Robot consciousness

[Paul C. Anagnostopoulos]

Yet this does not constitute a pencil-and-paper brain.

Why? Because what's happening in the real world is that I am sitting at a table moving a pencil.

It doesn't matter that the symbols on the paper represent (to me) the chemical reactions in John's brain. The fact remains that they are not, in reality, those reactions.

No chemical reactions are happening. No sort of brain is operating, on any sort of substrate.

So is it the fact that the brain is chemistry that disallows the pencil and paper brain from being conscious? Because it seems to me that you could make the same argument for hand simulating any other computer program:

Yet this does not constitute a pencil-and-paper computer.

Why? Because what's happening in the real world is that I am sitting at a table moving a pencil.

It doesn't matter that the symbols on the paper represent (to me) the electronic reactions in the computer. The fact remains that they are not, in reality, those reactions.

No electronic reactions are happening. No sort of computer is operating, on any sort of substrate.

But, of course, we all know that I can hand simulate a typical computer program and produce the same answers. Why is a computer program that produces consciousness a special case?

~~ Paul

 

[Modified]

I don't know that a cog brain would work. I suspect it would not. How are you going to reproduce threshold sensitivity with cogs?

The same way you do it with a computer chip. There is nothing, in theory, to prevent someone from building a mechanical equivalent to any computer in existence; it just isn't very practical.

 

[shuttlt]

Regarding heart contractions, are you saying you know of someone who disputes that?

No

 

[shuttlt]

Man I hate these threads. They make me feel like such a woo. The English language lacks the words to express what I'm trying to convey and I end up tripping over my own words.

In the definition of "conscious", the ability to sense and interact with the outside is a necessary component.

So a disembodied consciousness would not be possible? Keep a brain alive in a jar and it wouldn't be conscious? Clearly it would be a disordered mess if it developed without such interactions, but knock someone over the head, steal their brain, put it in a jar...

However, there is a related state that occurs during lucid dreams where one has the same sense of thought as when awake. Is this lucid state "conscious"?

I don't know.

If we call the lucid state "self conscious", is there a state of consciousness that does not include being self conscious (ie, can you be conscious and not aware of it)?

I'm not sure about the terminology, but I certainly would hesitate before saying that whatever it is that I'd be afraid of losing when I step through the teleporter stops when I fall asleep. The brain functions available to my consciousness are clearly limited under these conditions though.

 

[roger]

No, because if my consciousness continued unabated, I'd be aware of the pauses. Maybe my consciousness flickers in and out with the universe. I kinda think there'd be some fingerprint if that actually happened, but that's not relevant here.

You are still erecting a straw man. No oneis saying that the consciousness continues during the pause. (sorry for the bold shouting, but this has been said several times, and you keep going back to the same argument). Specifically, we say that you would not have consciousness during the pause.

As for the speed floor, there's every reason to believe it exists. We know that the brain works at the current speed, and that it relies on rapid coordination of inputs, including its own outputs as inputs.

this is pure assertion, and it flies in the face of everything we know about computation. You are conflating things. The brain depends on "coordination of inputs", not "rapid coordination of inputs". Yes, the coordination needs to be timed relative to the pace of inputs, but again, we are postulating that the inputs are slowed down just as much as the brain. You have no evidence, nor reasoning, that slowing down both wouldn't work. Furthermore, we have an enormous body of evidence that it would work, based both on computation, and the behavior of individual neurons in petri dishes. They have no concept of time - when the inputs reach a certain level they fire.

We also know that there's no consciousness when there's no activity.

Everyone here agrees with this.

And based on what we can deduce from how the brain is built, and the rather fuzzy nature of consciousness, it's just impossible to believe that one signal per second would be sufficient to maintain the effect.

Again, evidence. You are claiming something I have never seen claimed by any neuroscience practitioner (doctor, researcher, etc)

Although I freely admit that I don't know whereabouts the floor would be. Neither does anyone else right now, I suspect.

Fine, but we still need a reason to think such a floor would exist.

Too late. I just don't get your point here. We seem to agree.

Yes, we do. You keep trying to put a position on us that we don't hold, and then argue against it.

I don't know that a cog brain would work. I suspect it would not. How are you going to reproduce threshold sensitivity with cogs?

Study Turing machines. Seriously, it's a trivial problem computationally.

The pencil brain is sheer lunacy.

Yet it is computationally equivalent.

Doing the equations on paper is, as I've pointed out numerous times, removing the hardware.

But you are wrong. Pencil and paper are hardware, just a different form.

When you get down to it, the brain is nothing but hardware. It's all physical reaction.

