We can’t define or measure consciousness - because we haven’t discovered how.

So, we can’t define or measure it, but we can create it?

How do you create that which is not definable or measurable?

Not thoroughly understanding consciousness doesn't mean we can't create it. All sorts of phenomena are created without an understanding of the underlying mechanism. The entire animal kingdom, including us humans, have been creating conscious beings (babies) without understanding how consciousness actually works.

Of course, understanding the mechanism is helpful if you want control, reliability, and precision over the phenomena, but creation can definitely happen before we can explain it.

	▲	evilduck an hour ago \| parent [-]
		Seems like the entire field of alchemy and later chemistry was precluded by a "oh wow" or "that's interesting" or "help, I can't breath", not derivations from first principals. Throwing stuff together just to see what happens and then working backwards from interesting outcomes to recreate and understand those interesting outcomes seems like a perfectly valid if not chaotic approach for happening upon artificial consciousness.

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vitally3643 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> How do you create that which is not definable or measurable?

Through engineering.

This isn't new by any stretch of the imagination. Throughout our entire history as a species, we've been building things long, long before we had the tools to understand them. We built bridges and massive cathedrals before we invented geometry. We built and optimized steam engines for a century before we developed the language of fluid dynamics to understand why those designs were optimal.

Engineering very frequently is far ahead of the science needed to explain it.

As far as consciousness goes, personally I think it's an emergent property that will arise on its own when conditions are right. It will take a lot of experimentation to establish the right conditions, and then generations of study to figure out why those conditions were ideal for consciousness to emerge.

Because realistically we can't learn about consciousness with a sample size of one (us). We need to study other consciousnesses to understand the why and hows.

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visarga 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> How do you create that which is not definable or measurable?

animals can have offspring without understanding reproduction

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Tenoke 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

We can create many things without being able to define them. From embryos to fire.

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hackingonempty 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Consciousness is what the brain is doing.

I look forward to more precise definitions.

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mellosouls an hour ago | parent | next [-]

That's very imprecise, and not at all convincing.

Eg.

1. The brain "does cognition".

Cognition <> consciousness.

2. Some philosophical theories have consciousness pre-figuring complex arrangements like the brain.

ie. The brain is not necessarily a pre-requisite for consciousness.

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visarga 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Consciousness is what the body is doing to be viable.

Without it we can't walk, eat, reproduce, or do anything. I like to think cost viability reasons explain consciousness. I know people prefer metaphysical or quantum magic explanations, I prefer a prosaic one - cost. It's a mechanism to keep our costs offset by gains. Cost can also explain unity - we die as one organism, not each organ on its own.

	▲	enugu an hour ago \| parent [-]
		A useful test to see the value of definitions, is to check if there are simple programs which become conscious according to the definition. There are very simple programs (<1000 lines) which do cost optimization, interact with the os and other programs with a coherent self-reference, can reason if they will be able to do some simple tasks etc. Of course, you can be like Daniel Denett and bite the definition bullet - he was talking about 'free-will', not consciounsess and that a chess program has the necessary properties. But, it makes more sense to take conscious experience as more fundamental, what we are directly aware of, and try to explain everything else with that as the base.

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empath75 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

People made fire for thousands of years before they understood what it was.