Episode 25: David Chalmers on Consciousness, the Hard Problem, and Living in a Simulation
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- Опубликовано: 2 дек 2018
- Blog post with show notes, audio player, and transcript: www.preposterousuniverse.com/...
Patreon: / seanmcarroll
The "Easy Problems" of consciousness have to do with how the brain takes in information, thinks about it, and turns it into action. The "Hard Problem," on the other hand, is the task of explaining our individual, subjective, first-person experiences of the world. What is it like to be me, rather than someone else? Everyone agrees that the Easy Problems are hard; some people think the Hard Problem is almost impossible, while others think it's pretty easy. Today's guest, David Chalmers, is arguably the leading philosopher of consciousness working today, and the one who coined the phrase "the Hard Problem," as well as proposing the philosophical zombie thought experiment. Recently he has been taking seriously the notion of panpsychism. We talk about these knotty issues (about which we deeply disagree), but also spend some time on the possibility that we live in a computer simulation. Would simulated lives be "real"? (There we agree -- yes they would.)
David Chalmers got his Ph.D. from Indiana University working under Douglas Hoftstadter. He is currently University Professor of Philosophy and Neural Science at New York University and co-director of the Center for Mind, Brain, and Consciousness. He is a fellow of the Australian Academy of Humanities, the Academy of Social Sciences in Australia, and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Among his books are The Conscious Mind: In Search of a Fundamental Theory, The Character of Consciousness, and Constructing the World. He and David Bourget founded the PhilPapers project. 
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David Chalmers and consciousness... my kind of cup of tea. Thanks!
Me three!
Keep it up Sean, these are some of the best science podcasts around.
Him and Sam Harris - They are top notch
@@freeri87 sam edgy harris is not in seans league
freeri87 lol Sam Harris. You probably also think Peterson is an intellectual
As the only concoiusness that exists in the universe, I really appreciate you making a video specifically for me. Thank you so much! 😅
And I would like to take this opportunity to thank you for including me in your ....whatever it is that you're doing.
@@seriouskaraoke879 yeah my thoughts excactly. What in the world does he need me for...??
@ David G. Me too 😄
Ah yes, nothing beats a good dose of solipsism..
Isn't your name Dwayne Hoover?
38:00 Sean’s principle idea on life, consciousness, and exsistence gets shut down and called magic 😂 I love it
No, not really.
@@johnhausmann2391 sort of tho
@@tookie36 Caroll seems only to believe in weak emergence, so Chalmers' critique of strong emergence does not touch Carroll. Chalmers' critique of weak emergence (that it still leaves the hard problem untouched) is something that Dennett and Carroll dismantle easily (in my opinion).
I know people say this a lot on here, but this is literally the only channel where I leave a like before it starts.
People like Noam Chomsky argue that our minds may just not be designed to crack the hard problem. We don't expect dogs to understand calculus. Maybe the scope and limits of the human mind make it cognitively impossible for beings like us to able to solve the hard problem.
We'll edit our genes, amplify our coginitive powers and move beyond our natural capabilities. We also have the ability to design tools to aid our understanding.
My jaw is on the floor after hearing this conversation. I have to consider applying for a job in Trump's staff, because they experience this everytime he gives a speech, so i will probably fit in nicely.
If anyone can give us explanation about conciousness, it will most likely be Carroll-Chalmers duet. I came across dr Carroll's podcast while gathering intel for my SF novel and i'm sure i will stay here for a long time.
Huge respect for both Gentlemen. Best regards from Poland.
I couldn't agree more on that. Pozdrawiam słonecznie. Cheers.
The simulation hypothesis: We all live in a yellow subroutine.
Underrated as fuck.
✌🤩
If u do enough LSD you realize that quickly. 😵
Haha
Great topics! Thank you prof Carroll for bringing intellectualism into the mainstream!
Hi Sean, just a note to say thanks to you and your guests for these excellent podcasts.
An excellent discussion, I think I understand what the hard problem of consciousness is at last! Thanks for posting.
Sean Carroll is such an amazing teacher and a class act !!! Also, I loved this conversation SO much, thank you SO much for such fantastic content!
Beautiful discussion it opens the mind. No dogma .Thanks for arranging that
Absolutely fantastic, I feel somewhat quantized after listening to that.
