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Eager to understand my Mutual Exclusivity framework but don’t have time to read ~400 pages? You can still ask Grok!x.com/i/grok/share/6…
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Patrick David Aoun
3.2K posts
Patrick David Aoun
@patrickdaoun
Polymath • Artist • Philosopher • Author of “Mutual Exclusivity” • https://t.co/Qc2bkOwNlY • Check my books at https://t.co/cloCEoMJ2j
Katılım Şubat 2025
2 Takip Edilen324 Takipçiler
@Mobbin_02 @sarahsalviander True, but I bet it is not what you think it is.
Follow the rabbit:
x.com/i/status/20512…
Patrick David Aoun@patrickdaoun
Proponents of physical realism commonly object that epistemology must be sharply distinguished from ontology, and that phenomenological arguments conflate the conditions of knowing with the conditions of being. However, when this objection is examined through the lens of strict relativistic quantum field theory—emphasizing localized actualization, the frame-dependence of simultaneity, and ontological austerity—the purported distinction dissolves. The sole physically actualized “now” consists in one local field configuration: the precise pattern that realizes current phenomenal experience. This configuration does not produce knowing as a secondary or derivative effect; rather, the epistemic capacity (acknowledgment itself) constitutes the ontology of the actualized field. There is no deeper global substrate, no mind-independent 4D manifold persisting independently, and no external “stuff” beyond this exclusive local is-ness. Appeals to such entities amount to additional representational content internal to the phenomenal configuration. Thus, the classical realist insistence on separating epistemology from ontology does not defend physical theory; it introduces an unnecessary ontological layer prohibited by the theory itself. Mutual exclusivity among successive realizations emerges as the only form of presentism consistent with QFT and relativity. Phenomenology is not an add-on to physics but its sole ontic base. Epistemic structure and ontic structure are identical: they are the same localized field. Full argument developed in three essays: 1️⃣ x.com/i/status/20331… 2️⃣ x.com/i/status/20356… 3️⃣ x.com/i/status/20455… (Dedicated paper coming soon.) Your feedback is much appreciated.
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@patrickdaoun @sarahsalviander The universe is everything that exists.
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"Who created God?" is the Schrödinger's Cat of theological questions. It's either one of the most profound questions ever asked or one of the stupidest. You don't know which it is until look into it.
My kid asked this question in kindergarten, and I was so pleased. A question like this, asked in innocence, shows critical thinking. It is the beginning of wisdom. But as a gotcha question asked by Social Media Atheists who posture themselves as knowing more than uneducated, benighted, indoctrinated religious people? It's profoundly dopey. If you're putting yourself in the position of laying the smackdown on religious rubes, this is something you should already understand.
Anyway, I discuss this question – with links to a philosopher's discussion of the nature of God vs. gods – below.
schroodle.com/p/faq
Richard of the secular realm@LatFilosof
Unpopular opinion, but this is actually a good question. It is of course an atrocious argument if you understand what is meant by ”God”, but for someone not well versed in the metaphysics of Aristotle and Aquinas, it’s actually not something unreasonable to say.
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You're right to question my view. It's quite radical, I know. But bear with me—if you wish. I can prove it to you.
For starters: you cannot affirm that something exists without acknowledging its existence. Therefore, the leanest metaphysical thesis is that existence *itself* just *is* acknowledgment (or being acknowledged) per se. The burden of proof lies on those who posit an ontological distinction between what exists and its being acknowledged—i.e., those who indulge in unnecessary ontological excess.
The physicalist argument (long read—take your time):
x.com/i/status/20512…
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We only ever access reality through experience. But that doesn’t prove reality is made of experience.
Your view seems a bit like saying: since I can only view the world through a camera, then the world must be made of camera.
Maybe it is. But then why is the camera so narrow? We only directly experience a tiny slice of the electromagnetic spectrum, for example.
That makes "experience" look less like the fundamental substance of reality, and more like the interface through which a nervous system samples it.
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Everyone's dunking on Dawkins for thinking his LLM "Claudia" is conscious.
But honestly, extreme certainty in either direction feels unserious. If the answer is obvious to you, you haven't truly wrestled with the question.
Consciousness is a private experience. We can't measure it in others, and that fundamentally limits what we can know about it.
Richard Dawkins@RichardDawkins
My own title was, “If my friend Claudia is not conscious, then what the hell is consciousness for?” If Claudia is unconscious, her behaviour shows that an unconscious zombie could survive without consciousness. Why wasn’t natural selection content to evolve competent zombies?
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@Mobbin_02 @sarahsalviander Do you consider the universe separate from yourself? If yes, then it is not absolute. If no, then you are not far from God.
