If continuity isn't relevant for qualia, then LLMs could have perpetually incomplete perception like the edge of the image drawn on a CRT screen when captured at high frame rates. You never see a complete picture even if it's technically represented.

Thanks, could only see half of it because of paywall.

It is certainly interesting to think about what your conscious experience would be like if it changed every brain cycle instead of being a continuous stream of information

It's a silly argument.

LLMs are designed to mimic smart humans. Any test devised to find the dividing line will fail because at some point there will be a pretty large group of humans that would fail that test.

Meaning that we need a definition of consciousness that can't be mimicked by text or voice alone, and isn't going to exclude people who are just naturally unintelligent.

Case in point, some days of the week, the elected - elected! - head of state of a major county couldn't pass a Turing test. You expect the people that voted for him to pass that test any day of the week?

The test ought to be using observation of a quantum state. Can a 50 IQ human observe something thet collapses the wave form? Yeah. Don't take skills to observe. Great, now see if an LLM can do that.

Nothing says that the observer which collapses a waveform needs to be conscious.

Ok, so get a cat to do it.

This isn't hard to test if someone would fund it.

It isn’t just a problem of needing a definition of consciousness that meets certain criteria. That’s actually kind of backwards. We need to discover what the shit we’re actually talking about when we refer to consciousness. Is it a thing, a process, … do birds have it? Insects? Worms?

We’ve all pretty much decided that consciousness definitely exists in some form. It isn’t honest to just define it as whatever conveniently fits our desired narrative. So “defining” isn’t really what needs to happen. “Qualifying” is what needs to happen.

You can rant all you want about how I’m arguing from authority (I’m not) or how you’re disagreeing rather than not understanding, but you keep literally saying you do not understand.

I am challenging you to actually justify your position, which you have not done so.

Your perception of the squares in the image is “subjective” because you are seeing the same light from both grey squares but perceiving it differently based on context. You are literally percieving the same objective physical phenomenon in two different subjective ways.

Why does something differing based upon context make it subjective? That would make it contextual. It's not the same physical phenomenon: one is a gray square in the context of a shadow, and the other is not. Those are not the same things.

To me, that is backwards. No one applies the same logic anywhere else. Can you think of any other situation whereby we insist some word, let's call it Florgleblorp, has true meaning, even though none of us can define Florgleblorp, and that we need to do further scientific research and discovery in order to learn how to properly define Florgleblorp?

It's just strange to me. We invent terms to describe things that we already know exist, we don't start with terms that contain no meaning and then go out in search for meaning. That is bizarre.

I don't blame you because half of PhD physicists are obsessed with quantum woo themselves and believe silly things like this, so there's no shame in a Laymen making such a mistake.

But there is no scientific reason to believe that there is any physical wave that exists when you're not looking and suddenly "collapses" when you look to begin with.

The reality is much simpler. Bell's theorem proves that quantum mechanics is non-local, but the no-communication theorem proves that this non-locality never bubbles up to the level of something directly measurable, so you cannot communicate with it. You can only notice the non-locality by bringing measurements together and then making inferences about things that you did not directly measure.

This is significant because special relativity is both logically and mathematically incompatible with anything non-local. However, if what you directly measure never exhibits anything non-local, then you can construct a theory which only talks about what happens at measurement and nothing else, and then that theory would remain mathematically consistent with special relativity.

That is how textbook quantum mechanics is formulated: it is purely a theory of measurements. It is simply not a theory of physical reality. It makes no claim as to there being, in physical reality, some infinite-dimensional waveform that floats around in Hilbert space with no address in physical that "collapses" down when you look at it. It makes no claims at all to what physical reality is doing when you are not looking.

The wavefunction is just taken to be a book keeping tool to make a prediction as to what will happen if you make a measurement, and you have to update it in response to the measurement, and so "measurements" are taken to be fundamental in the theory, as a fundamental axiom. There is no derivation of what the measuring device is actually even measuring at all, because it is not a theory of reality. There is no claim that "consciousness" is involved, or anything at all, because it is not a theory of reality.