Best podcast for the thinking person. Love your work Sean!
This is great, thank you! Very much enjoyed the chat about if we were to create our own simulations!
Great conversation between a favourite philosopher and a favourite physicist. Good stuff. Obviously Sean has strong leanings on this, but as always he's very fair and open minded. And Chalmers is what I think any true philosopher should be around such open questions: with current preferences but far from committed any way.
As usual on this topic, the unthinking rejection of the problem by many in the comments is almost as interesting and entertaining as the problem itself, though not as hard to diagnose.
Great discussion. Well done, gentlemen.
I am getting into the whole phenomenon of consciousness......to me, it's the fundamental basis of everything.
Liked the Ian M Banks reference. Some of the best sci-fi ever written.
I don't understand the argument that consciousness doesn't have effects on the world. Of course it does! Just on a psychological level we know that emotions have effects on behaviors. Pleasure and pain have effects on behaviors. How can anyone argue this isn't so?
I think the notion is just that the "what-it's-likeness" which grants a first-personal character to an organism does not itself effect behavior, whereas the underlying, physically pre-inscribed quantitative functions being that which is exhaustive of behavior, with the "first-personal character" and it's qualitative phenomena, either explainable through: a) strong emergence (supervenience via IIT), panpsychism (representative of the matter's "in itself" nature), or idealism (the solely innate feature of reality). In that sense it's not inherently dualistic. In other words, it wouldn't be the *experience* of pain which itself has causal influence, but the third personally observable, functional prerequisites which yield pain *behavior* that does.
Thanks! Love this episode
Really enjoyed this talk. One of the things that makes human consciousness so great is our ability to imagine the neverending possibilities of what was, what is, and what could be. Although I personally am a strong proponent of realism and science, I believe that philosophers are a sign of a healthy ecosystem of ideas. I think there is great evidence to support that allowing people to think out side the box can give rise to truly astounding solutions. Talks like these are fun and have value in there entertainment and artistic nature. That being said most of what comes out of philosophers mouths is complete and utter nonsense and should never be taught or even entertained as fact until proven and verified through scientific processes.
Thanks Sean and David for entertaining me on a long drive.
Check out Richard Feynman a short clip on RUclips where he talks about why philosophy is important in science.. The example he gives is of a Mayan astronomer
Well what a treat! Fantastic interview on a very interesting topic. I am subscriber of soft pan-psychism view due to my subjective experiences of awareness-expanding techniques (zen) and natural substances (Ayahuasca). Going in depth into this view and possible problems it runs into was a highlight of this episode, along with discussing simulation hypothesis and implications.
Intellectually stimulating, non-attached, inspiring conversation! Your Mindscape project truly delivers 😊⚡️
Vladimir Radisic what are your experiences, if you don’t mind me asking ?
@@Justin-st6og he's gone 😁 prob astral travelling
I give this podcast 2 simulated thumbs up.
👍😃👍
Good one
LOVETHISPODCAST!!
Thanks for that great episode, Sean. It’d be great if you could one day interview Chalmers’ advisor, Douglas Hofstadter.
Great podcast! As a nuclear engineer who is also deeply interested in philosophy of mind, I applaud you for having these interesting and thought-provoking discussions. If you’re looking for recommendations for future podcasts, maybe you could convince Dan Dennett or John Searle to come on the show?
As a side note, The Big Picture was a great read. I’ve seen many of your talks and I must say I’ve become a fan. I look forward to your next book!
You got Chalmers!
Great discussion!
The best podcast.
Hi Sean, it could be very interesting if you made a podcast about emergence, since it was only mentioned briefly in this podcast and since you are working with complex systems. In my point of view it explains a lot about our experience of dualism and the disconnect between the the smaller parts and the overall emergent property.
Revisiting in 2022 after reading David’s Reality +. Intriguing stuff!!
Just think about your driving. Sometimes you are driving and your mind is somewhere else, you still stop at red light, slow down when someone crosses the road, an automated process without being conscious about it. Sometimes we don't even remember, know anything when we arrive.
And when you did started to drive you remembered every car passed you, the we hole trip, because you were conscious about the whole experience.
You can drive without conscious presence. But you cannot have experience of driving without being conscious.
