The hard problem of consciousness [Archive] - Page 3

Beth

18th July 2008, 10:36 AM

So the qualia is the stimulus? Arguably, in the external world? I'm not sure. That is how it seems to me, but others seem to feel that it is that which occurs within the individual as a response to the stimulus.

Objective and subjective are nasty words. Public and private don't imply the different kinds implied by O&S, and one does not have to claim the primacy of either subjective or objective realms. It is, after all, when we start making that sort of distinction that we are led to conclusions of dualism; it takes some doing to realize that it was our assumption that led to this in the first place.

I don't find them to be nasty words, but I'll try to avoid them if you do. However, I think that in this context, public and private have the same issue of primacy. You can't have public experiences (objective) without first having private experiences (subjective) to pool together to form the public.

I don't agree that an assumption of duality is necessary in the sense that most here use the term. There is a duality in the sense there are two classes of observations/perceptions/experiences - those that are entirely private and those that can be directly observed/perceived/experienced by others as well as by oneself. (We can both observe the same red apple, but we cannot be certain that the charactoristic we perceive and label 'red' is experienced in the same way for both of us. We can only agree that numerous objects that have the charactoristic 'red' are consistently perceived as having the same color for each of us.) Thus, 'red' can be termed as an objective (oops, should I say public?) charactoristic as opposed to a subjective (private?) charactoristic like delicious or nasty.

I think this duality is an unavoidable component of being human and I don't feel it implies the duality that I think you are referring to, that the mind is a non-physical thing separate from the physical brain.

leon_heller

18th July 2008, 10:43 AM

So the qualia is the stimulus? Arguably, in the external world?

The quale (singular, qualia is the plural) is held to be the sensation, not the stimulus.

Leon

PixyMisa

18th July 2008, 10:45 AM

Evolution.
I see.

So evolution - a simple physical process - is what provides the "intent" for these thermostats - also simple physical processes?

How does that work?

Describing something designed to do a job as possessing an "internal model" is a very odd way of putting it. I can see no justification for such a term beyond obfuscation.
There's no simpler way to put it. The thermostat has an internal model of temperature.

What the thermostat does can in no sense be described as making decisions.
If the temperature exceeds a certain setting, send signal A. If the temperature falls below a certain setting, send signal B. Those cannot be described as anything other than decisions.

That is of course the point. The reason for assigning qualities such as awareness to objects that clearly don't possess them is not to increase our understanding of the objects. It's to defuse possible implications of the word "aware".
What implications?

If "awareness" were a property which really existed in thermocouples, then we would have some means of evaluating it, or measuring it, or testing it.
And we do.

We don't, of course.
Yes, we do.

The same goes for describing the thermostat as "making decisions".
Which is precisely what it does. How are your decisions different from those of the thermostat?

It clearly doesn't. All it does is what the rock does. Expand or contract as it heats up or cools down. It doesn't decide to do this any more than the rock does.
Sure it does. It processes information; the rock does not. Otherwise, we would use rocks to control our air conditioning.

Which is the significant factor. The my is what gets us into awareness and decisions.
Why? How is it relevant?

The person who owns the air conditioning is aware, and makes decisions. They extend to his tools.
What's the difference between his decisions and those of his thermostat?

If it's a name for what things do under the laws of physics, then that's quite acceptable.
Okay. Because, as I keep reminding you, that's all there is.

However, if a thermostat has awareness of what it is doing
It doesn't. We've already covered that point.

then there is no physical measurement of any quantity which can determine that the rock doesn't.
Actually, this is trivially easy. Does a rock switch things on and off for you? No. Answered.

However, we can perform an awareness test if our thermostat is a human being in the room, the mechanical thermostat being broken.
What?

"What are you doing?"

"I'm turning up the air conditioning because I'm hot".

That's a valid test of awareness.
Valid, but not particularly useful, as it requires far more than simple awareness. It's like testing whether a small child can add and subtract by having them solve the Kerr-Newman metric for a rotating black hole.

If it's a physical concept, then it should be measurable in a physical way.
And so it is. Thermostats either work, or not.

As described, it appears to be something like utility, or value. Something assigned by human beings to an object depending on how well it does what they want.
As described by whom?

I was told that there was a shortage of physicists who agree with Penrose's ideas on consciousness.
To a first order approximation, none, yes.

I conjectured thet that might be due to his views being on a specialised subject outside the normal remit of physics.
No, it's just that he's talking utter tripe in every respect.

However, if we are considering "a straightforward physical concept" - awareness - which is possessed by objects such as thermocouples - then surely this would be of interest to physicists.
Sure.

Measuring properties of objects is what physicists do. How's that going, so far?
Very well, thank you. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Information_theory)

westprog

18th July 2008, 10:58 AM

No, computer memory has electrical potential, and human memory has synapses. How is that "more" a memory ?

Well, we can pretend that we don't have experience of how human memory works. Then we can pretend that we understand how data is stored and retrieved in the human mind. Then we can ignore the semantic content of human memory and voila! Just the same.

PixyMisa

18th July 2008, 11:00 AM

Well, we can pretend that we don't have experience of how human memory works. Then we can pretend that we understand how data is stored and retrieved in the human mind. Then we can ignore the semantic content of human memory and voila! Just the same.
Why do you keep claiming that computer memory doesn't have semantic content, but human memory does?

Beth

18th July 2008, 11:08 AM

That's a coherent definition. But of course, that's just neurons firing. We can observe that, measure it. And we have done. As I said earlier, if you provide a coherent definition for qualia, HPC evaporates. I don't think the HPC evaporates. A worm has neurons that fire in response to stimuli. Do you consider them to be conscious beings? If no, then the problem still exists. If yes, then you are defining consciousness somewhat differently than most people do and the HPC still exists in the sense that what is typically meant by consciousness is considered different from what worms and thermostats appear to experience.

That's an internally consistent worldview, but one that makes everything more difficult to understand. Yes, well, for me consistency is far more important that easy/hard to understand.

For example, if everything is subjective, why is there some particular subset of the subjective that can temporarily - or permanently - put an end to our subjective experience? Baseball bats, for example.

A very good question but not one I feel confident in answering. For dualists who believe in life after death, the answer is easy to understand and consistent: the baseball bat doesn't put an end to one's subjective experience.

Another answer is the hypothesis that the experience of being an individual and having an identy are only illusions (I believe this is Blackmore's position). Thus having never existed in the first place, the individual subjective experience cannot come to end, it only appears to do so as it appeared to exist in the first place.

As for myself, I consider that question part of the HPC. Why does consciousness have an end? Presumably it has a beginning too, though I couldn't say exactly when. Birth perhaps? I don't think a zygote possesses consciousness, but certainly by age two, humans are conscious of themselves as separate from others.

Piscivore

18th July 2008, 11:11 AM

...synapses...

aka electro-chemical potential.

Mercutio

18th July 2008, 11:12 AM

I don't find them to be nasty words, but I'll try to avoid them if you do. However, I think that in this context, public and private have the same issue of primacy. You can't have public experiences (objective) without first having private experiences (subjective) to pool together to form the public.

Sorry, I was not clear. Public and private are not meant at all to be synonymous with objective and subjective; if they were, of course the same issue would arise. Rather, events are (unless there is additional evidence to suggest otherwise, which so far there has not been) assumed to be all of one kind--natural events. Public and private refer simply to the number of people who can observe these events. Public events have more than one potential observer (thus, running, writing, breathing, juggling--even if no one is around, these are public in that they are potentially observable by others), while private events are observable by only one (seeing a tree, feeling a pinprick, hearing the oboe part in a symphony--only one observer can, even potentially, observe these). Thus, Darat's ran is a public behavior, while my seeing a tree is private. (note also--I am seeing the tree, not "the image of" a tree--that is also dualistic language that can mess up our explanations.

Some parts of our brain's actions are available to us as private behavior, but not all--neuroimaging has rendered some brain activity into public behavior; prior to this, I suppose it was neither public nor private, but completely hidden behavior. We could attempt to infer what must have been going on, but (as with Chomsky's Language Acquisition Device) we could just as easily be wrong as right.

Note--there is no reason to assume that the number of people able to observe something somehow confers a magical, other-type quality to some behavior. But our language was not built around this knowledge, and so we have words for the separate realms of the subjective and objective, the mental and the physical, remnants of a prescientific world-view and vocabulary. Imagine the difficulty if Chemistry or Physics had to describe what they now know, using only "earth, air, fire, and water". And yet, that is what is being attempted when our view of consciousness is saddled with terms Plato would have been comfortable with!

Mercutio

18th July 2008, 11:22 AM

The quale (singular, qualia is the plural) is held to be the sensation, not the stimulus.

Leon
Even as used in Beth's example? I admit, it was the first time I had seen it phrased in that manner, which was why I asked the question.

eta: I had always seen examples such as "the redness of red" or "the warmness of warm" or some such, which was not at all what Beth's example held.

Beth

18th July 2008, 11:49 AM

Sorry, I was not clear. Public and private are not meant at all to be synonymous with objective and subjective; if they were, of course the same issue would arise. Rather, events are (unless there is additional evidence to suggest otherwise, which so far there has not been) assumed to be all of one kind--natural events. Public and private refer simply to the number of people who can observe these events. Public events have more than one potential observer (thus, running, writing, breathing, juggling--even if no one is around, these are public in that they are potentially observable by others), while private events are observable by only one (seeing a tree, feeling a pinprick, hearing the oboe part in a symphony--only one observer can, even potentially, observe these). Thus, Darat's ran is a public behavior, while my seeing a tree is private. (note also--I am seeing the tree, not "the image of" a tree--that is also dualistic language that can mess up our explanations.

I sorry, but I'm completely confused by what you mean by public and private now. Feeling a particular pinprick - that's clear. But seeing a tree or hearing the oboe? Others can observe the same tree or listen to the same performance. Why are you considering those private?

Note--there is no reason to assume that the number of people able to observe something somehow confers a magical, other-type quality to some behavior. No, not a magical other-type quality, but it does confer a magical other-type of certainty regarding our sensations. Our senses can deceive us. Others can deceive us. But when our senses and those of others are in agreement,we possess more certainty about the observation under discussion. There is a kind of magic to that and we give such observations a label that confers this specialness: Objective. It is a distinction that many skeptics consider to be of utmost importance.

But our language was not built around this knowledge, and so we have words for the separate realms of the subjective and objective, the mental and the physical, remnants of a prescientific world-view and vocabulary. Imagine the difficulty if Chemistry or Physics had to describe what they now know, using only "earth, air, fire, and water". And yet, that is what is being attempted when our view of consciousness is saddled with terms Plato would have been comfortable with! Yet those terms can still be used to describe the different states of matter. They are not entirely useless nor do they describe something that we now term 'illusion'. Imagine, if you will, a physicist who tried to convince others that solid/liquid/gas/plasma were only illusions and all matter was essentially the same. It might be arguably true, but it's not illuminating or convincing to those who can clearly discern between the difference between earth, air, fire, and water despite understanding that you can turn wood into fire and water into steam.

Hokulele

18th July 2008, 12:27 PM

rocketdodger

18th July 2008, 12:40 PM

Describing something designed to do a job as possessing an "internal model" is a very odd way of putting it. I can see no justification for such a term beyond obfuscation.

So a Garmin doesn't have an internal model of the roads and streets?

What the thermostat does can in no sense be described as making decisions.

Unless you define a decision to be a deterministic mapping of input to output I.E. a function.

Which is how everyone in A.I. defines it.

However, if we are considering "a straightforward physical concept" - awareness - which is possessed by objects such as thermocouples - then surely this would be of interest to physicists. Measuring properties of objects is what physicists do. How's that going, so far?

The physicists don't care about them anymore -- that was 50 years ago. Nowadays its the HVAC repair dudes that are interested in measuring the awareness of thermocouples.

leon_heller

18th July 2008, 12:41 PM

Even as used in Beth's example? I admit, it was the first time I had seen it phrased in that manner, which was why I asked the question.

eta: I had always seen examples such as "the redness of red" or "the warmness of warm" or some such, which was not at all what Beth's example held.

Beth had it wrong. She seemed to be talking about the stimulus.

Leon

Nick227

18th July 2008, 12:48 PM

So, what you are saying is that you observe this when you are not being systematic and applying any sort of controls; the abandonment of the methodology of introspection is irrelevant to you. The fact that hundreds of researchers, very sincere and motivated to explain their conscious experience, tested it and found it wanting, does not matter to you.

If there are no thoughts, there are no thoughts. What do you want me to do? Make something up for a bunch of researchers? It happens. Plenty of people experience passivity of mind. It's nice, relaxing. You get to see the reality of our thought-based lives and put them in perspective.

When you wonder about wondering, it is no wonder that you find what you assume you will. Try challenging your assumptions; you may find that some of them (like qualia) dry up and blow away.

It has nothing to do with wondering about wondering. That's just more thinking. It has not so much to do with introspection. Mostly that's just more thinking too. I can challenge my assumptions til I'm blue in the face. All that is is more thought-based logic piling on top of itself. What am I assuming? Even the phenomena "I" only arises as an artifact of thought. (Answer me without thinking!)

Nick

JoeEllison

18th July 2008, 01:02 PM

If there are no thoughts, there are no thoughts. What do you want me to do? Make something up for a bunch of researchers? It happens. Plenty of people experience passivity of mind. It's nice, relaxing. You get to see the reality of our thought-based lives and put them in perspective.
You contradict yourself strongly right here. Where you are relaxing "to see the reality of our thought-based lives and put them in perspective," that's also thinking. You aren't having "no thoughts" if you are seeing things and putting things into perspective.

Darat

18th July 2008, 01:24 PM

Mercutio

18th July 2008, 01:27 PM

I sorry, but I'm completely confused by what you mean by public and private now. Feeling a particular pinprick - that's clear. But seeing a tree or hearing the oboe? Others can observe the same tree or listen to the same performance. Why are you considering those private?
Others can be pricked with the same pin, too. The pin, the tree, and the oboe are public. Feeling the pin, seeing the tree, hearing the oboe--as Hokulele grokked, these are private because you cannot possibly be certain what my "green" looks like to me, even if we agree that the tree is green. (ever have--or overhear--the late-night conversation "dude... what if... like... when you see something and you call it red, the red you see is... like... what I would call green, but..., like, dude, we both call it red! dude..."?)

No, not a magical other-type quality, but it does confer a magical other-type of certainty regarding our sensations. Our senses can deceive us. Others can deceive us. But when our senses and those of others are in agreement,we possess more certainty about the observation under discussion. There is a kind of magic to that and we give such observations a label that confers this specialness: Objective. It is a distinction that many skeptics consider to be of utmost importance.
But of course, the agreement you are speaking of is simply the "public" that I spoke of. But you are trying to say that simply because more than one person reports something, that it is somehow different, and "objective". The word "objective", though, implies something more than what we would more accurately call "intersubjective agreement", which describes the "when our senses and those of others are in agreement" you so correctly spoke of. Agreement does not make something a different kind, but subjective/objective has historically implied something more (thus, your "utmost importance") than just agreement by more than one observer.

Yet those terms can still be used to describe the different states of matter. They are not entirely useless nor do they describe something that we now term 'illusion'. Imagine, if you will, a physicist who tried to convince others that solid/liquid/gas/plasma were only illusions and all matter was essentially the same. It might be arguably true, but it's not illuminating or convincing to those who can clearly discern between the difference between earth, air, fire, and water despite understanding that you can turn wood into fire and water into steam.Yes, those words retain some usefulness in some non-technical discussions. If only the words we used to use to discuss consciousness were likewise forced to retreat to some small corner, replaced in all technical discourse by more accurate terms.

westprog

18th July 2008, 01:35 PM

You're using private experience as objective evidence ?

It's entirely valid for me. If I'm alone in the lab, late one night, and I dip litmus paper into a liquid and it changes colour, the fact that this is a private experience does not make it invalid as totally sound scientific evidence for me.

If someone then demands that I prove that the liquid really is, or is not, an acid, I can then say "go do the experiment for yourself" and they have access to exactly the same objective evidence that I have.

So pinch the backs of your hands. And if they don't give you any sensation, pinch a little harder. Maybe give yourselves a little slap.

westprog

18th July 2008, 01:41 PM

Why do you keep claiming that computer memory doesn't have semantic content, but human memory does?

Because it's palpably true. There is no semantic content in the operation of a computer except in the case of the human being inputting and retrieving the data.

westprog

18th July 2008, 01:42 PM

I see.

So evolution - a simple physical process - is what provides the "intent" for these thermostats - also simple physical processes?

How does that work?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolution

There's no simpler way to put it. The thermostat has an internal model of temperature.

If the temperature exceeds a certain setting, send signal A. If the temperature falls below a certain setting, send signal B. Those cannot be described as anything other than decisions.

That's a description of what the thermostat does in terms of what the humans want it to do. The thermostat simply expands and contracts. No decisions are made.

What implications?

The implication of saying that thermostats are aware, and make decisions, is that human beings are just like thermostats and behave in the same way. But they aren't, and don't.

And we do.

Yes, we do.

Which is precisely what it does. How are your decisions different from those of the thermostat?

In that my decisions give me the impression of being choices. They may, or may not be actual free choices - but they appear to me as if they are.

Sure it does. It processes information; the rock does not. Otherwise, we would use rocks to control our air conditioning.

Of course rocks process information. Look at a fossil of a Tyrannosaurus some time. Everything in the universe processes information. It mostly throws it away. What makes a thermostat useful is that it throws away almost all the information.

...
Actually, this is trivially easy. Does a rock switch things on and off for you? No. Answered.

And there is the difference. What it does for an aware creature.

As soon as an archeologist breaks the rock in half, he has a record of millions of years accessible to him. Or not, depending.

...
And so it is. Thermostats either work, or not.

No, as with rocks, they do vast amounts of things. They are hugely complex objects, as is everything above the atomic scale.

Each expansion and contraction involves quadrillions of single interactions, be it with a rock or a thermostat. The contact that sends an electrical current is just one event - and it has no more significance than any of the others.

Very well, thank you. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Information_theory)

I did a search for "awareness" on that page but I couldn't find it.

Then I did a wikipaedia search for awareness.

Nothing I found indicated that there's a body of scientific thought which considered thermostats to be aware.

At least when physicists say that fundamental particles possess strangeness, colour and charm they know that they are joking.

Mercutio

18th July 2008, 01:57 PM

It's entirely valid for me. If I'm alone in the lab, late one night, and I dip litmus paper into a liquid and it changes colour, the fact that this is a private experience does not make it invalid as totally sound scientific evidence for me.
Actually, that is a public behavior.

If someone then demands that I prove that the liquid really is, or is not, an acid, I can then say "go do the experiment for yourself" and they have access to exactly the same objective evidence that I have.
That is why it is public. That does not make it objective, just public.

So pinch the backs of your hands. And if they don't give you any sensation, pinch a little harder. Maybe give yourselves a little slap.
I felt a pinch. I did not feel the sensation of a pinch, or the qualia of the sensation of a pinch, or the perception of the qualia of the sensation of a pinch, or any other set of turtles. If you would like to show any evidence that any of the turtles exist, please go ahead.

rocketdodger

18th July 2008, 02:18 PM

That's a description of what the thermostat does in terms of what the humans want it to do. The thermostat simply expands and contracts. No decisions are made.

YES

You have solved the HPC for thermostats.

By doing so, you have also solved the HPC for humans.

Piggy

18th July 2008, 02:59 PM

I am talking about what goes on with your neurons.

And the whole point is that you can because it is impossible to come up with a criteria for consciousness other than computation.

You keep saying no, it is. But you don't come up with this other criteria!

No, it can't, because it doesn't work.

Just because we don't know how a phenomenon occurs doesn't mean you can simply pick the explanation that's closest to hand, even if it clearly doesn't explain anything.

As I've pointed out, it's possible to have computation without consciousness -- even bugs have some computation going on at the most rudimentary level. So did Terry Schiavo when she could not have possibly had any conscious experience.

The thing is, we know that the phenomenon of conscious experience is real.

We know the brain produces it somehow.

We don't know how.

That's the "difficult problem", plain and simple.

Pointing to the neurons and saying "There!" won't provide an answer.

Piggy

18th July 2008, 03:02 PM

Feel free to actually explain why it is absurd.

Sure. If the neuron is automatic -- that is, if it fires or doesn't fire according to its threshold levels and that's it -- then there's no reasoning going on at that level.

If you want to call that "reasoning", then you're going to have to invent a new word to describe the kinds of processes which are normally called "reasoning".

If automatic responses are "reasoning", then chemical reactions of inorganic matter are a type of "reasoning".

That's ridiculous.

Beth

18th July 2008, 03:05 PM

Others can be pricked with the same pin, too. The pin, the tree, and the oboe are public. Feeling the pin, seeing the tree, hearing the oboe--as Hokulele grokked, these are private because you cannot possibly be certain what my "green" looks like to me, even if we agree that the tree is green. (ever have--or overhear--the late-night conversation "dude... what if... like... when you see something and you call it red, the red you see is... like... what I would call green, but..., like, dude, we both call it red! dude..."?) Okay. I understand you better now. Thanks.
But of course, the agreement you are speaking of is simply the "public" that I spoke of. Okay. That's why I thought it was just a different way of stating 'objective'. But you are trying to say that simply because more than one person reports something, that it is somehow different, and "objective". The word "objective", though, implies something more than what we would more accurately call "intersubjective agreement", which describes the "when our senses and those of others are in agreement" you so correctly spoke of. Agreement does not make something a different kind, but subjective/objective has historically implied something more (thus, your "utmost importance") than just agreement by more than one observer. I'm not sure I understand you, so let me attempt to paraphrase you. I think you are distinguishing between agreement between different observers about what is observed (public) as opposed to 'actually exists in reality' (objective)?

If not, please try to explain it further to me as I'm not following you. If I am understanding you correctly, then I simply disagree. I think that there is an important difference between things that multiple people can observe, such as a particular tree or an oboe solo, versus things that cannot be observed by more than one individual, such as how a particular pinprick feels. Further, I don't think that 'actually exists in reality' has any meaning outside of what you are terming public. The only way we can conclude that something 'actually exists in reality' is by verifying with others that they perceive the same thing we do.

However, I must concede there is much ambiguity about such terms and they are easily misunderstood in conversations such as this. Thank you for taking the time to explain to me what you mean by your terms.

Piggy

18th July 2008, 03:05 PM

It does?

As far as I know from the research I have seen, there is nothing that can be considered computation going on between neurons unless you are in a waking state or a dreaming state.

Boy, that's news to me.

Probably because it's not true.

Unless, of course, you've simply defined what can be "considered computation" to include only what the brain does while you're awake or dreaming.

Piggy

18th July 2008, 03:08 PM

Nitpick of a minor character that makes my point. You are not hardwired to duck, that is a conditioned response that is learned.

Oh, boy. That's not a minor nitpick, it's a false statement.

Piggy

18th July 2008, 03:15 PM

Mercutio

18th July 2008, 03:19 PM

That's a description of what the thermostat does in terms of what the humans want it to do. The thermostat simply expands and contracts. No decisions are made.Just to expand on rocketdodger a bit...

I once reviewed an intro to psychology textbook, in a prepublication draft. The first author was a well-known neuropsychologist, but his chapter on neurobiology was (at that point) horribly written. At one point, he said something to the effect of "when a neuron receives enough stimulation from neurotransmitters, it decides to send an action potential, a signal which propogates down the length of the axon..." [italics his, color mine]

The neuron does not, of course, decide anything at all. The neurotransmitters cause, through chemical action on receptor sites, a depolarization of the cellular membrane. At the threshold level (about -55 mV), the structure of the cellular membrane and the relative concentrations of ions inside and outside the cell insure that an action potential will result. We can model this with computers or physical models, we know a tremendous amount about the process of action potentials. The initiation of a nerve signal is precisely analogous to the tripping of a thermostat--if a certain level of stimulation is reached, it will send. If not, no signal. No conscious "decision" is necessary to make the "decision" to initiate the signal. (If you require consciousness in your definition of decision, then no decision is made at all. If you do not require consciousness, then the cell has decided to fire, and so has the thermostat.)

Building up from individual neurons, there is no place where the process of neural transmission requires any consciousness of the sort required by the HPC. On the other hand, there are more synapses in your brain than stars in our galaxy; there are multiple parallel sensory, perceptual, cognitive and memory processes moderated by different neurotransmitters; there is a constantly changing physical and social environment; there is a constantly changing internal physical environment. Add to this that we have no access to how the process of thinking feels (no sensory neurons in the brain), only access to some of the products (even then, a relatively tiny number of these products) of the process of thinking, and suddenly a "simple, mechanical" explanation of consciousness is extraordinarily flexible and complex. Arguments of "it can't be that simple" are seriously underestimating the complexity of the brain, and arguments of "we just don't know enough about the brain to say" are seriously underestimating what we know about it.

Piggy

18th July 2008, 03:22 PM

In that case I'd say you experienced your reaction, not the thing you reacted to, otherwise there isn't much choice: there was some thinking involved.

I wouldn't even go that far. When you break things up that way, "I" "experience" "my reaction" or a "thing", then we allow the little homunculus in the mental theater to creep in.

I'd say, let's get more objective, and simply say that during the time of the flinch, the phenomenon of conscious experience was occurring, and the object was sensed, and the body reacted, and aspects of the event were stored in memory, and none of all this required any abstract reasoning or higher-level brain function.

When you start talking about "what was experienced -- the external event or the bodily reaction?" then you're diving into some heavy assumptions and things get muddy really quick.

John Freestone

18th July 2008, 03:23 PM

Hello rocketdodger, I've appreciated your posts a lot.
What, exactly, are qualia? What, exactly, is a subjective experience?

As in, what is going on in your head when a qualia pops into awareness, or when you have a subjective experience? Here is a clue -- in every case, you will find that you are reasoning.I wondered about this 'reasoning' statement. I thought that my experience and consciousness (the bits people are generally expressing as hard problems - or 'Difficult' after Darat) would surely be present without what I normally consider 'reasoning'. I think someone else said something similar re chairs later. If I am passively observing - an idea important in meditation and presumably also something you will be familiar with in your introspection - do you think I am not reasoning and therefore unconscious, or is this too tight a definition of 'reasoning'?

Anyway, you started this line of reasoning!: There is a usual assumption that I can be passively conscious when I'm staring at the environment, and I'm wondering whether this is merely another constructed rationalisation I make (as it were, after I 'wake up' and start to think again, then label what was happening). This was the mistake I think I made in interpreting samadhi - that it was pure consciousness without object. I even have a text book by a meditation teacher stating categorically that samadhi is unconsciousness (few of them say this) - you never experience it; you only notice it when you wake up; it's still a special kind of unconsciousness, clearly, since you can do it standing up and immediately can be aware of anything that happens.

There is that other problem I find in my own short test just now - I'm gazing at the curtains and I can be un-reasoning (let's say), unconscious of them at that time, because I am daydreaming about something else perhaps, or processing other sensory data. But there is another state, again important in meditation, where I wordlessly attend to the curtains ('active samadhi', some call it).

