[infurl]

https://bigthink.com/amp/epiphenomenalism-mind-body-problem-dualism-2654324827

What if you don't matter? What if all of your thoughts, precious feelings, great dreams, and terrible fears are completely, utterly, spectacularly irrelevant? Might it be that all of your mental life is just some pointless spectator, looking on as your body does the important stuff of keeping you alive and running about? What actually is the point of a thought? This is the view of "epiphenomenalism," and it might just be one of the most disturbing ideas in all of philosophy.

[HS]

Here's my take on it.

For one thing, if consciousness had no effect on the physical world, then I believe he wouldn't have written this article.

But even if they are separate, does the proposed basis for consciousness not mattering check out? Is something important because it physically affects reality, or is it important because it's experientially affected by reality?

[LOCKSUIT]

HS you could say that about any thing or religion, that they wrote it, so why would they if it was not true, every god must exist. Nope....Same with spirits and consciousness, we are just tin metal droids made of skin cells n stuff. Our communicationalisms is so juicy that we share a lot by text alone and seem more but we are just "communicating droids". Hi.

OpenAI.com alone is a good source of proof for how we work and how to build helpful AI. We can only use patterns to solve future problems. And solve = survive in life, we try to BE patterns too, life and survival equate to pattern/ immortality, and I excell at identifying this area. We form Earth in pattern too, square, etc, lined up homes, all is circular etc just look, this makes world predictive, group similar buildings together and time things together, we can walk blindfolded safely in the dark in the future, a cold 3D structure will form, a fractal, like a GPU. This is smart.

[MagnusWootton]

Here's my take on it.

For one thing, if consciousness had no effect on the physical world, then I believe he wouldn't have written this article.

But even if they are separate, does the proposed basis for consciousness not mattering check out? Is something important because it physically affects reality, or is it important because it's experientially affected by reality?

You could say consciousness is required for full awareness of itself and environment, and theres the clue here which is a very good one to believe in., and it does make a difference to have it or not have it.  (To the environment.)     
But on the other hand humans are often confused about who has the soul?  do animals have souls, do plants have souls?  then the outcome is mixed, we arent sure except for ourselves.

Maybe wed prefer to think that animals have souls, until we think of the fact how we eat them, then maybe wed prefer they dont, because of cruelty/morals?  But maybe its true, you can have a "SOULED" response, and there be no soul,  so then it doesnt make a difference!

[MagnusWootton]

we can walk blindfolded safely in the dark in the future, a cold 3D structure will form, a fractal, like a GPU. This is smart.

You can't beat a living creatures "mental map" of things,  the computer is much worse at forming this structure artificially.   Even with quite a powerful Ai.    Ai is best off with cameras in all directions, instead of having to guess/match it.

[Korrelan]

We simply wouldn't exist/ function without consciousness.

Although our world perception/ semantic maps are grounded by our external envelope/ sensory reality, our understanding/ filtering of that information is grounded by our consciousness.

It's akin to an index system that selects relevant knowledge aligned to the task/ thought from our chaotic sub-conscious, its a symbiotic/ feedback that provides the application/ focus required to constrain our thought process.

Consciousness, attention, self-awareness, lucidity, volition, perception, etc are all basically the same thing... they all stem from the same modality.

My AGI wouldn't function without it's own machine equivalent of consciousness.

 

[MagnusWootton]

We simply wouldn't exist/ function without consciousness.

Although our world perception/ semantic maps are grounded by our external envelope/ sensory reality, our understanding/ filtering of that information is grounded by our consciousness.

It's akin to an index system that selects relevant knowledge aligned to the task/ thought from our chaotic sub-conscious, its a symbiotic/ feedback that provides the application/ focus required to constrain our thought process.

My AGI wouldn't function without it's own machine equivalent of consciousness.

 

Maybe we wouldnt be as adaptive, Its a matter of belief I guess, but I think 99% of function works without consciousness.

Are u sure your robot will be conscious?   Im doubtful about my creation.
Just think how much having an Ai being conscious is a huge moral dillemma.   It would be subject to infinite tortures on behalf of people that havent anywhere near the responsability it would take, to "take care and nurture" something like this.

