You bring up an interesting point, but I would pose the following: where does will come from?

To me, consciousness is the seat, or root, of where will comes from. Let's say you get expert level surgeon or politician training, what then?

There is nothing that specifically silos a surgeon or politician's knowledge-set. Meaning a politician's skillset isn't purely in a domain that doesn't cross into a surgeon's and vice-versa. There are nuances to being a politician and a surgeon that extend beyond diplomacy or "being able to cut real good".

What you're left with is just high-skilled workflows. But what utilizes these workflows? To me, the answer is that consciousness needs to be powering these workflows.

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thinkling 11 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Do you think bacteria have will? Or plants?

When their actions are sped up to match the speed at which we move, movies of their behavior will start to look like there's intent and will. Plants move towards the light, tendrils "reach" for supports, etc.

Clearly this is humans projecting our mental model onto plants, but... are you sure we're not also projecting it onto ourselves?

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foltik 15 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

What specific properties of consciousness do you think are required, and why couldn’t those be replicated algorithmically?

To me it seems a bit like just guessing that one thing we don’t understand might explain another.

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orangebread 12 hours ago | parent [-]

This is a tricky topic to navigate because from a materialist perspective consciousness is the side effect of biochemical mechanisms. And many will point to the brain as the obvious container of our consciousness as a bullet to the head versus the arm would demonstrate.

But if a brain/intelligence is all you need to prove consciousness, then would an effectively complex set of neural networks that contained the same amount of neurons as a human be considered "conscious"? My guess is even at that level, probably not. Algorithms alone may mimic consciousness, but it won't be true consciousness.

Imagien this: what if consciousness is closer to something like the movie Avatar? What if the body our consciousness inhabits is closer to that of inhabiting a machine or computer that coexisted with the physics of the universe our body exists?

This would mean Jake from Avatar could theoretically inhabit not just a Na'Vi body, but what if they reproduced the Pandora equivalent of a squirrel for Jake to insert his consciousness into? Jake the Squirrel would be only as capable of expressing itself as the constraints of the body would allow it to.

Many religions discovered a long time ago that this is the most likely model of what we understand to be consciousness/sentience.

I'm not saying you're wrong, this is a conversation larger than what we may believe and touches into the core of what makes us humans that machine alone cannot replicate.

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kace91 12 hours ago | parent [-]

Do you have any reason to introduce that whole extra invisible, unprovable complex system? Is there anything the materialist model can not explain that you feel your model does, or is it just a case of "I don't like the alternative"?

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orangebread 9 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Depends on what you qualify as proof. Much of what I said was experiential and corroborated with other people who have had similar experiences as I've had. I know that in the scientific world it would be dismissed without as much a glance. But I'm not here to convince everyone of my perspective, I'm just adding one that the engineering world has not examined or introduced given the current pursuit.

And it's not a matter of not liking the alternative. Like I said, I used to believe that consciousness was an emergent trait of complex systems, but I had what some call a "spiritual awakening" and I saw what was on the other side.

It's kind of like describing pizza to someone who's never eaten pizza. You could try and describe it by asking if they'd eaten cheese or bread or tomato sauce before and then go "imagine all of those combined". It's not the same as actually having eaten it. But this is heading into a different, albeit related territory.

	▲	2snakes 8 hours ago \| parent [-]
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2snakes 6 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Consciousness is fundamental in yogic cosmology (matter is not necessarily primary), and it has to be for there to be a meaningful model of reality - there is a big problem with nihilism and determinism as premature philosophical conclusions because of materialism. The only thing anyone can prove is consciousness itself because everything else comes in through energy transformations of the senses. As for things unexplained - parapsychology has high sigma results against chance. But to add direct experience for a paradigmatic shift see the goals and methods of Yoga. The rise of wisdom is indeed a wonderful thing.

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jareklupinski 16 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

> where does will come from?

your gut bacteria, navigating "you" towards novel nutrition to ingest and preprocess for them