Yup, which is why we see no reason why substituting one form of hardware for another suddenly means there is no consciousness. That is lunacy.

I can sit down and, theoretically, if I had some life-extending drug that gave me the time, describe on paper every chemical process that occurred in John Doe's brain in his life.

Yet this does not constitute a pencil-and-paper brain.

Why? Because what's happening in the real world is that I am sitting at a table moving a pencil.

It doesn't matter that the symbols on the paper represent (to me) the chemical reactions in John's brain. The fact remains that they are not, in reality, those reactions.

No chemical reactions are happening. No sort of brain is operating, on any sort of substrate.

You are just making all that up. Note that exactly the same argument is made by dualists about the human brain - "it doesn't matter that the symbols in the chemicals represent the thoughts in the brain. The fact remains they are not, in reality, those reactions" Not convincing, is it. And, again, you are conflating things. We are not saying the pencil symbols are the thoughts in John's brain, that are the thoughts in the pencil brain. John thinks chemical based thought. Silicon thinks silicon based thoughts. Pencil brains think pencil based thoughts.

Pen/paper is entirely different, for the reason I just described.

And as I pointed out, you are arguing a point no one holds. The pencil brain thinks the pencil brain thoughts, not John's. Just like my brain does not think your thoughts. If you structured my brain to be exactly like yours, and fed the inputs from your body into my brain, our two brains would think exactly the same thing at the same time. yet no one would claim the thougts in my brain are yours, just that they are the same. They are real, they are thoughts, and there is consciousness. In this case, we'd have two identical consciousnesses.

Tease apart your argument, and you'll see you're holding a dualist position. "The thoughts aren't the symbols in the brain" - that's dualist.

 

[Piggy]

You know they don't resemble each other because you know exactly what those two things do. You do not know how the brain works nor whether a black-box program is emulating one. Therefore you cannot "calculate their resemblance."

You can't seriously buy that logic.

Enough is known about the brain to conclude that however it makes consciousness, that process bears no resemblance to scribbling with a pencil.

Get real.

 

[roger]

I think you just have altered consciousness when you are dreaming. If that's what you meant by "different meaning," then fine.

I started this whole sleep thing, you all took it on a tangent I didn't intend. I was initially going to say brain dead, but current medicine hasn't been able to bring somebody back from brain death, and so I was concerned somebody would say "but once your brain dead you are dead". The point was simple, and rhetorical - Piggy's assertions nonwithstanding, there is absolutely nothing we know that states that if we stopped a brain for awhile, then started it back up, that consciousness would not return. Sleep was an easy thing to reach for, though of course in sleep's case many of the lower level functions continue.

 

[roger]

You can't seriously buy that logic.

Enough is known about the brain to conclude that however it makes consciousness, that process bears no resemblance to scribbling with a pencil.

Get real.

Argument by belittlement and insult.

Meanwhile all of neuroscience proceeds with exactly that assumption.

 

[Piggy]

So is it the fact that the brain is chemistry that disallows the pencil and paper brain from being conscious? Because it seems to me that you could make the same argument for hand simulating any other computer program:

If you were to create a brain with electrical circuits, you could build an object that (hypothetically) worked like a human brain, perhaps you could build a consciousness module and have a conscious robot.

However, sitting at a table moving a pencil over paper does nothing that could even hypothetically create a working brain of any kind. It doesn't matter whether you're doodling, or writing formulas which, in your mind, represent the workings of a conscious brain.

So....

If we're talking about a dump-redump, it doesn't matter if the calcs are done by computer, pencil, aliens, or angels.

But if we're talking about the notion that doing everything on paper, start to finish, and never running anything on the robot brain, could somehow generate a conscious entity, that's daft.

But, of course, we all know that I can hand simulate a typical computer program and produce the same answers. Why is a computer program that produces consciousness a special case?

You cannot be serious.

 

[shuttlt]

I think you just have altered consciousness when you are dreaming. If that's what you meant by "different meaning," then fine.

But if I'm asleep, surely it would be acceptable usage of the word to say that I am unconscious.

Just try to find something that is conscious in a manner similar to humans, but without a brain. That would falsify the claim that consciousness is a function of the brain.

We agree that this can't be done.

I don't know what you think consciousness is, so I can't propose a way to falsify it.

Sorry. I struggle to find the words. It's certainly outside the scope of the Turing test. We all seem to agree that a pen and paper consciousness could produce the necessary outputs (don't we?). Piggy doubts that it would be conscious. I presume he doesn't doubt it could pass a Turing test (give that the slowness was hidden)? It seems to me that the only thing that could be missing would be that the pen and paper p-zombie would not actually have an inner 'I', no matter what it said to the contrary.