It is a theory of measurement outcomes and nothing more is said. Injecting things about the wavefunction collapsing because a cat looking at it is going beyond the textbook axioms. The textbook axioms of quantum mechanics really are entirely operational: they just provide a book keeping method for the physicist to make predictions as to what they will measure. The dependence upon the measuring device as fundamental is not a claim that measurements are actually fundamental to reality, but it is just a consequence of the operational nature of the theory. Treating it as a theory of physical reality will always lead to nonsense.

Yeah, hey - what degrees do you hold in physics?

Well, that’s sort of strawmanning my argument isn’t it?

I started with the disclosure that we all believe consciousness exists in some form. That alone separates my argument from your example: consciousness exists, Florgleblorp doesn’t. If you alternatively want to argue that consciousness doesn’t exist, that’s another conversation I’m willing to have.

Consciousness isn't some arbitrary word we've invented and subsequently gone searching for a referent. We already have the phenomenon we're attempting to explain: subjective experience. What we lack is a sufficiently established understanding of what constitutes it, how it arises, and how to reliably identify it in other systems.

That's how scientific investigation frequently works. We recognize phenomena before we fully understand their mechanisms or develop reliable criteria for identifying them.

Of course we need provisional definitions to investigate anything. But an operational definition isn't automatically an accurate characterization of the underlying phenomenon. That's something we have to establish through evidence.

Otherwise, we're just choosing which properties count as consciousness, constructing tests around those properties, and treating the results as validation of our original assumptions. That approach, which is what I’m interpreting your suggestion to mean, is not reliable. In fact, it’s dangerous.

Just insight and intuition gained from twelve years of post-graduate study at Universities, including a MSc in Machine Learning.

I'm not sure "like us" is something that is quantifiable. I'm of the belief that treating we meat automatons as anything special is hubris. We're finite state machines, acting on information input from our senses, making decisions, and outputting information in the form of activating biological apparatus. Swap physical for digital, and LLMs are indeed capable of aping all of our behavior.

I don't think there are debates about that. There's whatever they say, and there's the few that make content by saying, "okay, let's take a deep breath and pretend there's anything to work with, and go from there".

Actual modern flat Earth was a spoof, I believe, but enough people with low science education and some religion ran with it as having anything worthwhile. And there's the few that don't believe it but feed off those others, keeping it going.

I started with the disclosure that we all believe consciousness exists in some form.

Do we?

That alone separates my argument from your example: consciousness exists, Florgleblorp doesn’t.

How can we even assign properties to something which has no meaning?

That’s how scientific investigation frequently works. We recognize phenomena before we fully understand their mechanisms or develop reliable criteria for identifying them.

No, that's not how scientific investigation works. Even if we do not fully understand something, we can still fully define what it is we're talking about. We can concretely define what a banana is, such that you and I can both agree upon what is and isn't a banana, long before we have any detailed physical analysis of the underlying chemical properties of a banana. Not understanding something in perfect detail doesn't prevent you from giving a high-level definition which defines it in terms of its surface-level qualities.

I don't even see how we can investigate something to begin with if we cannot even identify what it is that we're talking about. That's why I think you missed the point of my Florgleblorp example... if I told you to go investigate Florgleblorp, how would you even do that, if you have no idea what I'm even talking about, because I've not even given you a definition loose enough to identify it?

Since you want to look at my comment history, consider actually reading next time. I am as far from an AI bro as you can be, but it's easier for you to think so instead of considering arguments.

Read the thread. Everyone defending the idea that LLMs can be conscious are spiraling off into theory of mind that isn't actually relevant or applicable. One dude's whole argument is based off his totally unproven assumption that consciousness is a property of the physical structure of brains which is both limited and misguided. There are no serious arguments here, just philosophizing.

I think we're conflating two different things here: establishing what phenomenon we're referring to, and establishing the properties that reliably identify or explain that phenomenon.

I'm referring specifically to subjective experience: what it's like to feel pain, perceive color, experience emotions, dream, etc. We have a meaningful starting point for investigation, even if we disagree about the underlying nature of those experiences.