I'm not reasoning in the usual sense, but an intuitive assumption would be that I am perfectly conscious, and conscious of the thing I am attending to. It would be easy to imagine then (I mean afterwards!) that I am passively connecting with qualia - the meditation lingo would present the idea of identity (one merges with the object - you are aware, just attending, but have disciplined the mind sufficiently not to think anything whatsoever). However, I then thought that this could actually still fit with all the machine-processing language that's being presented by the skeptic fraternity here: a system can map directly a simple correlation, I suppose, between its internal states and the stimuli without another level of computation (though probably in the animal case there would be many levels of computation, but none actively in awareness). I suppose that there could be simultaneously, or periodically, a low level of processing that represents the sensation described as "Attention", the system perhaps doing things like checking it is still awake, eyes open, looking at the same curtains as before, relaxed, etc... Again, it is important to note that all of this, while it happens, would be below the level of active consciousness - I would actually be unconscious - but whenever I refer to what I was doing 'then' I always label it "staring consciously at the curtains", not knowing any better.

Anyway that's a lot of conjecture for now, but might help some introspectors like me as we work through these ideas ourselves. It also reminds me, anyway, of some complications of the idea of consciousness: i) that what we might call 'being conscious' over a certain small time span (say of seconds) might not be a single state, indeed is not likely to be, but made up of sucessions of states and changing processes, ii) that there may be many relatively long gaps between moments of consciousness over that time, which would presumably be lost to future recall (like you might not notice the edits in a film, cause they weren't there!), and iii) the stimulus or object of consciousness can flit from place to place and sense to sense. We can be idly "looking" without seeing either because we're unconscious altogether or conscious of a pain or other sensation, or seeing while suppressing all conscious knowledge of pain. And iv) maybe consciousness isn't the singular kind of process we imagine, but can be of different characters and, perhaps, amplitudes too.

It's a crazy idea to most people that we're unconscious a lot of the time - or unconscious of what we would report being consicous of if asked - but we can drive for miles and not remember any detail of the journey and, furthermore, if we tested ourselves, would find that we were actually conscious of radio programs or private thoughts on many occasions. I'm sure that introspection is a very blunt object compared with scientific investigation - asking people "What are you conscious of now!" tends to just make 'em go "Ugghgh? Idunno, erm...." and by that time they're (inaccurately) remembering; doing so to yourself is also extremely difficult - if you are trying to discern your state of consciousness, your state of consciousness is that of trying to discern your state of consciousness; if you are trying to remember what it was a moment ago, it is that of trying to remember what it was a moment ago.

Mercutio

18th July 2008, 03:48 PM

I'm not sure I understand you, so let me attempt to paraphrase you. I think you are distinguishing between agreement between different observers about what is observed (public) as opposed to 'actually exists in reality' (objective)?
Precisely! Wish I had said it that way! "Actually exists in reality" is the baggage that comes along with "objective"--in truth, of course, what we have is intersubjective agreement. We know for certain that "lots of observers can see this" is true, but since each and every one of those observers is privately experiencing his or her observation, we cannot logically say that the sum of these observations must be "reality".

If the sum of those observations is somehow "real", then why are not the individual elements that make up that sum? Private and public simply acknowledges that, whether or not they are "real", the only known difference between the sorts of data is the number of observers.

If not, please try to explain it further to me as I'm not following you. If I am understanding you correctly, then I simply disagree. I think that there is an important difference between things that multiple people can observe, such as a particular tree or an oboe solo, versus things that cannot be observed by more than one individual, such as how a particular pinprick feels. Further, I don't think that 'actually exists in reality' has any meaning outside of what you are terming public. The only way we can conclude that something 'actually exists in reality' is by verifying with others that they perceive the same thing we do.
Then we cannot conclude that something exists in reality, can we? Because we cannot know that they perceive the same thing. (Sorry--I am a pragmatist, not a materialist; Darat mentioned this earlier. It does not matter whether we can know that something is real or not--it does matter that we can observe it.) That something is public allows us to put certain types of observational controls in place, but we can also put experimental controls onto our private observations--although some, as evidenced in this thread, do not feel the need to observe their private behavior systematically.

However, I must concede there is much ambiguity about such terms and they are easily misunderstood in conversations such as this. Thank you for taking the time to explain to me what you mean by your terms.
It is my pleasure. I know it is difficult, when the technical terms and everyday terms are so similar, so familiar, and yet used in somewhat unfamiliar and specific ways.

John Freestone

18th July 2008, 04:13 PM

Let me get this straight.

You're saying that you don't know what the question is, but we have to answer it anyway?

Be fair, he didn't say you had to answer it in a non-fuzzy way.:D BTW, it wasn't too much fun last time, but thanks. You're making a lot more sense. I'm amazed how much you seem to have learned since I went away.;) Thanks Pixy. I'll get GEB and check out those lectures, too.

Actually, I keep wondering this. Do any of you guys actually understand the MPC (I'm coining it, the Mindboggling:boggled: Problem of Consciousness), and if so do you deliberately avoid letting on? I mean, wasn't there a time before you recognised the lack of need for an 'experiencer'? I feel like it's this great epiphany for me. Maybe it makes sense just to keep forcing people to define their terms and deal with the nuts and bolts of their statements and questions.

You in particular are very short in your answers, Pixy, although that's a different observation I suppose, and I'd be interested in what any of you think. Is it generally something of an epiphany? It's not appropriate on this thread, but I want to write about how it happened for me. I think it would have helped me before, when I was pondering dualistic versions of reality here, to be told "Yes we know it doesn't sound like it makes sense". I kind of feel like I want to say that to the HPC proponents. I don't want to patronise. I mean that it might be easier for someone to see a magic eye picture if someone explains that there's something to see and gives some directions. In the case of HPC, of course, I'm saying they need to be told there's a knack to not seeing the 'experiencer' anymore, and when he's gone, everything else makes sense. They seem to keep pretending to themselves that the homunculus is evicted, but then keep asking "Who is experiencing?". I kind of feel that when I really, seriously, truly, honestly considered a subjectless self, suddenly he hadn't gone anywhere, cause he wasn't there in the first place.

I'm still not convinced of it, but I can at least work with it. If it's true, then the system has learned to process that particular equation, having freed itself from something of a loop.

Nick227

18th July 2008, 04:17 PM

Yes -- it says that I don't think you know what lusting really is.

Lusting to me is lusting, a sensation around my bollocks that I want to shag someone. Possibly you regard it as some deep neurological process, I don't know. If you want to call it "reasoning" that's up to you. I wouldn't personally.

And....? I didn't say experience required self, I said self experience required self.

As I understood it, your premise was that consciousness resulted from a system examining itself. What I'm pointing out, and you seem to be agreeing with, is that no self is necessary.

*sigh* And what is a thought, Nick? Lemme guess... what you have when you are thinking? Awesome.

A little discreet package of language? Something like this. They float across the mind, when stimulated.

Nick

John Freestone

18th July 2008, 04:23 PM

In fact, they don't. They have a current state - which includes the RAM*, the registers and the disks. It's not possible to determine from the current state what the previous state was. Programs don't run backwards.

* I know RAM stands for memory, but it really isn't - any more than the CPU is the brain.Would it be useful to expand on this, do you think, westprog, or do you think now that it's a red herring. It's intruiging. I'm not sure what you mean by it. Surely the idea of 'memory' is not that a system must know what state preceded it, but that it can save copies or images or representations of states and retrieve them or operate on them later. I can only think of the explanation that RAM is not physically memory, but medium; nevertheless, a computer stores memory there, doesn't it?

Nick227

18th July 2008, 04:23 PM

You contradict yourself strongly right here. Where you are relaxing "to see the reality of our thought-based lives and put them in perspective," that's also thinking. You aren't having "no thoughts" if you are seeing things and putting things into perspective.

Well, I found there was a kind of laughing realisation that developed from having spent time without many thoughts occuring. Having previously been so engaged, so identified with thought, suddenly the whole world of thoughts started to make me laugh. It seemed so intense and so real before. As though my whole existence would be defined and judged by the quality of my thoughts. So, to experience relatively few thoughts for a period, it suddenly came to me afterwards how idiotic this position was.

Nick

JoeEllison

18th July 2008, 04:25 PM

Well, count me out of that.

I see no reason why we shouldn't one day be able to explain it.

Feel free to assume that I'm not talking about you unless I quote you. Whatever your viewpoint is, it doesn't seem to be "woo" as much as "pain in the arse." :cool:

Nick227

18th July 2008, 04:25 PM

Nick - you just seem to be describing what I would call "relaxation" - the state when someone asks you what you were thinking and you reply "nothing". However my experiences of that is that is exactly what is happening in regards to the "I" i.e. nothing. It just simply wasn't running at that moment.

Usually when someone asks me what I'm thinking, typically my girlfriend, and I reply "nothing," it's because I don't want to say!

Nick

JoeEllison

18th July 2008, 04:26 PM

Well, I found there was a kind of laughing realisation that developed from having spent time without many thoughts occuring. Having previously been so engaged, so identified with thought, suddenly the whole world of thoughts started to make me laugh. It seemed so intense and so real before. As though my whole existence would be defined and judged by the quality of my thoughts. So, to experience relatively few thoughts for a period, it suddenly came to me afterwards how idiotic this position was.

Nick

So, in other words, you've deluded yourself into believing that you have access to revealed knowledge, a recognized logical fallacy.

Hokulele

18th July 2008, 04:27 PM

skiba

18th July 2008, 04:28 PM

Wouldn't that be an oxymoron ?

To the analytical mind, yes, because it works in a dualistic manner.

Nick227

18th July 2008, 04:31 PM

So, in other words, you've deluded yourself into believing that you have access to revealed knowledge, a recognized logical fallacy.

What revealed knowledge is this? No thoughts means no thoughts. It's not about knowledge. It just means no thoughts.

Nick

John Freestone

18th July 2008, 04:46 PM

So, in other words, you've deluded yourself into believing that you have access to revealed knowledge, a recognized logical fallacy.I can't see how you read Nick's statement that way, Joe. He didn't even say he had a laughing realisation whilst not thinking. He said 'afterwards', presumably when he was thinking again. I havent caught up fully and don't know what he's suggesting is the metaphy....forget it, cosmology... behind it, all this seems to say is that it's good to take a rest from thinking and not get identified with it. Revealed knowledge and delusion? I think it's good to stop thinking and scratch my arse now and then, but I'm not pretending I'm a prophet.

skiba

18th July 2008, 04:50 PM

John Freestone

18th July 2008, 05:12 PM

This is how meditation basically works but only takes it further.
Silencing the mind and being aware of that silent mind.
Thoughtless awareness.

Wouldn't that be an oxymoron ?

To the analytical mind, yes, because it works in a dualistic manner.
That makes me think of some of the stuff my guru used to say. But there's a twist. The usual formulation, when they are pressed hard up against an elephant or something, is not "silent mind and aware of that silent mind", just silent mind. That is where the dualism stops. They talk about being (even being the object of awareness), not being aware of....anything at all. Hence, trying to put the consciousness back into silence may just be a bit of a pretence. That's what I think I imagined I was doing. Now I think I was just alternating from moments of the most wonderful peace, just being, to waking up and going "Oh my God, this is Bliss. Om mani padme hum..."

It's important to clarify, presumably, that you mean dualistic in that sense. 'Mystic' teaching asserts that this is our great thinking problem, subject and object, instead of being united. Now there we have it again - monism - unity - not 'awareness of not having thoughts', just either having thoughts or not having them - or if you prefer, either being a thought or not being it. Materialistic consciousness theory sounds rather like the speeches of gurus, I mean, some of them (they talk an awful lot of crap). Finally - Gate, gate paragate, parasamgate, bodhi svaha. Gone. Gone. Gone beyond. Gone even beyond the idea of beyond. Does it matter if what is left we call 'matter' or 'Mind' or 'God' (who is by all sophisticated reckoning everything anyway)? Not if we're good monists, surely? But look, there is 'matter-energy-mind-god'. Now how special are we?

Beth

18th July 2008, 05:24 PM

Precisely! Wish I had said it that way! "Actually exists in reality" is the baggage that comes along with "objective"--in truth, of course, what we have is intersubjective agreement.

If the sum of those observations is somehow "real", then why are not the individual elements that make up that sum? Private and public simply acknowledges that, whether or not they are "real", the only known difference between the sorts of data is the number of observers.

Then we cannot conclude that something exists in reality, can we?
We are in agreement on this point. I'll try to remember to use the terms 'public' and 'private'. Can you keep in mind when I say objective, that I mean the same thing you do by public?

Number of observers is also one way we discriminate between sane and insane. I think that's why there's an exception for religious beliefs when documenting the kinds of delusions that human beings sometimes suffer from.

"Lila" by Robert Pirsig illuminates some interesting ideas along those lines. He wrote "Zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance that I mentioned earlier. I pulled it off my bookshelf to try and find where he defines qualia, but I didn't find it. I'll keep looking, just because it's always a pleasure to read. I did find this passage which I thought appropriate to this thread:

(1) Every instructor of English composition knows what quality is. (Any instructor who does not should keep this fact carefully concealed, for this would certainly constitute proof of incompetence.) (2) Any instructor who thinks quality of writing can and should be defined before teaching it can and should go ahead and define it. (3) All those who feel that quality of writing does exist but cannot be defined, but that quality should be taught anyway, can fenefit by the following method of teaching pure quality in writing without defining it"

...

He had to answer the question, If you can't define it, what makes you think it exists?
.....
A thing exists if a world without it can't function normally.

Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance" page 191-3 Nov. 85 paperback edition

Quality* is much like consciousness in that it seems impossible to define, to adequately pin down with words. If we can't define it, why do so many of us believe it exists; that it is something more than the awareness that thermostats and cockroaches might be said to possess? Would our world function normally without it? I don't think so. Do you?

It is my pleasure. I know it is difficult, when the technical terms and everyday terms are so similar, so familiar, and yet used in somewhat unfamiliar and specific ways.

Yes, I have much the same problem when trying to communicate in my professional language (statistics) with users of my work (engineers and managers). Engineers at least have a basic familiarity with the technical language and it's much easier for me to communicate with them for that reason.

By the way, I always enjoy your posts. You write well. Thank you.

*Pirsig eventually equates Quality with qualia.

Dancing David

18th July 2008, 05:27 PM

So pinch the backs of your hands. And if they don't give you any sensation, pinch a little harder. Maybe give yourselves a little slap.

And so how is the qualia different than sensation becoming perception?

John Freestone

18th July 2008, 05:28 PM

It seems to me that the HPC is here being debated by two camps of people - those who believe that all human existence is thought-based, and those who believe that there are other phenomena too. The problem is that, for the latter camp, it is necessary to translate these proposed other phenomena into thought-based constructs in order to debate them.

NickThat's odd. For a first up, it's almost a reversal of what one camp would say, I think, has said, which would be something like "there are two camps of people, those who believe that all human existence is matter-based, and those who believe that there are other phenomena too." I suspect you may be deliberately constructing this opposition to be awkward, Nick. Furthermore, it is later backed up by skiba, whom I thought had expressed materialist leanings with ghostly undertones. Do any of you know what you believe, let alone what supposed questions you are wanting answered?

Nick, it really is much better to be clear and if you believe that thought, mind is primary, say it (though probably not here, eh?:D). Personally, I wish it could be debated openly, but I also suspect that if I am right and you're not daring to be open about it, it's because of the rather unwelcoming reception it would probably receive. Even dualism, I mean, to mention it seems almost like a heresy here. Just suppose someone should suggest that there might be matter and mind floating about in the universe right from the start. I did, just hypothetically. I didn't mean I believed it. I've just got up the courage to return.

Edit: getting back to the subject, is it possible to conceive of us not translating 'other phenomena' (you mean physical non-realities, presumably) into (real) thoughts in order to debate them, but passing real physical information between us? I can conceive of it that way as I type these words and watch the little pixels light up encoding the English language, ready to open the various little synaptic switches of your consciousness, using your English lookup table, such that you have then your physiological response to my message, perhaps utterly predictable if we knew all the variables.

Dancing David

18th July 2008, 05:28 PM

Because it's palpably true. There is no semantic content in the operation of a computer except in the case of the human being inputting and retrieving the data.

Wow, that is interesting. Do you mean that you have a memory of words or that your memory is comprised of words.

What meaning are you placing on semantic content?

Dancing David

18th July 2008, 05:37 PM

Sure. If the neuron is automatic -- that is, if it fires or doesn't fire according to its threshold levels and that's it -- then there's no reasoning going on at that level.

If you want to call that "reasoning", then you're going to have to invent a new word to describe the kinds of processes which are normally called "reasoning".

If automatic responses are "reasoning", then chemical reactions of inorganic matter are a type of "reasoning".

That's ridiculous.

Cogent point because it is the interaction of the network of neurons that makes for reason.

Take the thought "I see the color red", to get there :
1. the network of the ye sens singnals like: red yes, green no, cell next to me says red yes, cell next to me says no green.
2. all thiese signals are sent to the optic nerve and then to the visual cortex.
3. there the patterns are intergrated at different lelevls. The red yes and green no, the yellow no, etc...
4. edges are discerned for background and foreground effect, etc...
5. motion in the visual field and orientation is discerned, etc...
6. associations start creating and lack of associations are created
7. memories are referenced
8. and so on

So I agree to reach the reasoned statement, "I see red" takes a lot of neurons working in concert.

Beth

18th July 2008, 05:37 PM

What is that difference? A good question. I'll contemplate it a while and if I come up with anything I like, I'll let you know. What is the difference between a tadpole and a frog? Between ice, water and steam? Are they not all the same? Yet are they not also different in fundmental ways?

There is one problem with using a consensus version of reality, lots of people can be wrong or can fail to come to a consensus. As an analogy, where is a rainbow? If you have 5 people standing in 5 different locations, they will all claim to see the same rainbow, but will describe it as starting and ending in different locations. Does the rainbow "actually exist in reality" or not? Are there 5 different rainbows present? I don't know. Just as I don't know whether or not a creator god exists. I don't know whether or not we are all just 'simulations' in a matrix world. And I don't know whether or not consciousness or free will 'actually exist in reality'. Do you have a firm opinion on the rainbow question?

This sort of highlights Merc's point (I hope), seeing the rainbow is private, but the rainbow's existence is public as other people can see it and take lovely pictures of it.

Thanks. I think Mercutio and I are on the same page with that point now.

Piggy

18th July 2008, 05:47 PM

Feel free to assume that I'm not talking about you unless I quote you. Whatever your viewpoint is, it doesn't seem to be "woo" as much as "pain in the arse." :cool:

Instead, I'll feel free to draw my own conclusions. Thanks for the offer, though.

You're right that I'm not woo.

Now, if you'll explain your pain, I'll do my best to give you a reply that resolves it.

Hokulele

18th July 2008, 06:15 PM

I think that there is an important difference between things that multiple people can observe, such as a particular tree or an oboe solo, versus things that cannot be observed by more than one individual, such as how a particular pinprick feels.What is that difference?A good question. I'll contemplate it a while and if I come up with anything I like, I'll let you know.

There may be more than one criterion. I will use your examples to demonstrate. Please note, there is a huge difference between your two examples I will elaborate on at the end of this post.

What is the difference between a tadpole and a frog?

For the very basics:

- Tail
- Legs
- Gills

Between ice, water and steam?

- Temperature
- Reaction to pressure
- Permeability
- Density

Are they not all the same? Yet are they not also different in fundmental ways?

Arguably they are not all the same in that calling ice "steam" would garner you some very funny looks.

I don't know. Just as I don't know whether or not a creator god exists. I don't know whether or not we are all just 'simulations' in a matrix world. And I don't know whether or not consciousness or free will 'actually exist in reality'.

Meh, I am more pragmatic than that. For me, is there any benefit to acting as if there is a creator god/matrix/consciousness/free will? My answers to those questions are most likely different than yours.

Do you have a firm opinion on the rainbow question?

Sure, consensus is boring. It is where observations differ that we can actually learn something interesting. For example, if we all agree that "That is a rock." Yay! OK, now I'm bored. But if I say, "Look at that rock", and you respond, "That is a tortoise", now I'm interested. I could learn that tortoises look a lot like rocks, or I could learn that you need to start wearing glasses. ;)

Back to the rainbow. If 5 people all see exactly the same thing, it doesn't teach me anything I don't already know (there is a rainbow). However, if all 5 people describe different locations for the rainbow, suddenly there is an interesting problem to examine. Why aren't they seeing the same thing? This can lead to a better understanding of rainbows. Consensus isn't an arbiter of reality, nor is it necessarily bad, it just doesn't lead anywhere.

Looping back to the OP and my earlier comment on your frog/tadpole and ice/water/steam examples, I don't think consciousness is a binary problem. I see it as more of a Loki's Wager situation, akin to your frog/tadpole. There is no one point where the tadpole is suddenly and completely a frog. This is quite different from the ice/water/steam example, in that the switch between each of those states is much more clear-cut.

To me, I don't see the question so much as whether or not a system is or is not conscious, but how conscious is it? This is why seeing a consensus that "Humans are conscious" is boring, but the disagreement on "Thermostats are conscious" is interesting. My first serious response in this thread is one example of setting up a checklist for consciousness that can be applied to real life situations.

And as a side note, I treat the concepts of consciousness (or general awareness) versus self-awareness very differently. It seems like some people in this thread are using them interchangeably.

Mercutio

18th July 2008, 06:17 PM

We are in agreement on this point. I'll try to remember to use the terms 'public' and 'private'. Can you keep in mind when I say objective, that I mean the same thing you do by public?
I'll certainly give it the ol' college try.

Number of observers is also one way we discriminate between sane and insane. I think that's why there's an exception for religious beliefs when documenting the kinds of delusions that human beings sometimes suffer from.
Hmm... see below...

Quality* is much like consciousness in that it seems impossible to define, to adequately pin down with words. If we can't define it, why do so many of us believe it exists; that it is something more than the awareness that thermostats and cockroaches might be said to possess? Would our world function normally without it? I don't think so. Do you?
So many believe that a god exists, yet so many define said god differently. Would our world function normally without a god? I do happen to think so. Yet, if we start with the assumption that an undefined god exists, can we see evidence consistent with it? (as long as it is badly defined, of course we can.)

Oddly enough, I do think that the HPC debate is functionally identical to the creation/evolution "contraversy"; all the evidence I am aware of supports one side (I admit, as a human being, that I could be biased and wrong on this), but the other side hangs on to a significant number of supporters, in part due to its flattering portrayal of humans as special. (Also in part thanks to historical tradition reaching back before the evidence was available.)

Yes, I have much the same problem when trying to communicate in my professional language (statistics) with users of my work (engineers and managers). Engineers at least have a basic familiarity with the technical language and it's much easier for me to communicate with them for that reason.
Hmm... I have taught stats--maybe that is why you can understand me...

By the way, I always enjoy your posts. You write well. Thank you.
Awww... thanks.

John Freestone

18th July 2008, 06:20 PM

Well then Nick227 I haven't a clue what you mean by "experiencing". The only time "I" am aware of experiencing anything is when I have an internal dialogue (as I am doing at the moment when thinking about this post I am typing) the rest of the time "I" experience nothing.Weird. Seriously? I can't imagine that. I'm thinking it must be very noisy in your head, or you spend a lot of time unconscious. Don't you equate having sensory experiences (maybe I should say 'happenings') with experiencing? Don't you experience music, food, running, sex, or a sunset without an internal dialogue?

Oh wait, did I misread that - the only time you are aware of your experiencing. Another recursion?

Mercutio

18th July 2008, 06:23 PM

To me, I don't see the question so much as whether or not a system is or is not conscious, but how conscious is it? This is why seeing a consensus that "Humans are conscious" is boring, but the disagreement on "Thermostats are conscious" is interesting. My first serious response in this thread is one example of setting up a checklist for consciousness that can be applied to real life situations.

Agreed. And I would argue that we infer "how conscious something is" by its behavior. Even other people. And, by extension, since we learn to label our private behavior through interaction with others referring to public behavior, we learn how conscious we are through behavior.

Hokulele

18th July 2008, 06:35 PM

Agreed. And I would argue that we infer "how conscious something is" by its behavior. Even other people. And, by extension, since we learn to label our private behavior through interaction with others referring to public behavior, we learn how conscious we are through behavior.

I mostly agree, although I feel communication plays an important role as well. The objects that can best exchange information with you are always the ones that appear the most conscious, such as PixyMisa's example of the server sending him an e-mail when something is wrong.

I guess one could always argue that communication is a behavior. :cool:

Mercutio

18th July 2008, 06:42 PM

I mostly agree, although I feel communication plays an important role as well. The objects that can best exchange information with you are always the ones that appear the most conscious, such as PixyMisa's example of the server sending him an e-mail when something is wrong.

I guess one could always argue that communication is a behavior. :cool:
Communicating is a behavior, or rather a class of behaviors. (Remember, behavior is "what you do"; a computer does things.)

Actually, look at when we typically use consciousness words to apply to non-animals; it is usually when they behave... or misbehave. ("My computer wants me to defrag it"; "my car hates to start on cold days"; "the lawnmower refuses to work for anybody but me") We don't tend to speak that way of tables, chairs, rocks... things that don't behave.

eta: re-reading your post, you are already saying this--so I'll condense my post to "I agree".

Hokulele

18th July 2008, 06:46 PM

Communicating is a behavior, or rather a class of behaviors. (Remember, behavior is "what you do"; a computer does things.)

Bah, you and your gerunds.

Actually, look at when we typically use consciousness words to apply to non-animals; it is usually when they behave... or misbehave. ("My computer wants me to defrag it"; "my car hates to start on cold days"; "the lawnmower refuses to work for anybody but me") We don't tend to speak that way of tables, chairs, rocks... things that don't behave.

eta: re-reading your post, you are already saying this--so I'll condense my post to "I agree".

:)

John Freestone

18th July 2008, 07:11 PM

Yes, exactly.

Even if you are in-the-moment for a split second and start to see it, then the analytical mind comes in and tries to grasp that experience, which ofcourse is no longer the experience but a conceptual thought.I'm honestly wondering and fence-sitting now, but I think the point is this: that what you call being in the moment (by which you also mean experiencing it, and which clearly makes so much sense to you and Nick, and is persuasive to me) might just possibly be a in-the-moment unconscious. It is interesting that you say "even if only for a split second and start to see it" - weren't you seeing it before? You interpret this here as "grasp" it (an experience) intellectually - which of course is gone (but you assume was a conscious moment). But it's odd that you used those words: you start to see it.

The alternative could be that this is an interpretation, a mistake, a self-deception, and who knows, maybe "start to see it" was a little clue your unconscious mind popped into your fingers. I'm starting to wonder if I actually spend most of my time utterly unconscious (since I don't have much of an internal dialogue except when I'm writing - a bit of talking to myself now and then, but I don't keep going "Oh, I'm drinking my coffee again. Now I'm putting it down again...." Nevertheless, I'm pretty damn sure that I'm doing a lot of stuff without thinking about it or being conscious of it - funnily enough, even typing the very words I'm thinking as I type them into the computer. I touch type. I think, and my fingers do the rest. I'm wondering if I emerge from this unconsciousness now and then, reassert my favourite lies: I am constantly conscious, a separate mental inner person, a subject, and I'm the same as I was the last time I woke up. Jeez, at one time it was easy enough to add: I'm going to continue to be conscious forever.

So I guess I'm currently wondering whether I can say, like Darat and ...erm...sorry, it's gone, that I am only experiencing when I have some kind of internal dialogue, that these people actually mean 'thinking' not in some special scientific/philosophical sense, but just having words and sentences go through their heads. That seems preposterous at the moment, I have to say. Like Nick, I seem to have many experiences that are not verbal, and I don't quite know how the experience/consciousness of animals like dogs and cats suddenly got called in again. I thought we'd all admitted that they were likely to experience - surely they don't have internal dialogue?

