The Hard Problem of Gravity

[westprog]

I guess I have to explain it like I would to a child.

WHEN YOU PRESS YOUR KEYBOARD, THE SAME LETTERS POP UP ON THE SCREEN EVERY TIME.

WHEN YOU PRESS YOUR ALPHABET SOUP, THE SAME LETTERS DO NOT POP UP IN THE SOUP EVERY TIME.

So a typewriter is a computing device?

 

[AkuManiMani]

But, realistically, hard evidence for how consciousness is generated is unlikely to come about imo. Simply because of the fundamental paradoxes inherent in the task.

I think what is more likely to happen is that more and more of the "easy problems" will be cracked to the point where the HPC has virtually no reasonable space to hang out in. If GWT for example continues as it's been doing then at some point we are going to know pretty much exactly the brain's state during conscious access and precisely what the neuronal conditions to create this are.

Bit by bit the Searles and Blocks of this world will be forced onto progressively smaller bits of ice, compelled to believe in evermore weird metaphysical abstractions to resist the advance of Strong AI. [resistance is futile!]

This of course assuming some weird stuff doesn't get discovered in the meantime and we all have to go back to the drawing board.

Nick

Yea. The question we're trying to tackle is a pretty ancient one that generations of thinkers have tried to resolve. There are many paradoxes that tend to spring up when trying to understand what consciousness it. However, I believe that paradoxes are not a reflection of reality but of hidden flawed assumptions. IMO, a lot of the main metaphysical schools of thought [like dualism, idealism, and materialism] have some flaws in their treatment of consciousness. I think there is a way to create an ontological framework that gives a more useful conception of reality w/o the flaws of the more conventional philosophies.

It seems that right now the field of AI is true to it's name sake; it deals with the study and reproduction of intelligence. But, after giving this issue a lot of thought, I've come to think that consciousness is not really the same as intelligence. It seems that its going to be quite a while before the field of AC [artificial consciousness] emerges. I really hope the pace of progress is such that we can see such a field emerge in our lifetimes.

I don't think that we will have to necessarily discover some new 'weird stuff' to explain consciousness [but, I guess when you're dealing w/ a guy like me 'weird' is a pretty relative thing >_>]. Its highly likely that we won't need to invoke any new physical entities to explain what consciousness is; merely find out what known physical process constitutes consciousness and use our knowledge of it to reproduce it. Of course, there is also the possibility that there is some hitherto unknown 'weird stuff' needed to explain consciousness but I prefer not to assume such until we know more.

In the mean time, lets have fun speculating!

 

[rocketdodger]

So a typewriter is a computing device?

Absolutely.

 

[Dancing David]

Too bad this thread had such promise too.
L8R

So close and yet so far.

 

[PixyMisa]

And, like I pointed out before, expanding or revising physical theories doesn't 'create' new physical laws -- it merely refines our understanding of them. Its a flat fact that there is nothing in current physical theory that predicts or accounts for conscious experience.

No. It's not a fact, it's merely a bizarre assertion you keep making.

 

[rocketdodger]

Too bad this thread had such promise too.
L8R

So close and yet so far.

Yeah, I would have left long ago if not for the disgusting piece of **** that is UnrealEngine3.

I spend literally half my day waiting for it to build -- what else am I gonna do during that time, besides arguing with uneducated keyboard philosophers?

 

[rocketdodger]

What is the point of writing things like that? What does it add to the discussion? That's why I don't bother reading Pixy most of the time. When an argument consists of saying "you're wrong" over and over how does that help an interested third party to come to a conclusion?

It helps them come to the conclusion that you are wrong.

 

[PixyMisa]

What is the point of writing things like that? What does it add to the discussion? That's why I don't bother reading Pixy most of the time. When an argument consists of saying "you're wrong" over and over how does that help an interested third party to come to a conclusion?

It's annotation.