I have no plans to bring up metaphysics when trying to explain consciousness. I just figure it fits into science somewhere. Is that a mode of explanation?

Nowhere is it written that everything has to be accessible to scientific inquiry. It seems plausible to me that consciousness (in the specific sense I mean it), what caused the big bang and the like are unknowable. If we are going to impose the constraint that they ARE knowable and then reason from there, we should at least admit that this is a pragmatic assumption and could be wrong.

At the risk of rambling, it just seems to me that the fact that I am not a reasoning meat automata, and do in fact have an inner 'I' is not something that one would have predicted from anything we have learned about physics, chemistry or biology.

 

[Piggy]

Argument by belittlement and insult.

Meanwhile all of neuroscience proceeds with exactly that assumption.

There comes a point where you have to call foolishness foolishness.

And no, neuroscience does not proceed with the assumption that the physical activity of the brain is akin to the physical activity of moving a pencil across a sheet.

 

[Piggy]

Study Turing machines. Seriously, it's a trivial problem computationally.

But we're not talking about computation. We're talking about a machine that can generate the phenomenon of conscious awareness.

Maybe it can be done with cogs, I dunno.

Doesn't matter, really.

 

[Piggy]

this is pure assertion, and it flies in the face of everything we know about computation. You are conflating things. The brain depends on "coordination of inputs", not "rapid coordination of inputs". Yes, the coordination needs to be timed relative to the pace of inputs, but again, we are postulating that the inputs are slowed down just as much as the brain. You have no evidence, nor reasoning, that slowing down both wouldn't work. Furthermore, we have an enormous body of evidence that it would work, based both on computation, and the behavior of individual neurons in petri dishes. They have no concept of time - when the inputs reach a certain level they fire.

So please explain to me how you extrapolate from computation and the behavior of individual neurons in petri dishes to the conclusion that the brain can produce conscious awareness at the rate of one impulse per second.

 

[shuttlt]

You are still erecting a straw man. No oneis saying that the consciousness continues during the pause. (sorry for the bold shouting, but this has been said several times, and you keep going back to the same argument). Specifically, we say that you would not have consciousness during the pause.

Feel free to ignore me as I seem to be off on my own little tangent, but while I may not be saying that the consciousness continues... but that it does not feels like an assumption to me.

 

[Piggy]

But you are wrong. Pencil and paper are hardware, just a different form.

Explain how that hardware can produce consciousness.

 

[Piggy]

Yup, which is why we see no reason why substituting one form of hardware for another suddenly means there is no consciousness. That is lunacy.

A: Because the pencil and paper cannot do what the brain is doing. A pencil and paper cannot act like a collection of neurons.

As I said before, if we're talking dump-redump, it doesn't matter if the calcs are done on computer, by hand, or by aliens.

But if you're trying to say doing everything start-to-finish on paper will somehow cause consciousness to happen, that's insane.

 

[shuttlt]

However, sitting at a table moving a pencil over paper does nothing that could even hypothetically create a working brain of any kind. It doesn't matter whether you're doodling, or writing formulas which, in your mind, represent the workings of a conscious brain.

No formulas for me, I'm imagining writing out the state of the machine per enormous page....

10111010100100010101...
10101010101010000101...
10101010100010101010...
................................
................................
................................

Every clock tick is me turning over the sheet and start again.

 

[Piggy]

Regarding one impulse per second:

At that rate of input, none of the things that are needed for consciousness can be happening. From what we can tell, in the brain, simultaneous associations of many types of information have to be made for this effect to occur. That requires a pretty heavy real-time data stream -- which is why the brain uses so much of the body's resources to maintain it.

If you are proposing that there's some other model for consciousness, which is not like the human brain, then you'll need to explain what exactly that is before you go claiming it can handle one impulse a second and be conscious.

 

[Piggy]

We are not saying the pencil symbols are the thoughts in John's brain, that are the thoughts in the pencil brain. John thinks chemical based thought. Silicon thinks silicon based thoughts. Pencil brains think pencil based thoughts.

But there is no pencil brain.

There's a pencil moving across paper. It doesn't matter what the mover thinks about the shapes that appear on the paper.

There is no reason to believe that a moving pencil creates a brain or creates "thoughts".

 

[Piggy]

Tease apart your argument, and you'll see you're holding a dualist position. "The thoughts aren't the symbols in the brain" - that's dualist.

It has nothing to do with dualism.

When you look at the brain and consider what is known about consciousness, then you look at the physical act of moving a pencil on paper, it's clear that the latter is not sufficient to do what the former is doing when it creates consciousness.

It's that simple.