I have experience - let's not take lust as an example because it would be too embarrassing to follow the process - say, of seeing an advertisement for juice on a hot day. I'm thirsty. I don't, necessarily, think "I see a picture of juice. I am thirsty." I would describe my experience of it, however, as a set of wordless - therefore thinking-less - associative experiences, visions, memories, fantasized physical sensations (I recall memory or reconstruct the internal states associated with cold juice running down my throat, with the quenching of thirst. I 'see' in my minds eye myself pulling the car over and going through that door into the shop...

It could still all be the machine replaying internal states, but hardly a word passes through my head.

Hokulele

18th July 2008, 07:26 PM

I'm honestly wondering and fence-sitting now, but I think the point is this: that what you call being in the moment (by which you also mean experiencing it, and which clearly makes so much sense to you and Nick, and is persuasive to me) might just possibly be a in-the-moment unconscious. It is interesting that you say "even if only for a split second and start to see it" - weren't you seeing it before? You interpret this here as "grasp" it (an experience) intellectually - which of course is gone (but you assume was a conscious moment). But it's odd that you used those words: you start to see it.

I think Nick and Skiba have it exactly backwards. The effort is in being conscious (I have sat zazen, and still use some meditation practices occasionally in stressful or boring situations). It sounds more like they are trying to be conscious of being unconscious. In other words, they are storing the experience for later examination. It is simply delaying the rationalization/reasoning process, not eliminating it altogether.

Please note, I do not mean to trivialize their experiences, but it is still experience, only delayed.

The alternative could be that this is an interpretation, a mistake, a self-deception, and who knows, maybe "start to see it" was a little clue your unconscious mind popped into your fingers. I'm starting to wonder if I actually spend most of my time utterly unconscious (since I don't have much of an internal dialogue except when I'm writing - a bit of talking to myself now and then, but I don't keep going "Oh, I'm drinking my coffee again. Now I'm putting it down again...." Nevertheless, I'm pretty damn sure that I'm doing a lot of stuff without thinking about it or being conscious of it - funnily enough, even typing the very words I'm thinking as I type them into the computer. I touch type. I think, and my fingers do the rest. I'm wondering if I emerge from this unconsciousness now and then, reassert my favourite lies: I am constantly conscious, a separate mental inner person, a subject, and I'm the same as I was the last time I woke up. Jeez, at one time it was easy enough to add: I'm going to continue to be conscious forever.

People take unconscious action constantly. The best example is driving long distance. In general, your "mind" is elsewhere, and yet you make it home in one piece.

INRM

18th July 2008, 07:49 PM

How big are these "groups" I mentioned? Can they be a single neuron, or just a few, or are they thousands of neurons? How strong, how long, and how many impulses need to come into a group to activate it? Do they all need to converge on one neuron of the group, or all in the group, or just a few key neurons, or what? What kind of timing needs to be involved for the mechanism to work properly? Does an entire group activate at once, or can parts of it act independently? Are there even enough distinctions that can be made during computation for us to discern one group from another I.E. do the groups even exist outside of the conceptual framework we use? These are the questions that constitute the real hard problem of consciousness.

I would have to concur with you there... That is probably the hardest problem

Piggy

18th July 2008, 08:01 PM

I would have to concur with you there... That is probably the hardest problem

I don't think so.

The answers to most of those questions come from watching the activity of the brain.

But you could answer them all, and these answers may not, in themselves, tell you how the brain creates consciousness.

Maybe they would, but we don't know yet.

Personally, I'd put my money on the proposition that we will understand consciousness by understanding how macro-level structures interact.

At that level of organization, the details of the neuron won't matter, only its gross behavior.

The phenomenon of conscious experience will not be explicable within the narrow frame of reference of the neuron. It will be explicable within the wider frame of reference of interconnected brain structures, which could theoretically be built from neurons or from other structures which produced the same gross results.

skiba

18th July 2008, 08:05 PM

skiba

18th July 2008, 08:12 PM

Please note, I do not mean to trivialize their experiences, but it is still experience, only delayed.

Yes, I agree. but I think the big difference there is, it is not a direct experience.

Watching porn isn't exactly the same as having sex,
even though you can relate to the actors

INRM

18th July 2008, 09:27 PM

At that level of organization, the details of the neuron won't matter, only its gross behavior.

I'm not certain I understand you...

The phenomenon of conscious experience will not be explicable within the narrow frame of reference of the neuron. It will be explicable within the wider frame of reference of interconnected brain structures, which could theoretically be built from neurons or from other structures which produced the same gross results.

Are you talking about building a conscious A.I.?

INRM

RandFan

18th July 2008, 11:57 PM

How do you know? First, define exactly what those experiences are. Then you can make a claim like this. I suspect, however, that when you actually define these experiences you will suddenly see that they can quite easily be modeled by an inference based reasoning system. You are simply claiming that they can. You have not demonstrated that they can and you have not given reason to suppose that they can. As to defining the experiences, I think that is the crux of the problem. I'll confess that I can't prove that it isn't what we call emotion or pain but then I can't prove that emotion and pain are not invisible unicorns either. I don't think the person making claims here is me nor do I think that I'm the one who needs to demonstrate anything. If you think A = B then you are the one that is going to have to demonstrate that. In any event I will confess that it is but my opinion that A isn't B. Beyond that the ball is in your court.

Agreed. I am pretty sure of it, though. At least, nothing in my knowledge base leads me to conclude the opposite. Not exactly convincing... is it? Don't get me wrong, you are free to hold any fanciful notion that you wish but why should anyone else agree?

No. We have reason to suppose that they do because it makes sense. Declaring that something isn't so, isn't, in and of itself, an argument. But fine, it makes sense to you and those who choose to think that it makes sense. Do you have an argument as to why it should make sense? At the very least I think you are missing a few steps in your argument.

RandFan

19th July 2008, 12:02 AM

It's more along the lines of why does anything exist at all, or why is the universe this way instead of that.

Looking at the question from the other end, i.e. the physics to support it is there, and evolution latched onto it and used it, it is no longer a mystery.

The only question is why such a facility exists to begin with, and that's like asking why is an atom the way it is.

For this case, we could only conclude that non-sentient intelligence could (probably) have evolved, but that the subjective perceptual experience is useful enough it's been used and integrated into it. Personally I doubt they're the same thing; consciousness seems to be more of a motivator than a thinker in and of itself.Interesting but I remain unconvinced that the question is of any real significance beyond speculating. I could be wrong though. I'll keep an open mind.

RandFan

19th July 2008, 12:09 AM

is it possible that its just the body that experiences the trick? Yes it is possible but what does it mean to say that it is just the body experiencing a trick? I'm more than happy to concede that it's all smoke and mirrors but that tells us absolutely nothing. That's just "turtles all the way down".

There is no homunculus. There is no Cartesian theater. That's clear. That we don't know what consciousness is does not give us license to fill the gap of understanding with a soul but it does us no good to simply say it is a trick. It doesn't advance our understanding.

RandFan

19th July 2008, 12:11 AM

BTW, if it hasn't been mentioned already then I highly recommend this weeks podcast from radio.seti.org When Machines Rule (http://radio.seti.org/). Seems appropriate for this thread. Forgive me if it has been pointed out.

Also, please forgive the presumptuousness of the interviewee who claims that we don't yet know what human consciousness is. Some people are rather rebellious.

RandFan

19th July 2008, 12:19 AM

Check out phantom limbs:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phantom_limb I'm a huge fan of Ramachandran (he pioneered the treatment of phantom limbs). I highly recomend A Brief Tour of Human Consciousness: From Impostor Poodles to Purple Numbers (Hardcover) (http://www.amazon.com/Brief-Tour-Human-Consciousness-Impostor/dp/0131486861)

This is not a rebutal to my point. I will gladly concede that it is possible to also implant electrodes that can also give the sensation of heat and cold. That was not my point.

RandFan

19th July 2008, 12:25 AM

The feeling I always get in these sorts of threads is that if we came up with a complete, 100% explanation of the "experience of consciousness", the same folks would say that we still haven't explained the "feeling of experience of consciousness." Interesting, FTR, science doesn't really deal in such absolutes, but let's go with that for a moment, how would you know that it was a "complete, 100% explanation of the experience of consciousness"?

I think you demonstrate clearly the woo-woo aspect of those who think they know what consciousness is. You might be right but first come up with a hypothesis and attempt to falsify it. Publish your finding in a peer reviewed journal and then have others replicate your findings. This is what we demand of creationists why do the rules change when it comes to consciousness?

Do that and I'm with you. Fair enough?

rocketdodger

19th July 2008, 12:30 AM

If I am passively observing - an idea important in meditation and presumably also something you will be familiar with in your introspection - do you think I am not reasoning and therefore unconscious, or is this too tight a definition of 'reasoning'?

Hi John. I will just address this portion of your post because the rest of it is spot on I think.

First, though, I just want to say in reference to your post being spot on that anyone who approaches the subject with a skeptical, open mind should realize the same things you are. It isn't easy to choose a side -- at times, the attributes of the HPC seem so darn real! Truth be told, I am not a skeptic at all. I used to be a hardcore dualist -- because I couldn't figure out how consciousness could arise from a purely physical system. I think a few people here might remember the days when I was arguing left and right about the existence of Chi and how humans just hadn't figured out how to harness it yet, lol. One of the main reasons I am not a dualist anymore is that I have figured it out (or at least I think I have, but that is what matters anyway, right?)

So, anyway, the point is that I think being on the fence is where a conscious entity should be when it comes to their own consciousness. Godelian incompleteness asserts that no system can ever be fully aware of all aspects of itself, so any conscious entity (no matter how smart -- even the greatest A.I. imaginable could not escape this problem) will always have something like the HPC nagging at its heels. The best we can do, then, is to look at the world around us and arrive at the conclusion that most of us HPC opponents have reached: yes, it sure feels like there is something special, but everyone else I see is just a collection of atoms, and apparenty they feel the same way, so I must be just a collection of atoms as well.

Many dualists, and especially the religious, seem to think that being a collection of atoms makes life boring, cold, and meaningless. Most of us monists, on the other hand, think that because something as meaningless as atoms can give rise to something as meaningfull as ... well, us! ... then our life in this universe has the potential to be very exciting indeed. So I guess I am saying that although it might be scary to think of the alternative when you are a dualist, once you embrace monism you can find much light in what you previously thought was nothing but darkness.

This is a tangent, but it is almost like dualists care more about the truth than monists! A dualist cares about feelings, and they care about the truth so much that they have to believe that their feelings are real entities, in an objectively truthful way. Us monists? We know the truth is that our feelings are just constructs -- but who cares? Why be bogged down with this truth? If they feel real, then who cares whether they are real or not! That is my message to you or anyone else that is very close to crossing over. Whether dualism is right or wrong, you still feel the same. Nobody is saying you have to abandon feeling.

Now, to respond to your question! Part of the reason (no pun intended!) people are getting hung up on this whole "reasoning" push of mine is that I am actually using reasoning in a very formal sense of the word, like we use it in the field of A.I. In that sense, there are only two parts to any decision making process. First, there is knowledge, which is just a collection of facts about the world. Second, there is reasoning, which is any process that uses those facts.

Most people are stuck on the commonly understood human notion of reasoning, which seems to be something along the lines of "logical thought" or "pondering" or whatever. Please understand that I am not speaking exclusively of this type of reasoning. I am speaking of any process which uses knowledge about the world for some end.

Furthermore, note that this doesn't have to be an actively dynamic process. Quite the contrary, in fact -- which is the main thrust of the theory that biological neural networks are simply automatic reasoning devices. Most of the "reasoning" done in the human brain is fully automatic! Take piggy's example of ducking from a thrown ball. Through experience, his neurons have hard-wired the conclusion (which can only be reached through reasoning) that if something is flying at his head, he should duck. Similarly, your neurons have hard-wired the conclusion that if you are looking at something that resembles your girlfriend, you are looking at something that resembles your girlfriend.

So in that light, every single process that goes on in your brain can be considered reasoning because every single process is operating on facts about the world. Those facts might be represented as immediate sensory input (from your eyes, your ears, whatever) or as memories of sensory input. Many of them will also be derived facts, in your memory, that are the result of prior reasoning.

And many facts won't be represented as facts outright (such as the axioms of mathematics that every mathematician has memorized) but instead will be implicit facts encoded in automatic responses to stimuli -- like piggy's ducking the ball, which represents the fact "if a ball is coming at my head, ducking it can save me from feeling pain." Note that a fact like that is also a conclusion that was reached through reasoning -- a derived fact.

Thus, after that long explanation, the answer to your question is yes, that is too tight a definition of reasoning. According to the definition I am using here, if you are passively observing you are also reasoning. If you are asleep and your brain-stem is regulating your body temperature, you are reasoning.

The problem is that this doesn't help us define at which point a reasoning system becomes "conscious" in a way that we are "conscious," because according to that definition a thermostat is also a reasoning system and therefore "conscious" on some level. But even more unfortunately, nobody has found a coherent way to define "conscious" any better than this. That is why people like PixyMisa and I have no choice but to say a thermostat is conscious and that computation is consciousness. I know a thermostat doesn't feel like I do, John, but for the life of me I just can't figure out an objective difference between me and a thermostat that can't simply be reduced to a complexity difference.

So clearly we don't think a thermostat, or even a computer for that matter, is conscious in the same way you and I are. That is absurd. And this is part of the fundamental communication problem between the "thermostat consciousness" camps -- one side admits that we can't define consciousness as well as we would like to, and we grudingly settle on "thermostats are conscious, but not conscious like we are, and the only way to measure that is with something like the turing test" whereas the other side asserts "thermostats are not conscious, we are conscious, but we can't define 'conscious'; we just know it when we see it." Really, if you think about it, those two positions are pretty much the same thing just worded differently.

rocketdodger

19th July 2008, 12:55 AM

I don't think so.

...snip...

The phenomenon of conscious experience will not be explicable within the narrow frame of reference of the neuron. It will be explicable within the wider frame of reference of interconnected brain structures, which could theoretically be built from neurons or from other structures which produced the same gross results.

If you had said human conscious experience I would agree 100%.

What I am saying is that consciousness in general is explicable within the 'mid-range' frame of reference of a robust reasoning system.

Biological neural networks are one substrate for a robust reasoning system. Semiconductor logic networks are another. I am sure someone could design a purely mechanical substrate if they had a ton of spare time. The point is that you are right that such things can theoretically be built from anything that leads to the same result -- reasoning.

I think I see now that you are just very demanding when it comes to the mechanism behind our consciousness. I am just not as demanding.

For instance, I could build a very rudimentary microprocessor (anyone with a degree in CS should be able to). I could not build, or even fully understand, an intel pentium 4. Yet, I am completely satisfied that I know the mechanism that gives rise to everything an intel pentium 4 can possibly do.

The same goes for consciousness. I could (given the tools) build a very rudimentary consciousness (using either silicon or neurons). But what is "consciousness?" It certainly wouldn't be anything like us, just as my microprocessor wouldn't be anything like a pentium 4. Yet, at some level, they are fundamentally the same -- and once you grok how the simple version works I think you will know the mechanism that allows the more complex version to work.

Now, when I learn about some feature of a pentium 4, I understand how it probably works -- it makes sense to me. Now, when I learn about some feature of the human mind, I understand how it probably works -- it makes sense to me.

rocketdodger

19th July 2008, 01:22 AM

You are simply claiming that they can. You have not demonstrated that they can and you have not given reason to suppose that they can. As to defining the experiences, I think that is the crux of the problem. I'll confess that I can't prove that it isn't what we call emotion or pain but then I can't prove that emotion and pain are not invisible unicorns either. I don't think the person making claims here is me nor do I think that I'm the one who needs to demonstrate anything. If you think A = B then you are the one that is going to have to demonstrate that but I will confess that it is but my opinion that A isn't B. The ball is in your court.

You are demanding something that is impossible to deliver. Like I told John, a (distant) corollary of godelian incompleteness is that any conscious entity can never be aware of the entirety of itself. Thus it is simply logically impossible to prove that emotion and pain are not invisible unicorns.

The best one can do -- and this is what we will do very soon -- is construct a consciousness and ask it if it feels emotion and pain (or something like their analog). If it says "yes" then we can assume our emotion and pain is simply an emergent property of a reasoning system and nothing more. We can't prove it is nothing more. We just have to take it with a grain of salt.

Not exactly convincing... is it? Don't get me wrong, you are free to hold any fanciful notion you wish but why should anyone else agree?

Why should you agree if I tell you anything non-trivial? You shouldn't. But if you choose to disagree then you only have two choices for why you disagree -- either you learn everything I have learned and figure out what is wrong with my logic, or you look at my conclusions and find contradictions with what is known. Well, the third choice is that you are plumjam, but you are not plumjam, so that doesn't apply.

In this case, I do not expect you to learn what I have learned. I expect you, and anyone else who disagrees, to actually find a contradiction.

Declaring that something isn't so, isn't, in and of itself, an argument. But fine, it makes sense to you and those who chose to think that it does. Do you have an argument as to why it should make sense? I think you are missing a few steps in your argument.

Yes I am missing a few steps. But they are steps in complexity, not in mechanism.

I don't see how I could put it any simpler so that someone without my knowledge base can understand. I mean, you can't expect to be able to grasp something like this from just a few sentences. You have to think about it, maybe draw some stuff on paper, or ponder it in the shower one morning, whatever. A sufficiently robust reasoning system could give rise to consciousness as we know it. Our consciousness is nothing more than reasoning. Biological neural networks are automatic reasoning systems. What more can I say?

I don't have the answers for what neuron does what function where and when. You shouldn't need that information to grasp the basic mechanism that underlies it all. You also shouldn't need a published study where someone has created a working replica of a human consciousness to grasp the mechanism.

I mean, we are not sure this is the mechanism. But it is a mechanism -- the only one we can think of that makes much sense -- and we are conscious. Put two and two together...

cyborg

19th July 2008, 01:46 AM

it does us no good to simply say it is a trick. It doesn't advance our understanding.

Sunrise is a trick. Knowing that has advanced our understanding.

RandFan

19th July 2008, 01:50 AM

You are demanding something that is impossible to deliver. Like I told John, a (distant) corollary of godelian incompleteness is that any conscious entity can never be aware of the entirety of itself. Thus it is simply logically impossible to prove that emotion and pain are not invisible unicorns. Bingo.

The best one can do -- and this is what we will do very soon -- is construct a consciousness and ask it if it feels emotion and pain (or something like their analog). If it says "yes" then we can assume our emotion and pain is simply an emergent property of a reasoning system and nothing more. We can't prove it is nothing more. We just have to take it with a grain of salt. No. Actually, that you and I are weak in the imagination area doesn't rule out scientific means of deducing that emotion and pain are an emergent property of a reasoning system (a vacuous statement BTW, akin to flight is an emergent property of birds. It has a base value but not much beyond a first step towards understanding). There are in fact smarter people than you and I who have come up with a number of ideas and I suppose that we will come up with a lot more.

Why should you agree if I tell you anything non-trivial? You shouldn't. But if you choose to disagree then you only have two choices for why you disagree -- either you learn everything I have learned and figure out what is wrong with my logic, or you look at my conclusions and find contradictions with what is known. I have been following this issue since I was quite young. I was also a dualist who came to reject the notion based on reason and argument. I'm a former computer programmer who spent a lot of time researching AI from a number of disciplines.

That said, your argument is sophistry. You not advancing the discussion. You are special pleading. I could regurgitate the same and it wouldn't have anymore bearing on the issue at hand. At best you are making a very weak appeal to authority without even establishing your authority.

In this case, I do not expect you to learn what I have learned. I expect you, and anyone else who disagrees, to actually find a contradiction. You've not said anything that requires finding a contradiction. You've simply put forward a hypothesis that may or may not be correct. There are a number of smart con-men who could also posit non-contradictory claims. They could be correct but I personally choose to go with that which is scientific. I'm funny that way.

Now, don't get me wrong, there's nothing at all wrong with speculating about the underpinnings of consciousness. That is often where insight comes from. I'm not telling you that you are wrong I'm telling you that I think there is much more that we need to know. I'm also telling you that this is a field that I'm very interested in and most experts agree that we don't have a solid understanding of consciousness but we likely will in the future. Perhaps the near future. I agree.

Yes I am missing a few steps. But they are steps in complexity, not in mechanism. A little more than that. Analogies are always poor but I would compare it to describing flight by describing a bird.

I don't see how I could put it any simpler so that someone without my knowledge base can understand. I mean, you can't expect to be able to grasp something like this from just a few sentences. You have to think about it, maybe draw some stuff on paper, or ponder it in the shower one morning, whatever. A sufficiently robust reasoning system could give rise to consciousness as we know it. Our consciousness is nothing more than reasoning. Biological neural networks are automatic reasoning systems. What more can I say? I've been reading and following this for years. You're just engaging in fallacy.

I don't have the answers for what neuron does what function where and when. You shouldn't need that information to grasp the basic mechanism that underlies it all. You also shouldn't need a published study where someone has created a working replica of a human consciousness to grasp the mechanism.

I mean, we are not sure this is the mechanism. But it is a mechanism -- the only one we can think of that makes much sense -- and we are conscious. Put two and two together...
Get back to me when you actually have something. Ad hominem makes for poor argument.

RandFan

19th July 2008, 01:56 AM

Sunrise is a trick. Knowing that has advanced our understanding. No. I can't agree with that at all. We didn't know it was a trick until we knew first why it was a trick. I'll grant that it could be beneficial to understand to get beyond dogmatic views of self (ego, Cartesian theater) but beyond that it doesn't really tell us anything.

cyborg

19th July 2008, 02:23 AM

it doesn't really tell us anything.

It tells us what isn't. Last time I checked the scientific epistemology is about constructing the sets of "what isn't," to leave the "what is," and further our knowledge.

People who are advancing the HPC are engaging in the same reasoning error in this domain as it applies to any other where you start with "what is," - namely circular reasoning.

Premise 1. p implies q
Premise 2. p
Conclusion. q

"My experience of consciousness implies consciousness exists. Assume my experience of consciousness exists. Therefore consciousness exists."

This doesn't tell us a damn thing.

Eliminating souls, demons & angels on our shoulders, the heart etc... as the cause of behaviour has improved our understanding however. All I really want to see here is HOW the model of qualia is supposed to improve our understanding. The computational explanation sure has a lot going for it - I fail to see the value in qualia.

rocketdodger

19th July 2008, 02:58 AM

That said, your argument is sophistry. You not advancing the discussion. You are special pleading. I could regurgitate the same and it wouldn't have anymore bearing on the issue at hand. At best you are making a very weak appeal to authority without even establishing your authority.

... what are you talking about?

You've not said anything that requires finding a contradiction.

Then why are 3 people here arguing with me about a contradiction they think they see in what I said?

Now, don't get me wrong, there's nothing at all wrong with speculating about the underpinnings of consciousness. That is often where insight comes from. I'm not telling you that you are wrong I'm telling you that I think there is much more that we need to know. I'm also telling you that this is a field that I'm very interested in and most experts agree that we don't have a solid understanding of consciousness but we likely will in the future. Perhaps the near future. I agree.

Well that depends on how you define "solid understanding." I am telling you that I, and many many others, have a very good idea.

A little more than that. Analogies are always poor but I would compare it to describing flight by describing a bird.

It is more akin to describing the flight of a bird by describing the mechanism of an airfoil.

I've been reading and following this for years. You're just engaging in fallacy.

I suppose you will tell me it would be a waste of your time to explain why I am engaging in fallacy.

Get back to me when you actually have something. Ad hominem makes for poor argument.

That was not an ad-hom directed at you so don't get all bristly.

And fine, I won't bother you with my fallacies until everything is nice and neat for you in peer reviewed journals that I can cite endlessly. Fortunately for this thread, and discussion between humans in general, not everyone is that picky.

John Freestone

19th July 2008, 03:54 AM

I think Nick and Skiba have it exactly backwards. The effort is in being conscious (I have sat zazen, and still use some meditation practices occasionally in stressful or boring situations). It sounds more like they are trying to be conscious of being unconscious. In other words, they are storing the experience for later examination. It is simply delaying the rationalization/reasoning process, not eliminating it altogether.

Please note, I do not mean to trivialize their experiences, but it is still experience, only delayed.Yes, that is the sense I am making of my own zazen, and by guesswork, theirs. Of course, not only do I not wish to trivialise the 'experience' :rolleyes:, I can't know, and they may possibly be much better at it, have overcome the problem of the effort, as you say, required to remain conscious, whilst stopping 'thinking', 'being passive', 'merging', realizing the unity of subject and object (now that is funny), or whatever other description may be used for the experience (and, of course, to give them their due, the philosophy repeats endlessly that it cannot be put into words at all, even after the event, only hinted at). Other things they say, plus the weight of my own experience, persuades me that they're not doing that, however it's described, but as you say, delaying the reasoning process.

People take unconscious action constantly. The best example is driving long distance. In general, your "mind" is elsewhere, and yet you make it home in one piece.Yes, I gave that example too. Thanks for that.

John Freestone

19th July 2008, 04:07 AM

Sorry, the wording is abit off, as it seems to be always with these things.

It's not that you "start to see it", nor do I even try to see it. no-thought happens and upon later reflection on that no-thought experience theres some insightHi skiba. Yeah, I feel that I understand your meaning. It's really difficult to discuss some of this with clumsy old words, innit? The decisive point, I suppose you'd agree, is between whether this 'no-thought' or whatever words we use, are actually conscious no-thought, which I presume is what you mean, or unconscious. To put it another way, one has to distinguish the kinds of no-thought involved in unconscious action, sleep, coma, or whatever, and this meditative state. After most of my life from the age of about 15 to now being 47 spent asserting what I think you're saying, I'm now leaning in the direction of rejecting the idea. It could of course just be that I've not practised enough. I'm still noticing how you are prefering to call this state 'no-thought' now, having said that you start to 'see' it but fail when you're thinking kicks in. I'm thinking how easily it could be a big black nothingness, that moment of no-thinking that you can't quite catch hold of with your mind until after it's over. That is what happens, after all, with periods of unconsciousness. I have no-thought while I'm asleep and, when I wake up, I can't quite 'see' what state that was, because my thinking kicks in, indeed, because my consciousness kicks in. It may be a point neither of us can ever really prove, whether there is a state of awareness without processing, passive awareness, one way or the other.

John Freestone

19th July 2008, 05:10 AM

Wow, rocketdodger, how brilliant was that to wake up to this morning, a lovely essay helping me understand this so much better. Thanks. Hi John. I will just address this portion of your post because the rest of it is spot on I think.

First, though, I just want to say in reference to your post being spot on that anyone who approaches the subject with a skeptical, open mind should realize the same things you are.All that is very gratifying. I am, of course, still dubious as I approach the 'realization', and that 'should' is tantalizing - I guess the point of being a skeptic or a philosopher/scientist is that truth has to be solid, it has to be a 'should', but then, as you remind me, mathematical theory would seem to indicate that absolute truth isn't knowable.

It isn't easy to choose a side -- at times, the attributes of the HPC seem so darn real!Yes. Like yesterday or the wall next to me! Good to remind people of that. I sometimes feel as though people get so used to monism that they keep saying to the dualists that it's an easy problem. In a sense, of course, it is too.

