sure, it just doesn’t particularly matter to me which parts are more or less conscious
Conversation
On its face, this position is genuinely baffling. Consciousness is arguable the thing that matters most, as its presence or absence almost exclusively drives our ethics and morality. If an AI is conscious, we probably shouldn’t torture it.
2
24
I’m struggling to empathize with a view that’s essentially yes I care about physics just not the part that is the sole base of ethics and morality and feeling
2
22
this is the part i think is deeply confused. i don't think consciousness has anything to do with the basis of ethics and morality and feeling
4
12
do you think that any of the following have anything to do with the basis of ethics?
pain
suffering
desire
-maybe- consciousness doesn't have anything to do with those things, but it's an open question
2
9
yeah sure. i'm not convinced consciousness has much to do with any of these things, except maybe suffering
2
5
does this change if you switch out consciousness for qualia? Eg studying the qualia of desire and it’s causes (tanha etc) and how to alleviate it
2
8
the concept of qualia feels confused to me in the same way that consciousness does. i don't think you can know that anything in the universe experiences qualia except you so it doesn't make any sense to me to use whether *other things* experience qualia as a foundation for ethics
6
1
13
Wrote a short thread, and I criticize "consciousness" and "qualia" as they're typically used in a similar way
Quote Tweet
The problem with the way "consciousness" tends to be used is that it takes the manner in which beings show themselves, and turns this into an object, and then places this object in the mind, and forces then into relation to ourselves.
Show this thread
1
1
i don't totally follow but this roughly feels right. here's a thought this thread produces and you can tell me if it has anything to do with what you're trying to say: let's say i'm looking at a baby and it's doing something cute and i'm like "yeah i would die for this baby"
1
1
this is a kind of moral perception and it doesn't route through any kind of conceptual judgment about how conscious the baby is or what qualia it's experiencing, both of which seem like much more difficult questions to answer than the question of whether i'd die for the baby
So one thing I'm doing here (and also when I go on about materialism) is I'm cutting consciousness (or matter) out of places that I think it doesn't belong. You're already cutting it out here so what I'm saying doesn't make a lot of contact, but,,,
1
I think people use "experience" in a similar way, turning it into an object, but in this case I think the concept is much more broadly useful. In particular, it's not in the mind and it's something we can share. Literally "shared experiences"
1
Show replies