vitiello for example. They are all physicists working on the topic. Here’s a good article on the topic if you are interested plato.stanford.edu/entries/qt-consciousness/

[@backwardthoughts1022]

cos thats what we need, more data about how no part of any fundamental particle has any capacity to create subjectivity, illusions of subjectivity, or any illusions of any kind

[@backwardthoughts1022]

because wright doesnt understand, noone understands. top logic.

[@donhabermas-scher7040]

Why do you start every interview with asking your guest how they are? Aren't you past such meaningless pleasantries?

[@LO-gg6pp]

Thumbnail looks like sad clown and happy clown 😁

[@senjinomukae8991]

Descartes tortured a dog to death.

[@ytehrani3885]

Oh Jeeze, hey Chalmers, why don't you go enroll in a program with Deepak Chopra. You make as much sense as he does. This is an awful divergence from the understanding of real physicists.

[@Sam-hh3ry]

@Y Tehrani Many of the greatest quantum physicists were idealists. Planck, Schrödinger, Heisenberg, and von Neumann, for example. Many important modern day physicists are non-physicalists as well.