On Consciousness

[Piggy]

Originally Posted by Mr. Scott

It's as if you didn't read my refutation of Massimo's comparison of consciousness to sugar, or you didn't understand it.

Photosynthesis outputs sugar.

What does the brain output?

How is consciousness like sugar?

How is sugar like hauling brush to the dump?

It's not.

But neither can be accomplished by logic alone... in fact, no real-world phenomenon can be.

There's no reason to believe -- and every reason not to believe -- that colors and sounds and smells and pain and pleasure and all the other conscious behaviors can be performed by logic alone without real work.

[Piggy]

Originally Posted by rocketdodger

They wired up some artificial neural networks according to a hypothesized pathway that they thought might be part of how the mamallian brain controls motor movements via imagination, hooked the simulation up to a robot arm with a camera sensor, and it worked. The robot imagined that if it turned a certain way it would see an object of a color that it "liked" and because of that imagined reward it actually turned.

Great post. I don't have time to respond now, but I will when I get back later today.

I think we can actually use this post to point out where some of our differences aren't, and where they are.

More later.

[rocketdodger]

Originally Posted by Piggy

"Information" is a term we can use in a variety of ways, as you know.

In the Wolfram sense, it's totally equivalent to physical activity and properties.

If you use the term to refer to degrees of entropy, then the equivalence is not complete.

If you use the term in such a way that it allows an informational "world of the simulation" to exist which can (and must) be described in radically different ways from the physical activity of the simulator -- as y'all do -- then you (not I) have divorced the information from the physical behavior in a radical way.

If we use the term "information" in the sense of something that can be encoded and decoded, then that information becomes independent of physical reality in very important ways.

I can send the same message to you -- say, "Help!" -- using the motion of flags, or an arrangement of rocks on a beach, or by flashing lights in certain patterns, or by causing air to bounce inside your ears in a particular way. That means that there must be a "difference between information and physical behavior" when we're talking about this kind of information, or else all those different physical set-ups couldn't carry the same kind of information.

However, there's a caveat when talking about this last sort of information, because it requires an encoder and decoder.

Someone who doesn't speak the same language as me (whether that's English or semaphore) won't get the message, unless they use other shared information such as our human understanding of what a frantic cry sounds like, which is another kind of encoding and decoding.

In other words, there actually is no "information" in the rocks or the lights or the flags or the air, just like there's no pain in the knife.

So we can talk about the brain objectively (without inserting any encoder and decoder) in the Wolfram sense, and we can speak metaphorically about "information in the brain" when we're really referring to the brute physical activity, and we can talk about information exchanged in a system that contains more than one brain.

But to talk about this last kind of information existing objectively in the isolated brain, well, that makes very little sense.

I'm just so tired of having to wade through walls of text in order to make sense of your responses to what should be extremely simple questions. You insist on smothering people with words, typically when you are just wrong about something.

Piggy, you can't divorce information from physical behavior because everything is physical behavior.

You are as wrong as wrong can be. "We" don't consider the world of the simulation to be different from the physical activity of the simulator, I have no idea why you keep saying this even though we keep saying we don't mean it. How stubborn does someone need to be to repeatedly tell multiple people that they mean something other than what they explicitly say they mean?

[rocketdodger]

Originally Posted by Piggy

But neither can be accomplished by logic alone... in fact, no real-world phenomenon can be.

There's no reason to believe -- and every reason not to believe -- that colors and sounds and smells and pain and pleasure and all the other conscious behaviors can be performed by logic alone without real work.

Here you go again -- what the heck are you talking about? Who has ever said that logic can be performed without real work?

The behavior of making absurd stuff up and then refuting it just so you can say "see, I'm right" is less than useful.

Here, let me try it: There's no reason to believe that you can get green paint by mixing red and black paint.

By saying that, I implicitly suggest that you are stupid enough to think that the opposite is true, eh? Why else would I have said it, if it didn't need to be said, eh? And now anyone reading the posts might think I am a little bit smarter than you, because something I said in a post is obviously true. I obviously have a grasp on reality because I said something obviously true ( never mind that nobody ever said the opposite ). Hooray for me!!

[dlorde]

Originally Posted by Piggy

If you're talking about the IP sense of "compute" then the outcome of any computation is symbolic, and requires a reader.

What, exactly, do you mean by a 'reader'? One can hook up a symbol manipulating computer to physical effectors and have its computations cause physical actions. I'm happy to accept that the interface to an effector is a 'reader' (although 'interpreter' seems more precise), but it leads me to query why you say the outcome of a computation requires a reader. Computations directed to controlling effectors require those effectors in order to cause an effect, if you remove the effector interface the computation can still be done, although to no useful effect.

In the case of consciousness, who or what is the 'reader'? It seems clear, as evidenced by 'locked-in' syndrome, that consciousness doesn't require physical effectors, but seems able to be maintained effectively in isolation. I can only think that by your requirement above, consciousness must be reading itself - a clear expression of SRIP

[rocketdodger]

Originally Posted by Piggy

I've never said we know nothing about it, of course.

You have said we don't know much, in a number of ways, a number of different times.

Originally Posted by Piggy

And although there are some hypotheses being tossed around, the focus at the moment is just to continue investigating NCCs and see where it goes, which is pretty raw stuff.

Forgive me if I don't take your word for it.

Originally Posted by Piggy

Besides, I quoted them directly so the viewpoints expressed are theirs.

No offense, but I certainly think you are guilty of quote-mining in almost every single case. I absolutely cannot stand quote mining ...

Originally Posted by Piggy

Anyway let's see if the folks I cited have done any actual research....

You realize that it is a double edged sword, and if you are not good at swordplay ( I don't think you are ), you are more likely to hurt yourself, right?

