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What Hacker News says
- You don't need anything discovered in the last 40 years to be able to state that lobsters are not sentient. But, Rodolfo R Llinás' "I of the Vortex: From Neurons to Self" is a really great book that explores the underpinings of sentience from single neurons on up. The tldr; is that the structures which seem to be necessary (if not sufficient) for consciousness in mammals (like 30-40 Hz thalamo-cortical loops) do not and cannot exist in the structures provided by the lobster nervous system. Do lobsters have some seperate, unrelated implementation of sentience? There's no behavioral evidence to support it. They're just big insects. I think anyone claiming that 100k neurons can support sentience needs to be providing the proof, not me providing the context and evidence for why not.
- I would recommend Llinás book "I of the Vortex" which explains a pretty interesting reason for the existance of "consciousness". Also Wittgenstein has some thoughts about it too.
- I would argue that Rodolfo Llinás in fact knows more about the brain than either one of your two philosophers.
Please read the book 'I of the Vortex' before answering this comment.
- I think that after dozens of years of neuroscience we can determine whether a person is thinking or not by several means, all very different to 'introspection'.
Arguing about 'the illusion of thought' really sounds like medieval philosophy.
I recommend 'I of the Vortex: From Neurons to Self' by Rodolfo Llinás for a more modern take on these issues.
- If we consider science as a way to document reality (among other things) then "information -> decision" is an elegant point of view (if information doesn't help make decision, it is just noise). https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41881872
It reminds me of "brain (mostly) for movement " (no decisions to make, no brain is necessary). Sea squirts being a prime example: "As an adult, the sea squirt attaches itself to a stationary object and then digests most of its own brain." (Rodolfo R. Llinas I of the Vortex: From Neurons to Self) https://www.amazon.com/Vortex-Neurons-Rodolfo-R-Llinas/dp/02...
- Firstly, this is a very very difficult topic. Some ancients books have tried to communicate the same ideas I am trying to convey here, but have been less than succesful. There appears to be deep psychological reasons why these things are difficult to grasp. So I hope you will forgive me if I cannot fully convince you about my experiences.
Actually, I am not trying to prove anything to you (or others) or say how people should think about consciousness. I am just sharing my experiences and what I have found based on them, so others can try out and see for themselves, so perhaps we could learn together more about these.
Neuroscientist Rodolfo Llinas did an interesting experiment on himself, and explained it in an interview on Science Network about his book "I of the vortex". He was able to consistently turn his foot inwards by placing a strong magnet at certain position on his head. Then he decided he would move his foot outwards when the magnet was applied on the same spot. When he did this, his foot still moved inwards. His experience was that "I changed my mind". He was able to repeat this experiment many times, and each time he felt he had changed his mind. So he could not distinguish between really changing his mind and his body doing something and his mind making up a post-hoc rationalization for his body doing it.
This story, as well as my experience of trying to understand my consciousness experimentally has led me to become very suspicious about my own memory and thoughts about my conscious experiences. And consequentially, about other people's thoughts and memory about their conscious experiences as well.
So my question to you is, how would you know that 100% of the times you have had a similar experience, you were 100% of the time 100% focused in deeply thinking about something?
