RE: Consciousness and falsifiability

From: Ben Goertzel (ben@goertzel.org)
Date: Fri May 28 2004 - 09:34:29 MDT


> On Fri, 28 May 2004 "Ben Goertzel" <ben@goertzel.org> said:
>
> >conscious agents will report more intense conscious
> >experience roughly when more algorithmically-significant
> >patterns are emerging in their "brains".
>
> So, you're saying "conscious agents" will make sounds with
> their mouths that "non conscious agents" would find imposable
> to mimic with their mouths. Why? And exactly what are these
> unique sounds?
>
> John K Clark

No, I'm saying that the REPORTED INTENSITY OF AWARENESS as reported by
people will be greater when brain imaging shows a greater amount of new
pattern emerging in their brains.

This is a posited link between neural phenomena and REPORTED
experiential phenomena.

It does not address the question of the "ultimate reality" of the
reported experiential phenomena.

Similarly, theories of gravitation do not address the "ultimate reality"
of gravitational forces. They simply provide descriptive laws that let
you predict things about how gravitation works. These descriptive laws
may come in the form of mathematical and conceptual models that look
like they address "ultimate reality" -- but of course there are always
many models predicting the same data, and it's a matter of taste which
one to accept as being "simpler" and more elegant.

In my view, the conceptual model in which awareness is "real" is a
simple, elegant explanation of the observed data. In my view it leads
one in the correct research directions, by and large. However, one will
never be able to distinguish empirically between a conceptual model in
which awareness is "real" versus a conceptual model in which awarenesss
is "illusory" but "fools us into thinking it's real." This is a
philosophical rather than scientific distinction.

-- Ben G



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