My take on why indeed the study of consciousness may not be as simple

[AkuManiMani]

I really wish you wouldn't use the term mind. It's so dualistic-ey.

Yea, the term has some controversial history to it but its still useful, IMO. When I use the term I don't mean it to imply metaphysical dualism since, whatever the mind is, it has physical consequences and is therefore physical in some sense. I've no intention of abandoning the term just because some people are ideologically squeamish

Yup, this is similar to a hundred descriptions I've read. I'm not sure what it does for us in terms of trying to figure out how the brain works.

Well, what I just described is a major part of what the brain actually does. What makes it so tricky to study is that, unlike most phenomena that can be publicly observed without much trouble, the subjective can only be observed privately.

Also, how do we know it's not just a social construction?

Anyway, time will tell.

~~ Paul

The only social constructions are the metaphysical assumptions we have concerning the nature of this issue and the language we use to describe it. That we have qualitative subjective experiences is a brute fact, tho

 

[westprog]

Huh ? Aren't they ?



I was simply adding to your post that humans aren't aware of ALL their processed.



And yet it does. Often.

Each cell of memory is set up so that it can never affect another cell of memory. Never ever. Most of the components of a computer are carefully built in order that nothing of their state can be accessible to another part. The ways in which the components can effect other components are extremely limited.

Compare this with the cheerful anarchy of a bucket of water, where any molecule can go anywhere and exchange information with any other molecule. Why isn't that self-referential?

 

[westprog]

Dipping my head in here again.

Isn't what some people here are doing just Loki's Wager? It seems like people want to attempt to make consciousness deliberately impossible to define in order to keep it "ok" to hold wacky beliefs?

It seems to me like the entire HPC is just a big Loki's Wager?

Yeah, you should make 'em look foolish by coming up with a neat definition, possibly involving the word "just".

 

[AkuManiMani]

Each cell of memory is set up so that it can never affect another cell of memory. Never ever. Most of the components of a computer are carefully built in order that nothing of their state can be accessible to another part. The ways in which the components can effect other components are extremely limited.

Compare this with the cheerful anarchy of a bucket of water, where any molecule can go anywhere and exchange information with any other molecule. Why isn't that self-referential?

Because the "self" in "self-referential" is equivocable, apparently.

 

[Robin]

You are not seeing that Robin is asserting that each probe is somehow linked to the previous one, such that the entire operation is a single consciousness distributed across space.

No, that is completely the opposite of what I am saying, you are missing the entire point.

I have said explicitly that each probe is unconnected to any other. If they were connected there would be no problem.

But precisely the same instructions occur as in Run1, albeit a little further apart.

Because the state that probe X operates on comes from Run2, not the other probes in Run3.

And again, what is it in the computer system that knows this and will use this to ensure that there is no consciousness?

 

[Paul C. Anagnostopoulos]

The only social constructions are the metaphysical assumptions we have concerning the nature of this issue and the language we use to describe it. That we have qualitative subjective experiences is a brute fact, tho.

It may be a fact, but it may still be largely constructed.

~~ Paul

 

[Robin]

Or this -- that is another illustration of how the probes have nothing to do with each other.

Yes, as I said, that is the whole point.

 

[Robin]

Over the course of the nine months. But how do we know it feels like a half second of consciousness? We don't understand the mechanism that makes apparent time feel the way it does.

But I have already said a number of times, the gap between apparent time and actual time is not the problem.

Even if there were some mechanism to bring all this stuff together (which there isn't), it would take at the least several years (in fact probably centuries, I haven't worked out the geometry).

But my apparent unified conscious experience of a moment's half second took nine months in real time.

So you are saying it is all done and dusted in less time than it would take to bring together information from any two probes, never mind all of them.

So did information travel faster than light?

 

[Robin]

Robin is saying that because the instructions are the same, and in the same order, as the original program, and they all operate on the same states as they do in the original program, that the program is a single instance that is now distributed throughout space.

I said nothing of the sort.

You are attributing to me your own intuition that an algorithm is somehow a thing.

I don't consider that the program was a single instance even in the original run except in a purely abstract sense.

In Run1 all that happened was that a bunch of separate operations linked by the fact that they are related by some other program by an index in the process table and that they will write the the same piece of virtual memory and that someone has previously taken care that these operations in this particular order will result in some meaningful calculation.

Even in Run1 the registers could have been overwritten hundreds of times between any two steps in the program, and the memory it writes to could have been overwritten many times. The program state might have been saved to disk at any point, moved to a different computer and the original hardware crushed to dust, then the program started up again and the algorithm would have continued just as though it had been run on a dedicated CPU.

When that program step is loaded to the CPU it is run with the specific data items and register state it is given and there is nothing on the system that knows that between ST A (fefa) in one step and LD A (fefa) in another that same value for (fefa) was restored from the wrong place.

What is it that knows this?

 

[Paul C. Anagnostopoulos]

Even if there were some mechanism to bring all this stuff together (which there isn't), it would take at the least several years (in fact probably centuries, I haven't worked out the geometry).