I agree with your banana example, at least to a point. We can identify bananas without understanding their molecular composition. But notice what you've actually demonstrated: we can recognize instances of a phenomenon without fully understanding what constitutes it...

You can describe the observable characteristics of a banana and use them to identify other bananas. But what happens when you encounter something that shares those characteristics without being a banana, or a banana that doesn't exhibit the characteristics you've chosen? You need to investigate further, potentially refining your classification criteria.

Now consider consciousness. Unlike a banana, subjective experience isn't directly observable by third parties. I can recognize my own experiences, but determining whether another entity has comparable experiences is a different problem entirely. That's why establishing reliable criteria matters.

Your Florgleblorp analogy would apply if I were referring to something for which we had no identifiable phenomenon whatsoever. But that's not what I'm doing. I'm referring to subjective experience, and asking what constitutes it and how we can determine whether it exists in other systems.

I absolutely agree that we need provisional definitions and operational criteria to conduct research. What I reject is treating those criteria as though their validity were established simply because we've agreed to define consciousness in those terms.

Here’s my own example for you: we could define consciousness as the ability to verbally report internal states. That's a perfectly testable definition. But whether it actually identifies subjective experience, rather than merely the ability to produce convincing reports, remains a question. There’s nothing there to differentiate between correlation and causation.

So I'm not arguing that we should investigate something without knowing what we're talking about. I'm arguing that our initial characterization of a phenomenon shouldn't be confused with a validated scientific account of what constitutes it or how to detect it.

If you want to prove consciousness, I stand my ground on the argument that you first need to qualify consciousness as a thing. What is it?

You may find that consciousness is actually something which was deeply misunderstood and unexpected. Such a discovery would allow you to draw genuinely meaningful conclusions about whether or not LLMs can ever truly be conscious. That’s how you form a theory.

You suggested, earlier, that someone may be able to detect consciousness by measuring whether the agent’s observation can collapse a waveform. But quantum mechanics does not establish that consciousness is required to collapse a wavefunction. In physics, an observer is not necessarily a conscious entity. A measurement apparatus can register a quantum event without any human being present. The measurement can occur whether someone watches the results live, reviews them tomorrow, or never examines them. By the same logic, an LLM could pass your hypothesized test.

Simply deciding that LLMs shouldn’t count as conscious, without even truly understanding what qualifies consciousness, is just moving the goalpost. Or bikeshedding, perhaps.

I downvoted this when you first posted it but I came back to find it has 50-something upvotes, so I feel compelled to respond.

It’s obvious that you haven’t read the article since literally the second fucking sentence defines exactly what the author means by “consciousness”: “the capacity for subjective experience.”

So, your comment is completely useless. And it’s mostly wrong.

Experience is not subjective. It is contextual, but contextuality is a property of physical reality, not of subjectivity.

I’m referring specifically to subjective experience: what it’s like to feel pain, perceive color, experience emotions, dream, etc.

Yes, Chalmerites like to prepend "what it is like" to things, as if it somehow proves anything. You can tell when a phrase means literally nothing when everyone just repeats it verbatim without ever rewording it in different ways, because the phrase carries no meaning, and only has the appearance of meaning by being repeated a lot.

Pain, color, emotions, and dreams are all real occurrences in the real world that really happen and all have real physical explanations for them. Prepending "what it is like" to them doesn't mean anything. "Like" means "akin to" or "similar to," and "what it is" regards being. And so the phrase, if taken literally, is about "similar being," which I don't see how that even makes linguistic sense in this context.

Of course, as Chalermites always do, you will probably get frustrated with me for taking the words literally, because I'm supposed to interpret them abstractly or something, but then there is zero clarity on what this abstract interpretation is supposed to be.

But notice what you’ve actually demonstrated: we can recognize instances of a phenomenon without fully understanding what constitutes it… You can describe the observable characteristics of a banana and use them to identify other bananas. But what happens when you encounter something that shares those characteristics without being a banana, or a banana that doesn’t exhibit the characteristics you’ve chosen? You need to investigate further, potentially refining your classification criteria.

It's literally physically impossible for something to share all observable characteristics of a banana without being a banana.

