SelfAwarePatterns

The edge of sentience in humans

This is the second in a series of posts on Jonathan Birch’s book, The Edge of Sentience. This one is on borderline cases of sentience in humans.

Birch looks at cases involving humans with disorders of consciousness, such as those in vegetative or minimally conscious states, as well as fetuses, embryos, and neural organoids made with human tissue.

For disorders of consciousness, Birch is…

The semantic indeterminacy of sentience

I’m currently reading Jonathan Birch’s The Edge of Sentience, a book focusing on the boundary between systems that can feel pleasure or pain, and those that can’t, and the related ethics.

While this is a subject I’m interested in, I’m leery of the activism the animal portions of it attract. I have nothing in particular against that activism, but mixing it with science seems to risk questionable…

Voting 2024

I voted today.

As with the last several elections, it was via early voting. My schedule was relatively light today, lighter than it’s going to be next week, and probably lighter than election day. Getting it out of the way seemed like a good idea.

This time I avoided the mistake I made last time, slipping in during lunch on a weekday instead of doing it on Saturday morning. Thankfully I don’t…

Classic and connectionist computationalism

Spurred by a couple of recent conversations, I’ve been thinking about computation in the brain.

It was accelerated this week by the news that the connectome of the fly brain is complete, a mapping of its 140,000 neurons and 55 million synapses. It’s a big improvement over the 302 neurons of the C. Elegans worm, which were mapped decades ago. Apparently there are already new computational models…

The problem with the knowledge argument

What does the knowledge argument actually demonstrate?

The argument, which shows up in various forms in numerous philosophical papers and thought experiments, is that we can have a complete physical understanding of a conscious being, but still not know how it feels to be that being. We can know everything about a bat’s nervous system, Thomas Nagel argues, but still not know what it’s like to be…

Experience and behavior

Is conscious experience completely unrelated to behavior, such that studying behavior tells us nothing about experience?

#consciousness

Is studying conscious experience different from studying behavior?

In a number of recent conversations I’ve had, the distinction between experience and behavior has come up. There’s a strong sentiment that we can study behavior scientifically, including all the intermediate mental states that enable it. But experience is seen as something distinct from that, something that is much more difficult…

Illusionism and functionalism

What exactly is it about consciousness that illusionists say is illusory? The difference in views may be less than is often assumed.

In the last thread, someone asked what exactly is it about consciousness that illusionists say is illusory?

One quick answer is that for illusionists, the properties people see in experience that incline us to think that consciousness is a metaphysically hard problem, are what’s illusory. In weak illusionism, the properties aren’t what they seem. In the strong version, which is usually what…

Illusionism and types of physicalism

Can we in principle ever deduce the mental from the physical?

Christopher Devlin Brown and David Papineau have a new paper out in the Journal of Consciousness Studies titled: Illusionism and A Posteriori Physicalism; No Fact of the Matter. (Note: the link is to a free version.) As the title makes clear, the overall gist is that the difference between illusionism and a posteriori physicalism…

The Mercy of Gods

The Mercy of Gods is the first book in James S. A. Corey’s new space opera series: The Captive’s War.

James S. A. Corey is the pen name for the writing duo Daniel Abraham and Ty Franck, the authors of The Expanse book series. This new series appears to be either in a brand new universe, or in a period far in the future of the Expanse setting.

The story starts on a planet called Anjiin. Humans…

Entropy transformers

What is the relationship between information, causation, and entropy?

The other day, I was reading a post from Corey S. Powell on how we are all ripples of information. I found it interesting because it resonated with my own understanding of information (i.e. it flattered my biases). We both seem to see information as something active rather than passive. In my case I see it fundamentally…