Originally Posted by Piggy

Christof Koch of Caltech, author of Biophysics of Computation: Information Processing in Single Neurons -- his research focuses on visual systems, information theory, and questions of machine sentience.

Ok, he definitely sounds like he would know a thing or two. I stand corrected on that front.

On the flipside, just a cursory glance at his research page should convince anyone capable of reading English that he feels the current state of research is beyond "we don't know much," as you claim he would say. He certainly doesn't seem to be just slogging through NCC data with little clue as to how to put it all together.

Originally Posted by Piggy

Ned Block from NYU -- you might be interested in his panel appearance along with Koch and info-theorist Giulio Tononi in the "Consciousness and Intelligence" seminar of last year's "Brains, Minds, and Machines" symposium at MIT, which btw I think demonstrates the actual current intersection of neurobiology and info theory.

I disagree with you on this one. This guy is neither a programmer nor a biologist. He is a philosopher and psychologist. Him saying "we don't know much" carries about as much weight with me as Romney saying he could fix global warming.

Originally Posted by Piggy

Bernard Baars of Berkeley who's done all kinds of things.

If you think I don't know about Baars then you really are crazy, especially since the global workspace model is used all over the place in the world of machine consciousness, in fact I am trying to get my colleagues to agree to experiment using it for game AI.

But here is the thing, piggy -- he hasn't actually written a paper since 2002, according to that cv page of his. And here is another thing, piggy -- he is a really smart guy whose position changes over time, you can see that in the history of his work.

So are you going to sit there and honestly tell me you can find quotes of his to the extent of "we don't know much" from anytime in the near past? Even a quote more than 5 years old is irrelevant, given the speed at which research moves forward today.

It sort of boggles my brain that you would consider Bernard Baars as a supporter of the notion that we are still just slogging through NCC data trying to make heads or tails out of it.

Originally Posted by Piggy

V.S. Ramachandran of UC San Diego's Center for Brain and Cognition, who has done some research.

Yeah, let's talk about quote mining piggy. Quote mining is when you look through something someone has written just to find isolated quotes that could be interpreted as supporting your position. It isn't inherently bad, except that often ( as is the case with you ) the context of the quote is completely changed. Case in point:

Ramachandran's site says "It is ironic that although we now have a vast amount of factual information about the brain, even the most basic questions about the human mind remain unanswered."

Whoah, it looks like you might be correct!! Hmmm.. wait a second though, I should keep reading...

"Why do we laugh, i.e., make a rhythmic sound and bob our heads in certain situations? Why do we cry? Why does a salty liquid flow down our cheeks when sad? How does the human brain create and respond to art? Why do we enjoy music? What causes us to dance? What makes some of us so amazingly creative in mathematics, science, and poetry? How are metaphors represented in the brain? What is "body image" and why does it get distorted in anorexia nervosa? How did language evolve?"

Ohhhh, I see what he means. He means what humans would consider the most basic questions, not the fundamental questions. I think it would be slightly dishonest to attribute the position of "we don't know much" to someone like Ramachandran based on a quote taken so out of context, don't you? ( not sure why I'm asking you, since you did it !! ) Let's keep reading though....

"Then there are more basic questions. How do we see color? Why can we pay attention to only one thing at a time? How do we recognize faces so effortlessly?"

Ahh, those are the kinds of things I had in mind. So we don't know much about them??

"Neuroscientists and psychologists have, in the past, shied away from such questions, but our center has become well known for tackling questions such as these experimentally, questions that have traditionally been the preoccupation of philosophers."

Hmmm....so they are actually doing research on these things? Call me crazy, but that doesn't sound like a lab full of people who think "we don't know much."

Originally Posted by Piggy

Michael Gazzaniga who was on the original split-brain study team, led the continuing research, and is the current president of the Cognitive Neuroscience Institute.

I don't even need to touch this one. Please cite a recent quote ( not mined, please keep it in context ) where he says anything remotely similar to "we don't know much."

Originally Posted by Piggy

Steven Pinker of Harvard, advocate of the computational model of mind

Same. Please cite a recent quote ( not mined, please keep it in context ) where he says anything remotely similar to "we don't know much."


So I admit I was partially wrong -- you do actually reference people who know, at least partially, what they are talking about. However I would strongly argue that you are taking their sentiments completely out of context to support your own position. Prove me wrong. Start using recent statements and link to the full articles where you got them. Avoid quote-mining.

EDIT -- what I am trying to figure out is why you are a proclaimed materialist yet you seem to have a desire to "dumb down" the current state of research, almost as if you want to convince people that we know far less than we really know. It is peculiar ...

[Belz...]

Originally Posted by Piggy

What do you mean by "data"?

If I consider food "data", then my body can accept it, store it, and process it according to a predetermined set of rules.

And if I consider cows to be tables, I can put napkins, set up dinner and and eat on one.

[Belz...]

Originally Posted by dlorde

What, exactly, do you mean by a 'reader'? One can hook up a symbol manipulating computer to physical effectors and have its computations cause physical actions.

An better answer than mine.


So nobody has anything to say about my biological truck ?

[Mr. Scott]

Originally Posted by I Ratant

I can't see a computer, with the rules it must be assembled with, coming up with:
"It was a dark and stormy night"... or "Call me Ismael"... or "In the beginning..",
particularly the last which has what a computer would recognize as physical absurdities, much less plots that have been pre-figured in the author's mind to go in a specific direction, which may or may not be possible in a physical world.
A computer that might do that would have so few constraints its output would resemble that herd of monkeys more often than not.
Dawkins got his program to find a particular phrase in Shakespeare, but he had to direct the computer to that goal, external to the programming of the phrase generator.