Hope youre still alive.
Thank you Sean.
Hi Sean, I learn alot from You.
Somewhere out there in No Man's Sky npc's have become conscious, developed scientific observation and philosophy, and are sitting back in a podcast saying "yeah, but if this were a simulation, why would it be so dang big?".
Thank you very much.
Pure gold!!!
That was a qualia episode! :D
Loved this
Great talk!
I would like to suggest a way that a simulated universe can be more complicated than the supporting universe. Assume that universe A (UA) produces a simulation of universe B (UB) and UA is itself a simulation, though this is not necessary. One of the laws of UA is that objects can only rotate to the right, none-the-less in UB objects can rotate both left and right by the following mechanism: UA controls the progression of time in UB by calculating the next state of UB and updating that state anytime it wants. As far as UB is aware one state follows another in an uninterrupted progression and time advances at a constant rate. This allows UA all the time it needs to calculate the next state of UB. In UA in order to rotate an object 90 degrees to the left it is not possible to go directly to that position because UA allows only right rotation, on the other hand it is possible to arrive at the same position by rotating to the right 90 degrees three times. So UA is able to produce left rotation in UB by rotating right until it reaches the desired position prior to updating the state of UB. As far as UB is concerned the left rotated state follows directly the previous state even though it required several states of UA to produce the effect. By this mechanism UB has a degree of freedom that UA doesn't and is thus more complicated.
Rock star of consciousness!
The coolest part of this conversation was the simulation hypothesis. What if we're all living in an Apple simulation to test which iPhone sells the best 😂
Before this talk i was largely dismissing chalmers theories as wishfull thinking. After this podcast i am still with Sean in that i think consciousness is completely emergent, but i do have respect for chalmers position. He is much more critical of his own ideas then i thought and in the end, maybe there is something to it.
IMO, As elaborate, precise and complete physics models are, they couldn't possibly explain the non-behavioral part of the subjective experience. In other words it is simply not possible to model a mechanism for subjective experience. Only the behavior/the illusion can be modelled.
@@TeodorAngelov you're suffering from assertion-itis. time will tell who is correct, so far though we live in a world that is purely material.
@@HarryNicNicholas Yes, I do general conclusions all the time
"EXCELLENT"... thanks.
I think there is one way to kind of solve it; they did studies of people that have had the left and right sides of the brain separated, where they could often act like different individuals. If the reverse is also true, multiple minds can meld together, or machine/mind can be melded together over time to create new emergent consciousness. If we can experience each other's subjective experiences by extension or connection we can perhaps verify the other is not a zombie.
They have cut the brains of some people in half (for certain medical conditions) and they did not act like two people, just had some odd perceptions.
32:20 list three things about your self and this is what comes to mind. Rock n Roll Sean 😉
Stimulating torture with multiple challenging topics once you get pass the easy problem😉. The simulation postulate is a useful gedanken but it leads to so many further thoughts and questions. After listening to the podcast and reviewing many of the 500+ comments, I had to refresh myself through Chalmers' Wikipedia summary and again recognized any podcast/Wiki note that includes zombie references and philosophy of science is a priority.
I now believe Trump is the master programmer controlling our present simulation, however, he is 13, in his world.
Sean speaking of hard problems when are you going to have Scott Aaronson on?
Absolutely fascinating. I'm halfway through this one and on the edge of my seat. A bit skeptical about the illusionist hypothesis of consciousness though. It seems an illusion still presupposes a subjective, first person observer to view the illusion. And nor would a zombie ask questions about something they don't have i.e. consciousness. No I think zombies would resemble us only in ways which are unaffected by our being conscious. But in the hybrid phenomena produced by both factors shared by persons and zombies (physiology, cognitive networks, survival functions and behaviors, etc.) and factors unique to us conscious persons (existentialism, philosophy, introspection, etc.) I think our divergence from zombies would be clear.
3:35 Love the content
Please have a chat with Stanislas Dehaene . thanks
I love how both David and Sean both started going 'errr' in the simulation discussion! Dark energy is just the overhead computer process required by the higher plane entities that generate our gigantic simulated universe. :-)
Made my GF listen with me as we lay down to go to sleep... She didn't stay awake to the end, but had a dream that she was Rosencrantz & I was Guildensturn & we were dead, so at least I know he unconscious mind paid attention to the end...