If you are wrong about something, I'll explain why you're wrong. If you make the same false statement a hundred times, ignoring everything that's said to you, then clearly explanations are wasted.

If Rocketdodger has a point about the crystalline structure of a snowflake being a physical property absent from a drop of water, then he should develop the idea and explain it, and keep explaining until it's obvious. Treating it like a puzzle for which clues need to be doled out helps nobody.

It is already obvious.

 

[westprog]

Absolutely.

In fact, a blender, or a clock, or almost any human machine is a computing device?

 

[westprog]

It helps them come to the conclusion that you are wrong.

Why, because they like you so much?

 

[Belz...]

Now, if the mere existence of physical properties destroyed my argument, then it would have to be fairly weak.

Indeed.

So, in the case of a crystalline structure like a snowflake, we can examine the atomic scale, and we observe that the molecules in the snowflake are bound together in a rigid structure, while the water molecules have no such fixed arrangement.

And yet they are composed of the exact same thing. You'd swear that something else is going on. I propose "crystalia", the most basic element of the "crystaline" property. What's it made of ? Why, I don't KNOW! I just know that science hasn't explained them yet!

Huh ? Of COURSE they exist. Otherwise how do you explain crystals ???? Why, you can even have crystalia about crystalia!

 

[Belz...]

Mm...Not to nitpick, but aether was the assumed media thru which light propagated and many scientist and thinkers of the time proposed models for it. A lot of the models' predictions about the nature of the media turned out to be incorrect, but the basic premise was right. We now understand that light propagates in waves thru the media we now, call space-time and that media itself warps and bends. Reality turned out to be a lot weirder than scientists at the time ever anticipated *_*

But aether and space-time aren't the same thing with different names, Aku. There's very little in common between them.

Every object/process, by simply existing, is an expression of some quantity. But, in the context of some conscious entity, the quantities take on qualities.

That's the bit I have issue with. I think that we simply like to think of it that way. It's a relic of the olden ways of thinking. But if you stop to think about it, when you hit your elbow somewhere, do you feel a quality ? Or are you simply responding to stimuli ? Once I focus on the experience, I honestly can't see qualities. That's a huge chasm to cross if we're to speak the same language.

Now, the question is, what is it about some entities that 'causes them to perceive -- to be conscious of -- the information around them?

The problem with qualia is that they are pretty much defined as the cause of consciousness but they only exist in relation to it. As I said above, I'm still yet to accept their existence (even in a non-dualistic kind of way) and you'd have to explain how they can possibly arise, from what, and what they're made of.

The simple answer that its 'just information processing' tells us nothing; all physical objects and events are information processes.

But they don't necessarily compute i.e. categorise the information.

If every even, object, and process can be reduced down to discrete quanta it stands to reason that perceptions can likewise be broken down into more basic elements.

Only if you assume that consciousness is not a process but a thing.

Hate to break it to yah, but such arguments are, by definition, doing philosophy.

Uh-huh, but we don't have to get to sophistry in the process.

Lets say that there is a species of animal that perceived light as sensations similar to our perception of sound. Maybe another that perceives temperature the same way we sense taste.

Okay so it's not "dysfunctional" per se. So ?

If one were to break sensations down to their basic components, what would they consist of?

That's exactly what I'm asking.

Heck, depending on the language, even a single phoneme may have a semantic meaning. I could invent a language right now where the phoneme é, by itself, means 'phonemes'.

No. You'd have a WORD, "é", composed of a single phoneme. Phonemes have no meaning, in and of themselves.

The whole enterprise of physics has been one big effort to find out what the world is 'made of'.

Actually I think the whole point is to determine HOW the world is, not WHAT.

If YOU are conscious then YOU detect them.

Only if qualia exist and have anything to do with consciousness. I don't agree that they are required, and scientists in the field seem to agree.

Fundamentalism and dogmatism isn't observable?

No. You can observe someone acting in accordance to the definition, however.

Since when is light hitting a photosensitive surface 'observation'?