Ah, the old "fine arts" argument against consciousness as data processing. It's a fallacy class: argument from ignorance and argument from personal incredulity. It follows the form:

"I don't know (or can't imagine) how computers could write beautiful prose, so computers can't write beautiful prose, and human brains must do it with some form of magic (outside the known laws of physics)."

The argument unfortunately implies that people who don't produce fine art are not fully conscious.

There are some poem generators online. Here's a nice Haiku Generator I found. I don't doubt that some of its poems would challenge one to sense they were computer-generated.

[dlorde]

Originally Posted by Belz...

So nobody has anything to say about my biological truck ?

Apart from the gratuitous surgical tweaking of neurons and the novel method of locomotion, I couldn't really see much difference, in principle, between it and pack animals used for transport, e.g. donkeys, horses, elephants, camels, bullocks, etc.

It did bring to mind Boston Dynamics' 'Big Dog' - should we call that a truck?

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I AGREE

[Mr. Scott]

Originally Posted by Belz...

I just had an idea for an analogy and I'm not sure if it'll work. Here goes...

A truck is a metal frame over an axle and four wheels, transports stuff and goes places, right ?

Let's do the consciousness/computer thing in reverse.

Let's say I build an organism in a lab. It's a vertebrate with a tough skin with hard plates. It has flabs on either side that you can open to get inside its frontal cavity, in which there are ganglions you can push or pull to trigger certain functions of its nervous system. In front are two white bioluminescent organs. Same thing for the rear, but red. There is another cavity at the back. You can input a slush-like food in an orifice to the side, which feeds the organism, and comes out as fart from the rear. Under it are four legs arranged in a way that they can spin on themselves without damage, so they turn like wheels. Using these attributes, you can shove stuff in its back cavity, hop inside, press a few ganglions and go see your father-in-law in Jersey.

Is it a truck ?

I'd say you'd have a number of truck enthousiasts, amongst others, claiming it can never be a truck because it's organic, etc.

Yes, a truck is substrate-independent. If it's above a certain size and licensed to transport stuff on the roads, it's a truck, even if it's made of wet, fleshy carbon-based and DNA-directed materials.

The brain processes data. It would, in theory, process data the same way, generating fine arts and reports of internal subjective experiences, if it were made of metal and ran on gasoline, I maintain.

[Mr. Scott]

If it's true that the brain "performs" red (and qualia in general) then there must be a consequence in thermodynamics.

Some energy has to be expended performing red, and some of this would have to be recovered (with losses) in the process of appreciating the performance.

Wouldn't this have to be happening if the arguments of qualiaphiles were correct? Is there any evidence for the metabolism needed for qualia generation and appreciation, beyond what's involved in action potentials and neurotransmitter activity?

[Fudbucker]

Originally Posted by Mr. Scott

Ah, the old "fine arts" argument against consciousness as data processing. It's a fallacy class: argument from ignorance and argument from personal incredulity. It follows the form:

"I don't know (or can't imagine) how computers could write beautiful prose, so computers can't write beautiful prose, and human brains must does it with some form of magic (outside the know laws of physics)."

The argument unfortunately implies that people who don't produce fine art are not fully conscious.

There are some poem generators online. Here's a nice Haiku Generator I found. I don't doubt that some of its poems would challenge one to determine if it was computer-generated.

To be charitible, I think Iratant was talking about computers as they currently are.

A couple Haikus from the haiku generator:

fisherwomen climb
giddily, moose flying plum
lying conjurers

pumpkins recover
wistfully, laughter festers
rosemary frolics

blazing strut gravestone
dwindles, frivolous lustrous
dunes pulsate, mealy

I'm not too impressed
Haiku program is lacking
Hail new machine lords!

(OK, that last was my own)

So computers aren't at the "dark and stormy night" level yet. However, there's no reason to think they won't be. Maybe fairly soon.

[Piggy]

Originally Posted by rocketdodger

Piggy, you can't divorce information from physical behavior because everything is physical behavior.

You are as wrong as wrong can be. "We" don't consider the world of the simulation to be different from the physical activity of the simulator, I have no idea why you keep saying this even though we keep saying we don't mean it. How stubborn does someone need to be to repeatedly tell multiple people that they mean something other than what they explicitly say they mean?

You keep saying you don't mean it, and then you make arguments which presume it.

That's what troubles me.

[Piggy]

Originally Posted by rocketdodger

Here you go again -- what the heck are you talking about? Who has ever said that logic can be performed without real work?

You're not seeing what I have plainly said.

Of course logic must be performed with real work.

But if you only demand (or have) enough real work in the system to run the logic, then all you have done is run the logic.

If you want to run the logic and do something like make enzymes or move objects or play sounds, then you need enough work to run the logic and enough work to make the enzyme or move the object or play the sound.

Nobody disagrees with that, of course.

Where you and I differ is that you believe that no additional work is required for conscious behavior like colors and sounds and textures to be performed, above and beyond what's necessary to "run the logic" because these phenomena result directly (and exclusively) from the logic, which is not entirely dependent on substrate -- in other words, you can run the logic with a brain or a computer or whatever, as long as it runs, that's all you need.

I've called this the "pure programming" point of view, for short, on other threads.

If this is accurate, then machines can be programmed to be conscious, they need not be otherwise specially built to be conscious. Creating conscious machines becomes a question entirely of computer engineering rather than mechanical-electrical engineering (except as the latter serves the needs of the former).

The neurobiological approach sees things a bit differently, and this is what I've been saying about the requirements for doing work....

Per the NB approach, the neural correlates of consciousness (NCCs) aren't so much seen as a substrate supporting logic which in turn enables conscious behavior to occur, but as the direct mechanism itself -- one which is much often simpler to talk about in terms of information, but which nevertheless must be plain old physics at the end of the day.