Our own brain is certainly creating the simulation we experience by the "I" circuit in our neural networks. The basis of the material reality is ultimately the Wave Function not an illusion which includes our neurons and biology etc etc.
This is the greatest conversation i've ever heard on youtube, maybe irl too ha. I wonder what he would say about LLMs, seeing as how he basically described them verbatim.
Hey Sean, absolutely love the podcasts. Please don’t take this the wrong way but could you try not to breathe into the mic when the guest is talking? Again I mean this to be constructive and not an insult in any way. Keep up the good work!
David always refer to Maxwell defining the property of electric charge. I haven't heard or been able to find this anywhere else and I though charge goes back to Coulomb.
Chalmers!!!!!! Fun!
I also have a general psychological question for Sean, based on the approach he says he has: Why aim for being conned/convinced about anything? Why choose to narrow your understanding of reality as opposed to being the scientist type who aims to broaden the view, *adding* different perspectives to generate a more multidimensional picture? Rather than dismissing some perspectives (data), a scientific approach welcomes *all* of the data and uses it to map reality and all of it's complexity.
internal bias? age limiting flexibility? tunnel vision?
all things we see in people you get a thing in your head and for one reason or another you feel its correct or you get tribal about it and you start insulating yourself from new things.
einstein suffered this as he got older he was the avant guard free thinking dreamer when he was young and when he was old he was very much opposed to some of the new ideas being proposed by the kids.
you see this played out in string theory vs loop quantum theories the old guard segmented into camps and refused to even talk to each other.
the new kids coming up in both fields started working with both and found ways to unify loop theory in higher dimensions and with super symmetry on some level at lest opening the door to unification or something new.
takes new ideas and new thinking to often make breakthroughs and it get harder as you age to keep on that stuff.
I often wonder what it must be like to be the Sicilian Defense. Though recently I've thought more about the Caro-Kann...
Brilliant
What is the novel mentioned at the end about simutaions rights?
As technologies like Neuralink is developing get better, I wonder if questions of comparing different people's experiences of colors, etc., will become testable.
Listening to this made me wonder if consciousness is fundamental as a field. Much like the Higgs giving rise to mass, perhaps it's interactions with this field that gives rise to consciousness. Instead of releasing fermions or bosons when the field is excited, it releases an observation or measurement unit. Of course even the smallest would collapse the wave function. Enough of them together could create subjective experience.
If your zombie believes itself to be conscious and has all the necessary internal states and self-awareness to maintain that belief then it is conscious.
What does "believe itself" to be conscious even mean? A zombie is defined as a being who does not experience a subjective point of view, and "believing" is a conscious subjective experience. So what you've said makes no sense whatsoever. What you're really trying to say is "well the zombie told me that its experiencing a subjective point of view" which is not the same as it actually having the experience of belief.
I find many worlds interpretation and the hard problem interesting ideas. Just speculating out loud but how about self-locating observer in a many-worlds interpretation measurement combined with the idea of Wigner's friend. something like consciousness having a role on where an observer finds themselves on which branch of a measurement outcome. Could consciousness play a role in self-locating on an Everettian branch? I am just throwing stuff against a wall here but it is a thought.
If only proteins, which ones ? Only the ones that are involved in neuronal computations, like ion channels ? How do those atoms know what information (mental content) is associated at a given moment with the state of the protein ? Every 7 years the atoms are replaced in my body. How do the new atoms "learn" about my memories that are older than that ? When the atoms leave my body do they carry my mental content(s) ? What happens when I incorporate an atom that used to be in someone else brain ? How does the atom know which info belongs to which person ?...
What he proposes a understanding of protophenomenal properties behind a property dualism that mental properties can exist as emergent
I don't get how people like Chalmers can dedicate so much time on this topic without getting depressed. I despise some theistic narratives that include something like a hell, but at the same time I find this pure naturalistic approach uncomfortable as well somehow I think. Oh whatever
Anyway, I can't understand Carrols stance on conciousness either. He seriously can't differenciate between a philosophical zombie and his conciousness?
How realistic does a simulation have to be before we can define it as reality? In other words if there are no qualitative differences between 'simulation' and 'reality' what physical or philosophical difference is there between them?
