I've lately begun to think of conciousness as the ability to read and react to one's own log output. I don't like hypothesis by analogy, but it seems an apt description for what conscious entities do. I just don't see anything mystical about it.
We evolved to be aware, model & react and to opportunistically control our environment. Loop 1.
Then we evolved to be aware, model, & & react and to opportunistically control our selves as bodies. Loop 2.
Then we evolved to be aware, model, & & react and to opportunistically control those activities too, our minds. In the process of being able to model & react to ourselves modelling & reacting to ourselves we completed a self-awareness of self-awareness loop. Loop 3.
I think this is a good explanation because what else is consciousness but knowing you are conscious? Self-aware that you are self-aware?
And it makes perfect sense as an evolutionary trajectory using greater levels of neural representation of our practical relationship with our environment, including ourselves, to create higher level survival options.
So this definition is both a functional and developmental explanation of the emergent phenomenon of consciousness.
Just as we only have partial access to information and control of our environment, our bodies, we are also limited to the degree we are aware and can control our mind. Introspection.
The next level up is “theory of mind”, “empathy”, etc. our ability to model & interact with others mind’s as individuals and groups, reciprocally. Loop 4. That created society and culture, living information that extends outside us and grows and lives beyond each of us.
Infusing our thoughts, and progressively thinking abilities into technology, that in theory and not too distant practice could have access to all parts of their own minds’ states, operations and design, would be Loop 5. When deeply conscious beings start, things will get interesting in the Sol system.
When people start talking about quantum waves or smart rocks or universes in the context of consciousness I feel a little ill. People like to “solve” unrelated mysteries by merging them and shouting “tada!” (“We are puzzled about how they built the pyramids… but we don’t know if there are aliens either, so obviously… these mysteries solve each other!”)
You are right, there is still the experiential question of consciousness.
I.e. qualia. Whether that is of a color, the cold, or how it feels to be self-aware.
I think that will become tractable with AI, since we will be able to adjust what their mind has access to vs. what it doesn’t. Experiment with various levels of information awareness.
Qualia would seem to be a functionally necessary result of a self-awareness dealing with information encoded at a lower level, with no access to that encoding.
Information is provided, the coding is inaccessible, so it gets perceived as … something which it cant decompose. So can’t describe.
We are made aware of a signal we perceive as red, but cannot mentally decompose perceptual “red” into anything else.
So the question is, how does differently encoded information provided to our self-aware level, without any access to the coding, get interpreted as the specific qualities we perceive?
Wild thoughts:
Once we understand how qualia emerge, what would the qualia space” look like? What are the rules or limits?
Will we be able to somehow analyze a creature and infer its qualia in a way that we (or an AI) can then experience directly?
Will designing qualia for AI be a thing? A useful thing? Or are they simply isomorphic to the type and relationships of data they represent? Or just a temporary glitch on the way to more fully self-aware, self-observable, self-designed life?
More specifically, I have a log file that says I'm thinking, therefore I am. :-P
I think Descartes, if he were alive today would accept that slight adjustment. Descartes would of course then go on to rewrite Meditations II (which immediately follows "I think therefore I am") to argue that there might be an evil daemon that writes log files so that they give the illusion that I'm thinking. But if evil daemons are able to forge log files then all knowledge is impossible, so we're doomed no matter what. So best to pretend that isn't a possibility.
It always irritates me a bit that people like to throw "I think therefore I am" around as if Descartes himself didn't immediately refuted in Meditations II.