From your point of view, comparing consciousness to photosynthesis or hauling trash to the dump makes no sense.

Because from your point of view, unlike photosynthesis or hauling trash, consciousness is a pure-programming problem.

Which means that running a digital simulation of the brain will create consciousness -- with no extra work required for doing so, beyond what's needed to run the simulation -- even though a digital simulation of a leaf will never make sugar and a digital simulation of a truck will never haul your trash to the dump.

From a neurbio point of view, the challenge to building conscious machines is a bit different, because we assume that electro-mechanical engineering will be crucially important over and above its contribution to supporting the logic.

In other words, the machine brain will have to behave in real spacetime in some ways like the biological brain to make these behaviors actually occur, and this is the bit of work (despite your dubbing it a "magic bean") which I'm referring to.

So the simulation will not actually create an instance of blue or pain or the smell of coffee or anything else, unless it's got the hardware to make that happen in real spacetime.

That's the difference.

Sorry if it takes a while to explain it.

[Piggy]

Originally Posted by rocketdodger

They wired up some artificial neural networks according to a hypothesized pathway that they thought might be part of how the mamallian brain controls motor movements via imagination, hooked the simulation up to a robot arm with a camera sensor, and it worked. The robot imagined that if it turned a certain way it would see an object of a color that it "liked" and because of that imagined reward it actually turned.

Sounds good.

Originally Posted by rocketdodger

I don't think it is necessarily directly relevant to the search for phenomenal consciousness. Rather, I think it is relevant to all of the arguments you have made against the computational model, for starters.

You have explicitly stated that simulating neurons can't lead to real world results, that what happens in simulations is just ones and zeros that only humans can make sense of. Well, you are wrong about that, because these guys hooked up a robot to simulated neurons, and it did something on its own.

No, that's not what I've said, explicitly or otherwise.

Of course they can lead to real-world results -- happens every day. It makes as much sense as being able to send letters.

What I've said is that when you do insert a simulation into part of a process, it has to be the case that you need signal-in and signal-out.

The trouble comes if you need any actual physical mechanism to do real work in spacetime anywhere along that part of the system that's been swapped with a simulator.

If you do, then your system breaks because the simulated stuff is in informationland and can't do any work... the only work being done is the simulator being run.

So yeah, there's no problem with simulated neurons "leading to real-world results".

But there's a problem with simulators allegedly performing work that they're not performing in spacetime (which from your point of view isn't a problem, I know).

Originally Posted by rocketdodger

You have explicitly stated your distaste for AI research because it goes on in some sort of vacuum from brain research. Well, you are wrong about that, because these guys made an artificial neural network based on known brain pathways, in fact the paper goes into a good amount of detail describing such pathways and even provides citations of its own for the "brain research," as you call it, that the researchers educated themselves with.

My objections aren't with AI research, never have been.

I've consistently said it's interesting, important, and useful.

My objection is to its application on this forum to the question of consciousness, that's all.

I object to irrelevant discussions based on AI research that doesn't have any bearing (or precious little) on consciousness research.

And I haven't claimed that AI researchers ignore brain research. I've complained that the comp.lit camp on this forum much prefers to discuss research on non-conscious machines than to discuss current neurobiology, and I'm dead right about that, as far as I can see.

Those are two very different things.

Originally Posted by rocketdodger

You have explicitly stated that computing is somehow not "real time" and thus a program is incapable of emulating what is necessary for consciousness. Well, you are wrong about that, because these guys simulated the neurons in software, and those neurons didn't have any problem interacting with the world in "real time."

I don't recally anyone saying that computing is not real time.

I do recall discussions about whether a conscious machine could stay conscious at any arbitrarily slow operating speed.

In any case, nothing in this experiment is shocking to me, it doesn't go against anything I've said so far, as far as I'm aware.

Originally Posted by rocketdodger

You have explicitly stated that there is no indication by any research thus far that the functions of the brain necessary for consciousness can be divorced from its "real-spacetime function" which you have explicitly stated is surely more than what known computers can provide. Well, you are wrong about that, because these guys seem to have emulated at least a few of the functions required for that thing we call "imagination" in a computer.

That's not quite what I've said, but close enough for our purposes here anyway.

Yeah, I've said that running logic alone won't get consciousness done, just like logic alone won't make a machine sing or run or perform any other behavior.

That's why I always talk about conscious machines rather than conscious computers.

But this only means that, for the particular function of consciousness, you're going to need properly set up hardware.

What these guys are doing really has nothing to do with that question, I'm afraid. It's not that what they're doing isn't damn interesting and useful -- it certainly is -- but it doesn't have any bearing on the question of the hardware component of consciousness, I'm afraid.

Originally Posted by rocketdodger

Whether or not the research explains much in terms of consciousness for you isn't really the point. The point is that the research clearly shows that just about every single one of your counterarguments isn't valid. That's why I brought it up. Turns out there are dozens of projects like this, just go to the aisb home site and look at their symposiums over the last decade.

And that's fine, and very cool, but my objections have never been what you seem to think they are. It's a matter of relevance, nothing else.

Originally Posted by rocketdodger

So my question would be, given that there is actual research going on where people are looking at the mamallian brain and emulating its functions with artificial computers and getting behavioral results that confirm their hypotheses, why do you think that simply making post after post trying to argue to the contrary is productive? Once you move past this silly need to control the conversation and "win" a debate at any cost maybe you will start to learn a few things, eh?

I'm not arguing against that fact.

I know there are folks doing this research.

Some of the people I cite are involved in it, and have written about it.

Yes, this is "actual research" but it is not particularly relevant actual research. And I wonder why it ends up dominating every thread about consciousness to the exclusion of much more relevant research on the human brain itself, which is indeed focused on the question of consciousness.