Absolutely the best conversation I have ever heard on this subject. I am more or less in Chalmer's camp, but have to give high marks to Sean Carroll for having a rational discussion of the subject.
I haven't lsitened to all yet, but must poin out that Chalmers missed the appropriate response to Carroll's doubt that he himself is conscious (32:05 and following).
Carroll confuses behavior with being consciousness. They simply are not the same. This mistake (which seems to sten from personal temperament, in my experience) is the root of the pure materialist-behaviorist's misunderstanding. He believes that all 1st person experience can be reduced to 3rd person descriptors because he really cannot "see" any difference between their own 1st person experience and descriptions of others behavior. (the philospher Chalmer's describes who doubts that some philosophers are conscious was probablyt extrapolating from this glaring lack of insight.)
I will keep listening, but so far, Chalmers is too agreeable.
I don't think that's what Carroll is saying. He's saying that if there's a world of zombies that have no qualia but say they do act like I do in every way and can convince other people of it, and are self-convinced of it, then maybe everyone is a zombie. And maybe I'm a zombie too. It's more of an emphasis on self-doubt, not some kind of proof that behavior equals existence. That actually would be facile, and Carroll is way to smart.
I am sure many listeners of MindScape podcast would have noticed that Lisa Aziz-Zadeh interview had made "hard problem" not so hard anymore. The subjective experience of seeing red could be very similar or at least explainable with "embodied cognition". Do we still need to appeal to qualia?
Yea, your right, we don't need to appeal to qualia.
It’s simple. Our consciousness creates quantum mechanics.
To say that unconscious zombies that act exactly like conscious people are possible is also to say that consciousness is superfluous, is it not? It seems to me that we should assume the opposite, that consciousness is absolutely essential to us as gene replicators, otherwise apes such as ourselves wouldn’t have evolved to be conscious. We pay too high a price (via pain and suffering) for it not to be essential in some way.
Wouldn't uncomputable numbers and quantization error be obstacles to digitizing an organic (numerically continuous) consciousness? My digital camera doesn't have an "infinity-P" resolution! This problem seems non-trivial, specifically in "where does consciousness act on the physical world?" because the amount of physical energy it would take to willfully influence reality is vanishingly small. Anybody else agree that this is an under-explored set of questions?
Possibly. However, keep in mind that simulation/emulation does not necessarily require digitization. But yes, there appears to be a hidden assumption (shared by most people who engage with this topic) that these hypothetical obstacles will prove irrelevant given sufficiently fine-grained discretization/quantization. I do think the latter view can be a well-justified one, but I also agree that it's an area which warrants further inquiry (although the potentially applicable methodology seems completely non-obvious to me).
My subconscious gives a shout out
If it a dream, like our nightly dreams, then we will wake up unharmed. Duality is necessary for there to be anything and that involves suffering. We suffer less if we use our free will to cooperate with reality. If we fail to do so we suffer and we learn from that.
For me consciousness( the global, not personal level) is the same as the quantum field, the base fundamental of existence of anything, material or energetic.
One view is that we are in a dream similar to entities being in our dreams at night. If we are in a Mind that allows us to share in its consciousness and gives us free will with an individuality that will never be taken away we are lucky. Luckier than the entities in our dreams which do not have individuality or soul or whatever one wants to call it.
I wish they talked more about Sean’s favorite interpretation, many worlds theory! Specifically, if all physical states are real, and consciousness traverses those states based on some rule like similarity of conscious state
I'm waiting on that conversation as well. Id also like to hear some intergrated information theory paired with the many worlds theory as well.
What about quantum mechanics as a computer itself generating a simulation universe?
hey guys,
i think sean could be absolutely certain that he is not a zombie. because sean knows what it is like to be conscious. the sean-zombie doesnt know anything. he isnt "thinking". thought is a part of consciousness. so even though sean-zombie says and does everything exactly like sean, he would have no idea of what consciousness is.
i have a bit of a problem with the premise of a zombie-world, even in theory. because dave's definition of it describes it as a world in which there are exact human life-forms without consciousness, but that do and say everything that their conscious counterparts would do and say.