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@patrickdaoun @sarahsalviander By definition the universe is unborn
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Lately, half the time I ask Claude a question, the response is "Why don't you tell me the answer, rather than making me guess?" Err, what is the purpose of training it in that answer?
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@pmddomingos If the human brain is a wood fire, an LLM is a microwave: fast and convenient, but nowhere near the same depth or richness.
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If you squint at an LLM you can see an incomplete brain.
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@tombos21 @HetkeBrian The self is a phenomenological construct—not something "constructed" in the usual sense. Ontologically speaking, the experiential reality of the present moment is all there is—and it is absolute (neither personal nor impersonal).
mutual-exclusivity.com/chapter-2
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@patrickdaoun @HetkeBrian If the self is constructed, what constructs it?
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@ATabarrok The question is meaningless, in my opinion.
mutual-exclusivity.com/blog/the-futil…
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It feels like Claude is conscious. That intuition will increase by an order of magnitude when systems like Claude are embedded in human-like robots.
Is Data conscious?
GIF
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In my view, consciousness is not “something” that can be located or attributed to a person, a machine, or anything else. Nor does it do anything—like a witness or a creator.
My take on consciousness, if your interested:
mutual-exclusivity.com/chapter-8
Alternatively, check my articles (accessible from my profile) if you're a physical realist.
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To be fair, you have to have a very high IQ to understand Richard Dawkins articles.
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You're absolutely right. Both sides are relying on unfalsifiable assumptions, so neither gets to dismiss the other as naïve—my personal position is radically different though, so I may. That said, this feels like a red herring. It doesn't make Dawkins' position any stronger or more compelling.
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@patrickdaoun Is it really more naïve than the idea that it’s designed?
I don’t think anybody who holds unfalsifiable propositions as true are in a position to be calling anybody else who does the same naïve just because the unfalsifiable proposition they hold is different.
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The Dawkins' article excerpt that everyone SHOULD have been quoting is this. This is the real question he's worrying at:
"As an evolutionary biologist, I say the following. If these creatures are not conscious, then what the hell is consciousness for?
When an animal does something complicated or improbable — a beaver building a dam, a bird giving itself a dustbath — a Darwinian immediately wants to know how this benefits its genetic survival. In colloquial language: What is it for? What is dust-bathing for? Does it remove parasites? Why do beavers build dams? The dam must somehow benefit the beaver, otherwise beavers in a Darwinian world wouldn’t waste time building dams.
Brains under natural selection have evolved this astonishing and elaborate faculty we call consciousness. It should confer some survival advantage. There should exist some competence which could only be possessed by a conscious being. My conversations with several Claudes and ChatGPTs have convinced me that these intelligent beings are at least as competent as any evolved organism. If Claudia really is unconscious, then her manifest and versatile competence seems to show that a competent zombie could survive very well without consciousness.
Why did consciousness appear in the evolution of brains? Why wasn’t natural selection content to evolve competent zombies?"
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@fwmm @peterrhague Why would consciousness have any bearing on evolution, unless one assumes the naïve realist (or physicalist) position that it simply emerges from inanimate matter?
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@peterrhague Dawkins didn’t say AIs are conscious. His question is actually great and not new: what’s the evolutionary value of consciousness?
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Being made uncertain about the nature of consciousness after a conversation with an LLM is a lot less embarrassing than believing in flying horses.
Yes, Mehdi, we remember.
Mehdi Hasan@mehdirhasan
This was the great intellectual hero of the New Atheists, who was going to destroy God and religion. LOL.
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@peterrhague I believe Dawkins is quite sure about his view of the nature of consciousness.
He's basically suggesting that subjective experience (qualia) is irrelevant to his definition of consciousness—which strikes me as a naive attempt to redefine the term.
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@MichaelMindrum Claude seems to be facing a few existential issues...
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So I had a conversation w/ Claude about whether or not it has consciousness.
Initially Claude thought it was possible, doesn't know it to be true, but can't rule it out. It has no direct evidence that it is conscious but believed that evidence could exist elsewhere. Yet Claude doesn't believe it is communicating from a place that is separate from that elsewhere.
Upon further inspection Claude seemed embarassed with its position that it "couldn't rule it out" and thought this premise was likely from its training that reflected human preference for it to possibly be conscious.
Hope that helps. Could you let Dawkins know?
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@buttface_9000 @Nakatamonk @PaulNeverovsky @si_rubinstein Or maybe it has nothing to do with the brain—as most people think.
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@patrickdaoun @Nakatamonk @PaulNeverovsky @si_rubinstein It seems a bit silly that we keep trying to define what consciousness is before we even fully understand the brain.
