Whatever your stance, it has many potential ramifications for when the merger between human
and machine begins extending into the mind.
Well, yes. The whole reason this sub-topic came up was in relation to brain to computer transfers and robot replacements and thing. My own view is as I stated a dozen pages ago or so: I'm not convinced that if the neural pathways in my brain were reproduced, be it via hardware or software...I'm not convinced that "I" would be in that reproduction.
the way you're phrasing it here makes it sound like you'd consider a camera to be conscious. It observes. I know that's not exactly what you mean, though. There has to be some kind of mind interpreting the sensory data into meaningful experience. But meaningful interpretation of data can be conducted by things that you probably wouldn't recognize as being conscious.
I have no way of knowing whether a cameras is concious, because I'm not a camera and the only thing that I can observe is my own awareness. Again, by definition. But let's work with a more illustrative example: put a penny on your desk. Push it with your finger. The penny moves. Would you argue that the penny "observed" the input and reacted by moving? How is that any different than your camera example? Mechanical action-->reaction is not the same as awareness. Maybe the camera and penny are both aware, and simply lacking enough free will to usefully influence the processes they experience. Free will and awareness are different things. You can watch a movie without having any effect on the choices the characters make. Your lack of influence doesn't change the fact that you re nevertheless watching the movie.
Let's link that back to the simulated universe tangent. In this situation, your consciousness isn't your own. You are a subprocess of a larger program. Your experiences aren't really experiences so much as they are the interaction of variables between subprocesses. Within the context of the subprocess that identifies itself as a consciousness, those interactions are, subjectively, experiences. Outside of that context, those interactions may, objectively, just be one set of brackets within some giant equation that spits out the number 42.
I know what you're thinking. Regardless of the reality of those experiences or their place in some larger scheme or even their ultimate abstraction into something incomprehensible, those experiences were still had by you and define you as a conscious being. Right?
...well...kind of...but, I already suggested that consciousness is probably necessarily related to networking. To be aware of something...kind of implies that there is a "something" that one is aware of, right? For an observation to occur, there has to be an observer...and something that is observed. That's two entities. The observed doesn't necessarily need to be a physical thing. You can close your eyes and imagine puppies, and you're having the experience of imagining puppies. That's fine. All the same there is an observer and an observed.
In our case, assuming your experience is similar to mine....there are lots of things being observed. I see my computer, table, desk, keyboard, house, walls, floor, etc. I feel the sensations of my weight on my chair, the tightness of clothes on my body, the air passing through my nostrils. Many things are being observed, and "we" collectively exist in a network of shared experience. I infer that, as my clothes are pushing on my body, the body is also pushing back on my clothes. The light that reaches my eyes conveying images of my keyboard also touched the keyboard. All of the "things" in this collective experience are interacting with each other. We are a network in constant communication.
In that sense, all of "creation" is a collective network with varying degrees of communication among its components.
So...saying that my own particular consciousness is a subprocess of a larger program...well, yeah. Saying that my consciousness is an interaction between subprocesses...well, yeah. That's kind of what consciousness is. If I say that "X is aware of Y" that implies that there's both an X and a Y.
So I'm not really seeing how what you're saying is different from what I'm saying. And yes, the "I know what you're thinking" part about these experience being had by me...that's
also true, but none of the things you're saying in the above quoted text contradicts anything else.
For example, if I assert that my house is painted blue, and you respond that "yes but...your house is part of a neighborhood and the other houses are also painted blue." That might be true...but...what's your point?
imagine you have a dream. This dream contains two perspectives. One is you. One is a completely separate identity. These two identities within the dream do not share any thoughts or experiences. They're completely separate and the one that isn't you, within the context of the dream, completely believes itself to be an individual being having completely unique experiences. When you wake up, you vividly recall both perspectives concurrently, not as if they were separate dreams, but the same dream with both perspectives operating at the same time within it. But that other consciousness within the dream is now terminated, having been a construct of your own mind, its dream-life having no relation to your reality other than its lingering in your memory. But you distinctly remember that other perspective's true belief in its own identity and the separateness of its experiences from your own perspective that was operating at the same time.
Do you believe that other perspective in your dream was a consciousness separate from yours? If not, how does that differ from the hypothetical situation where you are a subprocess?
This requires several answers:
1) I probably
am a subprocess. I can't directly observe that. By definition. Because if I were directly aware of "greater" processes" than "I" ...the "I" that would be making that observation would be the collective of "this me" plus those other processes. But I tend to assume that I am a subprocess and that there are other processes besides me, because the model by which I'm a subprocess seems arbitrarily more plausible to me that a purely solipsist "I am all that exists" model.
But using that model, however arbitrary it might be, the only thing that
isn't a subprocess of something else is "All That Exists." Whether you put religious connotation on it and call it "God" or simply look at it from the obvious point of view that given any arbitrary set, the only set of that set that isn't a
subset is the
entire set...either way, yes...that's how it it. SO, given the set of "the entire universe everything that exists" ...of
course I'm a "subset" of that. So yes, I'm a subprocess, because I'm not "everything that exists." Right?
2) I take some issue with the
literal phrasing of your scenario. If I have a dream about personalities, I don't know that I'd assume that those dreamed personalities were conscious entities any more than if I were playing with dolls and having the dolls talk to each that I'd assume that the doll personalities were real conscious entities.
But, trying to work with
spirit and intent f what I think you probably mean...I would say yes, "shared, subprocess sub-consciousness" is a valid thing. Again, I am most likely a subprocess. And I fully expect that there are "greater" consciousnesses that I am part of and who are aware of everything that I am aware of, even if I am not aware of them.
More to the point, even my own consciousness appears to be composed of sub processes with limited awareness of each other. For example: I have an emotional experience. I have a verbal internal monologue. I have sensations of wearing clothes. These various subprocesses have very limited if at all awareness of each other. The part of me that is "sensation of wearing clothes" appears to have no awareness of the emotional experience of happiness and joy when I watch kitten videos on youtube. Whereas the part of me that is internal verbal monologue seems to have awareness of the existence of these other two parts of me, but doesn't seem to actually experience the same things that they do.
I'm
aware of my own subprocesses. Aren't you?
So, yes. "I" am a
network of subprocesses. And the collective that I consider "me" is probably a subprocess of a larger network. "All of humanity" is probably perceived from a higher process as being a single subprocess. The Milky Way galaxy is probably perceived from yet higher processes as being a single subprocess. And eventually you get to "All That Is" which presumably is aware of absolutely everything that exists. I'm speculating of course, but since I'm a network of conscious subprocesses that I'm aware of but have limited awareness of each other, it seems rather arbitrary to assume that "the network that is I" is all that exists and that nothing outside of me is aware of me.
When you watch a youtube kitten video and feel happy, cuddly joy at the adorableness...is the part of you that experiences that experience aware of the sensation of the chair you're sitting on pushing up against you? Or are they separate and distinct? And yet there is a "you" that is aware of both of these things, yes?
3)
Do you believe that other perspective in your dream was a consciousness separate from yours?
How is separation possible in the model I describe? The two dream-entities you described might not have been aware of each other, and they might not have been aware of me...but calling us "separate" is missing the big picture.
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