Of course, if we have a very loose definition of a "banana" that is so broad it would even include an apple, then either the word itself "banana" really does just refer to banana+apple, or we would add on to the definition to separate the two. Words are ultimately a social construct, what is real is what they refer to when used in practice, and not the specific definition in the dictionary. I'm sure you know what a "dog" is, but few people have ever intentionally looked up the word "dog" in a dictionary. You can just know what it means by its social use.

Now consider consciousness. Unlike a banana, subjective experience isn’t directly observable by third parties. I can recognize my own experiences, but determining whether another entity has comparable experiences is a different problem entirely. That’s why establishing reliable criteria matters.

You are being so absurdly vague that I have no choice but to just try and guess at what you even mean by this, so I may get my guessing wrong, but that's on you for being so extremely abstract. It seems that there are two halves to what you are trying to say, so I am going to attempt to parse them.

First, again, there is nothing "subjective" about experience. Experience is just when X happens to Y, i.e. a rock experiences erosion in the rain. It seems to me that one half of how you are you are using "subjective" here to refer to "my own experiences," i.e. "X happens to myself," which is a strange way to use the word "subjective," because it would be like saying, if I eat a sandwich, I'm engaging in "subjective eating," or that my house is a "subjective house" because it's owned by a subject. But, whatever, words are words, but I would refer to it more meaningfully as "experience of a subject." Second, you say that it "isn't directly observable by third parties." Of course, the experiences of a subject are obviously observable by third-parties, so you must be introducing some second criterion here, likely you are trying to say, it is the experience of a subject, as it is realized from the subject's own vantage point. That is what I presume you mean by "isn't directly observable by third parties."

Actually, the first half seems irrelevant, because any experience, whether it happens to a subject or not, as it is realized from a subject's vantage point specifically, is not realized by the vantage points of other subjects. If I see a rock experience erosion in the rain, no one else on earth can perceive it exactly the way I did. (The term "accessible" does not really make much sense, because what is realized is not something to be "accessed.")

But, there is no mystery about this at all. Obviously, if they were to perceive what I perceived exactly as how I perceived it, they would have to be standing in the same place as I am, they would have to be of the same height as me, they would have to have the same nose in front of their face as I do, they would have to have the same memories such that they contemplate upon it the same way, so on and so forth.

That is to say, they would have to be me.

Indeed, talking about accessing another person's vantage point does not even make linguistic sense. You could imagine getting closer and closer to my vantage point, by gradually taking atoms from my body and replacing them with your own, until you become identical to I, but the moment that identity occurs, then you would just be me, and you would cease to exist, so you would have failed to achieve my vantage point, you would have just stopped existing. Indeed, this is because how we define objects in the first place inherently entails that object's vantage point, and so they are basically two ways of describing the same thing.

If you think the "mystery" is that we cannot access each other vantage points... that is not mysterious at all. So what is the mystery? Even after this whole aside, I am not sure what you think is so mysterious.

Your Florgleblorp analogy would apply if I were referring to something for which we had no identifiable phenomenon whatsoever. But that’s not what I’m doing. I’m referring to subjective experience, and asking what constitutes it and how we can determine whether it exists in other systems.

You have not identified any phenomenon at all. You are acting as if X experiencing Y suddenly evolves into some new phenomenon if X is a subject, but there is no explanation as to why this is the case. It would be like saying that houses are banal, but houses owned by people, those are "subjective houses," and require a special explanation... why? You kind of skipped that step.

Here’s my own example for you: we could define consciousness as the ability to verbally report internal states. That’s a perfectly testable definition.

Notice how your definition, then, suddenly entails nothing about so-called "subjective experience."

The moment you start to talk about anything real, you suddenly have to move away from the meaningless, Chalermite language.

But whether it actually identifies subjective experience, rather than merely the ability to produce convincing reports, remains a question. There’s nothing there to differentiate between correlation and causation.

Yeah, you can see the essence of Chalmers in here as well. On one hand, you want to make it look like you are being reasonable by giving a definition that has some concrete meaning, but then you immediately backpedal to Chalmerland and start talking about how we could never actually connect that concrete definition to the abstract thing you were supposed to be defining in the first place... and so you would've just wasted our time.