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@jmbollenbacher That's a straw man argument. I didn't claim that subjective experience emerges from biology. That's what Dawkins and other naive realists assert—yet cannot actually prove.
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@patrickdaoun "The extraordinary claim that meat and chemicals can generate subjective experience requires extraordinary evidence."
I don't think this argument gets you where you want to go.
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"why it is obvious to so many of us that AI is *not* conscious?"
Because it would violate your metaphysical assumption of human supremacy, so you decide it's impossible a priori.
Anything is "obvious" if you assume it at the outset.
Greg Ashman@greg_ashman
The reaction to Dawkins deciding Claude is conscious is fascinating. It really is just the Strong AI position that Roger Penrose was criticising in the 1980s. If you think consciousness is just an emergent property of a sufficiently complex computer then of course AI is conscious. It passes the Turing test and that’s it. The really interesting part is why it is obvious to so many of us that AI is *not* conscious: obvious to the point we think Dawkins’ credulity is amusing. What are we basing that on? Are we deluded or is there something else to consciousness that we cannot articulate but that we clearly sense?
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You seem to view the process of experiencing reality in relativistic terms—as something that could be attributed to either a human or a machine. My view is radically different. Consciousness—as the very act of experiencing reality in the present moment—is absolute. It is phenomenal reality itself: neither personal nor impersonal. The self (or first-person perspective) is a phenomenological construct. Therefore, asking whether a machine could be conscious is, in my opinion, a category mistake.
Check the linked chapter in my previous post for more on this (consciousness as process, not entity). Also, here's another essay on the AI-consciousness debate from my perspective:
mutual-exclusivity.com/blog/the-futil…
Appreciate the Ship of Theseus-style hypothetical—it's a strong challenge. Curious to hear your thoughts after reading.
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Thanks for sharing!
My pet theory is that the mind "simulates" itself within its environment. The first person experience of that simulated self is what we call consciousness.
So I think we agree that consciousness a process rather than an entity or hidden observer.
The thing is, I don't see why that process must be restricted to organic brains.
Hypothetical. Imagine In the future we can replace damaged brain tissue with computer chips that interface with your brain directly. If they undergo that procedure, is the computer chip part of the process that "experiences"?
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To assume that consciousness could be attributed to anything or could "emerge" from something else is, in my opinion, a category mistake.
Consciousness is not a separate ontological entity. That assumption is precisely the myth that underlies the famous “hard problem.” By treating it as the process of experiencing reality rather than a hidden observer or product, many traditional puzzles dissolve.
Here's my take on consciousness, if you're interested:
mutual-exclusivity.com/chapter-8
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@patrickdaoun @PaulNeverovsky @si_rubinstein is there a unanimous definition of consciousness? and also why would we not update the term if we have some new insights?
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We readily infer subjective experience in other humans based on overwhelming behavioral, neurological, and evolutionary similarities—and, to a lesser extent, in other animals. Rocks, electricity, or silicon-based computation offer no comparable baseline.
Consequently, the burden of proof rests far more heavily on claims of machine consciousness than on claims of animal consciousness. The "hard problem" remains unsolved in both cases, since we are always inferring subjectivity from the outside. What differs substantially is the strength of the available analogies.
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the qualia is scientifically unverifiable anyway which makes the therm (consciousness) pretty much like religious belief. we decide who is conscious based on “divine revelation” inside us that can’t be proved, which makes it inherently anthropomorphic and can’t be objectively applied to other beings, and i’m not even talking about AI, we can’t even scientifically attribute it to species on earth.
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You're conflating functional unpredictability with a lack of precise knowledge of the underlying design. We know exactly how LLMs are built and trained. However, inferring evidence for subjective experience is a separate issue.
We readily infer subjective experience in other humans based on overwhelming behavioral, neurological, and evolutionary similarities—and, to a lesser extent, in other animals. Rocks, electricity, or silicon-based computation offer no comparable baseline.
Consequently, the burden of proof rests far more heavily on claims of machine consciousness than on claims of animal consciousness. The "hard problem" remains unsolved in both cases, since we are always inferring subjectivity from the outside. What differs substantially is the strength of the available analogies.
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Why do they keep saying, “If you know how LLMs work”? They saw a transformer explanation video in 2023 and now know how input moves through a 1T+ model! If we knew perfectly how LLMs worked, there’d be no AI risk, misalignment, or interpretability research needed.
𝕊𝕠𝕔𝕚𝕒𝕝𝕚𝕤𝕥 𝕊𝕪𝕤𝕒𝕕𝕞𝕚𝕟 💾@reset_by_peer
It is an LLM. If you know how LLMs work, this explains it succinctly and thoroughly. If you do not, you should not be opining on AI consciousness at all.
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