why would a zombie cry, for example ? we cry, because we are feeling an emotion of some sort. maybe one of sadness, one of relief, etc. i see no reason why a zombie would ever evolve to cry ? or any other aspect of our lives. everything that we are, were, or could ever hope to be is 100% due to our consciousness. something that is totally lacking in the sean-zombie.
it is our consciousness that triggers everything we do. while i agree with the easy problem of finding out which nerve reactions cause us to cry. those specific nerve reactions do not occur until our consciousness triggers them. so if we had no consciousness, we would have no mechanisms to trigger the reaction, to begin with.
for most of my life, i just figured that our brains create our consciousness. i no longer think this is true. i do now suspect that our consciousness is not a physical part of us, because i am now aware of stuff that i had never been introduced to before. because i grew up with the western scientific philosophy.
i wouldnt be the least bit surprised if consciousness is the only fundamental in our universe, from which everything else arises. however, i also highly suspect that this is not provable. which is not at all satisfying to a curious mind !!
Dualism isn't 'the other side' of materialism/physicalism. Idealism is.
Idealism and materialism are both monistic. Idealism or materialism could be formulated is such a way as to make one indistinguishable from the other. That is to say one could come up with theories of mind that exactly mirrored theories of matter and only the names given to things would change. Dualism on the other hand doesn't produce good theories of either mind or matter.
@@myothersoul1953 I agree. That's why I stated dualism isn't the opposite. It's not even the middle.
You should get Rupert Sheldrake on the podcast. He’s a very interesting individual and very well credentialed biologist.
honestly if you're having Chalmers on your show and not including his flowing mane in some visible fashion, are you even podcasting?
Conciousness is as hard a problem as un-conciousness is easy.
32:31 Sean Carroll owns a cat. How much awesome can he be? :D
David Chalmers says consciousness is some phenomenon totally separate from anything behavioral, but even he keeps slipping from that view into conflating consciousness and certain types of behavior. For instance, he says there is research about NCCs, "neural correlates of consciousness", where they take people, look at which neurons fire, and correlate that with what the person feels. Well... how do the researchers know what the subject consciously feels? They presumably look at some sort of physical behavior! Maybe they ask them, and the subject tells them. That's behavior!
We shouldn't give up on trying to explain consciousness we shouldn't embrace mysterianism like some have
webcam would be great, or alt least the reasons for not using it
But I’m stuck at work and can’t listen 😢
Zeno goes to Copenhagen 🤣😂
Say you have a philosophical zombie and they step on glass and cut their foot, and all the same nerve impulses etc work the same way as for you and I, with the only difference being they have no subjective experience of pain. What would cause them to react to the cut foot in the same way you or I would?
Exactly point Sean made when he said zombie watching movie n crying just like us..I think there can't be a zombie person if it's exact replica of person right down to subatomic level..it's just our wishful thinking tat we r uniquely abled to experience consciousness..but I agree with David tat current way of explaining it won't get us anywhere near to it's answer
There could still be nerves hardwired to react to cuts in the skin and pull the limb away, without the being being conscious of this. Likewise one could theoretically build a robot that would have similar reactions, but not experience pain or anything else.
@@nabuk3 There could be. But if they were to react unconsciously and reflexively only they would not learn from the painful experience not to step on glass again in the future. So they would not behave in the same way as you or I. Maybe it's possible with a lot of extra wireing and programing to make a unconscious being that behaves in the same way that a conscious being would, but I think consciousness the most efficient way to produce those behaviors.
I'm actually mildly surprised that solipsism didn't get a mention in this conversation (because I know that _I_ have experience of qualia, but I just can't prove that anyone else is). Perhaps it's not a very productive idea in the first place (I could see that being a good reason for it not coming up).
do anther episode!
14:56 - Who is to say that humans are really conscious and not just mimicking consciousness, also?
Elliott Fields because my consciousness is the only thing I can say it’s real or at least have more confidence of. Cogito ergo sum.
Consciousness is self awareness. We are aware of ourselves. Ergo we are conscious.
@@grumpytroll6918 I came back to listen to this conversation because I am an idealist now. Saw my comment and chuckled.
we are already talking about the implications of AI, such as would it be right to turn them off if they are conscious, one of the pointers that this isn't a simulation is that we get turned off, we die, surely that would be unethical in a simulation where we are conscious?