How is a theory different from using reason / empirical observation / intuition?
With the same line of reasoning we can go and cherry pick the thousands of failed theories we have left behind...
Using a theory with some empirical support as a model to discuss the subject is
not the same as attempting to use just reason/intuition. A theory, by definition, has experimental corroboration, whereas reason and intuition are proposed explanations based on how you think things do or should work. Have you ever read any metaphysics? If not, perhaps you should to see how far wrong reason and intuition leads one while ignoring empirical evidence from our contemporary physical theories.
What empirical observation are you using? You're just saying "an experience doesn't need its opposite." That's not an empirical observation. Reason and intuition are just not reliable guides when it comes to science. Einstein used reason and intuition to try to refute the completeness of quantum theory, which was wrong. The history of science is very much the history of unreasonable and unintuitive theories demonstrating their validity.
BUT, you are right that there are many failed theories. This can occur for many reasons, one of which could be that even though it may offer some ability to make predictions, but the concept was wrong. I admit that IIT could prove to be wrong, but one also has to see that IIT has some empirical support so far, including the prediction of recovery of some vegetative patients.
Bucky said:
No I can't, that's right. Although we have to start somewhere.
At the same time IIT is projecting its mathematical/theorical intutitions of consciousness (starting from human consciousness, the only one we know) onto inanimate objects.
IIT isn't projecting intuitions; it is applying the equations to an object and making predictions. That is, for example, what quantum theory does.
Bucky said:
I am fine with redefining our intuititive understanding of consciousness, provided it's not a "just so" argument.
How is IIT anything like a "just so" argument? It is a quantitative and mathematical theory that is making predictions that have had some testing (and support), and other predictions will need better technology to test. But that is nothing like a "just so" argument.
Bucky said:
How do we falsify the claim that the photodiode is basically conscious? We don't have a meter for consciousness and IIT says it provides one. We'll be running around in circles.
We don't need a meter for consciousness, nor do we directly have to falsify the instance of the photodiode. The theory could be falsified at the human level, where there are more ways to indirectly get at the predictions, such as the use of subjective feedback. If it is falsified there, then we can probably throw out the idea of the photodiode.
Bucky said:
This seems just another way to say that with you need to be conscious to have an experience.
Experiences have qualities. If you can't discriminate qualities you might just be non conscious.
What do you mean by experience? If you mean an internal subjective experience, then you don't "need to be conscious to have an experience" because conscious awareness
is experience. Otherwise your statement implies that experience exists without consciousness, viz. there is an objective world "out there" independent of consciousness.
Bucky said:
That's exactly what I was saying since the very first post in this thread. A conscious entity, unsurprisingly, only needs X to experience X.
But that is not what I said in that quote. It is not the case that the conscious entity only needs X to experience X, because in-principle it needs to be able to discriminate state X from state Y in order to experience X.
Bucky said:
No we don't, otherwise we'd have solved the mystery of consciousness and of all the connected problems.
So I either have the case that "we really have no idea" or the case that we "have solved the mystery of consciousness and all of the connected problems"?
There are ideas and we can base them on established theoretical models as well as more tentative models of consciousness, which is not the false dichotomy you created here. We don't have to be able to explain everything in order to have an idea of what may be going on.
Bucky said:
IIT is an intriguing theory and it will probably move our understanding of mind and brain forward. It also predicts that if we cram enough integrated information complexes in a machine it will become conscious, out of non-conscious parts/elements. I am not going not hold my breath for that... :D
That's not what the theory says. You don't just "cram" integrated information complexes into something to make it conscious. If you have integrated information complexes, they themselves can have some level of experience depending on their qualities and complexity. Just cramming them into a machine will not add up to a greater consciousness, as this requires the correct type of communication between these complexes and integration of that information.
You also make a subtle insinuation that a theory explaining our conscious awareness cannot occur by using non-conscious parts. How else is our conscious awareness to arise? I'm going to be a bit antagonistic here by saying there seems to be some appeal to magic in that our conscious awareness somehow arises without our brains at all, even with so much evidence to the contrary. Unless you go down the panpsychism route, but that is a pretty difficult position to defend.
Bucky said:
Also IIT explains nothing about consciousness. As Kastrup puts it "explains consciousness no more than a speedometer explains how a car moves"(
1). It doesn't offer a causal chain that help us describe how consciousness comes into being.
cheers
I am a bit confused in the use of the word consciousness here. In the first sentence I understood you to mean the underlying pure consciousness, but then in the last sentence, a reference to a causal chain implies that you are referring to our human conscious awareness.
If you're saying that IIT explains nothing about the pure fundamental consciousness, then I agree, but that consciousness requires no explanation. It just
is. It is a given that it exists and has the capacity for experience. There is no explanation possible nor even needed. It is a transcendental existence outside of spacetime with no causal chain.
However, IIT, if true, would explain to a very large degree how our conscious awareness comes into being. The entire theory is mathematical and quantitative, offering quite a causal chain of explanation of the mechanisms that give rise to our conscious awareness.