Truth be told, I am not a skeptic at all. I used to be a hardcore dualist -- because I couldn't figure out how consciousness could arise from a purely physical system. I think a few people here might remember the days when I was arguing left and right about the existence of Chi and how humans just hadn't figured out how to harness it yet, lol. One of the main reasons I am not a dualist anymore is that I have figured it out (or at least I think I have, but that is what matters anyway, right?)Yes, with me it was more like I think Nick is saying (sorry if wrong, Nick), that Mind could be primary - everything physical imagined by Mind. If there is consciousness now, thought I, it doesn't emerge. I applied the conservation of energy to it. Nothing gets created, hence Cosmic Consciousness. I still can defend the position, but now see that consciousness is a relative term, perhaps, not on-off, but different processes. So potential-consciousness evolves into human consciousness and it is as hard to say where the division is as it is to say where it is between rudimentary phototropism and my 20-20 vision (I wish!). It has implications, the difference. I can't meaningfully pray to Universal Proto-consiousness anymore than I can play chess with an aspidistra.

So, anyway, the point is that I think being on the fence is where a conscious entity should be when it comes to their own consciousness. Godelian incompleteness asserts that no system can ever be fully aware of all aspects of itself, so any conscious entity (no matter how smart -- even the greatest A.I. imaginable could not escape this problem) will always have something like the HPC nagging at its heels.What an amazing thought. I love that. It makes me think of a (the) hypothetical exception, a 'computer' that has access to all the data, memory and reasoning. :eye-poppi

The best we can do, then, is to look at the world around us and arrive at the conclusion that most of us HPC opponents have reached: yes, it sure feels like there is something special, but everyone else I see is just a collection of atoms, and apparenty they feel the same way, so I must be just a collection of atoms as well.Yes. A bit I'm interested in padding out, though, is that often the 'spiritual' message is not that we are special. I know some religions have individual souls with personal relationship with a deity, but more relativist philosophies are all about overcoming the ego, Oneness and espouse humiliy and sacrifice. I get a bit irritated, frankly, when this assertion of an egotism is made towards tentative dualists or mentalists, although I think there may unconsciously be some truth to it. I have to admit that it was there for me. However, there is ego and an assumption of specialness in all positions, even sitting on fences. Much subliminal communication here seems to be "I'm a clever scientist. I know the truth. You're a loonatic. Shut up until you have something proper to say." Did I say subliminal?:D

Many dualists, and especially the religious, seem to think that being a collection of atoms makes life boring, cold, and meaningless. Most of us monists, on the other hand, think that because something as meaningless as atoms can give rise to something as meaningfull as ... well, us! ... then our life in this universe has the potential to be very exciting indeed. So I guess I am saying that although it might be scary to think of the alternative when you are a dualist, once you embrace monism you can find much light in what you previously thought was nothing but darkness.Absolutely. I really, really did believe I was not clinging on to dualism from fear or disliking the alternative. I'm not sure if I thought it could be meaningful and fun, but even so, I am rather shocked how liberating it feels. Part of the movement for me was stimulated by a more intensive dig into Buddhism and Vipassana meditation, in the course of which it all began to fall apart.

This is a tangent, but it is almost like dualists care more about the truth than monists! A dualist cares about feelings, and they care about the truth so much that they have to believe that their feelings are real entities, in an objectively truthful way. Us monists? We know the truth is that our feelings are just constructs -- but who cares? Why be bogged down with this truth? If they feel real, then who cares whether they are real or not! That is my message to you or anyone else that is very close to crossing over. Whether dualism is right or wrong, you still feel the same. Nobody is saying you have to abandon feeling.I get the last part, but I'm not sure about dualists caring more about truth. Maybe so. Maybe you mean the 'caring' gets in the way of observing and rationally testing. But being determined - that meaning of 'caring about the truth' - like you suggest earlier - leads this way.

Now, to respond to your question! <snip>Gotta go just now, so may say more about this later, but the short version is "Oh, I see", the slightly longer one "Oh I see, thank Bod for that!". Thanks again.
John

Nick227

19th July 2008, 07:18 AM

That's odd. For a first up, it's almost a reversal of what one camp would say, I think, has said, which would be something like "there are two camps of people, those who believe that all human existence is matter-based, and those who believe that there are other phenomena too." I suspect you may be deliberately constructing this opposition to be awkward, Nick. Furthermore, it is later backed up by skiba, whom I thought had expressed materialist leanings with ghostly undertones. Do any of you know what you believe, let alone what supposed questions you are wanting answered?

I'm not addressing materialism. It is not about matter-based or not. What I perceive happening in the no-HPC camp is an attempt to reduce all human experience to thought-based processing. Perhaps I'm wrong, but that is what it looks like to me. The whole thing with the HPC, as I see it, is that there is an assertion of other experiential phenomena, aside of thoughts. Of course, you need to attempt to translate these experiential phenomena into thought-based language in order to debate them...and herein lies the problem! For, in trying to do so, in creating concepts such as "qualia" for example, one must debate what is discussed through thinking. Everything must be reduced to thought-basis in order to discuss, so there is always the possibility to deny HPC, as one is constantly surrounded by words which are trying to point towards experiences, but which cannot by themselves invoke them.

Personally, I'm more materialist, but in behaviour rather than belief. Maybe so-called "consciousness" arises from the brain/body, I don't know. I'll be impressed when I find a computer that can actually experience emotions!

Nick

Nick227

19th July 2008, 07:37 AM

I think Nick and Skiba have it exactly backwards. The effort is in being conscious (I have sat zazen, and still use some meditation practices occasionally in stressful or boring situations). It sounds more like they are trying to be conscious of being unconscious. In other words, they are storing the experience for later examination. It is simply delaying the rationalization/reasoning process, not eliminating it altogether.

Please note, I do not mean to trivialize their experiences, but it is still experience, only delayed.

To me, if there are no thoughts...then there are no thoughts. It is not something you can make so many deductions from, about the "nature of reality" or whatever. That is just something that goes on when thinking commences again. The mind will inevitably attempt to develop some philosophy of "how things are" from what it considers "the experience of having no thoughts." But, at the end of the day, if there are no thoughts, there are no thoughts. At some point more of a balance is created between thinking and non-thinking and you end up not so identified with the mind, I think. (This "I" is only created through identification anyway).

Nick

Piggy

19th July 2008, 07:46 AM

I'm not certain I understand you...

Are you talking about building a conscious A.I.?

In part, there, I was.

Here's the thing, we can understand how a neuron is built and how it behaves backward and forward. But we won't be able to go from there to a solution of the problem of how the brain creates consciousness.

When we do finally build a conscious being, maybe its brain will be made of neurons (if we figure out how to grow a brain) or maybe it will be made of something else.

The underlying properties of the switches themselves won't matter so much, as long as they turn and off in the right way.

What we'll have to get right is the way these switches are organized into larger structures and how these larger-scale structures interact. At that point, the neuron (or its equivalent) becomes essentially transparent to the process.

Similarly, if you want to know how a canning factory works, it won't help you to study the molecules, because they're behaving exactly the same as the molecules in the hosiery mill down the road.

Instead, you have to deal with larger-scale entities, like bricks, compressors, air pressure zones, fluid temperatures, ducts, meters, and such.

Sure, the properties of the molecules tell you why these things -- or the materials they're made of -- behave the way they do, but if you want to understand what the factory is doing, and what makes it different from what other factories are doing, you can actually be totally ignorant of molecules and still understand it, as long as you understand what's happening on the macro level (even if you don't know exactly why).

Consciousness appears to be a higher-order phenomenon which requires the coordination of various functional units within the brain. In that way, it's kind of like the factory.

Understanding the neurons won't give us an explanation, but if we could somehow understand what all the macro-level forms and functions were without knowing anything about the neuron (purely hypothetical, because we can't) then we could still get to an explanation.

Piggy

19th July 2008, 07:54 AM

If you had said human conscious experience I would agree 100%.

What I am saying is that consciousness in general is explicable within the 'mid-range' frame of reference of a robust reasoning system.

Biological neural networks are one substrate for a robust reasoning system. Semiconductor logic networks are another. I am sure someone could design a purely mechanical substrate if they had a ton of spare time. The point is that you are right that such things can theoretically be built from anything that leads to the same result -- reasoning.

I think I see now that you are just very demanding when it comes to the mechanism behind our consciousness. I am just not as demanding.

For instance, I could build a very rudimentary microprocessor (anyone with a degree in CS should be able to). I could not build, or even fully understand, an intel pentium 4. Yet, I am completely satisfied that I know the mechanism that gives rise to everything an intel pentium 4 can possibly do.

The same goes for consciousness. I could (given the tools) build a very rudimentary consciousness (using either silicon or neurons). But what is "consciousness?" It certainly wouldn't be anything like us, just as my microprocessor wouldn't be anything like a pentium 4. Yet, at some level, they are fundamentally the same -- and once you grok how the simple version works I think you will know the mechanism that allows the more complex version to work.

Now, when I learn about some feature of a pentium 4, I understand how it probably works -- it makes sense to me. Now, when I learn about some feature of the human mind, I understand how it probably works -- it makes sense to me.

I don't believe any of that.

I don't believe you could build a rudimentary consciousness.

The chip example falls short because it's not analogous.

You still have not explained anything about the phenomenon of conscious experience, how you think it's generated by the brain, and how you think it could be replicated.

All you've said is that you have the belief that a robust reasoning system gives rise to consciousness, which answers nothing.

It's U.G. logic:

Step 1: Build a robust reasoning system.

Step 2: ?

Step 3: Conscious experience emerges.

PixyMisa

19th July 2008, 07:58 AM

Understanding the neurons won't give us an explanation, but if we could somehow understand what all the macro-level forms and functions were without knowing anything about the neuron (purely hypothetical, because we can't) then we could still get to an explanation.
Yes and no. It's a question of the right level of abstraction for what you're trying to understand.

You do need to understand how neurons work, and what they do, and how they interact, because without that understanding, you can't build an accurate model of the next level. Trying to map things from the top down has been a failure for the most part, because the mapping that is really going on is not obvious. Now that we know a lot more about that mapping from bottom-up studies, you can get a bit further.

But what you can also do is simulate neural structures en masse and study them in ways impractical in the biological context. Even if you don't understand exactly what goes on in a rat's neocortex, you can build an accurate computer model of it just by copying the structure (http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2007/dec/20/research.it).

And once you've done that, you can zoom in and out, examine things in fine detail or in the large, however you wish.

PixyMisa

19th July 2008, 08:00 AM

I don't believe any of that.

I don't believe you could build a rudimentary consciousness.
Why not?

I have a thermostat right here. What's wrong with it?

Beth

19th July 2008, 08:13 AM

I think that there is an important difference between things that multiple people can observe, such as a particular tree or an oboe solo, versus things that cannot be observed by more than one individual, such as how a particular pinprick feels.What is that difference?A good question. I'll contemplate it a while and if I come up with anything I like, I'll let you know.

There may be more than one criterion. I will use your examples to demonstrate. Please note, there is a huge difference between your two examples I will elaborate on at the end of this post.
My apologies. I got confused about what difference you were asking about. I was thinking of the difference between the consciousness of a cockroach or thermostat versus a human being. That’s why my examples didn’t make much sense. Thanks for going to the trouble of posting the relevant passages.

I don't know. Just as I don't know whether or not a creator god exists. I don't know whether or not we are all just 'simulations' in a matrix world. And I don't know whether or not consciousness or free will 'actually exist in reality'.

Meh, I am more pragmatic than that. For me, is there any benefit to acting as if there is a creator god/matrix/consciousness/free will? My answers to those questions are most likely different than yours. Yes, likely they are. But it would be off topic for this thread to discuss them.

Do you have a firm opinion on the rainbow question?

Sure, consensus is boring. It is where observations differ that we can actually learn something interesting. For example, if we all agree that "That is a rock." Yay! OK, now I'm bored. But if I say, "Look at that rock", and you respond, "That is a tortoise", now I'm interested. I could learn that tortoises look a lot like rocks, or I could learn that you need to start wearing glasses. ;)I happen to agree with this, but it doesn’t eliminate the fact that, as Mercutio pointed out in post 534, at bottom, all we have to determine reality is intersubjective agreement. You may scorn consensus reality, but as I see it, it's all we've got.

Back to the rainbow. If 5 people all see exactly the same thing, it doesn't teach me anything I don't already know (there is a rainbow). However, if all 5 people describe different locations for the rainbow, suddenly there is an interesting problem to examine. Why aren't they seeing the same thing? This can lead to a better understanding of rainbows. Consensus isn't an arbiter of reality, nor is it necessarily bad, it just doesn't lead anywhere.
I agree with all of this, but it doesn’t answer the questions you originally asked me about the rainbow where is a rainbow? If you have 5 people standing in 5 different locations, they will all claim to see the same rainbow, but will describe it as starting and ending in different locations. Does the rainbow "actually exist in reality" or not? Are there 5 different rainbows present? What is your opinion about the existence of the rainbow and where it is. More importantly, why do feel that your opinion, whatever it is, is the best response to such questions?

Looping back to the OP and my earlier comment on your frog/tadpole and ice/water/steam examples, I don't think consciousness is a binary problem. I see it as more of a Loki's Wager situation, akin to your frog/tadpole. There is no one point where the tadpole is suddenly and completely a frog. This is quite different from the ice/water/steam example, in that the switch between each of those states is much more clear-cut. Yes, I agree. I don’t think consciousness is binary either. That doesn’t mean the HPC doesn’t exist. In my opinion, the continuity of levels of consciousness ranging from a thermostat to a human being make the problem more difficult than if it was binary.

Ichneumonwasp

19th July 2008, 08:43 AM

Long thread.

Please excuse my ignorance of what has already been covered, but is this essentially a question of why emotions and motivational states exist? The 'experience of consciousness', after all, is simply one example of feeling/emotion/etc.

I think the answer to the "why are we not philsophical zombies?" should be fairly easy -- evolution provides short-cut answers. Without feelings to motivate action, we wouldn't be able to act in the way that we do -- the amount of computational power to re-create what we do without the short-cuts of emotions and motivational states would probably require a computer the size of the solar system.

My guess is that this problem seems 'hard' because we haven't the proper words to discuss it in the detail we would like. Most of the language we currently use is based in dualism, so we tend to think dualistically (I think there is limited truth to the Sapir-Worff hypothesis).

Why do we have emotion/motivation/feeling? Without it, everything would seem equal. They are the basis of valuation. Without the ability to assign values to what happens, nothing would matter and eating would seem equivalent to thumb twiddling. Experience is fall-out from survival itself. And the feeling of experience? It has to show up somehow. Why not the way we experience it?

Dancing David

19th July 2008, 08:57 AM

To try to start the dialogue on the 'thoughtless mind', take as a given that I don't believe that the mind exists either, it is a semantic placeholder.

I have practiced many different forms of meditation and 'spiritual' practice.

Mindfulness training gets to the core of some of these issues, even if it is an introspective state.

There are many forms of mindfulness training. Essentially it comes down to practicing a number of skills. The first instruction is usually something simple:
1. Relax and focus on your breathing

Now what does focus mean? That is another semantic place holder, I take it to me try to be aware of your breathing.

But what happens when you do this, or at least when I do it. You become aware of the intensity of the internal environment. All sorts of stuff is going on.

The second instruction:
2. When you find yourself thing saying 'thinking' to yourself and return your focus to your berating.

I actually prefer to say 'thank you' to myself.

So there are lots of effects that happen as a result of this, first off I always find that my 'mind' has accumulated a lot detritus, left over thoughts, emotions, body tension and all that. So at first there seems to be a huge amount of relaxing the body, decoupling from the thoughts, emotions and memories. This is usually where I spend most of the time in this breathing practice, becoming aware of the spider web of the internal state of being. Part of it is just plain acceptance, it is easier to decouple if you don't try to hard and just keep relaxing.

Instruction three:

3. Don't fall asleep.

So what happens when you do this, you learn a lot of things that the 'mind' is quite reactionary and it hordes stuff.

The benefit of this is that you learn and practice doing one thing at a time. When you talk with your friends you are present to the moment and not thinking about the chores you will do tomorrow.

Now occasionally I have reached the state of balanced freedom, where there is no attachment to the processes as they occur, they rise and fall as it were.

But I have found that there are only the five heaps body, thoughts, emotions, perceptions and habits.

So where does this 'consciousness' live or reside? I think it is just like the 'self' and the 'mind' and is a semantic illusion.

Now there is the common self, called 'the body'.

Beth

19th July 2008, 09:27 AM

Quality* is much like consciousness in that it seems impossible to define, to adequately pin down with words. If we can't define it, why do so many of us believe it exists; that it is something more than the awareness that thermostats and cockroaches might be said to possess? Would our world function normally without it? I don't think so. Do you?
So many believe that a god exists, yet so many define said god differently. Would our world function normally without a god? I do happen to think so. Yet, if we start with the assumption that an undefined god exists, can we see evidence consistent with it? (as long as it is badly defined, of course we can.)
While there is a similarity between the questions of the existance of god and the existance of consciousness, your response doesn't tell me whether or not you think our world would be different without consciousness. Do you?

Oddly enough, I do think that the HPC debate is functionally identical to the creation/evolution "contraversy"; all the evidence I am aware of supports one side (I admit, as a human being, that I could be biased and wrong on this), but the other side hangs on to a significant number of supporters, in part due to its flattering portrayal of humans as special. (Also in part thanks to historical tradition reaching back before the evidence was available.) Interesting. I don't see it at all like the creation/evolution debate, but perhaps that's because I don't pay much attention to that one anymore. I made up my mind on it a long time ago. I do, however, see it as being essentially the same as the existance of free will debate.

There is a near universal perception among human beings that we are conscious in a way that cockroaches and thermostats are not and that we make choices based on our desires. Some people claim that such concepts are illusions, not reality. Then we usually get into discussions about what is reality and what is illusion.

Given that intersubjective agreement is the only guide we have to reality, the conclusion I come to is that 'objective reality' is as uncertain, ill-defined, and nebulous a concept as the rest of those. Should I then conclude that an 'objection reality' does not exist? That is the logic by which some here (I'm not sure about your opinion on those matters) reject the concepts of god, consciousness and freewill.

Hokulele

19th July 2008, 09:50 AM

My apologies. I got confused about what difference you were asking about. I was thinking of the difference between the consciousness of a cockroach or thermostat versus a human being. That’s why my examples didn’t make much sense. Thanks for going to the trouble of posting the relevant passages.

Sure. If you do come up with an answer either way, let me know.

I happen to agree with this, but it doesn’t eliminate the fact that, as Mercutio pointed out in post 534, at bottom, all we have to determine reality is intersubjective agreement. You may scorn consensus reality, but as I see it, it's all we've got.

As I saw it, Mercutio was arguing the exact opposite of what you are saying here. He is saying that intersubjective agreement is not better at determining reality. I believe his main point was that most people are not good at systematically testing private functions, which leads to an incorrect view of reality. When data from private observations are collected and analyzed properly, they can reveal what is reality just as well as public data.

I agree with all of this, but it doesn’t answer the questions you originally asked me about the rainbow What is your opinion about the existence of the rainbow and where it is. More importantly, why do feel that your opinion, whatever it is, is the best response to such questions?

The rainbow is real, and is a projection that does not exist in any one location. The elements that form the projection have distinct locations (of which the observer is one element), which combine to give the appearance of a set location.

I feel this is the best answer to this and other similar questions, not because it relies on consensus of observation, but because it explains the lack of consensus.

Yes, I agree. I don’t think consciousness is binary either. That doesn’t mean the HPC doesn’t exist. In my opinion, the continuity of levels of consciousness ranging from a thermostat to a human being make the problem more difficult than if it was binary.

I strongly disagree. At its root, the HPC is asking "What makes us special?" By showing that consciousness is not special at all, the root of the HPC essentially goes away. There are still some very interesting issues brought up by the HPC that cannot be answered at this time, but a number of the questions posed in the OP are either answered or meaningless (as was pretty much pointed out on the first page of this thread).

RandFan

19th July 2008, 09:56 AM

... what are you talking about? I'm talking about you engaging in sophistry. Telling me that I need your special knowledge is special pleading. Telling me that your argument is right because you are an expert is fallacy. It's not that difficult to understand.

Then why are 3 people here arguing with me about a contradiction they think they see in what I said? I really think you should ask them, don't you?

Well that depends on how you define "solid understanding." I am telling you that I, and many many others, have a very good idea. Having a very good idea is fine but it isn't an argument.

It is more akin to describing the flight of a bird by describing the mechanism of an airfoil. Analogies allways fail. Let's agree that at best you are providing a hypothesis that has not been falsified.

I suppose you will tell me it would be a waste of your time to explain why I am engaging in fallacy. See Monty Python's argument clinic (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=teMlv3ripSM). An argument is an intellectual process. It's not saying "when you know what I know you will know I'm right". That's fallacy.

That was not an ad-hom directed at you so don't get all bristly. I'm not bristly.

And fine, I won't bother you with my fallacies until everything is nice and neat for you in peer reviewed journals that I can cite endlessly. Fortunately for this thread, and discussion between humans in general, not everyone is that picky. I have no problem with discussing possibilities. In fact I'm quite fascinated by all of it. Please continue. Just realize what you know and what you don't know. That is the strength of science.

RandFan

19th July 2008, 10:05 AM

It tells us what isn't. A bird in flight isn't a lead balloon. I've allready conceded that there is some value to knowing what something isn't but my point is that it doesn't tell us much beyond that. Some people seem to think that there is some deep insight into the premise that consciousness is just an illusion. The problem is that this doesn't really tell us what consciousness is. If I ask you what a mirage is and you tell me it is an illusion you haven't really told me what it is only what it isn't. Fine but I think we need more than that.

RandFan

19th July 2008, 10:15 AM

I strongly disagree. At its root, the HPC is asking "What makes us special?" By showing that consciousness is not special at all, the root of the HPC essentially goes away. There are still some very interesting issues brought up by the HPC that cannot be answered at this time, but a number of the questions posed in the OP are either answered or meaningless (as was pretty much pointed out on the first page of this thread). Dennett, Dawkins, Pinker and others are rather wowed with consciousness and I confess that I am also. That doesn't make me right but I'm in fair company. I don't think consciousness is special in any religious sense. I'm a materialist. I think it is special because it means that the universe woke up. That we are capable of wondering why we wonder is a pretty unique thing. Of all the known universe only a tiny fraction of it is capable of doing so. That said, I'm willing to accept for argument sake that consciousness is not special and I'm also capable of seeing it from that perspective. That still doesn't make HPC go away IMO.

I don't think that most of the questions have been answered and thankfully neither do neuro and cognitive scientists who are in fact trying to understand how consciousness emerges from the brain. It is a legitimate question. It's fine to dismiss if you want but in fact it's something that we don't as yet understand. We are starting to get to the right questions to ask and we are on the threshold of new insights given the reverse engineering of the brain that experts are working on right now (http://bluebrain.epfl.ch/).

Hokulele

19th July 2008, 10:59 AM

Dennett, Dawkins, Pinker and others are rather wowed with consciousness and I confess that I am also. I don't think consciousness is special in religious sense. I'm a materialist. I think it is special because it means that the universe woke up. That we are capable of wondering why we wonder is a pretty unique thing. Of all the known universe only a tiny fraction of it is capable of doing so. That said, I'm willing to accept for argument sake that consciousness is not special and I'm also capable of seeing it from that perspective. That still doesn't make HPC go away IMO.

I don't think the questions have been answered and thankfully neither do neuro and cognitive scientists who are in fact trying to understand how consciousness emerges from the brain. It is a legitimate question. It's fine to dismiss if you want but in fact it's something that we don't as yet understand. We are starting to get to the right questions to ask and we are on the threshold of new insights given the reverse engineering of the brain that experts are working on right now (http://bluebrain.epfl.ch/).

Let me try to clarify a bit. I am not suggesting that consciousness is uninteresting, completely explained, or shouldn't be investigated, but rather that the question posed by the HPC "Why should physical processing give rise to a rich inner life at all?" implies that physical processing shouldn't give rise to such a thing, which further implies that there is something here that violates the rules as we know them. As far as I can tell, the HPC concerns itself more with the "why" than the "how".

I felt that you had addressed this pretty comprehesively in your first post in this thread (http://forums.randi.org/showthread.php?postid=3858145#post3858145).

To your larger point, I agree that there is not enough known about how consciousness arises. The brain, in particular the human brain, is the best place to start looking, as it is the only place we know where such a thing has happened. Personally, I think it will lie in how subsystems within the brain are organized and transfer information between them. Additionally, the evolution of social behavior is most likely tied to the development of consciousness as well. Where I disagree is then assuming that the human brain is the only place it can happen (or has happened).

To me, this is based on the difficulty of communicating abstract concepts. For example, my dog understands physical concepts such as "ball", "truck", and "steak". Judging by her reactions, she can understand some abstract concepts such as "you" versus "me". I have no idea if she understands an abstract such as "I wonder why I am the dog and you are the person". Just because I do not know whether or not such thoughts cross her brain, I cannot assume she does not have them. Similarly, I feel it is a mistake to assume that a purely mechanical system cannot develop such thoughts, just that we do not currently have any evidence showing this has happened. Now, if it could be proven that mechanical systems cannot develop such thoughts, then the HPC comes back.

Mercutio

19th July 2008, 11:04 AM

While there is a similarity between the questions of the existance of god and the existance of consciousness, your response doesn't tell me whether or not you think our world would be different without consciousness. Do you?
First, define consciousness.

Ok, to take a shortcut--one of the tags of this thread is "p-zombie"; in past threads about p-zombies (and m-zombies!), "consciousness" is what we have that p-zombies do not--but in all other aspects of behavior (including private behavior, for m-zombies) they are identical to us. By that definition of consciousness, I do not think our world would be any different at all with or without consciousness. Not different in anyway whatsoever.

Interesting. I don't see it at all like the creation/evolution debate, but perhaps that's because I don't pay much attention to that one anymore. I made up my mind on it a long time ago. I do, however, see it as being essentially the same as the existance of free will debate.
Agreed--I'd say all of them try to make us special.

There is a near universal perception among human beings that we are conscious in a way that cockroaches and thermostats are not and that we make choices based on our desires. Some people claim that such concepts are illusions, not reality. Then we usually get into discussions about what is reality and what is illusion.
We behave in ways that cockroaches and thermostats do not. As such, it is inevitable that we will infer different types (or levels) or consciousness in each entity. Of course, such inferences are circular: we infer consciousness from behavior, then attribute that behavior to consciousness. Not a terribly helpful exercise.

Given that intersubjective agreement is the only guide we have to reality, the conclusion I come to is that 'objective reality' is as uncertain, ill-defined, and nebulous a concept as the rest of those. Should I then conclude that an 'objection reality' does not exist? That is the logic by which some here (I'm not sure about your opinion on those matters) reject the concepts of god, consciousness and freewill.
We cannot conclude that reality does not exist, any more than that it does; fortunately, it does not matter. If, on the other hand, there is evidence against a particular notion, that is another matter. For free will, for instance, there is good evidence that some specific definitions of free will are not just unsupported, but contraindicated. People bend over backward to define god in untestable ways, perhaps to avoid having to draw a conclusion. Consciousness, by some definitions, of course exists. By other definitions, it is not merely useless, but misleading and wrong and clearly contradicted by evidence.

Mercutio

19th July 2008, 11:15 AM

[snip]
Sure, the properties of the molecules tell you why these things -- or the materials they're made of -- behave the way they do, but if you want to understand what the factory is doing, and what makes it different from what other factories are doing, you can actually be totally ignorant of molecules and still understand it, as long as you understand what's happening on the macro level (even if you don't know exactly why).