What's your definition of "observe" ?

Bullship. You darn well that know that if I had been using the term [private behaviors] in place of [qualia] you wouldn't have spent to much time and effort trying to dispute what I've been saying.

If you had used "private behaviours" it wouldn't mean the same thing, because the term doesn't imply some sort of behavioural "particle". So, yeah, it's more than just the word.

How in the world can there be authorities on consciousness when there aren't any people who even KNOW what it is yet?

Now you're just being dishonest. I said "These people are experts IN THE FIELD WE ARE DISCUSSING". Neurology and computer sciences exist, no ? Those are our best options to study the nature of consciousness, so what I'm asking is why YOU think that YOU know better.

Care to repeat them? I must have missed it.

I'm just going off of the scientific knowledge that is readily available in any library, on the internet, and in schools.

Yes, that's so much more convincing.

As of yet, no one hes yet demonstrated that they have a comprehensive theoretical model of what consciousness is and how to reproduce specific conscious states from scratch.

That's because, AS WE'VE SAID already, the ONLY way to detect consciousness is through behaviour. You can't "detect" consciousness with a radar. So we observe and note that another human, for instance, acts as we'd expect if he/she were conscious. Once the same occurs with a computer, there is no reason, aside from dogma, to reject it as non-conscious.

 

[Belz...]

The point is that crystallisation is a well-defined property of matter. Where crystalline and non-crystalline matter are intermingled, we may be ignorant of the precise proportions, but that doesn't mean that the concept itself is imprecise.

But that is EXACTLY what we're saying about consciousness.

 

[dlorde]

ETA: Also, aether and phlogiston were themselves just labels. It was proposed that light propagates thru some media and some called the media 'aether'. Calling it 'aether' was not incorrect, its just that the assumed properties of it turned out to be incorrect. Light does propagate thru a medium but it turns out that the people who came up with a good working model of this propagation [Eisenstein, et al.] called the media 'space-time' so the term stuck. Phlogiston, was presumed to be what is stored in flammable objects and released when they are burned. It turns out that what is released by burning objects is what we now call chemical energy, which is infact, stored in flammable substances.

The general concepts the terms referred to were pretty accurate, its just that some of the assumptions people applied to those concepts turned out to be false and more fashionable terms were adopted in their place.

Your proposed reinterpretation of Phlogiston Theory as 'pretty accurate' simply doesn't hold water. The theory had nothing to do with chemical energy, and was simply and completely wrong. Read the Wikipedia on it. Likewise, Eisenstein was a famous Russian film director (or perhaps a German mathematician?). If you mean Albert Einstein, he did give a lecture to an aetherist audience, equating space-time with the aether - by dismembering the aether property by property until he was describing something quite unlike traditional theories of the aether (stationary and otherwise) - he was tactfully and effectively debunking the whole idea of an aether, and replacing it with the space-time of GR.

Both the assumptions and the concepts of phlogiston and aether theory were wrong - game attempts to explain observations of nature, supplanted by quite different and better explanations. If you redefine the names and/or reinterpret the theories and their history to suit your own purpose, you only render them meaningless.

 

[westprog]

But that is EXACTLY what we're saying about consciousness.

If the physical theory of consciousness were as well defined as the theory of crystals, then it would be in the physics books in its own chapter.

 

[rocketdodger]

In fact, a blender, or a clock, or almost any human machine is a computing device?

Yep.

 

[rocketdodger]

If the physical theory of consciousness were as well defined as the theory of crystals, then it would be in the physics books in its own chapter.

Actually, there are no physics books with chapters on crystallization.

Those chapters are in the chemistry books.

Congratulations on being wrong about even things you are wrong about, westprog.

 

[Ocelot]

Actually, there are no physics books with chapters on crystallization.

Those chapters are in the chemistry books.

Congratulations on being wrong about even things you are wrong about, westprog.

I've got a book on statistical physics book with a chapter on crystals.