Its inevitable I guess that the wrong ppl take the helm of a "conscious intelligence" But Ill never be happy about it,  for all the rest of my existance.
Life sucks.

[Korrelan]

I usually try to avoid the word consciousness... hence my compromise... machine consciousness.

Its just a modality/ mechanism that evolves/ emerges within my simulations... it's NOT human consciousness, though it does fulfil the same functionality within the bounds of the simulation.

I'll have to think of a better description/ term and avoid the C word altogether... perhaps 'task specific focus'... or 'task volition'... the problem is I have to relate to C at some level in order for people to understand my descriptions/ research.

 

[frankinstien]

The notion of dualism between mind and body comes from a religious perspective to explain an afterlife which of course solves the problem of death. However, we, humanity, are a form of biology, and mind and body are one and the same! Cultural perspectives are not unique to humans but humans are the most sophisticated at it. Too many experts think their free will is what is controlling the brain but that's not true. Awareness in the context of realizing a thought or being an impression from some stimuli serves the biology of man in that it allows for the ability to communicate experiences and solicit other members to solve problems. Where ants use pheromones humans use vocalizations that communicate such experiences or ideas to modify brain chemistries of other hominids, and obviously more recently written language has been used to do the same. So, to answer the question that Epiphenomenalism asks: "What purpose does consciousness serve?" It provides a mechanism of empathic anthropomorphic communications that glues its society together.  Remember the movie "Castaway"? In it Tom Hank's character develops a relationship with a basketball, literally turning it into a persona! Our evolution has placed such a high priority on socialization that even if we find ourselves isolated we create a pseudo society to bear the isolation. We are wired to form societies and consciousness is the crux that keeps us together...

[infurl]

I'm pretty sure that I agree with you on this. What we regard as our consciousness is actually a narrative of what our subconscious mind has already done or decided to do, which comes after the fact. It plays no role in what we actually do. The role that it does play is encoding our internal state for the purpose of communication with others, for influencing the actions of others. In programming terms, it is the process that encodes or serializes (part of) the data representing our mental state for communication with others. I suspect that storing and recalling this narrative doesn't actually influence our future actions either. When we recall something it is just the processes of the subconscious mind being projected afresh.

[Korrelan]

It provides a mechanism of empathic anthropomorphic communications that glues its society together.

I disagree; it’s the chicken/ egg.  Societal communication/ language are a product of consciousness.

It plays no role in what we actually do.

Consider a complex decision which results in an error.

What realises the error, it can’t be your prior learning/ sub conscious because it provided the initial solution… this is the role consciousness plays.

Although our consciousness can only make decisions based on prior experience/ sub conscious (you can’t apply what you don’t know) knowledge/ experience/ memories are stored relative to our conscious state/ awareness not just our sensory envelope.

Consciousness filters knowledge for application and stores knowledge relative to an application.

It's a continuum, technically there is no hard boarder between conscious/ sub-conscious.

 

[frankinstien]

I disagree; it’s the chicken/ egg.  Societal communication/ language are a product of consciousness.

The statement is referring to the reason there is an awareness of internal states and the impetus to use language, not the functional circuitry that processes language. To be specific I am calling awareness consciousness and what most call the unconscious are neural circuits that create cognitive abilities that collectively emerge awareness.

[MagnusWootton]

If we werent conscious,  wed be aware of less of the situation, and wed be less adaptive, so u could think.

[frankinstien]

If we werent conscious,  wed be aware of less of the situation, and wed be less adaptive, so u could think.

Well, no, the degree of awareness is directly proportional to cognitive abilities. So we could gauge or grade consciousness (awareness) to what cognitive capabilities an animal or person has. This can explain machine consciousness, animal consciousness, as well those with mental disabilities, and even cultural perspective consciousness that emphasize certain kinds of thinking or skills.

[frankinstien]

In terms of some definition of "Awareness": It is an ability to realize any internal states with an intent of self-interest for the organism or even machine, effectively awareness battles entropy. This is soo generic that perhaps even DNA could have a form of awareness, and even some programs that implement error trapping to prevent them from crashing would qualify!