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Comment by jkkramer | Hacker News Reader

I would submit that to properly define something, you have to understand it. Since consciousness is not understood, it has no definition. Talk about consciousness isn't hot air; it's an effort to understand.

Science tends to be inductive: we have to leap from particular experiences to abstract principles. With consciousness, we have the experiences but haven't made the leap yet to principles.

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I doubt that "with consciousness, we have experiences". I think consciousness is only an illusion.

OK, try to name at least something you consider an aspect of consciousness? I already don't have a clue again what we are even talking about. What is "consciousness" supposed to mean?

Consciousness is not an experience of something. It's the experience itself. So it doesn't have qualities--it IS qualities. It's not red, it's what it's like to see red. It's the immediate (no intermediary) subjective happenings of your conscious mind. I can't point you to it because my pointing is a view presented to you in consciousness.

It's not mystical or anything. In fact, it requires less faith than anything else -- it's all you've ever known directly. You could be living in the real world or in the Matrix, it doesn't matter. Either way, consciousness doesn't change, just the contents of consciousness.

"It's the immediate (no intermediary) subjective happenings of your conscious mind."

Circular definition, doesn't work.

So it is neurons firing, fine. I just don't know why we need entire research departments and conferences for that.

Or do you mean it is creating a model of the perceived world? Computers can do that without a problem (quality of the model is a different matter).

Does it puzzle people in the same way how computer chips can process information? Why not? (I am not talking about algorithms or electronics - those are interesting)

The best text I've read so far on that topic is the one from chalmers: http://www.imprint.co.uk/chalmers.html

He made a strong argumentation for the difference between experiencing something and having a experiencing state.

After that he also gets somewhat speculative, but at least reading the first 2 points is worth it.

Thanks for the link, but in my opinion, he is just chasing a chimera. At least he mentions the easy problems, and they are menaingful in my opinion. I have no problem if people invest their time in trying to create artificial intelligence. Those are well posed problems, like "create a chat bot i can have a meaningful conversation with". The "experiencing state" in my opinion is rubbish, it's nothing. As was written in the other thread, "how can physics explain the sensation of eating a strawberry". I think that it is essentially just like this: if(isEatingStrawberry()){ taste = strawberryTaste} (with more associations etc., but there is nothing special about it that lies outside the realm of physics).

I think consciousness is only an illusion.

How do you call the ability to have illusions, then?

Information processing.

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