Once we crack the big questions about consciousness neuobiologically, then we'll be able to design similar machine tests in that area.

I sincerely hope I'm dead before that happens, though.

[PixyMisa]

Originally Posted by Piggy

You're not seeing what I have plainly said.

Of course logic must be performed with real work.

But if you only demand (or have) enough real work in the system to run the logic, then all you have done is run the logic.

Yep..

Quote:

Where you and I differ is that you believe that no additional work is required for conscious behavior like colors and sounds and textures to be performed, above and beyond what's necessary to "run the logic" because these phenomena result directly (and exclusively) from the logic, which is not entirely dependent on substrate -- in other words, you can run the logic with a brain or a computer or whatever, as long as it runs, that's all you need.

I've called this the "pure programming" point of view, for short, on other threads.

If this is accurate, then machines can be programmed to be conscious, they need not be otherwise specially built to be conscious. Creating conscious machines becomes a question entirely of computer engineering rather than mechanical-electrical engineering (except as the latter serves the needs of the former).

Yep.

Quote:

The neurobiological approach sees things a bit differently

Nope.

That's the problem. There is no "differently". Either at some level it's computational, or it's magic.

[tensordyne]

Originally Posted by PixyMisa

That's the problem. There is no "differently". Either at some level it's computational, or it's magic.

So I guess then trucks and leaves are magical. I simply did not know.

[tensordyne]

Originally Posted by Mr. Scott

If it's true that the brain "performs" red (and qualia in general) then there must be a consequence in thermodynamics.

Some energy has to be expended performing red, and some of this would have to be recovered (with losses) in the process of appreciating the performance.

Wouldn't this have to be happening if the arguments of qualiaphiles were correct? Is there any evidence for the metabolism needed for qualia generation and appreciation, beyond what's involved in action potentials and neurotransmitter activity?

Interesting idea, but I do have to note that if the neurobio is approach is correct, qualia generation might be the physical result of action potentials and neurotransmitter activity without any need of bringing in the computational role of the same. Of course, I would like to add in that qualia generation as per thermodynamics and CEMI might come in the form of energy generated to create the EM field.

[Piggy]

Originally Posted by PixyMisa

Any system that is Turing complete^WP. That's what anyone who understands computers means by the term.


The brain is Turing complete. This was understood by everyone in the all related fields the minute we came up with the term "Turing complete".

Forgive me if I don't just take your word for that last bit about the brain.

And it's funny that your claim about the brain isn't mentioned in the article you cite, but my claim about the whole universe is.

And the folks over at Stanford don't seem to agree with you.

Quote:

A myth seems to have arisen concerning Turing's paper of 1936, namely that he there gave a treatment of the limits of mechanism and established a fundamental result to the effect that the universal Turing machine can simulate the behaviour of any machine. The myth has passed into the philosophy of mind, generally to pernicious effect.

In fact, their treatment of this "myth" sounds like a pretty good paraphrase of many of your claims in this forum.

So unless you can demonstrate that this is so, and unless you can cite leaders in the field agreeing with you, I'm betting that the Stanford guys are right and you're wrong.

[Piggy]

Originally Posted by PixyMisa

Consciousness is a self-referential informational process. From Descarte's cogito to Dennett and Hofstadter, that's what we've always meant by the term. Consciousness is a function of the brain. The brain is a computer.

It's not hard, Piggy. Complicated, yes. but not hard. All you have to do is stop believing in magic.

That is what you claim to be the contribution of seeing the brain as a computer?

I'm not impressed.

I don't see any contribution there, just restatement of your (still) unsubstantiated assertion.

If you want to call physics "magic", OK -- that's still my bet for what causes consciousness.

If you want to say it's caused by information, well, there are several problems here, not the least of which is the fact that there is no blue in the information which you claim causes blue.

Nothing in the sky performs blue. The light from the sky doesn't perform blue. My eyeballs don't either. Neither do the bits of my brain that aren't involved in consciousness.

What's worse, that same "information" which sometimes causes blue can cause any number of other behaviors besides blue, or no behaviors in the consciousness cluster at all.

If blue -- like all other phenomena that are part of consciousness, is caused by information, then how do you get from information which has nothing to say about blue, to blue?

[Piggy]

Originally Posted by PixyMisa

Well, you can of course also simulate it. But for things defined by their physical properties (e.g. acid) there's a divide that does not exist for things defined by their informational properties (minds, consciousness).

What makes you imagine that consciousness is defined by "informational properties"?

What about the smell of coffee is fundamentally "informational"?

[Piggy]

Originally Posted by PixyMisa

On what basis? Other than the usual arguments from personal incredulity and ignorance?

On what basis do I conclude that the Blue Brain simulation won't result in a conscious machine?

On the basis that it makes more sense, at this point, to posit that the phenomenon of consciousness is the result of the physical rather than informational architecture of the brain, even if the specifics of each instance of conscious behavior depend on the informational architecture.

It's a simpler way of looking at it, more in line with what we know about how the universe works, doesn't require any radical hypotheses, and it's working in the lab and the field.

The neurobio approach is making advances by asking "what is the brain doing when we're conscious in different ways, at different times?"

That's the whole point of the investigation of neural correlates, which is the dominant activity in the field at the moment.

Consciousness is behavior. To get a machine -- biological or not -- to exhibit real behavior in the real world, you have to build the right physical architecture some way or other.

That's not very controversial.

[Piggy]

Originally Posted by Belz...

No, they're not. The truck is a thing that moves from A to B while transporting something. The brain is a thing that gets data and outputs other data. How are they alike ?

The brain doesn't get any data. The brain's input is entirely physical, and that input is only "encoded with information" in the same way that ripples in a pond are "encoded with information" about the rock that was dropped in the pond.