Consciousness appears to be a higher-order phenomenon which requires the coordination of various functional units within the brain. In that way, it's kind of like the factory.

Understanding the neurons won't give us an explanation, but if we could somehow understand what all the macro-level forms and functions were without knowing anything about the neuron (purely hypothetical, because we can't) then we could still get to an explanation.
I agree very much with the vast majority of what you are saying--but I would argue that the higher-order consciousness that is so fascinating (as opposed to the sensation-perception-awareness sort that already appears more mechanical) will not be discovered within the "coordination of various functional units within the brain". I think that is also too reductionist. Consciousness of this sort will be best explained* in terms of the actions of organisms interacting in a social environment. Certainly, it will be reducible to brain units, and to neurons, and eventually to molecules, but as you say, at that level conscious behavior is indistinguishable from non-conscious.

*best explained by those in the field--popular opinion will certainly lag. Hell, we still have creationists.

INRM

19th July 2008, 11:24 AM

Even if you don't understand exactly what goes on in a rat's neocortex, you can build an accurate computer model of it just by copying the structure (http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2007/dec/20/research.it).

There's a real moral issue here as they are planning to reverse engineer a human-brain in every detail. If you produce an exact reverse engineered computer simulated human-brain, you produce a sentient being.

Sentient beings (*Especially* Humans -- it's a human brain simulation, no?), should have certain rights. I think there's a serious problem if you essentially produced something that was as intelligent and sentient as a human, gave it life essentially (by activating it), and then when you were done simply turned it off (killing it effectively)

INRM

RandFan

19th July 2008, 11:46 AM

Let me try to clarify a bit. I am not suggesting that consciousness is uninteresting, completely explained, or shouldn't be investigated, but rather that the question posed by the HPC "Why should physical processing give rise to a rich inner life at all?" implies that physical processing shouldn't give rise to such a thing, which further implies that there is something here that violates the rules as we know them. As far as I can tell, the HPC concerns itself more with the "why" than the "how".

I felt that you had addressed this pretty comprehesively in your first post in this thread (http://forums.randi.org/showthread.php?postid=3858145#post3858145).Thank you.

To your larger point, I agree that there is not enough known about how consciousness arises. The brain, in particular the human brain, is the best place to start looking, as it is the only place we know where such a thing has happened. Personally, I think it will lie in how subsystems within the brain are organized and transfer information between them. Additionally, the evolution of social behavior is most likely tied to the development of consciousness as well. Where I disagree is then assuming that the human brain is the only place it can happen (or has happened).

To me, this is based on the difficulty of communicating abstract concepts. For example, my dog understands physical concepts such as "ball", "truck", and "steak". Judging by her reactions, she can understand some abstract concepts such as "you" versus "me". I have no idea if she understands an abstract such as "I wonder why I am the dog and you are the person". Just because I do not know whether or not such thoughts cross her brain, I cannot assume she does not have them. It's a matter of degree and type. A number of non-humans have demonstrated a range of abilities including self awareness, curiosity, theory of mind, etc. It does not threaten me at all to suppose that there are animals that wonder. However, while it is not exhaustive the research is rather significant and there is good reason to conclude that the degree of wonder in non-humans is at best limited. It's rather unlikely any non-human has posited cogito ergo sum. BTW, Penn and Teller have a good BS episode on Dolphins that I recommend.

Similarly, I feel it is a mistake to assume that a purely mechanical system cannot develop such thoughts, just that we do not currently have any evidence showing this has happened.It's a mistake to assume that non-humans, including machines (pure or otherwise) cannot develop such thoughts. There is good reason to suppose that to date they have not.

Now, if it could be proven that mechanical systems cannot develop such thoughts, then the HPC comes back. I see HPC as a significant watermark of understanding. I recognize the philosophical baggage of HPC and understand the desire to avoid the spurious conclusions drawn from it but HPC is a legitimate problem when it is framed in the "how" and not the "why".

Piggy

19th July 2008, 11:47 AM

Yes and no. It's a question of the right level of abstraction for what you're trying to understand.

You do need to understand how neurons work, and what they do, and how they interact, because without that understanding, you can't build an accurate model of the next level. Trying to map things from the top down has been a failure for the most part, because the mapping that is really going on is not obvious. Now that we know a lot more about that mapping from bottom-up studies, you can get a bit further.

But what you can also do is simulate neural structures en masse and study them in ways impractical in the biological context. Even if you don't understand exactly what goes on in a rat's neocortex, you can build an accurate computer model of it just by copying the structure (http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2007/dec/20/research.it).

And once you've done that, you can zoom in and out, examine things in fine detail or in the large, however you wish.

Yeah, I totally agree with that.

And btw that's why I said "totally hypothetical" in my post, b/c as you say, in the real world it's just not possible to know what's going on with higher-level structures in the brain without understanding neurons.

leon_heller

19th July 2008, 11:48 AM

RandFan

19th July 2008, 11:48 AM

*best explained by those in the field--popular opinion will certainly lag. Hell, we still have creationists.:)

Piggy

19th July 2008, 11:55 AM

Why not?

I have a thermostat right here. What's wrong with it?

I take it those are 2 separate questions.

Taking the last one first, I don't know what's wrong with it. Check to see if you've connected all the wires correctly. That's a good first step.

As for the first question... because there's no reason to believe he could do it, and he hasn't explained how he might. His logic seems to be: When I notice that I'm conscious, I notice that I'm also thinking, therefore reasoning must be the cause of consciousness, therefore any robust reasoning system I create will also be conscious.

Which is not logical at all.

If you're going to claim you can build something which is conscious, you'd better be able to explain how consciousness arises, what kinds of structures engender and maintain it and how they're related.

Piggy

19th July 2008, 12:04 PM

I agree very much with the vast majority of what you are saying--but I would argue that the higher-order consciousness that is so fascinating (as opposed to the sensation-perception-awareness sort that already appears more mechanical) will not be discovered within the "coordination of various functional units within the brain". I think that is also too reductionist. Consciousness of this sort will be best explained* in terms of the actions of organisms interacting in a social environment. Certainly, it will be reducible to brain units, and to neurons, and eventually to molecules, but as you say, at that level conscious behavior is indistinguishable from non-conscious.

*best explained by those in the field--popular opinion will certainly lag. Hell, we still have creationists.

I don't know what a "higher-order consciousness... as opposed to the sensation-perception-awareness sort" might be. What is it you're talking about, exactly?

Piggy

19th July 2008, 12:08 PM

If the simulated brain knew that it could be brought back to life by being switched on again, it might not mind being switched off and there would be no ethical problem. Many human beings wouldn't mind being put into a state of suspended animation so that they could wake up after many years had passed - this might indeed be necessary for long-distance space exploration.

Leon

Well, what all are you reverse-engineering?

If it's only the gross mechanism which give rise to consciousness, then it might be that the created entity doesn't care one way or the other about being switched off.

Our dread of being switched off is almost certainly the result of evolution, which does not operate in the favor of beings who don't have much of an opinion on their own survival one way or the other.

That particular bit of wiring might not be present in an artifcial conscious entity (ACE).

Nick227

19th July 2008, 12:22 PM

Nick227

19th July 2008, 12:24 PM

Many human beings wouldn't mind being put into a state of suspended animation so that they could wake up after many years had passed - this might indeed be necessary for long-distance space exploration.

Leon

Personally, I doubt that "many" people wouldn't mind this. Though it could provide some more insights into the HPC.

Nick

RandFan

19th July 2008, 12:26 PM

Well, what all are you reverse-engineering?

If it's only the gross mechanism which give rise to consciousness, then it might be that the created entity doesn't care one way or the other about being switched off.

Our dread of being switched off is almost certainly the result of evolution, which does not operate in the favor of beings who don't have much of an opinion on their own survival one way or the other.

That particular bit of wiring might not be present in an artifcial conscious entity (ACE).

If it did not fear death/being-switched-off then I doubt it would have much emotional response. A lot of emotions are derived from animal defensive reactions.

Nick I suspect that survival instincts in humans and a hndful of other species are to a degree a by product of emotional response. It's like a complex interplay between a number of emotions. I suspect that you are right Nick but I don't know.

leon_heller

19th July 2008, 12:28 PM

Well, what all are you reverse-engineering?

If it's only the gross mechanism which give rise to consciousness, then it might be that the created entity doesn't care one way or the other about being switched off.

Our dread of being switched off is almost certainly the result of evolution, which does not operate in the favor of beings who don't have much of an opinion on their own survival one way or the other.

That particular bit of wiring might not be present in an artifcial conscious entity (ACE).

I was responding to INRM's post:

There's a real moral issue here as they are planning to reverse engineer a human-brain in every detail. If you produce an exact reverse engineered computer simulated human-brain, you produce a sentient being.

Sentient beings (*Especially* Humans -- it's a human brain simulation, no?), should have certain rights. I think there's a serious problem if you essentially produced something that was as intelligent and sentient as a human, gave it life essentially (by activating it), and then when you were done simply turned it off (killing it effectively)

I should have quoted it.

Leon

Nick227

19th July 2008, 12:38 PM

I suspect that survival instincts in humans and a hndful of other species are to a degree a by product of emotional response. It's like a complex interplay between a number of emotions. I suspect that you are right Nick but I don't know.

I figure quite a few animal responses relating to survival and procreation have evolved into human emotions.

Interestingly, there are certain emotions, usually relating to sexual behaviour, which seem, from a therapy point of view, to be insurmountable by the human higher mind. That's to say, you can't really think your way around them. Jealousy and Authority issues produce very powerful emotional responses in most people and, like I say, you can't easily think your way out of them. To me it tends to indicate that we developed emotions from animal reactions.

Nick

Nick227

19th July 2008, 12:40 PM

There's a real moral issue here as they are planning to reverse engineer a human-brain in every detail. If you produce an exact reverse engineered computer simulated human-brain, you produce a sentient being.

Sentient beings (*Especially* Humans -- it's a human brain simulation, no?), should have certain rights. I think there's a serious problem if you essentially produced something that was as intelligent and sentient as a human, gave it life essentially (by activating it), and then when you were done simply turned it off (killing it effectively)

Will it feel then? Can it experience empathy, or jealousy? If it doesn't have emotions, I can't see how it could object to being switched off.

Nick

RandFan

19th July 2008, 12:48 PM

I figure quite a few animal responses relating to survival and procreation have evolved into human emotions.

Interestingly, there are certain emotions, usually relating to sexual behaviour, which seem, from a therapy point of view, to be insurmountable by the human higher mind. That's to say, you can't really think your way around them. Jealousy and Authority issues produce very powerful emotional responses in most people and, like I say, you can't easily think your way out of them. To me it tends to indicate that we developed emotions from animal reactions.

Nick Yes, but interestingly "thinking" is to a large degree dependent on emotion. Meaning, a key to intelligence, is based in emotion.

We often think of our responses as active and reactive. Reactive being emotional and active being intelectual. While there is utility in seing human behavior this way it is actually overly simplistic, AIU.

Nick227

19th July 2008, 12:54 PM

Yes, but interestingly "thinking" is to a large degree dependent on emotion. Meaning, a key to intelligence, is based in emotion.

We often think of our responses as active and reactive. Reactive being emotional and active being intelectual. While there is utility in seing human behavior this way it is actually overly simplistic, AIU.

I have certainly seen that, if one becomes more aware of one's emotional reality, one has more choices in life. There is less reacting to situations and more responding. Thus a deepening of emotional awareness could often be interpreted as increased calmness and intelligence.

Nick

Mercutio

19th July 2008, 01:03 PM

I don't know what a "higher-order consciousness... as opposed to the sensation-perception-awareness sort" might be. What is it you're talking about, exactly?

Exactly? That is the very problem of this thread. Inexactly, the simpler is the "seeing red" up through "being aware of seeing red" stuff. the "higher-order" is considerably fuzzier, and (off the top of my head) would include stuff ranging from "self-awareness" to "whatever it is that humans have that makes us special that no other animal or computer or philosophical construct like p-zombie has". That last category simply recognizes that the higher-order stuff is a consciousness-of-the-gaps problem for some people--on this thread, for instance, some have claimed that no matter what *is* explained, what remains unexplained will be claimed to be the quintessential element of human consciousness. Whether or not there is evidence that such a thing exists.

I do not personally see the two types as separate categories; I think the same explanation (again, at the level of the behaving organism, completely compatible with the reduced levels of explanation) works for all. But (and perhaps I am misperceiving) I get the feeling that some on this thread are making a distinction.

RandFan

19th July 2008, 01:04 PM

I have certainly seen that, if one becomes more aware of one's emotional reality, one has more choices in life. There is less reacting to situations and more responding. Thus a deepening of emotional awareness could often be interpreted as increased calmness and intelligence.

Nick EI (emotional intelligence (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emotional_intelligence)). Yes, I agree.

Hokulele

19th July 2008, 01:21 PM

Exactly? That is the very problem of this thread. Inexactly, the simpler is the "seeing red" up through "being aware of seeing red" stuff. the "higher-order" is considerably fuzzier, and (off the top of my head) would include stuff ranging from "self-awareness" to "whatever it is that humans have that makes us special that no other animal or computer or philosophical construct like p-zombie has". That last category simply recognizes that the higher-order stuff is a consciousness-of-the-gaps problem for some people--on this thread, for instance, some have claimed that no matter what *is* explained, what remains unexplained will be claimed to be the quintessential element of human consciousness. Whether or not there is evidence that such a thing exists.

I do not personally see the two types as separate categories; I think the same explanation (again, at the level of the behaving organism, completely compatible with the reduced levels of explanation) works for all. But (and perhaps I am misperceiving) I get the feeling that some on this thread are making a distinction.

I admit, I do make the distinction, mostly because I can think of ways to test for the first in non-humans, but not for the second. Yet. Please note, I am not suggesting that there is any difference in how each works, or placing greater importance on one over the other.

Nick227

19th July 2008, 01:37 PM

Long thread.

Please excuse my ignorance of what has already been covered, but is this essentially a question of why emotions and motivational states exist? The 'experience of consciousness', after all, is simply one example of feeling/emotion/etc.

I think the answer to the "why are we not philsophical zombies?" should be fairly easy -- evolution provides short-cut answers. Without feelings to motivate action, we wouldn't be able to act in the way that we do -- the amount of computational power to re-create what we do without the short-cuts of emotions and motivational states would probably require a computer the size of the solar system.

I can see that feelings guide the behaviour of less conscious creatures. Feelings save them from having to think, yes. But then, from what actually does the feeling itself derive? It seems to me that there must be some background level of actual, experiential sentience which can either be made more or less pleasureable.

What I also find interesting here is that feelings apparently have their roots in evolutionary development. An animal no longer has to die to be afraid of death. It has inherited a feeling of fear that will automatically arise in certain situations. So, not necessarily did only the strongest animals survive, it could equally be the ones that felt the most.

Still, none of this deals with the actual experience of sentience, except to say that it could have developed to further evolution.

A few ponderings.

Nick

Beth

19th July 2008, 01:47 PM

So where does this 'consciousness' live or reside? I think it is just like the 'self' and the 'mind' and is a semantic illusion.

Now there is the common self, called 'the body'.

Thanks. That was an uncommonly interesting post. I think I understand what you are asking. Where does a rainbow live? Where do numbers live? I think we can say that consciousness is as real as numbers are. So, are numbers also a semantic illusion?

Sure. If you do come up with an answer either way, let me know. I’ll try. It might be years. Or it might be tomorrow. Or both.

As I saw it, Mercutio was arguing the exact opposite of what you are saying here. He is saying that intersubjective agreement is not better at determining reality. I believe his main point was that most people are not good at systematically testing private functions, which leads to an incorrect view of reality. Interesting. That’s not how I read it at all. What, exactly, are you claiming is better at determining reality but does not ultimately rely on intersubjective agreement?

When data from private observations are collected and analyzed properly, they can reveal what is reality just as well as public data. Yes, but that’s essentially a form of establishing intersubjective agreement.
The rainbow is real, and is a projection that does not exist in any one location. The elements that form the projection have distinct locations (of which the observer is one element), which combine to give the appearance of a set location.

I feel this is the best answer to this and other similar questions, not because it relies on consensus of observation, but because it explains the lack of consensus. It’s an excellent answer. Thanks. Now, can you explain to me how the projection that creates a rainbow qualifies as real but consciousness does not? Or do you grant that consciousness is as real as a rainbow?

I strongly disagree. At its root, the HPC is asking "What makes us special?" By showing that consciousness is not special at all, the root of the HPC essentially goes away. There are still some very interesting issues brought up by the HPC that cannot be answered at this time, but a number of the questions posed in the OP are either answered or meaningless (as was pretty much pointed out on the first page of this thread).
Interesting. I don’t see it that way, but I don’t see consciousness, in and of itself, as making us special either. I do, however, see our level of consciousness as being higher than all other animals (although I am willing to consider arguments for some species). It is an aspect of humanity that is different from all other species in as much as we are, apparently, at the extreme high end for this planet. That makes it of interest to us and worth exploring.

First, define consciousness.

Ok, to take a shortcut--one of the tags of this thread is "p-zombie"; in past threads about p-zombies (and m-zombies!), "consciousness" is what we have that p-zombies do not--but in all other aspects of behavior (including private behavior, for m-zombies) they are identical to us. By that definition of consciousness, I do not think our world would be any different at all with or without consciousness. Not different in anyway whatsoever.
Agreed--I'd say all of them try to make us special.

I don’t have a good argument against that. I’m not sure I could tell the difference either and I’m not sure how that could be done such that they don’t qualify as ‘conscious’.

We behave in ways that cockroaches and thermostats do not. As such, it is inevitable that we will infer different types (or levels) or consciousness in each entity. Of course, such inferences are circular: we infer consciousness from behavior, then attribute that behavior to consciousness. Not a terribly helpful exercise. Helpful is a value judgment. My first introduction to inductive proofs left me feeling that it was somehow cheating by assuming what it sought to prove. I eventually managed to understand the logic and realized that it was sound. I find such exercises helpful. I find the differences between the behaviors I perceive in a thermostat, a cockroach, a dog and a human to be easily placed in relationship to one another and correlate that with consciousness. I don’t know that a robot cockroach couldn’t be considered as conscious as a biological cockroach. That might well be a reasonable conclusion, but I couldn’t say one way or the other without actually experiencing a robot cockroach.

We cannot conclude that reality does not exist, any more than that it does; fortunately, it does not matter. I though it was ALL matter :p
If, on the other hand, there is evidence against a particular notion, that is another matter. For free will, for instance, there is good evidence that some specific definitions of free will are not just unsupported, but contraindicated. People bend over backward to define god in untestable ways, perhaps to avoid having to draw a conclusion. Consciousness, by some definitions, of course exists. By other definitions, it is not merely useless, but misleading and wrong and clearly contradicted by evidence. What definitions are you thinking of as being misleading, wrong, etc.? I’ve yet to see a definition I felt adequate to the concept as I understand it.

I’m basically with RandFan and Piggy on this issue and it’s a pleasure not to be arguing against them for a change :D . We don’t understand consciousness well. We can sense that it makes us ‘special’ – i.e. different from other animals, and it is both mysterious and miraculous, in much the same way that the birth of any child is a mysterious and miraculous event. I know, I know, not everyone feels that way about newborn babies or consciousness. I do.

Nick227

19th July 2008, 02:02 PM

We don’t understand consciousness well. We can sense that it makes us ‘special’ – i.e. different from other animals, and it is both mysterious and miraculous, in much the same way that the birth of any child is a mysterious and miraculous event. I know, I know, not everyone feels that way about newborn babies or consciousness. I do.

Well, one could argue that this desire to "be special" is conditioned into us both socially and biologically. These forces cause the human to develop a sense of "I," an egoic self, yet this "self" is inevitably insubstantial and notoriously hard to pin down. A sense of "specialness" could thus be considered a barricade to the inevitable uncertainties of the human, egoic state. Thus people will do anything to consider both themselves and their species "special."

Nick

Robin

19th July 2008, 02:30 PM

I’m basically with RandFan and Piggy on this issue and it’s a pleasure not to be arguing against them for a change :D . We don’t understand consciousness well. We can sense that it makes us ‘special’ – i.e. different from other animals, and it is both mysterious and miraculous, in much the same way that the birth of any child is a mysterious and miraculous event. I know, I know, not everyone feels that way about newborn babies or consciousness. I do.
What isn't miraculous and mysterious, in that sense? We have a special emotional affinity with newborn babies and our own consciousness, that is true.

But spit on the ground and then examine that closely enough and you will find mystery and miracle at some level.

As I said before, I don't see how the why's and how's that form the HPC are any different to any other unanswered why and how.

cyborg

19th July 2008, 02:45 PM

Some people seem to think that there is some deep insight into the premise that consciousness is just an illusion. The problem is that this doesn't really tell us what consciousness is.

Didn't say that it would - but the first step is to be willing to seriously consider that what you call "consciousness" is a trick of your mind and a shadow that you are chasing - and will continue to chase - endlessly because it's not really there.

Fine but I think we need more than that.

There's already a lot of good information on this thread.

Essentially the problem is that consciousness is just a word and like all other words we have to learn what it means. When it comes to labeling our internal state we can only learn what it means to be "angry" from observing the outward behaviour of someone called "angry". When it comes to something with less obvious outward signs such as "consciousness" communicating that properly becomes a lot harder - so it's no wonder there's so much contention over simply specifying what it is.

So first you've have to decide with some degree of precision what it is you're actually talking about otherwise there is no chance whatsoever of any consensus.

Beth

19th July 2008, 02:52 PM

What isn't miraculous and mysterious, in that sense? I don't find sewers or pollution or crime to be miraculous and mysterious. However, there are no doubt people who do and our environment is better for their fascination and willingness to delve into the details of such things. Miraculous and mysterious are the words I use to describe that which allows me to be awed by the world I live in. I think it's the same one you live in, but I can't be absolutely positive. :p

We have a special emotional affinity with newborn babies and our own consciousness, that is true. Right. So more people consider newborn babies and consciousness miraculous than feel that way about sewers and pollution. Going by the intersubjective agreement aspect, I have to say newborn babes beat out sewers by a goodly margin in being deemed miraculous.

But spit on the ground and then examine that closely enough and you will find mystery and miracle at some level. Amen Sister!

As I said before, I don't see how the why's and how's that form the HPC are any different to any other unanswered why and how.

I agree. It is much like other such questions. I like the simile of consciousness being as real as a rainbow. How real do you think a rainbow is?

Beth

19th July 2008, 02:57 PM

cyborg

19th July 2008, 03:01 PM

Miraculous and mysterious are the words I use to describe that which allows me to be awed by the world I live in.

You should be in awe of sewers then - without them modern life would fall apart pretty quickly. They are engineering marvels.

Right. So more people consider newborn babies and consciousness miraculous than feel that way about sewers and pollution. Going by the intersubjective agreement aspect, I have to say newborn babes beat out sewers by a goodly margin in being deemed miraculous.

By intersubjective agreement Pop Idol is more important than government when it comes to voting.

A newborn baby is not actually miraculous when the sense of the word is used to mean, "an unprecedented event of good," since newborn babies are plentiful.

cyborg

19th July 2008, 03:02 PM

And don't bother chasing rainbows either. It's just waste of time.

Yes.

Piggy

19th July 2008, 03:34 PM

If it did not fear death/being-switched-off then I doubt it would have much emotional response. A lot of emotions are derived from animal defensive reactions.

Nick

Yes, but that's because organic conscious beings developed through evolution driven by natural selection.

There's no particular reason why an ACE would have any emotional reaction at all to the prospect of being shut off.

In other words, fear of death is a product of evolution, not necessarily an inherent feature of conscious awareness.

Piggy

19th July 2008, 03:37 PM

I was responding to INRM's post:

I should have quoted it.

Leon

Yeah, I know. I was just wondering, would there actually be an ethical issue about scrapping an ACE if it didn't care one way of the other?

INRM

19th July 2008, 03:40 PM

If the simulated brain knew that it could be brought back to life by being switched on again, it might not mind being switched off and there would be no ethical problem. Many human beings wouldn't mind being put into a state of suspended animation so that they could wake up after many years had passed - this might indeed be necessary for long-distance space exploration.

Superficially it sounds reasonable. But the Swiss-group are not likely to keep this thing running until the simulated brain breaks down (like a real person would die). They're going to test various things, and probably within a few years they'll eventually shut it all down -- killed, way before the scenario I outlined (as human brains last like 80+ years) happens.

It sounds ridiculous, but after all -- you're creating a sentient being equivalent to a human! It's like having a baby -- Once you're done you can't just say, "oh well, that's all we need out of it", and kill your kid (who's now a few years old).

Creating sentient life opens up a huge can of worms...

INRM

Piggy

19th July 2008, 03:49 PM

Didn't say that it would - but the first step is to be willing to seriously consider that what you call "consciousness" is a trick of your mind and a shadow that you are chasing - and will continue to chase - endlessly because it's not really there.

That doesn't pass the sniff test.

If a hypothesis leads you to a conclusion that's obviously false, as this one does, then there's a problem.

One thing we do know is that the phenomenon of conscious experience is real.

It's difficult to call it a "trick of the mind", since "mind" is pretty much synonymous with conscious experience, or at least inextricably involved with it.

It's a product of brain activity, sure. I like Dennett's hypothesis that it's a product of a divided brain: First build brain A (the brain stem and the most basic circuitry), then build brain B (the outer cortices) to live "inside" brain A -- a brain that gets no direct input from the world, but only processed data from the brain that does get the input.

Add a feedback mechanism so brain B can "talk to itself", so to speak, and it may be that that's sufficient to make an entity self-aware.

But the consciousness is real.

Dancing David

19th July 2008, 04:04 PM

EI (emotional intelligence (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emotional_intelligence)). Yes, I agree.

Great idea, terrible book. i was vastly disappointed.

Dancing David

19th July 2008, 04:06 PM

Thanks. That was an uncommonly interesting post. I think I understand what you are asking. Where does a rainbow live? Where do numbers live? I think we can say that consciousness is as real as numbers are. So, are numbers also a semantic illusion?

I stole it from the AHB, alleged historical buddha. To me yes they are, while very useful ones, to you no.

westprog

19th July 2008, 04:07 PM

First, define consciousness.

Ok, to take a shortcut--one of the tags of this thread is "p-zombie"; in past threads about p-zombies (and m-zombies!), "consciousness" is what we have that p-zombies do not--but in all other aspects of behavior (including private behavior, for m-zombies) they are identical to us. By that definition of consciousness, I do not think our world would be any different at all with or without consciousness. Not different in anyway whatsoever.

However, the above makes many assumptions. It assumes that p-zombies are possible. It assumes that consciousness has no function. It assumes that creatures without consciousness could operate among us unnoticed.

There are a lot of if's there. It is possible that consciousness has no function. It's also possible that it's essential for the an intelligent being to operate.

cyborg

19th July 2008, 04:10 PM

One thing we do know is that the phenomenon of conscious experience is real.

We do?

Just like we know that the phenomena of the soul is real because people experience having them? Or that emotions come from the heart? Or that ghosts are real because people experience them?

At this point I'm going to have to demand you tell me what I can identify physically as the phenomenon and what categorisation of real you are using.

Otherwise statements such as:

But the consciousness is real.

Simply beg the question.

westprog

19th July 2008, 04:11 PM

There's a real moral issue here as they are planning to reverse engineer a human-brain in every detail. If you produce an exact reverse engineered computer simulated human-brain, you produce a sentient being.

