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Comment by ben_w | Hacker News Reader

The word "consciousness" means at least 40 distinct things; some of those (e.g. brain being alive and functioning) are obviously connected to microtubles; others (e.g. qualia, which is what most understand Penrose invoked microtubles to explain) are so ill-defined as to be untestable and unfalsifiable.

That Penrose also seems to have a fundamental error in his understanding of the implications of Gödel's incompleteness theorems, doesn't help.

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It means one thing to people who study consciousness.

https://www.theintrinsicperspective.com/p/consciousness-is-a...

But that accepted definition is that it means everything... "What it means to be a bat" isn't a useful definition. I will accept that is what the word means and defend the viewpoint the word is thus useless.

This is the last paragraph of his article for people who aren’t going to read the whole article.

“ So yes, there is scientific confusion about what consciousness is! And there’s metaphysical confusion about what consciousness is! But there’s no definitional confusion about the word “consciousness” itself. People know what needs to be explained, it’s just that explaining the phenomenon is very hard, and no one fully has yet.“

/anything I don’t understand is useless/

That linked page is just a long-winded assertion that only their own definition counts.

It's also a definition which is completely untestable and presently unfalsifiable.

He’s a neuroscientist that studies consciousness. I think that gives him more valid reasons to have this definition than someone who programs computers.

He himself would criticise you for doing so, even just on the basis of what he put in that blog post, as you're using an argument from authority.

I believe you’re being disingenuous and hopes that no one reads the full article. Because what he said is more nuance than what you’re proposing that we should not appeal to authority. I’ll post what he said here just to be clear.

“ I fully admit that this is an appeal to authority! But saying you should rely on the framings of a scientific field, like literally just respecting how it defines terms, is extremely reasonable as an appeal. It’s also very different than saying you should blindly believe the conclusions of that field. While “trust the experts” is often too strong a claim, the much weaker ask of “use the agreed-upon vocabulary the experts use when discussing the field” is actually quite reasonable, and most people who want to have an opinion about a scientific (or philosophical) subject should respect the used terms. The same goes for consciousness.”

I think we can do better than to have this level of argumentation. Regardless if the pretending comment had a merit to it or not

What he refers to is more specifically called phenomological consciousness afaik (just skimmed through tho)

To save everyone a click: this objective definition of consciousness is "the fact that an organism has conscious experience at all means, basically, that there is something it is like to be that organism". This is quite obviously circular, even though it sounds fun initially.

that is NOT what the article says. read the article, it's a pretty good survey.

I love his thoughts on connecting the halting problem to understanding ala Gödel.

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