The nonconscious parts of the brain do their thing, and the electrochemical reactions bounce around, and some leave the brain, and muscles move.

We don't need to talk about data and information to explain that, it's just much much easier if we do.

Other parts of the brain cause other types of behaviors such as odors and sounds and feelings of joy or dread -- that's what we call consciousness.

And that bit is handled entirely in the brain.

So although the behaviors of the brain and the truck and leaf are very different, it's still true that none of them can be replaced entirely by a computer simulation, because a computer running a simulation does different types of work than all 3.

No matter what the work is, if it has to be done during the point where you're replacing any real component with a digital simulation of that component, the work won't get done.

That's why you can't replace my truck's engine with a simulation of an engine and expect it to do everything it did before (like haul brush) and why you can't replace my body's brain with a simulation of a brain and expect it to do everything it did before (like perform colors and sounds).

Sure, my truck can do some things if you replace its guts with a computer simulation -- could still work the lights and the wipers and play the radio... but it can't do everything.

Ditto for a brain. Not all functions will work if you remove it and replace it with a digital sim.

[Piggy]

Originally Posted by Belz...

Not "special rules", but "different processes". See, the brain, as I said above, gets, processes, and outputs symbolic data. It just so happens that this is exactly what computers do, and nothing else in the universe does only that. To me that's a pretty convincing case for their similarity, and why one can emulate, simulate or be the other.

Does the brain really do that?

And if so, is that what the components that perform consciousness do?

Can you demonstrate that this is so?

[Piggy]

Originally Posted by Mr. Scott

Who or what is the brain "performing" red to? You have to explain not just the performer and how it performs, but also the audience, and how THAT works. And why performance of qualia needed to evolve in the first place. The biological sciences have yet to isolate a performer or an audience in the brain of such things, have they?

How do you know the internal subjective experience of a non-biological data processing machine cannot possibly seem, to it, like magic?

That's like asking who or what the brain is performing breathing to.

The body just carries out its tasks, that's all. It just performs the way it's built to perform.

As I said before, the model of consciousness as (normative) hallucination eliminates the need for any audience.

When your body wakes up from deep sleep, it starts up certain behaviors that weren't occurring before, such as colors and sounds and the smell of coffee and a small pain in your back and so on.

When these behaviors are happening, you (the person you think of yourself as) are happening. When you fall asleep and these behaviors stop, you stop.

Something similar happens when you dream.

Which means that all these things that start when you're conscious and stop when you're unconscious are consciousness and are you.

After all, my eyes don't really look out into the world and remotely detect what's really out there.

My conscious experience is me, and is everything that appears to be going on "out there".

Everything I feel like I'm seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting, feeling... that's what I am. There's no difference between me and my conscious experience. You could say, I am the qualia.

The sense of a self is one of things that consciousness can produce (or perform) but that's all.

Once you really come to terms with the fact that absolutely nothing you experience has any existence outside your experience, and that there's no difference between your experience and you, then a lot of apparent problems simply become non-problems.

[Piggy]

Originally Posted by PixyMisa

Yes, it's simulated. However, this does not divorce the information from the information.

No, but if you say that the simulator is "really" doing something that the machine is not physically doing, and that this "real" behavior conforms to the physics of the thing being simulated instead, then you've got a serious problem.

Originally Posted by PixyMisa

Which can be pretty much any switching mechanism. The operation of a computer does not need to be decoded, because it is itself a decoder.

I was speaking specifically of computers used as info processors in the ways that PCs often are. We input symbols, we get back symbols. Computer couldn't care less what they mean to us, and would have no way of knowing anyway.

[rocketdodger]

Originally Posted by Piggy

You keep saying you don't mean it, and then you make arguments which presume it.

That's what troubles me.

Or, you are just misunderstanding the arguments.

[rocketdodger]

Originally Posted by Piggy

You're not seeing what I have plainly said.

... snip ....

OK I understand what you are saying now.

Originally Posted by Piggy

The neurobiological approach sees things a bit differently, and this is what I've been saying about the requirements for doing work....

Per the NB approach, the neural correlates of consciousness (NCCs) aren't so much seen as a substrate supporting logic which in turn enables conscious behavior to occur, but as the direct mechanism itself -- one which is much often simpler to talk about in terms of information, but which nevertheless must be plain old physics at the end of the day.

Um, but I don't get this "viewpoint" from any of the researchers you have ever cited.

It seems to me like you are looking at NCC research and developing your own ideas that the non-logic portion of the physical behavior is somehow crucial.

EDIT -- it just occurred to me that perhaps you are simply a little confused, and think that the computationalists view the neurons of the brain as just the "hardware" running "software" which is merely the impulses traveling between them. This is absolutely not the case. The computationalist position is that the concepts of "hardware" and "software" do not apply to the biological brain, at least not in the way it does to silicon computers. The computational model, however, just assumes that the physical connectivity between neurons, which is entirely essential to the functioning of a neural network, can be emulated successfully in software. But that doesn't imply that it isn't important. On the contrary, the actual physical ( or emulated physical ) connectivity of neurons is the most important factor.

Originally Posted by Piggy

From a neurbio point of view, the challenge to building conscious machines is a bit different, because we assume that electro-mechanical engineering will be crucially important over and above its contribution to supporting the logic.

Lol, who is "we?" You and Baars? Had coffee with him lately?

I see no evidence that any researcher doing work in what you call "neurobio" has taken the position that there is something essential about the neuron "over and above its contribution to supporting the logic." I think you are fabricating this position and attributing it to a whole bunch of people that actually support the computational model but they would just rather do research on real brains than artificial ones.