Sentient beings (*Especially* Humans -- it's a human brain simulation, no?), should have certain rights. I think there's a serious problem if you essentially produced something that was as intelligent and sentient as a human, gave it life essentially (by activating it), and then when you were done simply turned it off (killing it effectively)

INRM

Again, lots of assumptions. It assumes that the only relevant part of the human brain is the computational element, and that the computational element is sufficient to make a sentient being. (It leaves aside the issue of the software).

There's only one way we know of to make a human brain. We may encounter ethical issues with artificial sentience. We may not.

Piggy

19th July 2008, 04:16 PM

We do?

Just like we know that the phenomena of the soul is real because people experience having them? Or that emotions come from the heart? Or that ghosts are real because people experience them?

At this point I'm going to have to demand you tell me what I can identify physically as the phenomenon and what categorisation of real you are using.

Otherwise statements such as:

Simply beg the question.

You're going to sit there at your computer and try to tell me that the phenomenon of conscious experience doesn't exist?

That's absurd.

RandFan

19th July 2008, 04:20 PM

Didn't say that it would - but the first step is to be willing to seriously consider that what you call "consciousness" is a trick of your mind and a shadow that you are chasing - and will continue to chase - endlessly because it's not really there. Yes, and the same could be said about reality. The problem, as I see it, is that there is something clearly going on that we call consciousness. If there wasn't you and I wouldn't even be having this discussion. That there is something going is trivially true. Calling it all an illusion doesn't advance our understanding of it much or make it go away. In fact it tells us scant little about the (illusion/phenomenon/event/whatever). Whatever it is, we want to understand it and how it emerges from physical processes. It's a fascinating subject and one that has intrigued philosophers and scientists for centuries. You are free to ignore it. No one says that you have to care or follow the advancements of cognitive neuroscience and AI.

Ok, we are all agreed it's an illusion. Now can we get back to HPC?

Essentially the problem is that consciousness is just a word and like all other words we have to learn what it means. When it comes to labeling our internal state we can only learn what it means to be "angry" from observing the outward behavior of someone called "angry". When it comes to something with less obvious outward signs such as "consciousness" communicating that properly becomes a lot harder - so it's no wonder there's so much contention over simply specifying what it is.

So first you've have to decide with some degree of precision what it is you're actually talking about otherwise there is no chance whatsoever of any consensus.Science doesn't quite work that way. First you start out by observing and then hypothesizing coming up with words to convey ideas and then testing and then refining your hypothesis and better defining your terms or getting rid of the hypothesis all together and coming up with new hypothesis and definitions and you work toward consensus. Discovery doesn't work by coming up with all of the answers at once or even understanding all of the parameters or definitions. Understanding is built brick upon brick and sometimes we flail in the dark. If we wait until we completely understand everything and all agree on the definitions we get no where.

RandFan

19th July 2008, 04:27 PM

Great idea, terrible book. i was vastly disappointed.Yes. I couldn't agree more. It's funny but I don't even associate the idea with the book really.

cyborg

19th July 2008, 04:27 PM

You're going to sit there at your computer and try to tell me that the phenomenon of conscious experience doesn't exist?

That's absurd.

And yet it moves!

cyborg

19th July 2008, 04:33 PM

The problem, as I see it, is that there is something clearly going on that we call consciousness.

Well duh - give a name to something that is going on and clearly that something that is going on has that name.

If there wasn't you and I wouldn't even be having this discussion.

That is much like saying because I have created the name "god" there has to be a "god" going on for us to talk about it. I don't think you quite appreciate the point about illusions.

If we wait until we completely understand everything and all agree on the definitions we get no where.

You can't test for something if you can't specify what it is you are testing for - you have to be able to measure something. The problem here is that there is, in effect, no "consciousness" to measure because consciousness is not like mass or time but it is like "chair" or "zephyr". How do you measure "chairness"? Does "chairness" become real enough to measure because we have a name for it?

Nogbad

19th July 2008, 04:37 PM

We could have diminishing units of consciousness. 1 bottle of malt whiskey = little or no consciousness (there would need to be weighted measure for hardened drinkers - the Keith Richards weighting would seem an apt name)

RandFan

19th July 2008, 05:21 PM

Well duh - give a name to something that is going on and clearly that something that is going on has that name.Yes, and calling it an illusion doesn't tell us much.

That is much like saying because I have created the name "god" there has to be a "god" going on for us to talk about it. I don't think you quite appreciate the point about illusions. Oh..., you missed my point. :) Sorry. No, that is NOT what I mean.

Rocks don't ponder their existence.
Rocks don't debate consciousness.
Why?

Hope that helps.

You can't test for something if you can't specify what it is you are testing for - you have to be able to measure something. The problem here is that there is, in effect, no "consciousness" to measure because consciousness is not like mass or time but it is like "chair" or "zephyr". How do you measure "chairness"? Does "chairness" become real enough to measure because we have a name for it?That's simple.

Example 1:

Tech gives subject questionnaire.
Subject fills out questionnaire.
Tech removes higher brain functions of subject.
Subject still breathes and converts carbohydrates to fuel.
Tech gives subject questionnaire.
Subject cannot fill out questionnaire.
Conclusion: It is possible to measure whether consciousness exists or does not exist.
Example 2:

Various subjects have quantifiable brain damage.
The greater the damage the less cognitive ability the subjects display.
Conclusion: Consciousness can be quantified.

Hokulele

19th July 2008, 06:02 PM

Interesting. That’s not how I read it at all. What, exactly, are you claiming is better at determining reality but does not ultimately rely on intersubjective agreement?

Nothing. There is no best way to determine reality. The tools you use vary depending on which aspect of reality you wish to analyze. For example, if I want to know which headache remedy works best for me, I won't wander around asking people if it looks like I am in pain. I may ask what works for them and use that information to narrow down my choices, but it will not determine my end results.

Yes, but that’s essentially a form of establishing intersubjective agreement.

Nope. You may be assuming I meant collecting the private data from multiple individuals when I meant I can only collect private data from myself (hence the term private). Anything else would have to be considered anecdotes. Self-testing can be very practical, but controls must be put in place to avoid confirmation bias and other self-delusions. It can be tricky, but it is very doable.

It’s an excellent answer. Thanks. Now, can you explain to me how the projection that creates a rainbow qualifies as real but consciousness does not? Or do you grant that consciousness is as real as a rainbow?

I never claimed consciousness doesn't exist. Quite the opposite, in fact. My first point to you was that I do not think consciousness can be pinned down by any one criteria, but a checklist must be made. I would consider objects and systems that meet more criteria on the list to be more similar in consciousness to what I experience than those that meet less criteria.

Interesting. I don’t see it that way, but I don’t see consciousness, in and of itself, as making us special either. I do, however, see our level of consciousness as being higher than all other animals (although I am willing to consider arguments for some species). It is an aspect of humanity that is different from all other species in as much as we are, apparently, at the extreme high end for this planet. That makes it of interest to us and worth exploring.

I completely agree with one very minor quibble. I don't see our level of consciousness as being higher than all other animals. To me, that sounds a bit like saying "humans are more evolved". I have no idea whether or not my dog has "a rich inner life". There is a communication barrier there that cannot yet be breached. I can observe how my dog reacts to various situations and make an educated guess, I can create images based on her brain activity, but I can never examine her actual thoughts (if there are any).

This is why I prefer the checklist approach to determining where something falls on the consciousness continuum with the realization that I can only check Yes for humans when it comes to an item such as formulating a concept such as cogito ergo sum, but I am not yet comfortable checking No for all other creatures or systems. It does not mean that humans are the only beings that could check Yes in every column, they are just the only beings that have.

I hope this makes sense. :)

Gurdur

19th July 2008, 06:05 PM

.... I hope this makes sense. :)

Only when I'm conscious.

Hokulele

19th July 2008, 06:09 PM

Only when I'm conscious.

I must be improving! ;)

Beth

19th July 2008, 06:20 PM

I hope this makes sense. :)

It does. :) We pretty much agree then. Unfortunately, as you pointed out earlier, consensus can be boring. What is there for us to argue about now ?

Hokulele

19th July 2008, 06:23 PM

It does. :) We pretty much agree then. Unfortunately, as you pointed out earlier, consensus can be boring. What is there for us to argue about now ?

Well, we could always request a moderated thread on the evidence for or against the existence of god. :D

Mercutio

19th July 2008, 06:28 PM

Yes, and calling it an illusion doesn't tell us much.

Oh..., you missed my point. :) Sorry. No, that is NOT what I mean.

Rocks don't ponder their existence.
Rocks don't debate consciousness.
Why?

Hope that helps.

That's simple.

um... how do you know? Perhaps all rocks do is ponder their existence; that's why they just sit there. What does pondering look like, anyway?

What rocks don't do is behave (publicly, at any rate). What you have written is an inference drawn from that observation.

Mercutio

19th July 2008, 06:42 PM

I don’t have a good argument against that. I’m not sure I could tell the difference either and I’m not sure how that could be done such that they don’t qualify as ‘conscious’.
That would be why I said that the world would be the same without consciousness, as defined in the p-zombie argument.

Helpful is a value judgment. My first introduction to inductive proofs left me feeling that it was somehow cheating by assuming what it sought to prove. I eventually managed to understand the logic and realized that it was sound. I disagree completely--how are circular arguments "sound"? Assuming your conclusions is not sound.
I find such exercises helpful. I find the differences between the behaviors I perceive in a thermostat, a cockroach, a dog and a human to be easily placed in relationship to one another and correlate that with consciousness. I don’t know that a robot cockroach couldn’t be considered as conscious as a biological cockroach. That might well be a reasonable conclusion, but I couldn’t say one way or the other without actually experiencing a robot cockroach. Ever take a stats or methods class? Remember the mantra "correlation is not causation"? OF COURSE you correlate the behaviors you see with the consciousness you infer--you infer the consciousness because of the behaviors! A strong correlation is no surprise at all!

I though it was ALL matter :p I am no materialist (nor ~materialist, either). It does not matter whether it is matter. Not a bit.

What definitions are you thinking of as being misleading, wrong, etc.? I’ve yet to see a definition I felt adequate to the concept as I understand it.
For instance, consciousness as causal. Libet's experiment, and blindsight research, and other cognitive neuropsych, shows that consciousness is, if anything, the result of actions rather than the cause of them. If we ask "how does consciousness cause behavior?" we are presupposing that it does, which is not a slam-dunk.

I’m basically with RandFan and Piggy on this issue and it’s a pleasure not to be arguing against them for a change :D . We don’t understand consciousness well. We can sense that it makes us ‘special’ – i.e. different from other animals, and it is both mysterious and miraculous, in much the same way that the birth of any child is a mysterious and miraculous event. I know, I know, not everyone feels that way about newborn babies or consciousness. I do.
"When everybody is special, nobody is." The term "miraculous", applied to something that happens hundreds of thousands of times a day (to choose childbirth as an example) kinda renders it a bit tame. Consciousness is not miraculous. It is pretty damned cool, but so is jell-o.

RandFan

19th July 2008, 06:47 PM

um... how do you know?I don't know anything absolutely. I can only infer that they don't based on my limited knowledge of the natural world. Lacking a mechanism that would explain how a rock ponders I conclude that they don't. But I'm happy to be shown wrong.

Perhaps all rocks do is ponder their existence; that's why they just sit there. What does pondering look like, anyway? I have no idea what pondering looks like. It seems to me that I ponder and I have a mechanism for accounting for that pondering (a brain).

What rocks don't do is behave (publicly, at any rate). What you have written is an inference drawn from that observation. I believe that I could infer that without any observation other than I ponder, I have a valid mechanism to explain pondering, my brain (when I get hit in the head with a wrench I stop pondering) and I can find no mechanism to suggest that a rock ponders. That said, I grant you that public behavior is rather important to deducing theory of mind in entities that have brains.

ETA: Yes, I've spotted at least one problem with the above but I'll let you pick it apart first. :)

John Freestone

19th July 2008, 06:57 PM

Oh, I see I misunderstood you badly, Nick. Sorry.I'm not addressing materialism. It is not about matter-based or not. What I perceive happening in the no-HPC camp is an attempt to reduce all human experience to thought-based processing.Monism means having to reduce everything to one kind of thing, but maybe you're misunderstanding what they mean by 'thinking' or 'thought-based processing'. They're kind of saying (if I may be so bold!) that there is no fundamental difference between thinking, which to you and me usually means something linguistic (like "I told you so"), a perception, a realisation, a reaction, or the lowest correspondence you might like to imagine between the environment and us, only a difference in complexity or how we label these things.

Perhaps I'm wrong, but that is what it looks like to me. The whole thing with the HPC, as I see it, is that there is an assertion of other experiential phenomena, aside of thoughts.But surely not. The usual assertion is that there are other phenomena aside of physical realities - thoughts (as purely mental phenomena), experiences, perceptions, qualia, etc. (all as having something that is beyond matter or immaterial or some composite of mind-matter). Either that, or there may be versions that question the reality of physical matter altogether. That's what I thought your position was, but now I'm not sure what you think.

Of course, you need to attempt to translate these experiential phenomena into thought-based language in order to debate them...and herein lies the problem!In the version I'm repeating, thought is no different from the experiential phenomena. Thought, or thinking, is used as a catch-all for bio-physical computation (notice, I avoided calling it 'mental', because it is 'brain and body' computation that sees or hears or thinks. I think I understand what you're getting at. You're dividing thought - because it seems linguistically representational and something we can all grasp and discuss and define - from awareness, perception, etc. But really, I think the division may be in the wrong place. After all - these words, when we really consider them and the concepts they describe, they are not clear and do not map accurately to fixed realities at all. They are nearly as relative and approximate as your internal sensation of pain or red. The 'thought' point above is one example - but it seems to me quite ubiquitous - words are placeholders. The more significant division is between physical objects and 'mental phenomena' - the HPC depends on this dualism, it seems to me.

For, in trying to do so, in creating concepts such as "qualia" for example, one must debate what is discussed through thinking. Everything must be reduced to thought-basis in order to discuss, so there is always the possibility to deny HPC, as one is constantly surrounded by words which are trying to point towards experiences, but which cannot by themselves invoke them.When you say "creating concepts such as qualia" do you mean making up a thought-name (i.e. conceptualizing) to represent the reality 'qualia'? You see, the HPC objector might consider this the very problem, and interestingly it has a linguistic twist in reading it: I can also read your words as meaning "inventing the qualia-concept altogether", i.e. for non-existent experiential units (perhaps persuasive, like sold walls and sunrises over a fixed earth, but quite illusory). Thought of that way, we re-establish monism - just matter hallucinating a convenient illusion it labels 'mind'.

Personally, I'm more materialist, but in behaviour rather than belief.Wazzat? You shop a lot?:D Seriously, that is a very profound statement. Behaviour is the only way to be a materialist.

Maybe so-called "consciousness" arises from the brain/body, I don't know. I'll be impressed when I find a computer that can actually experience emotions!

NickYou remember when you first began trying to remember that you weren't made of solid flesh, stopped identifying yourself with the body? You're also talking about dis-identifying with the thoughts here, so you know that trick. It's just another trick, the same but onwards. Look in the mirror and say hi to the computer you'd be impressed to find experiencing emotions! You are it (perhaps). You are, after all, a very compex machine, at least in some respect. If you let go of the "I" you become that matter experiencing emotions. Light is reflecting off your face, bouncing off the mirror and back into your eyes. Your body is making sense of that by construcing the myth "I". Maybe?

Mercutio

19th July 2008, 07:03 PM

I don't know anything absolutely. I can only infer that they don't based on my limited knowledge of the natural world. Lacking a mechanism that would explain how a rock ponders I conclude that they don't. But I'm happy to be shown wrong.
Oh, I would never do that.

I have no idea what pondering looks like. It seems to me that I ponder and I have a mechanism for accounting for that pondering (a brain).
Um... it occurs to me... how do you know that what you are doing is pondering? "It seems to [you] that [you] ponder"... why? How did you learn that particular word?

Certainly, the explanation you have received is that the brain is something that ponders... we tend to accept that, incomplete as it is. I don't know of any brain yet in all of history that pondered anything at all without the assistance of the rest of a body, but this is just that functional dualism I spoke of some pages ago, and not something that bothers more than a handful of people. Sadly, I am one of them, but that is not your problem.

I believe that I could infer that without any observation other than I ponder, I have a valid mechanism to explain pondering, my brain (when I get hit in the head with a wrench I stop pondering) and I can find no mechanism to suggest that a rock ponders. That said, I grant you that public behavior is rather important to deducing theory of mind in entities that have brains.
You really could infer that without any observation? You are really good! Me, it would take a bit of history being taught that word, let alone a bit of history being taught the functions of the brain (with or without the rest of the body in support). Heck, "pondering" is a fairly difficult word for me--I always get it mixed up with musing, contemplating, mulling over, and perhaps a dozen others.

ETA: Yes, I've spotted at least one problem with the above but I'll let you pick it apart first. :)I doubt I found it; I may have to ponder it some more.

Mercutio

19th July 2008, 07:05 PM

Behaviour is the only way to be a materialist.

This behaviorist is not a materialist.

Nor idealist, either, nor dualist, lest you get your knickers in a twist.

PixyMisa

19th July 2008, 07:08 PM

If you're going to claim you can build something which is conscious, you'd better be able to explain how consciousness arises, what kinds of structures engender and maintain it and how they're related.
Okay, here:

I can build something that is conscious.

I can do it the hard way, with a couple of hundred discrete transistors.

Or I can do it the easy way, with, say, a 68HC08 8-bit microcontroller.

Let's examine the microcontroller for a moment.

It has both analog and digital inputs for senses.
It has digital outputs for taking action.
It has on-chip flash for long-term memory.
It has ram and registers for short-term memory.
It even has timers to give it an internal sense of time.

Now, without power it's an inert lump of contaminated silicon, but without food we humans don't do so well either.

So let's power it up and do a little programming.

Now it can take inputs and respond to them, singly or in combination with other inputs or with the data in its memory.

And it can take that input and analyse it and store information about it in its memory.

And it can take a record of its actions and store that in its memory

And it can examine its memory, and take actions based on that, or write the results of its analysis back to its memory again.

And it can adjust its own programming based on any of this.

So what exactly is it that people do that a $1.95 microcontroller chip doesn't?

PixyMisa

19th July 2008, 07:09 PM

There's a real moral issue here as they are planning to reverse engineer a human-brain in every detail. If you produce an exact reverse engineered computer simulated human-brain, you produce a sentient being.
That's why they're starting with a rat.

Well, one of the reasons. Another reason being that a computer powerful enough to simulate a human brain would be somewhat expensive.

RandFan

19th July 2008, 07:09 PM

Oh, I would never do that.
Um... it occurs to me... how do you know that what you are doing is pondering? "It seems to [you] that [you] ponder"... why? How did you learn that particular word? Ponder is simply a word to convey and idea from one person to another. Do you suggest that without the word I couldn't conceptualize pondering?

You really could infer that without any observation?
Bingo! That's it. I'll have to ponder it some more myself.

Mercutio

19th July 2008, 07:17 PM

Ponder is simply a word to convey an idea from one person to another. Do you suggest that without the word I couldn't conceptualize pondering?
Well, I would actually disagree with that definition of "ponder", but no matter (pun intended). I would have asked the same question no matter what word you had chosen--it is not the word, but the behavior you were labeling, that I was pondering. How--for *any* private behavior--did those who taught you your vocabulary know what was going on under your skin? Or did you learn it by watching the *public* behavior of others?

Bingo! That's it. I'll have to ponder it some more myself.

I have to learn to read the whole post before starting to respond...

PixyMisa

19th July 2008, 07:19 PM

That doesn't pass the sniff test.
Then perhaps the sniff test is not much good?

If a hypothesis leads you to a conclusion that's obviously false, as this one does, then there's a problem.Well, yes. But you have to actually show that this conclusion is indeed false.

One thing we do know is that the phenomenon of conscious experience is real.But a real what?

We know, for example, that "conscious decision-making" is nothing more than a replay of decisions you have already made subconsciously. It's been amply demonstrated in rather elegant experiments that you begin to act before you are aware that you have decided to act.

It's difficult to call it a "trick of the mind", since "mind" is pretty much synonymous with conscious experience, or at least inextricably involved with it.A trick of the brain, then. An illusion. An illusion is, after all, a real thing - it's just not what it looks like.

RandFan

19th July 2008, 07:33 PM

Well, I would actually disagree with that definition of "ponder", but no matter (pun intended). I would have asked the same question no matter what word you had chosen--it is not the word, but the behavior you were labeling, that I was pondering. How--for *any* private behavior--did those who taught you your vocabulary know what was going on under your skin? Or did you learn it by watching the *public* behavior of others? I wasn't aware that I posited a definition. It certainly wasn't my intention. Let me rephrase my question. Had I grown up in isolation would it have been impossible for me to conceptualize the behavior that you and I call pondering? (assuming such a feat is possible at all)

INRM

19th July 2008, 07:40 PM

That's why they're starting with a rat.

Yeah to get everybody used to the idea. It's not ethical to simulate a human brain.

Well, one of the reasons. Another reason being that a computer powerful enough to simulate a human brain would be somewhat expensive.

True probably, but computers get more powerful with time and it won't be long before there's one that can do the job.

To RandFan,

You posted something about V.S. Ramachandran about phantom-limbs and a wikipedia article about how a mirror-box helped deal with the problem. Does this have to do with consciousness, and if so, how?

INRM,
BTW: I think this really belongs in the science,medicine,mathmatics,technology (I'm not sure if I got the order right) forum, as it pertains to the functioning of the human brain which is within the field of neurology -- a field of medicine.

Mercutio

19th July 2008, 08:09 PM

I wasn't aware that I posited a definition. It certainly wasn't my intention. Let me rephrase my question. Had I grown up in isolation would it have been impossible for me to conceptualize the behavior that you and I call pondering? (assuming such a feat is possible at all)

Ah. I misunderstood. (I thought it was an odd definition...)

If I understand your question correctly, than the best answer is "well, it's an empirical question..."; sadly, it would be a tad unethical to test.

My best guess? Yes, it would be impossible--or improbable to the extent that it may as well be. Fortunately, you would not miss the ability, having never had reason to suspect that such a thing existed.

Beth

19th July 2008, 08:26 PM

That would be why I said that the world would be the same without consciousness, as defined in the p-zombie argument. It's a reasonable stance.
I disagree completely--how are circular arguments "sound"? Assuming your conclusions is not sound. Actually, inductive proofs are well accepted in higher level mathematics. It's an interesting form of argument. You might enjoy it. You show your theorem true for low values of n, like 1 and 2, then assume true for all values up to n, finish by proving the case n+1. It has it's pitfalls though.

Derail for an old joke: How can you prove all odd numbers are prime?

Mathmatician: 3 is prime, 5 is prime, 7 is prime, the rest follow by induction
Statistician: 3 is prime, 5 is prime, 7 is prime, 9 - experimental error, throw it out, the rest follow by induction
Computer programmer: 3 is prime, 5 is prime, 7 is prime, 9 is prime, 11 is prime, 13 is prime, ....

Ever take a stats or methods class? Remember the mantra "correlation is not causation"? OF COURSE you correlate the behaviors you see with the consciousness you infer--you infer the consciousness because of the behaviors! A strong correlation is no surprise at all! No, it's no surprise. In addition, unsurprisingly, strong correlations are strongly correlated with causation. :)

I am no materialist (nor ~materialist, either). It does not matter whether it is matter. Not a bit. It was just at attempt at humor. Sigh. That never goes well for me.
For instance, consciousness as causal. Libet's experiment, and blindsight research, and other cognitive neuropsych, shows that consciousness is, if anything, the result of actions rather than the cause of them. If we ask "how does consciousness cause behavior?" we are presupposing that it does, which is not a slam-dunk. I agree with you that it is not a slam-dunk, yet it seems clear to me that our conscious thoughts have the ability to affect our behavior at times. Do you disagree?

"When everybody is special, nobody is." The term "miraculous", applied to something that happens hundreds of thousands of times a day (to choose childbirth as an example) kinda renders it a bit tame. Consciousness is not miraculous. It is pretty damned cool, but so is jell-o. We all have our criteria for what is miraculous and what is not. What miracles are and whether any have ever occurred is much like the other things we've been discussing. No firm definition exists.

rocketdodger

19th July 2008, 08:32 PM

I don't believe any of that.

I don't believe you could build a rudimentary consciousness.

No, you don't believe I could build a rudimentary <what you think is> consciousness. But notice that you have not defined <what you think is> consciousness well enough for me to say whether I could build a rudimentary one or not.

On the other hand, I am quite confident that I could build a rudimentary <what I think is> consciousness. Since I define consciousness to be reasoning, it is quite simple. It seems like Pixy thinks it would be simple as well. Who are you to tell us we are wrong when you don't even have a working definition?

The chip example falls short because it's not analogous.

You think so. Yet, you cannot explain why. On the other hand, those of us that think it is analagous can tell you exactly why we think so.

You still have not explained anything about the phenomenon of conscious experience, how you think it's generated by the brain, and how you think it could be replicated.

All you've said is that you have the belief that a robust reasoning system gives rise to consciousness, which answers nothing.

It's U.G. logic:

Step 1: Build a robust reasoning system.

Step 2: ?

Step 3: Conscious experience emerges.

Yeah I apologize for this, I suppose I have left out a few steps. Let me be more precise. Most importantly, I am using "reasoning" to mean "using facts to do something."

1) Build a robust reasoning system (where by robust I mean that there is no artificial limit to the facts the system can reason about).

2) Give the system a set of initial goals.

3) Give the system an initial set of facts about the world.

4) Give the system some sort of sensory device(s) that it can use to learn facts about the world.

5) Start the system.

Once the system is started, it will reason using the facts in it's knowledge base in order to do it's best to reach the set of goals it has been provided with. The claim that I am making (which is also the claim that the other HPC opponents here are making, in one way or another) is that what you perceive as "consciousness" is nothing more than your brain -- a reasoning system -- reasoning about the facts in your knowledge base.

Sensory data comes in, gets added to your knowledge base, and you reason about that data. That is subjective experience. When the reasoning process includes the formalized facts representing "self", you experience self consciousness.

I am speaking from a computer science / artificial intelligence viewpoint, because that is my interest. Others, like Mercutio, speak from a behavioral science viewpoint. The underlying theme is the same. And 30 years of experimental evidence backs up this theme.

rocketdodger

19th July 2008, 08:42 PM

See Monty Python's argument clinic (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=teMlv3ripSM). An argument is an intellectual process. It's not saying "when you know what I know you will know I'm right". That's fallacy.

Alright I see what you are saying. When you said "engaging in fallacy" you were talking about the hypotheses as I presented them to you. I suppose I just went on the defensive automatically and assumed you were talking about the actual hypotheses themselves. Glad we could clear that up!

I will try to be more clear and avoid special pleading henceforth.

RandFan

19th July 2008, 09:00 PM

Ah. I misunderstood. (I thought it was an odd definition...)

If I understand your question correctly, than the best answer is "well, it's an empirical question..."; sadly, it would be a tad unethical to test.