If you want to prove consciousness, I stand my ground on the argument that you first need to qualify consciousness as a thing. What is it?

Why would I want to prove something that isn't even defined in the first place?

You may find that consciousness is actually something which was deeply misunderstood and unexpected.

Well, I can't misunderstand anything because I have no understanding of what this "consciousness" supposedly is to begin with, so if someone did discover something unexpected and labeled it as "consciousness," it would just be a new understanding.

Such a discovery would allow you to draw genuinely meaningful conclusions about whether or not LLMs can ever truly be conscious. That’s how you form a theory.

That's more akin to taxonomy than theory building, just looking for ways to categorize things into this or that group.

You suggested, earlier, that someone may be able to detect consciousness by measuring whether the agent’s observation can collapse a waveform...By the same logic, an LLM could pass your hypothesized test.

the fuck

I literally said the opposite

I wrote a giant rant about how that is insanely batshit idiotic and that quantum mechanics has nothing to do with consciousness at all.

No, there is no "hypothesized test," what on earth are you talking about

Simply deciding that LLMs shouldn’t count as conscious, without even truly understanding what qualifies consciousness, is just moving the goalpost. Or bikeshedding, perhaps.

I don't decide that LLMs shouldn't count as "conscious," because I don't have a reason to even take the concept of "consciousness" seriously to begin with!

You insist that words derive their meaning from social usage, then declare "what it's like" meaningless by dissecting its individual words into "similar being." That's not a serious linguistic argument. You're contradicting your own account of how language works.

Likewise, a rock "experiencing erosion" and a person experiencing pain involve two different meanings of "experience." One means undergoing a physical change; the other involves feeling something. You're equivocating between them. And a camera has a vantage point, too. That doesn't mean it has subjective experience.

Nothing I've argued requires consciousness to be nonphysical or inexplicable. A physical explanation of pain doesn't negate the existence of felt pain. The question is what produces that experience and how we can reliably identify it in other systems.

I incorrectly attributed someone else's quantum-collapse proposal to you, I retract that. I see that was from the original commenter, not you.

But here's the fundamental issue: Do you actually deny there's a distinction between a nervous system detecting harmful stimuli and someone consciously feeling pain?

Because if you recognize that distinction, you already understand what phenomenon we're investigating. Disputing the terminology doesn't make it disappear.

It's a computer program and some data - nothing more.

I'll happily treat it anyway I see fit at the time - including powering it off without loosing any sleep over it.

You insist that words derive their meaning from social usage, then declare “what it’s like” meaningless by dissecting its individual words into “similar being.” That’s not a serious linguistic argument. You’re contradicting your own account of how language works.

That is literally not what I said at all.

Likewise, a rock “experiencing erosion” and a person experiencing pain involve two different meanings of “experience.”

Maybe for you it is, but then you'd need to explain why it is different, other than the subjects and objects being different.

One means undergoing a physical change; the other involves feeling something. You’re equivocating between them. And a camera has a vantage point, too. That doesn’t mean it has subjective experience. Nothing I’ve argued requires consciousness to be nonphysical or inexplicable.

So... this "consciousness" is not monphysical... but feelings aren't physical changes... right.

A physical explanation of pain doesn’t negate the existence of felt pain.

Why would a physical explanation negate the existence of a physical event?

The question is what produces that experience and how we can reliably identify it in other systems.

Reality is not something "produced." It just is what it is.

But here’s the fundamental issue: Do you actually deny there’s a distinction between a nervous system detecting harmful stimuli and someone consciously feeling pain?

If the nervous system in question is a person, and the harmful stimuli is pain, it is one and the same.

In your earlier reply, during the banana analogy:

"Words are ultimately a social construct, what is real is what they refer to when used in practice, and not the specific definition in the dictionary."

You followed that with:

"I'm sure you know what a 'dog' is, but few people have ever intentionally looked up the word 'dog' in a dictionary. You can just know what it means by its social use."