[Piggy]

Originally Posted by dlorde

What, exactly, do you mean by a 'reader'? One can hook up a symbol manipulating computer to physical effectors and have its computations cause physical actions. I'm happy to accept that the interface to an effector is a 'reader' (although 'interpreter' seems more precise), but it leads me to query why you say the outcome of a computation requires a reader. Computations directed to controlling effectors require those effectors in order to cause an effect, if you remove the effector interface the computation can still be done, although to no useful effect.

Btw, where are the symbols that you think the computer is manipulating?

Is it really manipulating symbols when it's operating, or is the manipulation of symbols more appropriate to the programming of the machine?

Btw, it's important to note that I didn't say "the outcome of a computation requires a reader" -- I was only talking about symbolic, as opposed to physical computations.

If we take Turing straight, no chaser, then we can (and many scientists do) describe the entire universe in computational terms, where quite literally everything that happens is just part of a machine moving from state to state depending upon a set of rules (the laws of physics) that govern all transformations.

In fact, it's because the universe is always performing computations that we can piggy-back symbolically on some of them -- and modern computers offer us a way to do this very fast and predictably -- which gives us symbolic computations.

This is more narrowly what Turing was describing.

He started with the notion that everything that could be done by a human calculator (a person performing calculations with pencil and paper) could be done by a machine simply by setting it up to change the symbols in the right order, without the need for the machine to know what any of it meant.

But to be useful, this kind of computation does require users who know what the symbols at the end of the process are supposed to mean, otherwise the symbolic aspect of the computation is useless and the physical computation underlying it is all you're left with.

That's what I mean by symbolic computation requiring a reader.

I don't think neural work in the brain is symbolic, and I don't think the neural work in a computer running a paint sprayer is symbolic either.

And yet what I'm asking my pocket calculator to do is essentially symbolic. That is, from my point of view. What it actually does, without regard to me, is not symbolic at all.

Originally Posted by dlorde

In the case of consciousness, who or what is the 'reader'? It seems clear, as evidenced by 'locked-in' syndrome, that consciousness doesn't require physical effectors, but seems able to be maintained effectively in isolation. I can only think that by your requirement above, consciousness must be reading itself - a clear expression of SRIP

From the physicalist point of view, what's important to understand in the production of consciousness are the physical computations of the brain, not the symbolic computations, so you don't need a reader.

The brain has received no codes, no symbols, and it is not going to produce any.

The result of a physical computation is simply a new shape of the physical stuff involved in the computation. That's how the brain works, by constantly reshaping itself physically.

For folks with locked-in syndrome, the physical electro-chemical activity in their brains is sufficient in the right real estate to allow consciousness to occur, but their motor responses are shut down.

Feedback loops are everywhere in the brain, including areas that have no effect on consciousness, so yeah, you could say SRIP is going on here, but that's a trivial observation.

We don't know how it is that the brain performs these behaviors, such as pain and sound and color, but we know it can do it entirely on its own.

In any case, the "reader" issue doesn't come up for consciousness precisely because there's no reason to invoke symbolic computation to attempt to explain it.

[Piggy]

Originally Posted by rocketdodger

No offense, but I certainly think you are guilty of quote-mining in almost every single case. I absolutely cannot stand quote mining ...

Then I suggest you get your own damn quotes from widely published neuroscientists who say that the mechanism of consciousness is known and that it's self-referential information processing.

Don't come accusing me of quote-mining if you're not going to pony up with anybody saying that SRIP is the known mechanism underlying consciousness.

And they'd better have credentials at least as good as the folks I cited.

At certain points I have to stop talking with you because you resort to stuff like this. I'll come back later.

[Piggy]

Originally Posted by rocketdodger

Lol, who is "we?" You and Baars? Had coffee with him lately?

Made me laugh, too, when I read it.

Originally Posted by rocketdodger

I see no evidence that any researcher doing work in what you call "neurobio" has taken the position that there is something essential about the neuron "over and above its contribution to supporting the logic." I think you are fabricating this position and attributing it to a whole bunch of people that actually support the computational model but they would just rather do research on real brains than artificial ones.

I don't have a problem with the research. I think if you look at that MIT symposium video I posted, you'll see 3 guying saying stuff we both agree with.

I don't disagree with the computational model as it's being used in research on the brain.

My disagreements are with certain conclusions drawn about consciousness from the research by some folks on this forum, that's all.

As for any researchers working from "the position that there is something essential about the neuron 'over and above its contribution to supporting the logic'," no I don't know of anyone either.

[Mr. Scott]

Originally Posted by Piggy

When your body wakes up from deep sleep, it starts up certain behaviors that weren't occurring before, such as colors and sounds and the smell of coffee and a small pain in your back and so on.

Those are behaviors? Not by any common definition of that word.

I'd still say you'd need a qualia detector to know that you have qualia at all.

Where do you find the certainty that a complete computer emulation of a human brain (say, with a real color camera and speech synthesis) couldn't possibly report an experience of qualia?

In Dennett's talk on free will, he mentioned the headline of a review of his book on consciousness that made me laugh out loud: "Yes, we have a soul, but it's made of lots of tiny robots."

[tensordyne]

Video of Chalmers stating how it is as far as consciousness research goes.

http://youtu.be/r4SLOr2icnY

[tensordyne]

Originally Posted by Mr. Scott

Those are behaviors? Not by any common definition of that word.

The topic of behavior and consciousness has come up on this forum in the recent past (that I am aware of). Consciousness is not behavior (contra to the cousin of the computationalists the bahviorists), it is an internal state of being. A black box could just be sitting there, experiencing (and thus is conscious) a sunny day. You would not be able to tell from outside of the box that this is happening, which is why consciousness is not fundamentally about behavior.

Originally Posted by Mr. Scott

I'd still say you'd need a qualia detector to know that you have qualia at all.