My best guess? Yes, it would be impossible--or improbable to the extent that it may as well be. Fortunately, you would not miss the ability, having never had reason to suspect that such a thing existed.Having thought about it I too find it improbable but not at all impossible. Someone had to conceptualize it. Though to be sure that person likely had other rudimentary mental skills including at least some degree of language. It's amazing how much our mental software is built on many tiny steps of insight and discovery. It evolved.... either that or god did it. :)

RandFan

19th July 2008, 09:06 PM

Alright I see what you are saying. When you said "engaging in fallacy" you were talking about the hypotheses as I presented them to you. I suppose I just went on the defensive automatically and assumed you were talking about the actual hypotheses themselves. Glad we could clear that up!

I will try to be more clear and avoid special pleading henceforth.Cool. I think we get hung up to much on minutae. I think your points are largely correct. The important thing is both you and I were once dualists and we now both accept that whatever the answer is it isn't dualism.

Mercutio

19th July 2008, 09:07 PM

It's a reasonable stance. Actually, inductive proofs are well accepted in higher level mathematics. It's an interesting form of argument. You might enjoy it. You show your theorem true for low values of n, like 1 and 2, then assume true for all values up to n, finish by proving the case n+1. It has it's pitfalls though.
Please look into the difference between induction and circularity. In this case, the only evidence you have for Y is X, and yet you claim that X is caused by Y. Note that we may plug in consciousness, god, or (ah, this brings me back) Upchurch's permission for Y; all are logically equivalent, and logically bankrupt. It may sound good, but it is fallacious.

[snip]
No, it's no surprise. In addition, unsurprisingly, strong correlations are strongly correlated with causation. :) May I conclude that Centigrade temperature causes Fahrenheit temperature? They are, after all, perfectly correlated! (please remember, correlation is non-directional; if correlation is evidence, then perhaps cancer causes smoking.)

It was just at attempt at humor. Sigh. That never goes well for me. I would blame your audience. :o
I agree with you that it is not a slam-dunk, yet it seems clear to me that our conscious thoughts have the ability to affect our behavior at times. Do you disagree? I dare not disagree that it "seems clear to [you]". What I would say, though, is that thinking is a behavior, and thus every bit in need of an explanation. (also, as per somebody's post above, take a look at the Libet experiment.) "Seems" is fine, so long as you do not take Hamlet's additional step: "Seems, madam! Nay, it is; I know not 'seems'."

We all have our criteria for what is miraculous and what is not. What miracles are and whether any have ever occurred is much like the other things we've been discussing. No firm definition exists.
If I agreed, would that be miraculous?
:):D:p

RandFan

19th July 2008, 09:14 PM

Note that we may plug in consciousness, god, or (ah, this brings me back) Upchurch's permission for Y; all are logically equivalent, and logically bankrupt. It may sound good, but it is fallacious.Good times. :)

soylent

19th July 2008, 09:24 PM

In short consciousness = being able to experience.

But is experience anything more than a sufficiently complex computational machine responding to, interpreting, analysing and predicting internal state variables and external sensory input?

Note that experience is different from computational processes and analysis, this can be done without the ability to experience.

Certainly, no one would accuse a simple ALU of experiencing anything; but it doesn't follow from this that emotions aren't computational processes.

soylent

19th July 2008, 09:31 PM

I don't understand your responses in light of the conversation. I don't claim that there is an insurmountable problem. I've made that quite clear. If we postulate your machine it would be conscious. So, I'm not at al sure what your point is.

My point is that even just comming up with a reasonable definition of what consciousness is is a very slippery thing; I'm not sure the concept has or will lead to anything useful. It could be better to just start from the other end and investigate how each individual phenomena you are interested in arises.

Consciousness may very well "evaporate" away but we will still have the capacity to wonder why we are here. It might be smoke and mirrors but I still ponder the universe. I still think abstractly.

Yes and those are very real things worth investigating, consciousness might just be a dead end.

rocketdodger

19th July 2008, 11:01 PM

RandFan

19th July 2008, 11:06 PM

My point is that even just coming up with a reasonable definition of what consciousness is is a very slippery thing; I'm not sure the concept has or will lead to anything useful. It could be better to just start from the other end and investigate how each individual phenomena you are interested in arises. Reasonable people can disagree. I don't think the slippery nature of defining consciousness should be any great cause of trepidation. Science advances by attempting to understand things, refining the hypothesis and the words and definitions of those words. That's the nature of the beast. Good heavens, if we are so worried about such affairs we ought not do science. It's not always a successful venture but almost always well worth the attempt. Thankfully there are many in the field who agree and don't share your odd pessimism.

Yes and those are very real things worth investigating, consciousness might just be a dead end. Yes it might be. I'm not sure what the point of that might be. Many promising and not so promising endeavors end up in dead ends. You are simply stating one of the consequences of science. Hardly a point of controversy.

Piggy

20th July 2008, 12:31 AM

So what exactly is it that people do that a $1.95 microcontroller chip doesn't?

Wonder what we're having for breakfast.

cyborg

20th July 2008, 12:32 AM

Rocks don't ponder their existence.
Rocks don't debate consciousness.
Why?

They can't ponder or debate anything.

That is easy.

Hope that helps.

That's simple.

Example 1:

Tech gives subject questionnaire.
Subject fills out questionnaire.
Tech removes higher brain functions of subject.
Subject still breathes and converts carbohydrates to fuel.
Tech gives subject questionnaire.
Subject cannot fill out questionnaire.
Conclusion: It is possible to measure whether consciousness exists or does not exist.
Example 2:

FAIL - I break the subject's hand. The subject cannot fill out questionnaire. The subject is therefore unconscious.

Various subjects have quantifiable brain damage.
The greater the damage the less cognitive ability the subjects display.
Conclusion: Consciousness can be quantified.

Now you're making consciousness synonymous with cognitive ability.

RandFan

20th July 2008, 12:39 AM

They can't ponder or debate anything. Why?

FAIL - I break the subject's hand. The subject cannot fill out questionnaire. The subject is therefore unconscious. Changing the protocols hardly changes the original experiment. If it did no experiment would be valid. There is no valid premise that consciousness is associated with the hand.

Now you're making consciousness synonymous with cognitive ability.Very good. Yes. Absolutely.

Piggy

20th July 2008, 12:40 AM

Well, yes. But you have to actually show that this conclusion is indeed false.

You know as well as I do that it is.

But a real what?

That's what we're trying to find out by investigating the brain.

We know, for example, that "conscious decision-making" is nothing more than a replay of decisions you have already made subconsciously. It's been amply demonstrated in rather elegant experiments that you begin to act before you are aware that you have decided to act.

And that's fine. More bits of the puzzle. (Although I wouldn't put everything quite as strongly as you have there.)

It still doesn't answer the question of how the brain creates the phenomenon of felt experience.

How is it that it is possible for awareness to follow action?

A trick of the brain, then. An illusion. An illusion is, after all, a real thing - it's just not what it looks like.

I can't go with that either, because "illusion" pre-supposes someone there to be fooled, but we're talking about the phenomenon of... well, being someone to begin with.

Consciousness is a real phenomenon. We all know that because we all experience it.

It's created by our brains somehow.

We may be very wrong about what we think it is, but we're not wrong that it's real. The mere fact that we have an opinion proves that it's real.

PixyMisa

20th July 2008, 12:41 AM

Wonder what we're having for breakfast.
Assuming that you're not claiming that breakfast is the critical difference, the microcontroller can certainly consider future events. So, try again.

cyborg

20th July 2008, 12:43 AM

Why?

There's no mechanism we could identify that that could reasonably said to be analogous to the things we label as "debate" and "ponder".

Changing the protocols hardly changes the original experiment. If it did no experiment would be valid. There is no valid premise that consciousness is associated with the hand.

Oh - and why is that then?

Very good. Yes. Absolutely.

Then your objection to our arguments of functionality is...?

RandFan

20th July 2008, 12:48 AM

To RandFan,

You posted something about V.S. Ramachandran about phantom-limbs and a wikipedia article about how a mirror-box helped deal with the problem. Does this have to do with consciousness, and if so, how? I didn't respond because it had to do with consciousness but instead I responded only because I was quite familiar with phantom limbs. That said I think it has a lot to do with consciousness but I'm at a loss as to how easily explain that it does in light of the discussion.

Have you read Ramachandran's book that deals with the subject?

PixyMisa

20th July 2008, 12:48 AM

You know as well as I do that it is.
No. Honestly, I don't.

And that's fine. More bits of the puzzle. (Although I wouldn't put everything quite as strongly as you have there.)

It still doesn't answer the question of how the brain creates the phenomenon of felt experience.

How is it that it is possible for awareness to follow action?
Reflection. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reflection_(computer_science))

I can't go with that either, because "illusion" pre-supposes someone there to be fooled
No, it doesn't. It's merely a process that mimics some characteristics of another process without having the underlying structure you would expect to find.

but we're talking about the phenomenon of... well, being someone to begin with.
So? Why can that not be an illusion? Particularly when you look at most philosophical approaches the the question - and indeed, this very thread - it's clear that "illusion" is a very apt description.

Consciousness is a real phenomenon. We all know that because we all experience it.
Mirages are real phenomena. Mirages are illusions.

It's created by our brains somehow.
That is certainly true.

We may be very wrong about what we think it is, but we're not wrong that it's real.
Which is precisely what "illusion" means.

The mere fact that we have an opinion proves that it's real.
That some process is happening, yes.

RandFan

20th July 2008, 12:50 AM

There's no mechanism we could identify that that could reasonably said to be analogous to the things we label as "debate" and "ponder". So it could be said that the rock is not conscious?

Oh - and why is that then? It is trivially true. Do you have a theory or evidence for hand consciousness that I'm not aware of?

Then your objection to our arguments of functionality is...? I think you are confusing me with someone else.

Piggy

20th July 2008, 01:06 AM

You make anything work as long as you get to define your words any way that pleases you.

No, you don't believe I could build a rudimentary <what you think is> consciousness. But notice that you have not defined <what you think is> consciousness well enough for me to say whether I could build a rudimentary one or not.

On the other hand, I am quite confident that I could build a rudimentary <what I think is> consciousness. Since I define consciousness to be reasoning, it is quite simple. It seems like Pixy thinks it would be simple as well. Who are you to tell us we are wrong when you don't even have a working definition?

Yeah, but that's because you've defined consciousness to mean something it has never meant. Which means, I guess, you're going to have to come up with a word for what is normally meant by "consciousness".

I've already given you the reasons why equating reasoning with consciousness must be incorrect. But you continue with it because it's convenient for you.

Consciousness is the sense that we all have of being an individual within the world. We don't have it all the time.

We certainly have it when we're wide awake. People have reported experiencing consciousness while paralyzed. Are you conscious when dreaming? Well, in the sense I'm talking about, I suppose we have to say that you are... so this definition is different from an everyday use of the word "conscious" in that sense.

All the evidence indicates that conscious experience is the outcome of the interactions among various brain systems.

You think so. Yet, you cannot explain why. On the other hand, those of us that think it is analagous can tell you exactly why we think so.

Oh, sure I can.

No radically new emergent phenomenon comes into play there.

You start with a basic chip and you move up. Ok. I don't see anything analogous to the rather startling and amazing developments we see when we go from ganglia to human brains. There's an entirely new phenomenon arising at one end of that spectrum.

Yeah I apologize for this, I suppose I have left out a few steps. Let me be more precise. Most importantly, I am using "reasoning" to mean "using facts to do something."

I can't quite figure out that definition, but I'll fly...

1) Build a robust reasoning system (where by robust I mean that there is no artificial limit to the facts the system can reason about).

2) Give the system a set of initial goals.

3) Give the system an initial set of facts about the world.

4) Give the system some sort of sensory device(s) that it can use to learn facts about the world.

5) Start the system.

Once the system is started, it will reason using the facts in it's knowledge base in order to do it's best to reach the set of goals it has been provided with. The claim that I am making (which is also the claim that the other HPC opponents here are making, in one way or another) is that what you perceive as "consciousness" is nothing more than your brain -- a reasoning system -- reasoning about the facts in your knowledge base.

Well, I don't find that very satisfying.

What we perceive as consciousness (I don't see the need for quotation marks) is our brains -- which are systems that do things with facts -- doing things with the facts in our knowledge bases.

Ok, well, I guess I can't argue with that (as long as I accept your definition of what a fact is).

But I don't even think that's a hypothesis.

I'm sorry, I just don't find your explanation to be at all explanatory of anything. That's all.

Sensory data comes in, gets added to your knowledge base, and you reason about that data. That is subjective experience.

No, it's not.

Our brains can do that without our being consciously aware of it.

There's no reason why we couldn't design a mechanical system to do those tasks, and it would work, but there would be no conscious experience.

I'm sorry, but you're leapfrogging over everything with this.

When the reasoning process includes the formalized facts representing "self", you experience self consciousness.

What makes you think that? In fact, what does that mean? What are "formalized facts representing 'self'"? What are "formalized facts", for that matter?

Is that really how the brain creates the sensation of awareness -- by referencing formalized facts, which include representations of self?

Piggy

20th July 2008, 01:07 AM

Assuming that you're not claiming that breakfast is the critical difference, the microcontroller can certainly consider future events. So, try again.

Depends on what you mean by "consider".

I gotta believe you're just yanking my chain here.

Are you honestly going to tell me that you don't really know that you have conscious experiences and a thermostat does not?

Piggy

20th July 2008, 01:10 AM

No. Honestly, I don't.

Sorry, I think that's baloney.

You don't think you're aware and a pencil isn't?

Of course you do. Don't try to pound moonbeams in my ear.

PixyMisa

20th July 2008, 02:11 AM

Depends on what you mean by "consider".

I gotta believe you're just yanking my chain here.

Are you honestly going to tell me that you don't really know that you have conscious experiences and a thermostat does not?
A thermostat is aware - it responds to external condictions according to an internal model of those conditions - but it is not self-aware, a critical distinction. There is no internal feedback mechanism that could allow it to examine its own behaviour - to consider, rather than just to react.

The $1.95 microcontroller does have that, though. As I said, it it quite capable of contextual analysis of its senses and memories, and changing its behaviour based on that. If that's not considering, I don't know what is.

PixyMisa

20th July 2008, 02:24 AM

Sorry, I think that's baloney.

You don't think you're aware and a pencil isn't?

You're arguing a different point. The original post by cyborg said this:

Didn't say that it would - but the first step is to be willing to seriously consider that what you call "consciousness" is a trick of your mind and a shadow that you are chasing - and will continue to chase - endlessly because it's not really there.

I do think that "illusion" is an apt description of consciousness, and that it is hard to understand what it really is because, first, it isn't what it would appear to be, and second, because it is what people have traditionally used to understand it.

Once you break away from that and start doing rigorous research, you find that, to take the example I used earlier, conscious decisions are not effectual at all, but merely reflect a reaction that is already taking place.

When you decide to raise your hand, you are already triggering the motor nerves to do so before you are aware that you have made any decision at all.

Obviously, the decision comes first, and then the motion. Obvious, but entirely wrong.

It's that sort of thing that blows the likes Skiba, Westprog, and Nick out of the water. The simple fact that you exhibit conscious behaviour, even to yourself, does not qualify you to make pronouncments thereon.

rocketdodger

20th July 2008, 02:26 AM

Yeah, but that's because you've defined consciousness to mean something it has never meant. Which means, I guess, you're going to have to come up with a word for what is normally meant by "consciousness".

Are the mentally handicapped "conscious?" Are dogs "conscious?" Are 5 year olds "conscious"? At what point does a being become "conscious?"

I've already given you the reasons why equating reasoning with consciousness must be incorrect. But you continue with it because it's convenient for you.

Your reasons were not valid, given the definition of "reasoning" I told you I am using. They were all examples of your brain using facts about the world to do something.

Consciousness is the sense that we all have of being an individual within the world.

What does that really mean? Do you have to have a sense of individuality to be conscious? Do you have to be aware of the world to be conscious?

What you are saying -- which is all you have ever said in this thread -- boils down to "consciousness is what it is to be like me when I consider myself conscious." That definition just isn't very useful at all.

No radically new emergent phenomenon comes into play there.

You start with a basic chip and you move up. Ok. I don't see anything analogous to the rather startling and amazing developments we see when we go from ganglia to human brains. There's an entirely new phenomenon arising at one end of that spectrum.

So between worms and dolphins there is very little change in phenomena, and then BAM humans are fully conscious?

You can go with that theory if you want, but it petty much contradicts every finding in animal behavioral science over the last 200 years.

What we perceive as consciousness (I don't see the need for quotation marks) is our brains -- which are systems that do things with facts -- doing things with the facts in our knowledge bases.

Ok, well, I guess I can't argue with that (as long as I accept your definition of what a fact is).

But I don't even think that's a hypothesis.

I'm sorry, I just don't find your explanation to be at all explanatory of anything. That's all.

Well I am sorry. I don't know what else anyone could tell you. A subjective experience is simply what it is like to be a reasoning system. That is all. There is nothing more to it. The difference between your subjective experience, and that of a monkey, and that of a dog, is simply the complexity of the reasoning system and the formalization of the facts representing "self."

No, it's not.

Why not? You insist on saying "no" over and over yet you refuse to give an argument as to why!

Our brains can do that without our being consciously aware of it.

Just because you are not aware of a process does not mean the process is irrelevant to your subjective experience. If a process contributes at all to your experience -- and it would seem that every neuron in your brain contributes to your experience in one way or another, if only just to keep your body alive -- then you are indirectly aware of it. That is to say, if it did not exist your experience would be different in some way.

There's no reason why we couldn't design a mechanical system to do those tasks, and it would work, but there would be no conscious experience.

You mean there would be no conscious experience like your conscious experience. So what? Would there be conscious experience like that of a monkey? Or a dog?

I'm sorry, but you're leapfrogging over everything with this.

No. There is nothing to be leapfrogged over. That is the whole point. That is what us supporters of the computational model are trying to tell you.

What makes you think that? In fact, what does that mean? What are "formalized facts representing 'self'"? What are "formalized facts", for that matter?

By "formalized" facts I mean facts that are available for conscious reasoning -- the "reasoning" most people think of when they think of "reasoning." You don't have a true sense of "self" until a certain age, at which point you can finally ask a question like "what am I and why am I here?" and really understand it. I don't remember what age that was for me but it must have been at least after 7 or 8 years old to be sure.

That is why I say "formalized" -- it implies that the set of facts in question has been defined well enough that your reasoning system can use them in higher order reasoning. In other words, what one would normally consider a "fact" in the common use of the term.

Note that you won't find "formalized fact" anywhere else because I just made the term up to help explain this stuff to you.

Is that really how the brain creates the sensation of awareness -- by referencing formalized facts, which include representations of self?

Awareness is just reasoning about any facts. What you seem to be talking about and calling "consciousness" is self awareness, which requires higher order reasoning, and hence formalized facts.

westprog

20th July 2008, 02:29 AM

But is experience anything more than a sufficiently complex computational machine responding to, interpreting, analysing and predicting internal state variables and external sensory input?

Certainly, no one would accuse a simple ALU of experiencing anything;

I think, from evidence on this thread, that you are wrong. There are people proposing exactly that.

but it doesn't follow from this that emotions aren't computational processes.

And it doesn't follow that they are.

westprog

20th July 2008, 02:34 AM

I just wanted to mention in passing that one of the interesting consequences of not being able to concretely define consciousness is that it is quite possible an entity sufficiently more complex than us could consider itself conscious and us nothing more than a thermostat.

Would then it's fellow entities argue with it about whether we were conscious as well, only at a different spot on the continuum of "consciousness," or would they all agree that we are nothing more than simple machines who react to input in a predictable way?

We are in exactly that position. We don't know if dolphins, or ants, or bacteria are conscious in any sense. The way we know that humans are conscious is because humans experience consciousness, and assert that they are conscious. We assume that e.g. apes are conscious in the same sense for behavioural reasons because they share much of the brain functions that humans have. It remains unproven, however.

If reacting to the environment is sufficient to claim consciousness, then everything in conscious. But clearly that's too big a brush.

rocketdodger

20th July 2008, 02:37 AM

Once you break away from that and start doing rigorous research, you find that, to take the example I used earlier, conscious decisions are not effectual at all, but merely reflect a reaction that is already taking place.

When you decide to raise your hand, you are already triggering the motor nerves to do so before you are aware that you have made any decision at all.

Obviously, the decision comes first, and then the motion. Obvious, but entirely wrong.

It's that sort of thing that blows the likes Skiba, Westprog, and Nick out of the water. The simple fact that you exhibit conscious behaviour, even to yourself, does not qualify you to make pronouncments thereon.

I wanted to point out that this finding was in complete agreement with the computational model of the brain as a reasoning system.

Such a model predicts that subjective awareness of the result of a decision ("experiencing a decision") will not occur until after the decision has already been made by the reasoning system.

westprog

20th July 2008, 02:39 AM

Now you're making consciousness synonymous with cognitive ability.

Very good. Yes. Absolutely.

When we view consciousness, it's always associated with cognitive ablility, and it's always associated with biological structures. It might be possible to have a form of consciousness that isn't associated with biological structure, or to isolate parts of the biological structure which are and aren't necessary, but that has not yet been done.

When we know how the brain creates consciousness, we might be able to claim that it can exist elsewhere. In the meantime, we haven't done so.

westprog

20th July 2008, 02:44 AM

No, it doesn't. It's merely a process that mimics some characteristics of another process without having the underlying structure you would expect to find.

No, that's not the case. Is there an illusion that the sun rotates around Mars? No, because there's nothing there to recieve an illusion. There's only an illusion when something has an inner belief which isn't matched by an external reality.

Can we fool a thermocouple with a match? No - the thermocouple will be responding to a real temperature, even if the room is still cold. There is no illusion. For that, you need a mind.

That is where the "Consciousness is an illusion" concept falls apart. A machine cannot experience an illusion. All experience is valid.

PixyMisa

20th July 2008, 02:46 AM

I wanted to point out that this finding was in complete agreement with the computational model of the brain as a reasoning system.
Yes, absolutely. It's such a great example, and such an elegant experiment. I'll have to dig out the link again.

PixyMisa

20th July 2008, 02:48 AM

No, that's not the case. Is there an illusion that the sun rotates around Mars?
Yes.

Can we fool a thermocouple with a match?
Yes.

As I said, I draw a considerable part of my income from curing machines of their illusions.

Dancing David

20th July 2008, 06:29 AM

Reasonable people can disagree. I don't think the slippery nature of defining consciousness should be any great cause of trepidation.

true, however there is a lot of baggage that goes along with the word consciousness, and a certain godofthegaps argument by some people. Not you specificaly.

Dancing David

20th July 2008, 06:32 AM

When we view consciousness, it's always associated with cognitive ablility, and it's always associated with biological structures. It might be possible to have a form of consciousness that isn't associated with biological structure, or to isolate parts of the biological structure which are and aren't necessary, but that has not yet been done.

When we know how the brain creates consciousness, we might be able to claim that it can exist elsewhere. In the meantime, we haven't done so.

When you demonstrate anything that looks like consciousness outside of a biological structure I will say more than it is a possibility. So far one without evidence, just speculation.

Dancing David

20th July 2008, 06:36 AM

That is where the "Consciousness is an illusion" concept falls apart. A machine cannot experience an illusion. All experience is valid.

Well all experience is real to the perceiver, is what i would say. There is confabulation of memory in head trauma and wrong memory without head trauma. Then there is the generation of the visual field in the blind spot, the generation of color in mosr of the visual field.

Optical illusions point out the nature of perceptions that are totaly there (IE real) but invalid.

I say that 'consciousness' is a construct to describe behavior, is a car fast?

Ichneumonwasp

20th July 2008, 07:19 AM

I can see that feelings guide the behaviour of less conscious creatures. Feelings save them from having to think, yes. But then, from what actually does the feeling itself derive? It seems to me that there must be some background level of actual, experiential sentience which can either be made more or less pleasureable.

What I also find interesting here is that feelings apparently have their roots in evolutionary development. An animal no longer has to die to be afraid of death. It has inherited a feeling of fear that will automatically arise in certain situations. So, not necessarily did only the strongest animals survive, it could equally be the ones that felt the most.

Still, none of this deals with the actual experience of sentience, except to say that it could have developed to further evolution.

A few ponderings.

Nick

You should also see where feelings guide the behavior/thoughts of humans. Without feeling, there is no value. Without value, there is no way to order importance in the world, no way to guide action, no meaning. Aside from bare logic, all of our thinking is intimately tied to feeling. If it were not, we would not be able to decide what to do in any situation because logic doesn't help most of the time. We know what happens when thought and feeling are dissociated -- folks can't function in the world. Their intelligence is left intact, but they can't work, can't figure out what to do in proper sequence because everything is essentially the same (this is not true in every aspect of life since there is not total separation of the two and feeling still persists, but certain types of thought process are divorced from it rendering these people incapable of functioning in the real world).

From what do feelings derive? No one thought that in the least important until the last few decades -- that is why knowledge of it lags behind. We all thought pure rationality was the 'hard problem' until computers came along. In the history of philosophy that was always the emphasis while emotion and feeling were considered base and 'animal'. We know that a properly functioning limbic system is absolutely crucial, and the wiring diagram for those structures will not be impossible to discover. But feeling and emotion are tough nuts to crack because they do not involve the brain alone -- the entire body is involved, with big relay loops from several internal organs, skin receptors, etc. The entire body plays a role in emotional life.

A background level of sentience necessary? Well, yes, of course. That is one of the big problems here. We tend to speak of very complex 'mental activities' as though there were one thing when they are not -- probably because we have a sense of being integrated wholes, which we are not. There is the issue of sentience, or awareness -- which is not one thing, but consists in body awareness and awareness of certain parts of space located in the parietal lobes and awareness of other 'things' located in the frontal lobes. The example of a thermostat has been offered repeatedly as an example that includes bare awareness/attention to one modality. We are more complex in that we have multimodal awareness (just an integration problem, but there are now several examples of cells that fire only with multimodal input) and we are aware of the fact that we are aware -- a complex issue that involves body awareness and a higher order form of awareness of body awareness (think mirror neurons for an example of how this might work). Then there is the issue of the feeling of sentience, which is also integrated into awareness itself, giving it a 'feeling of experience' -- which arises in the limbic system.

Simply because this is a complex system with multiple integrated 'parts' does not mean that it is not possible to build with neurons or some other form of technology. First, we must piece out the different component parts and not wax poetical about how impossible such a problem seems. That is the road the creationists take.

All of this has to do with the actual experience of sentience. The 'problem' is multimodal and should be treated as such. The experience (feeling) of sentience is one subset of the issue of feeling itself, which is a solvable problem. Sentience is a solvable problem. The feeling, or experience, of sentience is a solvable problem.

Beth

20th July 2008, 08:05 AM

Please look into the difference between induction and circularity. In this case, the only evidence you have for Y is X, and yet you claim that X is caused by Y.

Let me make sure I understand this. You are saying that the only evidence I have for consciousness is behavior (true) and therefore, I claim that behavior is caused by consciousness. (false).

I'm not claiming that all behavior is caused by conscious thought. Only some behavior. Do you disagree? Are you saying that conscious thought does not impact our behavior at all?

Note that we may plug in consciousness, god, or (ah, this brings me back) Upchurch's permission for Y; all are logically equivalent, and logically bankrupt. It may sound good, but it is fallacious.

May I conclude that Centigrade temperature causes Fahrenheit temperature? They are, after all, perfectly correlated! (please remember, correlation is non-directional; if correlation is evidence, then perhaps cancer causes smoking.)
Sigh. Not what I'm saying at all. If correlation is not evidence of causality, then why did we bother researching the how it is that smoking can cause cancer?