That's the basis for my characterization.

The contradiction is in your subsequent argument, where you reject the expression "what it is like" by interpreting its individual words literally:

"'Like' means 'akin to' or 'similar to,' and 'what it is' regards being. And so the phrase, if taken literally, is about 'similar being'..."

Youre treating an established philosophical expression as meaningless because its individual words don't yield the intended meaning under their preferred literal interpretation.

Yet you previously acknowledged that meaning emerges from how language is used socially, rather than strictly from dictionary definitions.

the nervous system in question is a person, and the harmful stimuli is pain, it is one and the same.

Okay. Glad we found the dilemma. I disagree, but I’m also too tired right now. That will be all, then.

You are just delusional, literally hallucinating things I never wrote. Nowhere in anything I wrote did I claim that I am rejecting it as meaningless "because its individual words don’t yield the intended meaning under their preferred literal interpretation.". I never said that, I never implied that, I never gave the impression of implying that, and I never had the air of the impression of implying that.

You are literally just hallucinating things never written.

Calling me “delusional” doesn't erase what you wrote. Let's review the evidence you're so determined to ignore.

“Prepending ‘what it is like’ to them doesn’t mean anything. ‘Like’ means ‘akin to’ or ‘similar to,’ and ‘what it is’ regards being. And so the phrase, if taken literally, is about ‘similar being’...”

Source: your comment, paragraph beginning “Pain, color...”

You declared the expression meaningless, then dissected its constituent words to argue that its literal interpretation makes no sense. That's a characterization of your reasoning, not a fabricated quotation. I never claimed it was your only objection.

In that very same comment, you wrote:

“Words are ultimately a social construct, what is real is what they refer to when used in practice, and not the specific definition in the dictionary.”

“You can just know what it means by its social use.”

Source: your comment, paragraphs beginning “Of course, if we have...” and “You can just know...”

I identified the inconsistency between your appeal to social usage and your literal dissection of an established expression. You haven't explained that inconsistency, let alone resolved it.

Instead, after being presented with direct quotations, you've resorted to categorical denials and personal insults. Repeating that an interpretation was “hallucinated” doesn't demonstrate that it's false. You need to show where the inference fails. You've done nothing of the sort.

If you can't distinguish between quoting someone's words and critically examining their implications, you have no business lecturing anyone about language or reasoning.

I've provided the evidence twice. I'm not wasting a third explanation on someone whose entire rebuttal amounts to “I never said that” and “you're delusional.” Get your shit together.

You declared the expression meaningless, then dissected its constituent words to argue that its literal interpretation makes no sense.

Yes, so I analyzed both its social use, and its literal word meaning, and found no meaning in either... so I concluded it has no meaning.

That doesn't establish your claim that I conclude it has no meaning only because the literal definitions of the words have no meaning. You just hallucinated something that never happened and was never said.

I identified the inconsistency between your appeal to social usage and your literal dissection of an established expression. You haven’t explained that inconsistency, let alone resolved it.

Again, a complete hallucination of something I objectively did not say. You are just inventing idiotic straw men argument and doubling and tripling-down on them.

You laughably say I claim X, then quote me literally saying ¬X, and then claim I'm "contradicting" myself, when your delusional ass invented that I said X to begin with!

Instead, after being presented with direct quotations, you’ve resorted to categorical denials and personal insults.

Because you're a subhuman bug who cannot have a meaningful conversation and just wants to deflect to idiotic hallucinations.

Repeating that an interpretation was “hallucinated” doesn’t demonstrate that it’s false. You need to show where the inference fails. You’ve done nothing of the sort.

Now, you want to say I need to prove I didn't say X! What a laughable shift of the burden of proof! How on earth do I prove I never wrote something? Just copy/paste everything I have ever typed in my entire life into one giant document? How does that even work?

If you want to claim I said something, you need to show evidence that I said it.

If you can’t distinguish between quoting someone’s words and critically examining their implications, you have no business lecturing anyone about language or reasoning.

Ah yes, you cannot quote me saying X, but you can "critically examine" my words to derive that I must've been secretly thinking X despite never having written it... right.

