Say, let’s admit consciousness is the result of a physical process.
Then say this process only goes “forward” when our time coordinate increases. Just like an egg gets cooked when it’s temperature coordinate increases, but it doesn’t get more or less cooked when it’s temperature coordinate decreases.
This would mean that going back in time doesn’t result in any perceptible change, since your consciousness hasn’t evolved from it’s “former” state.
Thus making it possible for us to be travelling through plenty of dimensions in varied directions, only ever experiencing the brief times when you happen to be moving in increasing time. Or whatever combination of movement along varied dimensions makes it possible for you to be conscious.
TLDR: i need to take shorter showers
Notice that I said this is a very active topic in academic philosophy (not science). I literally sent you links to what professional metaphysicians have to say on this topic. Do you really think you can contribute more to this topic in one lemmy comment than experts who have studied this problem for their entire careers?
This is exactly one of the reasons why it poses a problem. Physical things can be measured but consciousness can’t.
So what’s the point of saying AI can’t be conscious? That’s where we started here. It’s a stupid argument that’s clearly wrong.
I’m not discussing whether AI could be conscious. I’m responding to your claim that consciousness must be a physical phenomenon, which is a separate issue.
Sorry, my bad - wrong thread.
But if it’s not physical - what else could it be? Are you implying some magic that follows no laws and isn’t based on anything that can be measured or modeled?
No. No one is suggesting that it’s magic. One popular idea is that consciousness is an irreducible and fundamental (and, crucially, nonphysical) constituent of the universe. It must still follow laws even if this was the case, because it works with such regularity in our day-to-day lives (certain wavelengths of light reliably produce the same colour experiences, etc) which wouldn’t be the case if there were no laws at play.
An analogy can be made here to electromagnetism. For a while it was thought that electricity and magnetism could be reduced to other physical forces. We now know that’s not true. Electromagnetism is one of the fundamental forces of nature. Its irreducible. Similarly: it was thought for a time that consciousness could be reduced to the physical. A growing number of researchers are now seeing that this can’t be done, so it might just be the case that consciousness is a fundamental constituent of the universe. Its nonphysical, and irreducible to anything but itself.