You have one qualia detector, your own consciousness. There is something it is like for you to experience red, right?

Originally Posted by Mr. Scott

Where do you find the certainty that a complete computer emulation of a human brain (say, with a real color camera and speech synthesis) couldn't possibly report an experience of qualia?

Emulate or simulate? If you are simulating the brain (or anything else) there is never any reason to expect that the simulation will do anything beyond hopefully giving good predictions of what is being simulated. As far as emulation goes, you can program computers to say all sorts of things, that doesn't mean a thing.

The question is not if a machine made above could not possibly report back whatever you want it to in terms of experience as far as emulation goes, the question is, why should you believe it? The same goes for humans and other animals. I have my own answer for that; I am sure you have your own as well.

[Fudbucker]

Originally Posted by PixyMisa

It basically is a binary collection of switches. It's a pulse-coded switched digital network.

Not according to what others are saying:

"Human brains store information using many different strategies, none of which are very analogous to binary in a digital computer."
Paul King, Computational Neuroscientist

MIT neuroscientist, Guosong Liu, has found that human neurons compute in trinary, using signals that are the equivalents of -1, 0 and 1.

The brain as a whole operates more like a social network than a digital computer, with neurons communicating to allow learning and the creation of memory, according to O'Reilly.
psychology Professor Randall O'Reilly

[tsig]

Originally Posted by rocketdodger

I'm just so tired of having to wade through walls of text in order to make sense of your responses to what should be extremely simple questions. You insist on smothering people with words, typically when you are just wrong about something.

Piggy, you can't divorce information from physical behavior because everything is physical behavior.

You are as wrong as wrong can be. "We" don't consider the world of the simulation to be different from the physical activity of the simulator, I have no idea why you keep saying this even though we keep saying we don't mean it. How stubborn does someone need to be to repeatedly tell multiple people that they mean something other than what they explicitly say they mean?

Some seem to think that lots of words substitute for substance.

Reading his posts are like a mirage in the desert, instead of a cool drink of water you get a mouthful of sand.

[rocketdodger]

Originally Posted by Piggy

Then I suggest you get your own damn quotes from widely published neuroscientists who say that the mechanism of consciousness is known and that it's self-referential information processing.

But I don't claim there are widely published neuroscientists who say such a thing.

That is the singular fact of the matter that you seem to not understand.

Originally Posted by Piggy

Don't come accusing me of quote-mining if you're not going to pony up with anybody saying that SRIP is the known mechanism underlying consciousness.

Again -- I don't claim there are widely published neuroscientists who say such a thing.

In fact, I have made zero claims about what any researchers "say." All my claims have been about the research itself. This is the fundamental difference between your position and mine. I say "we have research showing X," and you respond with "but so and so says Y." You never -- ever -- reference actual research showing X to be false.

Regarding SRIP, since frankly I am sick of it, that is Pixy's torch to carry: All I have claimed is that the frameworks posited by widely published neuroscientists all reduce to a form of SRIP. Whether or not they explicitly state "my framework is a form of SRIP" is as irrelevant as whether or not a mechanical engineer explicitly states that his engine follows the laws of thermodynamics, whether or not a biologist points out that cells he is studying contain carbon and oxygen, or whether a mathematician points out that the integers he is using can be arrived at by repeatedly summing the number 1.

If you disagree that any of these frameworks is a form of SRIP, then we can have that specific discussion.

But you can't simply claim that because a specific phrase isn't mentioned in an article that the stuff in the article doesn't meet some external definition of that phrase. I can show you tens of thousands of mechanical engineering research articles that make no mention of the laws of thermodynamics -- are you gonna claim that the stuff in the research doesn't satisfy those laws? I can show you tens of thousands of biology papers that never mention any chemicals at all -- are you gonna claim chemicals have nothing to do with biology? I can show you all the math major's theses in any school and I doubt even 1% of them mention the fact that you can make any integer by simply adding 1 to a number over and over -- are you going to argue that the integers used in those theses can't be made in this way?

The question you have been ignoring -- I don't know why, since it is the only question that should matter to you -- is whether or not Bernard Baars would say "yes, given the definition of SRIP that PixyMisa is using, a framework like 'Global Workspace' is an instance of SRIP."

Do you think he would say that? Or do you think he would say "no, it is not an instance of SRIP?"

Everything else just seems like beating around the bush. If the answer is "yes, I think he would" then why on Earth are you even arguing this point so relentlessly? If the answer is "no, I don't think he would" then what reason do you have for reaching that conclusion? Either way, taking the position that "since Baars never mentions SRIP, whatever he is talking about must not be an instance of SRIP" seems bizarre. That's like saying Mendel "didn't deal with genetics because he never mentioned DNA in any of his research."

[Mr. Scott]

Originally Posted by tensordyne

The question is not if a machine made above could not possibly report back whatever you want it to in terms of experience as far as emulation goes, the question is, why should you believe it? The same goes for humans and other animals. I have my own answer for that; I am sure you have your own as well.

I should have added one word, which I thought was understood:

Where do you find the certainty that a complete computer emulation of a human brain (say, with a real color camera and speech synthesis) couldn't possibly honestly report experience of qualia?

I await your response.

[rocketdodger]

Originally Posted by Piggy

As for any researchers working from "the position that there is something essential about the neuron 'over and above its contribution to supporting the logic'," no I don't know of anyone either.

But you just said there were, in the statement of yours that I quoted:

Originally Posted by Piggy

From a neurbio point of view, the challenge to building conscious machines is a bit different, because we assume that electro-mechanical engineering will be crucially important over and above its contribution to supporting the logic.

I interpreted that "we" to mean Piggy + the "neurobio" researchers.