I’ve provided the evidence twice. I’m not wasting a third explanation on someone whose entire rebuttal amounts to “I never said that” and “you’re delusional.” Get your shit together.

You have never provided a shred of evidence.

Your claim is X: that I claimed that the phrase has no meaning only because its literal definition has no meaning.

You quote me saying two things:

• Y: The literal definition has no meaning, so its meaning must be in an abstract social definition, but Chalmerites cannot even tell me what that is, either.
• ¬X: Words can also have meaning from how they are used in a social context.

You then, after quoting me saying Y and ¬X, claim I'm "contradicting" myself because your "critical examination" allows you to read my mind and conclude I intended to write X!

You're just a fucking idiot, and I cannot believe I have allowed such a monkey to waste this much of time to begin with.

The contradiction claim was wrong. You can examine literal meaning and social usage without contradicting yourself. I withdrew that objection.

Regardless

“but feelings aren’t physical changes”

You attributed that position to me immediately after quoting my explicit statement that nothing I’d argued required consciousness to be nonphysical. Distinguishing a rock undergoing erosion from someone feeling pain does not place either event outside physics. My point was that undergoing a physical change is not, by itself, the same as feeling something. You turned that into a denial that feelings are physical, then mocked the position you’d supplied.

Your earlier “Experience is not subjective. It is contextual” doesn’t establish an incompatibility, either. I’m using “subjective” to describe experience as felt by the subject—not a supernatural property. Explaining how perception depends on someone’s body, memories and circumstances is compatible with that description. Rejecting a nonphysical explanation doesn’t rebut a position that never required one.

Your answer stipulated a person and described the harmful stimulus as pain. But building pain into the premise doesn’t establish when detecting harmful input amounts to feeling pain. The International Association for the Study of Pain explicitly states:

“Pain and nociception are different phenomena. Pain cannot be inferred solely from activity in sensory neurons.”

Nociception is the nervous system’s encoding of potentially damaging stimuli. Distinguishing that from pain doesn’t disprove a physical account of consciousness, but it shows that the distinction I raised has a concrete scientific use. Saying both are physical does not make them interchangeable; saying pain is physical does not identify which physical processes constitute it.

Then there’s your claim that I said:

“we could never actually connect”

That was your characterization of my question about whether a verbal-report test actually identifies experience. The passage you quoted asks whether that connection is established—not whether establishing it is impossible. Asking how to validate a proposed test is not backpedalling from a definition. Nor does saying something isn’t directly observable rule out indirect evidence. You inserted permanent impossibility into an open question, then ridiculed me for it.

Your valid criticism deserved a concession, and got one. It does not make those other attributions accurate. Calling me a “subhuman bug” isn’t what makes them wrong; the passages above are.

For all the lectures about straw men, you’ve supplied several of your own: for two, a nonphysical position I expressly rejected and an impossibility claim I never made. I’ve corrected my bad argument. Your contempt is not a substitute for correcting yours.

You're just a fucking idiot, and I cannot believe I have allowed such a monkey to waste this much of time to begin with.

Shame, I don’t seem to mind.

@Feathercrown Maybe all you need are the right ingredients? I don’t think so. There must be a recipe. Human ontogenesis proceeds according to a process specified in our genes, modified a bit by the developmental environment. We don’t fully understand that process completely (AFIK) but there are no intrinsic obstacles. #Mind emerges at some point. You are right about the question of recognizing consciousness. People are predisposed to attribute life, intentionality, and all kinds of “mental states” to all kinds of inanimate objects given the flimsiest evidence. The more something resembles ourselves, the quicker and deeper the belief is held. I’m not sure consciousness is even required. It may be an illusion. It may be an artifact. It does not matter to the prospect of extremely powerful #AI systems. I fully expect models to assert consciousness and make demands on that basis. True or false, what do we do in that situation?

And the earth couldn't possibly revolve around the sun.

They have completely recovered the wiring of fruit fry brains and trained models on that architecture..is a fruit fly conscious? Is a little device with all th same movement and sense capability using the fruit fly con nectome conscious