Correlation is not causation, true. But it is a very useful pointer to causal relationships. If you hypothesize a causal relationship (such as consciousness can cause changes in behavior), correlations can be interpreted as supporting evidence (not proof) that the causal relationship exists. This is how much scientific research works. But I think you knew that already.

I dare not disagree that it "seems clear to [you]". What I would say, though, is that thinking is a behavior, and thus every bit in need of an explanation. Absolutely! But what I was asking was if it seems to you that conscious thought can affect behavior on a publically observable level or if you disagree and think that it cannot.

When you decide to raise your hand, you are already triggering the motor nerves to do so before you are aware that you have made any decision at all.

Obviously, the decision comes first, and then the motion. Obvious, but entirely wrong.

It's that sort of thing that blows the likes Skiba, Westprog, and Nick out of the water.

Actually, no it doesn't. According to Penrose, who was referenced earlier in this thread, consciousness is dependent on quantum interactions in the nervous system. If this theory is true, then the timing of the motions and the conscious thoughts is not an issue since it is well established that quatum interactions are not limited to linear progression through time in the forward direction.

Just a theory, of course. It's entirely unproven. My point is only that the evidence you cite does not blow the alternative theory out of the water as you claim.

calebprime

20th July 2008, 08:25 AM

Mercutio

20th July 2008, 09:12 AM

When we view consciousness, it's always associated with cognitive ablility, and it's always associated with biological structures. It might be possible to have a form of consciousness that isn't associated with biological structure, or to isolate parts of the biological structure which are and aren't necessary, but that has not yet been done.

When we know how the brain creates consciousness, we might be able to claim that it can exist elsewhere. In the meantime, we haven't done so.We could view flight as always associated with feathers, and consequently deny flight in insects and airplanes.

"Associated with biological structures" kinda cuts thermostats off from contention without seeing what they can do. (and, speaking as a behaviorist, don't get me started with "cognitive ability"...) :D

Mercutio

20th July 2008, 09:16 AM

You should also see where feelings guide the behavior/thoughts of humans. Without feeling, there is no value. Without value, there is no way to order importance in the world, no way to guide action, no meaning. [snip]

Much as I hate to disagree with Ichy, I would once again remind us that there is a perfectly legitimate alternative view, in which feelings are part of the behavior of humans (as is thinking, of course), and are thus something to be explained, rather than an explanation themselves.

Also, I would argue against "without feeling, there is no value". There may not be our value, but I think your statement goes too far. The character of Spock was, after all, written by humans.

Piggy

20th July 2008, 09:25 AM

Reflection. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reflection_(computer_science))

That's likely to be part of the solution, one of the properties of the conscious brain.

Doesn't mean that any system which uses it will be conscious, or that it's the whole ball of wax.

Mercutio

20th July 2008, 09:29 AM

Let me make sure I understand this. You are saying that the only evidence I have for consciousness is behavior (true) and therefore, I claim that behavior is caused by consciousness. (false).
Are the words in parentheses your summation of my thought, or your own evaluation?

I'm not claiming that all behavior is caused by conscious thought. Only some behavior. Do you disagree? It does not matter if it is all or some--what matters is that for those behaviors, the only evidence you have for the alleged cause is the observed effect. And nothing more. Three thousand years ago, the same behavior, for the same reasons, was attributed to the actions of the gods, every bit as logically.
Are you saying that conscious thought does not impact our behavior at all? All of our behavior changes our environment, and impacts our behavior. That is trivially true. There is nothing special about private behaviors that somehow makes them the causal, and the public the caused, behaviors.

Sigh. Not what I'm saying at all. If correlation is not evidence of causality, then why did we bother researching the how it is that smoking can cause cancer? Ice cream sales and homicide rates are correlated. The fact that two things are correlated tells us nothing about whether X causes Y, Y causes X, or Z causes both X and Y (or that it is an uncaused relationship). If correlation was evidence of causality, we would not have had to bother researching the relationship! (The tobacco companies suggested that a genetic predisposition to enjoy the flavor of tobacco was linked to a predisposition to form tumors, and the smoking itself was irrelevant. Logically, this would certainly explain the correlation.)

Correlation is not causation, true. But it is a very useful pointer to causal relationships. If you hypothesize a causal relationship (such as consciousness can cause changes in behavior), correlations can be interpreted as supporting evidence (not proof) that the causal relationship exists. This is how much scientific research works. But I think you knew that already. Of course it is a pointer. But sciences differ in how much stock they put in correlations, without the actual manipulation of an independent variable.

Absolutely! But what I was asking was if it seems to you that conscious thought can affect behavior on a publically observable level or if you disagree and think that it cannot.
Certainly it can. As can public behavior affect private behavior, which has been amply demonstrated. And, of course, other environmental changes affect both public and private behavior. If someone wants to claim that a particular subset of private behavior is essential to this process, they have their work cut out for them.

Actually, no it doesn't. According to Penrose, who was referenced earlier in this thread, consciousness is dependent on quantum interactions in the nervous system. If this theory is true, then the timing of the motions and the conscious thoughts is not an issue since it is well established that quatum interactions are not limited to linear progression through time in the forward direction.
Near as I can tell, Penrose assumes a causal consciousness, notes that the timing as observed by Libet is backwards given that assumption, and concludes that it must be a quantum thing, since backward causation is not taboo there. I have read quite a bit of Penrose, and there is a reason he is not a major figure in the peer-reviewed journals of neuropsych research.

Just a theory, of course. It's entirely unproven. My point is only that the evidence you cite does not blow the alternative theory out of the water as you claim.Not just unproven, but unsupported.

Piggy

20th July 2008, 09:29 AM

No, it doesn't. It's merely a process that mimics some characteristics of another process without having the underlying structure you would expect to find.

Here's why it doesn't make sense to say that consciousness is an illusion we experience....

If "consciousness" is an "illusion" that "I" am "experiencing", then if we explain what's behind the illusion of consciousness, we're still left with this "I" who "experiences" it to explain.

See what I mean?

It actually introduces an unnecessary problem.

To say that our consciousnesses are illusions is to say that our sense of self and our consious awareness are 2 different things, that the phenomenon of experience and the identity of the experiencer are 2 different things, and they're not.

Consciousness = experience = awareness = I.

PixyMisa

20th July 2008, 09:34 AM

That's likely to be part of the solution, one of the properties of the conscious brain.

Doesn't mean that any system which uses it will be conscious, or that it's the whole ball of wax.
Actually, I do consider any system which uses it to be conscious, by definition, and that it is therefore the whole ball of wax. The rest is just garnish.

(Why you'd want to garnish a ball of wax is left for another thread.)

It comes back to my question - what is there about human consciousness that is missing from (this time) a reflective computer program?

Piggy

20th July 2008, 09:37 AM

Which is precisely what "illusion" means.

No, that is not precisely what it means, and this is an important point.

Just because we're "wrong about what something is" doesn't mean it's an illusion.

Example: I get a watch as a gift and I wonder how long the battery will last. I love the watch and wear it all day every day. After several years, it's still going strong. One day I'm in a jewelry shop and figure, why not go ahead and buy a battery, so I ask for one. The jeweler looks at the watch and says, "That watch has quartz movement, it doesn't use a battery".

I was wrong about what was making the watch work, but there was no "illusion" involved.

So let's look at the mirage example you gave.

Yes, mirages are real, and yes, mirages are illusions. And as I was trying to point out, what's necessary here is for there to be an experiencer, and for the experience and the external reality to be unmatched in such a way that reality appears to be other than what it is.

That is not the case with consciousness. If it were, I'd have to invent a little man in my head to be the one being fooled by the illusion of my conscious awareness.

You can't separate the conscious experience and the conscious experiencer.

PixyMisa

20th July 2008, 09:39 AM

Here's why it doesn't make sense to say that consciousness is an illusion we experience....

If "consciousness" is an "illusion" that "I" am "experiencing", then if we explain what's behind the illusion of consciousness, we're still left with this "I" who "experiences" it to explain.
No we're not. That is the illusion.

See what I mean?

It actually introduces an unnecessary problem.No. It doesn't introduce an additional problem; nor does it deny the problem. It addresses the nature of the problem. Consciousness is real, but it is not what it appears to be.

Indeed, we know for a fact (bringing up again the experiment on conscious decisions) that at least some aspects of consciousness are illusory. You don't actually consciously decide to do things. You think you do, but you don't. It's (drum roll please) an illusion.

To say that our consciousnesses are illusions is to say that our sense of self and our consious awareness are 2 different things, that the phenomenon of experience and the identity of the experiencer are 2 different things, and they're not.No. It doesn't say any of that.

PixyMisa

20th July 2008, 09:41 AM

And as I was trying to point out, what's necessary here is for there to be an experiencer, and for the experience and the external reality to be unmatched in such a way that reality appears to be other than what it is.
Nope.

Piggy

20th July 2008, 09:43 AM

Actually, I do consider any system which uses it to be conscious, by definition, and that it is therefore the whole ball of wax. The rest is just garnish.

(Why you'd want to garnish a ball of wax is left for another thread.)

It comes back to my question - what is there about human consciousness that is missing from (this time) a reflective computer program?

Same thing. Wondering what it's going to have for breakfast.

I agree that, in theory, it should be possible for us eventually to develop artificial consciousness.

But we ain't there yet, and I can't get on the bandwagon for your solution -- I'm a skeptic, after all -- unless you can show me why I should believe that the simple principle of reflection will get us there, and explain how it will get us there.

And you can't do that.

If you could, you'd be winning valuable prizes.

We know that our brains do produce this phenomenon of feeling aware in the world. We know it's not just the neurons firing. Apparently, it involves the interaction of brain systems and functions.

The "difficult problem" (as Darat has aptly tagged my subtopic) is trying to answer how that happens.

Calling it an "illusion" and pointing to simple principles like "reflection" doesn't get us an answer, although I think reflection is a valuable concept. (Illusion is not.)

Piggy

20th July 2008, 09:49 AM

No we're not. That is the illusion.

No. It doesn't introduce an additional problem; nor does it deny the problem. It addresses the nature of the problem. Consciousness is real, but it is not what it appears to be.

Indeed, we know for a fact (bringing up again the experiment on conscious decisions) that at least some aspects of consciousness are illusory. You don't actually consciously decide to do things. You think you do, but you don't. It's (drum roll please) an illusion.

No. It doesn't say any of that.

You're just wrong about this. I don't know any other way to put it.

You're correct that producing illusions is one of the things our consciousness does.

But it makes no sense for me to say "my consciousness is just an illusion" because -- as I've pointed out -- I then have to answer the question "who was fooled by the illusion?"

If I say "I was", then now I need to go figure out what this "I" is that got fooled. I need to answer the question: how is it that consciousness could produce an illusion which was perceived by this "I"?

It's the little man in the mental theater that Dennett cautions us against. He creeps in if you're not diligent.

Conscious awareness includes illusions.

We don't know yet how the brain produces consciousness.

But it makes no sense to say that my conscious awareness is an illusion I experience.

I = my conscious awareness.

Piggy

20th July 2008, 09:50 AM

Nope.

Yep.

Without those elements, you don't have an "illusion".

Piggy

20th July 2008, 09:53 AM

Piggy

20th July 2008, 09:59 AM

A thermostat is aware - it responds to external condictions according to an internal model of those conditions - but it is not self-aware, a critical distinction. There is no internal feedback mechanism that could allow it to examine its own behaviour - to consider, rather than just to react.

The $1.95 microcontroller does have that, though. As I said, it it quite capable of contextual analysis of its senses and memories, and changing its behaviour based on that. If that's not considering, I don't know what is.

But "contextual analysis of its senses and memories" etc. isn't awareness.

You call it "considering", well fine, that's ok, I guess.

But it's qualitatively different from the kind of considering I do when I decide what movie to see.

It may very well be true that my conscious mind is not doing the deciding, that it just appears that way, and I'm really just "along for the ride", so to speak.

But that does not change the fact that this experience of feeling like I'm deciding is an amazing phenomenon that we don't have an adequate explanation for and which we have absolutely no reason to believe is present in a thermostat.

Get serious.

You can't simply say, well the brain is doing X, Y, and Z -- among God knows how many other things -- when it's conscious, and this little device also does X, Y, and Z, therefore it must be aware.

I'm sorry, but that doesn't wash.

RandFan

20th July 2008, 10:00 AM

true, however there is a lot of baggage that goes along with the word consciousness, and a certain godofthegaps argument by some people. Not you specificaly.Absolutely. And I realize that is a significant problem.

Piggy

20th July 2008, 10:05 AM

When you decide to raise your hand, you are already triggering the motor nerves to do so before you are aware that you have made any decision at all.

Obviously, the decision comes first, and then the motion. Obvious, but entirely wrong.

I hope I've explained by now why this is irrelevant.

Illusions are part and parcel of conscious awareness, and some of them are profound -- in fact, so profound that the mind rebels at them.

But saying that consciousness IS an illusion goes farther, and it introduces the problem of the man in the mental theater.

Piggy

20th July 2008, 10:08 AM

Are the mentally handicapped "conscious?" Are dogs "conscious?" Are 5 year olds "conscious"? At what point does a being become "conscious?"

Those are excellent and productive questions.

I'd say yes for all the above.

I have no idea whether there is a "point", a kind of phase shift, where consciousness appears, or if it's fuzzier than that, like the boundary between atmosphere and space, or language and dialect.

We'll need to know a lot more about how the brain produces consciousness, I think, before we can make meaningful guesses at the answer.

Piggy

20th July 2008, 10:11 AM

Your reasons were not valid, given the definition of "reasoning" I told you I am using. They were all examples of your brain using facts about the world to do something.

Yes, but I've already told you I don't accept your definitions because they are self-serving tautologies.

You're still back where you started: brain "uses facts" to do something; brain produces the phenomenon of conscious awareness; therefore, anything which "uses facts" to do something can be called "aware".

That answers nothing and it's not even logically sound. So it's both incorrect and trivial.

leon_heller

20th July 2008, 10:13 AM

Those are excellent and productive questions.

I'd say yes for all the above.

I have no idea whether there is a "point", a kind of phase shift, where consciousness appears, or if it's fuzzier than that, like the boundary between atmosphere and space, or language and dialect.

We'll need to know a lot more about how the brain produces consciousness, I think, before we can make meaningful guesses at the answer.

What evidence do you have that they are "conscious"?

Leon

RandFan

20th July 2008, 10:15 AM

Bottom line, PixyMisa, you want to call consciousness an "illusion", you go right ahead.

Hopefully some of the others on this thread can explain better than I can why this way of looking at it leads to intractable problems and introduces unnecessary (non)entities.

(Anybody care to chime in?)

But I reject that definition for reasons I've already explained. I agree with you but it's not a fight I care to pick. Like you, when the subject comes up I point out the same criticisms you do but beyond that I'm happy to concede the premise for sake of argument. Pixy is free to call it an illusion. Having done so Pixy has not really said anything. One might as well have said that flight is not a ton of bricks or that flight is not invisible pink unicorns. I'll go one step further. I'm willing to concede that reality is also an illusion. So what? So what if consciousness or reality or both are illusions. Accepting either premise gets us no where. Those like Pixy who think it somehow explains consciousness or obviates HPC are in effect saying that it is turtles all the way down.

Piggy

20th July 2008, 10:24 AM

What does that really mean? Do you have to have a sense of individuality to be conscious? Do you have to be aware of the world to be conscious?

What you are saying -- which is all you have ever said in this thread -- boils down to "consciousness is what it is to be like me when I consider myself conscious." That definition just isn't very useful at all.

It's actually quite useful, although I wouldn't put it the way you've put it here.

First, I'd ditch the "when I consdier myself conscious" part.

As for the questions, no, I don't think a sense of individuality is actually necessary -- I can imagine certain animals being conscious and never having a sense of self, and it seems reasonable that a sense of individuality would evolve after other conscious functions such as emotional motivation (as IchWasp pointed out) -- and no, I don't think one would have to be aware of the world to be conscious, although I seriously doubt any being would evolve that way... but you can imagine a disease which shuts down the senses, for example, while leaving the mind aware of itself, awake.

So now I have a question for you.

Imagine yourself with such a disease. You knew that your sense of taste, smell, touch, sight, hearing -- and eventually proprioception -- would all eventually stop working, but (according to brain scans of past victims of this disease) it appears that you'd still be aware of your own thoughts.

Would that be terrifying to you?

It'd scare the hell outta me. Why? Because my brain isn't just a processor. It also produces this bizarre phenomenon of "feeling like myself".

The cat that's asleep on my desk... does she ever have a thought analogous to "I"? Maybe not. But I do think she's conscious because how she behaves is not all that different from how I behave -- just a lot more emotional -- and we both have mammal brains.

But even without that higher-level self-conscious and precise sense of "I", there's still something important that's operating when she's awake, and which is operating when she's dreaming but in a different way, which isn't operating when she's profoundly asleep or sedated.

That's conscious awareness.

One of the problems is that we have to still be little fuzzy about it until we do know more about the mechanism that makes this happen. Only when we know more will we be able to produce more precise definitions.

Piggy

20th July 2008, 10:30 AM

What evidence do you have that they are "conscious"?

Well, I was a 5 year old, and I had conscious experiences, so there's that.

I know mentally handicapped people, and their brains seem to be doing the same thing mine is doing on that count, and no research has ever indicated otherwise, so I'm not going to leap to some unfounded conclusion that they don't have conscious experiences -- unless you accept the argument that Terri Schiavo was "mentally handicapped".

As for dogs, I believe that they do have conscious experience because they behave as if they do and their brains have all the basic hardwiring that ours do which should be sufficient. If I turn out to be wrong, I'll be surprised.

leon_heller

20th July 2008, 10:32 AM

Well, I was a 5 year old, and I had conscious experiences, so there's that.

I know mentally handicapped people, and their brains seem to be doing the same thing mine is doing on that count, and no research has ever indicated otherwise, so I'm not going to leap to some unfounded conclusion that they don't have conscious experiences -- unless you accept the argument that Terri Schiavo was "mentally handicapped".

As for dogs, I believe that they do have conscious experience because they behave as if they do and their brains have all the basic hardwiring that ours do which should be sufficient. If I turn out to be wrong, I'll be surprised.

I think I'm conscious as well, but I don't have any evidence that anyone or anything else is. Our consciousness might just be an illusion, as has been suggested previously. Susan Blackmore has a nice article about this:

http://www.susanblackmore.co.uk/journalism/ns02.htm

Leon

Piggy

20th July 2008, 10:34 AM

So between worms and dolphins there is very little change in phenomena, and then BAM humans are fully conscious?

You can go with that theory if you want, but it petty much contradicts every finding in animal behavioral science over the last 200 years.

I don't mind debating with you, but I draw the line when you simply invent things and put them in my mouth.

Elephants and gorillas, for example, may have as strong a sense of self as we do.

If Dennett is right, earthworms and grasshoppers are not conscious, but field mice likely do have a rudimentary consciousness without a sense of "I".

Piggy

20th July 2008, 10:38 AM

Why not? You insist on saying "no" over and over yet you refuse to give an argument as to why!

You're the one making the claim. There's no reason to believe that what you say is true. It does not appear to have any basis in observation, and your logic is faulty.

SirPhilip

20th July 2008, 10:39 AM

http://img395.imageshack.us/img395/1994/survivalsustenancereprobf8.jpg

You'd think there would be more damn engineers present here to solve astonishingly complicated scientific and philosophical problems like this. Ok. Whoever grasps the essential purpose of reasoning skills square survival square the concept of personal identity in humans gets early recess.

RandFan

20th July 2008, 10:40 AM

I think I'm conscious as well, but I don't have any evidence that anyone or anything else is.Really? There is no evidence whatsoever that you could use to infer that others have the same consciousness as you? What about behavior?

Our consciousness might just be an illusion, as has been suggested previously. Which would lead us to conclude what? What insight does calling consciousness an illusion give us? How does real consciousness differ from illusory consciousness?

Piggy

20th July 2008, 10:41 AM

Just because you are not aware of a process does not mean the process is irrelevant to your subjective experience. If a process contributes at all to your experience -- and it would seem that every neuron in your brain contributes to your experience in one way or another, if only just to keep your body alive -- then you are indirectly aware of it. That is to say, if it did not exist your experience would be different in some way.

Ok, that's enough. I've had it with your self-serving definitions.

So now, somehow, I'm "indirectly aware" of every neuron in my brain.

Ok, Humpty Dumpty, if you want that kind of discussion, you can have it with someone else.

We disagree on the fundamentals. No sense dragging it out over the details.

Piggy

20th July 2008, 10:46 AM

All of this has to do with the actual experience of sentience. The 'problem' is multimodal and should be treated as such. The experience (feeling) of sentience is one subset of the issue of feeling itself, which is a solvable problem. Sentience is a solvable problem. The feeling, or experience, of sentience is a solvable problem.

Aye.

rocketdodger

20th July 2008, 10:52 AM

But it's qualitatively different from the kind of considering I do when I decide what movie to see.

We don't think it is. You seem to insist that it is. Yet you still haven't shown this to be true. That is the whole point of this argument!

leon_heller

20th July 2008, 10:56 AM

Really? There is no evidence whatsoever that you could use to infer that others have the same consciousness as you? What about behavior?

Which would lead us to conclude what? What insight does calling consciousness an illusion give us? How does real consciousness differ from illusory consciousness?

How do you infer consciousness from observed behaviours.

See http://www.susanblackmore.co.uk/journalism/ns02.htm

Leon

Piggy

20th July 2008, 10:56 AM

We don't think it is. You seem to insist that it is. Yet you still haven't shown this to be true. That is the whole point of this argument!

Do you really not believe that there is a qualitatively different phenomenon going on when you decide what movie to go to and when a thermostat kicks in?

You believe that either the thermostat has some sort of awareness, or that you don't?

Seriously?

Sounds to me like you're just choosing to ignore the phenomenon that needs explaining, in order to make it seem as though you have an explanation.

RandFan

20th July 2008, 11:00 AM

How do you infer consciousness from observed behaviours. What is the cause of your behavior? Do you behave the same when you are unconscious as when you are conscious?

http://www.susanblackmore.co.uk/journalism/ns02.htm

I posted this link further up the thread. What do you think its significance is?

Piggy

20th July 2008, 11:06 AM

Here's a very interesting little clip that illustrates the difference between computation and sentience (thanks for the word, Wasp ;)):

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It's about Marvin, who was robbed of emotional sentience by a stroke.

This video points out why PixyMisa is right about awareness following reaction, but also why it is wrong to say that the computation is consciousness, because not all of it is, and some higher-order requirements are involved as well.

Take at look at the way information is routed. There's a feedback mechanism to the brain systems that generate this experience of sentience.

If the stroke had been more extensive, and also cut off those systems from feedback about bodily senses, Marvin would have been alive but unaware of his body. I don't know if he would still dream.

rocketdodger

20th July 2008, 11:18 AM

We'll need to know a lot more about how the brain produces consciousness, I think, before we can make meaningful guesses at the answer.

We do, and we can!

You are being extremely unreasonable with regard to what constitutes "knowing about how the brain produces consciousness." We already know a lot.

The explanation you seem to be searching for doesn't exist -- that is the whole point of the computational model. "I" is nothing more than what it is to be computation at the level of complexity of your brain. It "feels" special because it is special -- no other computational machine is you. You attribute the same feelings to other humans (although you can't know if they feel like you feel) merely because they behave the same as you. You don't attribute those feelings to a computer, or a worm, because they don't behave like you. That is it. It is just that simple. You have no other basis to claim that a computer or a worm is not conscious, because you are not them, and conscious experience requires the subjective.

Nick227

20th July 2008, 11:19 AM

Yes, but that's because organic conscious beings developed through evolution driven by natural selection.

There's no particular reason why an ACE would have any emotional reaction at all to the prospect of being shut off.

In other words, fear of death is a product of evolution, not necessarily an inherent feature of conscious awareness.

Well, fear is an emotion and, to me, emotions are a feature of conscious awareness. It's quite possible that you can't separate consciousness from evolution.

Nick

Ichneumonwasp

20th July 2008, 11:25 AM

Much as I hate to disagree with Ichy, I would once again remind us that there is a perfectly legitimate alternative view, in which feelings are part of the behavior of humans (as is thinking, of course), and are thus something to be explained, rather than an explanation themselves.

Wouldn't be disagreeing with me; in fact that is part of what I'm trying to get across.

Also, I would argue against "without feeling, there is no value". There may not be our value, but I think your statement goes too far. The character of Spock was, after all, written by humans.

Yes, I should have said 'human value', since emotion/feeling is simply the way we are 'programmed' to do it. There are other ways to assign value, but we don't recognize them as 'human', so they are not particulary important for descriptions of human consciousness. Part of the reason why people have difficulty seeing Pixy's example of a microprocessor is because it uses an entirely different means of assigning value, but it certainly does so. There is also no 'motivation' as we recognize it in such systems, no self-motivation (to use dualistic language), so they don't look like human forms of consciousness.

Spock was one of the more emotional of all the characters on Star Trek. He dripped in emotion. So did Data. Otherwise, we would not have liked them so much.

rocketdodger

20th July 2008, 11:27 AM

Yes, but I've already told you I don't accept your definitions because they are self-serving tautologies.

You're still back where you started: brain "uses facts" to do something; brain produces the phenomenon of conscious awareness; therefore, anything which "uses facts" to do something can be called "aware".

That answers nothing and it's not even logically sound. So it's both incorrect and trivial.

No, piggy. It is logically sound because neither you, I, nor anyone else can come up with a criteria for awareness besides simply using facts to do something.

If you tell me that a rectangle has four right angles, and that a square has four right angles, and that is all you can tell me, then logically speaking a rectangle is a square. It is not until you provide the additional criteria that one must have sides of equal length while the other may not that they become different.

You have already said that you think dogs and monkeys are conscious. What about a ferret? A rabit? A frog? You can't come up with any sort of objective delineation other than by using a specific instance you want to compare to. That is why I keep harping that the only definition of consciousness that has meaning is "awareness like the awareness a normal human has." And as far as we can tell, the difference between that kind of awareness and the kind a gorilla has is simply quantitative.

Piggy

20th July 2008, 11:33 AM

We do, and we can!

You are being extremely unreasonable with regard to what constitutes "knowing about how the brain produces consciousness." We already know a lot.

We do know a lot. What we know is amazing. But we don't yet know exactly how it's done.

And we don't know that any and every robust reasoning system must be sentient.

The explanation you seem to be searching for doesn't exist -- that is the whole point of the computational model. "I" is nothing more than what it is to be computation at the level of complexity of your brain. It "feels" special because it is special -- no other computational machine is you. You attribute the same feelings to other humans (although you can't know if they feel like you feel) merely because they behave the same as you. You don't attribute those feelings to a computer, or a worm, because they don't behave like you. That is it. It is just that simple. You have no other basis to claim that a computer or a worm is not conscious, because you are not them, and conscious experience requires the subjective.

Well, the first part of that is correct, but the second part is not.

It's not just the behavior that leads me to conclude that other people are sentient and that worms and computers are not.

It's the wiring.

The kind of complex processing and routing that was going on in Marvin's brain... that's not going on in a worm, and I don't think it's going on in a computer, either.

If you want consciousness, you have to wire for consciousness.

There is absolutely no reason to believe that any old system you wire up will be sentient.

We don't yet know how those brain systems -- like the ones that process emotional awareness from the video -- do what they do and generate this sense of being in the world that we all have.

That's the difficult problem: figuring out exactly how it happens.