 

[westprog]

Yep.

If it can give a consistent response to multiple inputs then it does computation?

 

[AkuManiMani]

But aether and space-time aren't the same thing with different names, Aku. There's very little in common between them.

I said that what was in common between them was an attempt to describe the media thru which light propagates. I also specifically pointed out that

Every object/process, by simply existing, is an expression of some quantity. But, in the context of some conscious entity, the quantities take on qualities.

That's the bit I have issue with. I think that we simply like to think of it that way. It's a relic of the olden ways of thinking. But if you stop to think about it, when you hit your elbow somewhere, do you feel a quality ? Or are you simply responding to stimuli ? Once I focus on the experience, I honestly can't see qualities. That's a huge chasm to cross if we're to speak the same language.

I think that's a reasonable objection. There is a longstanding habit of considering perception as somehow being distinct from physical activity or response.

I'm not saying that perceptions are not responses. When it comes down to it perception is a class of response. What I'm proposing is that there must be a specifiable media which is responding to stimuli by producing what we call perceptions. I'm not saying that experience is not a 'behavior' or response; I'm saying that there must be a very specific class of physical interaction that generates experience and that if we determine what this specific class of interaction is we will have found 'consciousness'.

The problem with qualia is that they are pretty much defined as the cause of consciousness but they only exist in relation to it. As I said above, I'm still yet to accept their existence (even in a non-dualistic kind of way) and you'd have to explain how they can possibly arise, from what, and what they're made of.

I'm not sure if I would personally defined them as the cause of consciousness. I've been giving the feedback all of you have provided some serious thought and I think I have a means to atleast frame the problem in an intelligible way.

I've decided to consider the 'mind' to be a process/entity generated by the brain. Consciousness would be a state of the mind. Qualia could be considered as perturbations in this state which, together, make up what we call experience. The first major step would be to physically determine what the 'mind' is. Once this is done -- if it can be done -- I think we will have a workable model of consciousness w/o having to invoke dualism.

The simple answer that its 'just information processing' tells us nothing; all physical objects and events are information processes.

But they don't necessarily compute i.e. categorize the information.

I think that the criteria is still a bit too broad. All living things, and artifacts made by living things, are expressions of computation of some sort or another. As I pointed out before, computational processes still go on in a subject even when they are not conscious. This has led me to the conclusion that intelligence [i.e. computation] is not necessarily the same as consciousness. Its become clear to me that there must be some more specific physical requisite for consciousness than just general computation. It seems that it is a specific class of physical state that is generated and maintained by atleast some organisms for limited periods of time [such as when we are awake].

If every even, object, and process can be reduced down to discrete quanta it stands to reason that perceptions can likewise be broken down into more basic elements.

Only if you assume that consciousness is not a process but a thing.

But there is no absolute division between process and 'thing'. All objects have both a particulate and wave nature. Physicists have even reduced elements of sound down to quanta called phonons. In the conception I'm considering mind is a collective process/entity generated by the brain and consciousness is just a state of this process. If mental elements like ideas and memes are able to propagate within a population, and memories persist long enough to be repeatedly accessed then it seems to be more than justified to consider the mind to be a 'thing'.

Hate to break it to yah, but such arguments are, by definition, doing philosophy.

Uh-huh, but we don't have to get to sophistry in the process.

No, we don't. But you're still a philosopher in my book

Okay so it's not "dysfunctional" per se. So ?

Meh...Its a bit of a side issue but I just wanted to use synesthesia as an example of a natural experiment which shows that perception of stimuli and stimuli are not the same thing.

If one were to break sensations down to their basic components, what would they consist of?

That's exactly what I'm asking.

That's the question every researcher in the field worth their salt should be asking themselves. Honestly, I don't know that answer to that question either and I'm intensely curious as to what it is. What I DO know is that the blasé attitude of "we already know -- its information" to be rather counter productive and antithetical to scientific inquiry. Well, duh! Of course it's information. But, in order to meaningfully advance in this area, we must attain a more specific answer than that.

No. You'd have a WORD, "é", composed of a single phoneme. Phonemes have no meaning, in and of themselves.

Not only that. Words, sounds, markings -- w/e -- have no meaning outside of what we give to them. If one decides to make a phoneme in reference to phonemes then it is so.

Actually I think the whole point is to determine HOW the world is, not WHAT.

So you view science as being more a search for process rather than substance?

Only if qualia exist and have anything to do with consciousness. I don't agree that they are required, and scientists in the field seem to agree.

The term 'qualia' isn't in reference to any new entity. It directly refers to our actual perceptions of the world -- i.e. our consciousness. Would you stop quibbling with me if I just started using the terms 'perceptions' or 'private behaviors' in place of 'qualia'? Regardless of the vocabulary you choose to describe consciousness, the fact still remains that perception of stimuli still needs more rigorous scientific explanation. What is logically wrong with the proposition that perceptions must break down to basic elements or calling such elements 'qualia'?

If you had used "private behaviours" it wouldn't mean the same thing, because the term doesn't imply some sort of behavioural "particle". So, yeah, it's more than just the word.

If even light and sound can be broken down into particulate quanta, what makes you think that 'private behaviors' would be exempt?

Now you're just being dishonest. I said "These people are experts IN THE FIELD WE ARE DISCUSSING". Neurology and computer sciences exist, no ? Those are our best options to study the nature of consciousness, so what I'm asking is why YOU think that YOU know better.

I already pointed out that there are plenty in the field who recognize that we don't know what consciousness is yet. Its interesting to note that the claim that we already know what it is comes more from computer scientists than actual neuroscientists. Me pointing out that we don't know what consciousness is yet is not a claim from superior or special knowledge; its a clear and obvious fact. Those claiming that we DO know what consciousness is or have a sufficient working model of it have yet to demonstrate such. You don't need to be an 'authority' to apply your own critical thinking.

I'm just going off of the scientific knowledge that is readily available in any library, on the internet, and in schools.

Yes, that's so much more convincing.

Especially since the sources of those materiala are the very same authorities you're appealing to.

That's because, AS WE'VE SAID already, the ONLY way to detect consciousness is through behaviour. You can't "detect" consciousness with a radar. So we observe and note that another human, for instance, acts as we'd expect if he/she were conscious. Once the same occurs with a computer, there is no reason, aside from dogma, to reject it as non-conscious.

When you asked me how I knew that you were conscious I replied that I didn't. I said I could only infer from your responses and make a tentative guess. You then pointed out that outward behavior is not necessarily indicative of conscious perception:

Belz...:You have no evidence that I have qualitative experiences, specifically because those are NOT required for my behaviour, and are undetectable even in principle.

The simple fact of the matter is that if one has perceptions of the world, they are conscious. Being as how perceptions are actual events -- the very cornerstone of empiricism -- they are necessarily veridical and should, in principle, be discernible by some objective means. This means that, if one has real scientific knowledge of what consciousness is, they should be able to objectively determine whether an entity is conscious and, if so, have some reasonable idea of what those perceptions would be like given a specific stimuli -- without having to rely on inference. To claim otherwise it to suggest that consciousness is supernatural -- i.e. fundamentally outside of the realm of science. I do not believe that there is any actual phenomena that, in principle, lies outside of the ream of scientific inquiry. Any inability to scientifically investigate a phenomena would be practical -- not in principle. Conscious perception is an actual phenomenon so, in principle, it should be objectively discernible by some means.

Right now there are practical limitations to our ability to scientifically understand consciousness and objectively determine whether a subject has perceptions; we are forced to make guesses and inferences. But, being as how conscious experience is an actual phenomena, in principle there must be some means of objectively studying and understanding it. You may not realize it Belz, but your position on this matter is fundamentally unscientific.