I don't think there is any need to bring it together. It is the array of probes that represent consciousness, like the array of horses represents movement.

So you are saying it is all done and dusted in less time than it would take to bring together information from any two probes, never mind all of them.

So did information travel faster than light?

No information traveled at all. It is the array that represents consciousness.

As I said above, we have a problem here because we have not established how we are going to determine whether an entity(ies) is conscious.

~~ Paul

 

[Robin]

Say, why do we need to bother running the single instructions in the processors flung across the universe? After all, the sequence of input states for each processor already represents all the results except the final one. Just add a NOP instruction at the end and we've got them all.

The sequence of input states embodies the consciousness. Now how does this differ, if at all, from the transporter-photographed horse?

Does this make it easier for everyone?

~~ Paul

The same thing is true of Run1.

So the question becomes why do you need to run Run1?

After all nothing that happens in Run1 that wasn't already the case before the first instruction was evaluated. The program plus data already represent the results.

Just as I could say that the number of primes under a googol is:

{n=10^100;f(i=0;i<n;i++)a=i;f(i=2;i*i<=n;i++){f(j=i+1;j*i<n;j++){a[j*i]=-1;}}f(i=3;i<n;i++){?(a!=-1)j++;}o(j)}

Even though I would have to construct a different sort of a universe to actually run that algorithm.

 

[Paul C. Anagnostopoulos]

The same thing is true of Run1.

So the question becomes why do you need to run Run1?

After all nothing that happens in Run1 that wasn't already the case before the first instruction was evaluated. The program plus data already represent the results.

Sorry, what is Run1? I never memorized the purpose of these various runs.

~~ Paul

 

[Robin]

I don't think there is any need to bring it together. It is the array of probes that represent consciousness, like the array of horses represents movement.


No information traveled at all. It is the array that represents consciousness.

And yet I am looking at my left and right hand in the same moment of consciousness, something that should be physically impossible.

As I said above, we have a problem here because we have not established how we are going to determine whether an entity(ies) is conscious.

Are you saying that I can't decide whether or not I am conscious?

I define consciousness according to this private ostensive reference I have. I do not have to establish whether I am conscious, I only have to establish whether I can be Run4.

 

[Robin]

Sorry, what is Run1? I never memorized the purpose of these various runs.

~~ Paul

If the mind is an algorithm then there is an equivalent algorithm that can run on a suitably powerful computer.

Run1 is simply a run of this equivalent algorithm.

Run2 is a second run of this algorithm with precisely the same data as in Run1, and it is during Run2 that we cache the data for Run3.

 

[Robin]

I really wish you wouldn't use the term mind. It's so dualistic-ey.

But you guys are suggesting that dualism, not us.

You are saying that an algorithm running on something that is not a brain would be conscious in just the same way that we are.

So you are suggesting that my mind might be exactly the same whether it was run on a mechanism of organic neural architecture or silicon architecture running instructions one by one.

So how can we avoid dualism when discussing that concept?

Personally I think - mind/brain - same thing.

 

[Paul C. Anagnostopoulos]

And yet I am looking at my left and right hand in the same moment of consciousness, something that should be physically impossible.

Sorry, I don't follow.

Are you saying that I can't decide whether or not I am conscious?

You deciding about yourself is one thing. The problem is that we haven't determined how we are going to decide if a computer (in one piece or far-flung) is conscious.

Even concerning yourself, you have the problem that you may be a zombie set up to think she is conscious. That is, after all, part of the problem of defining qualia.

I define consciousness according to this private ostensive reference I have. I do not have to establish whether I am conscious, I only have to establish whether I can be Run4.

So let's say we teleport a copy of your brain every millisecond for a few seconds. Does the array of brains embody consciousness? If not, what is it about consciousness that disappears in this situation? It may help to compare it to the array of horses.

~~ Paul

 

[Paul C. Anagnostopoulos]

If the mind is an algorithm then there is an equivalent algorithm that can run on a suitably powerful computer.

Run1 is simply a run of this equivalent algorithm.

Run2 is a second run of this algorithm with precisely the same data as in Run1, and it is during Run2 that we cache the data for Run3.

What is the purpose of Run1? Is it to make the point that Run1 = Run2?

~~ Paul

 

[Robin]

What is the purpose of Run1? Is it to make the point that Run1 = Run2?

~~ Paul

Yes, because rocketdodgers initial point was that only the initial run produced consciousness, so I wanted to have a duplicate run of Run1 and ask if consciousness was produced.

 

[Paul C. Anagnostopoulos]

Yes, because rocketdodgers initial point was that only the initial run produced consciousness, so I wanted to have a duplicate run of Run1 and ask if consciousness was produced.

Is that really what he said?

~~ Paul

 

[Paul C. Anagnostopoulos]

So let's say we teleport a copy of your brain every millisecond for a few seconds. Does the array of brains embody consciousness? If not, what is it about consciousness that disappears in this situation? It may help to compare it to the array of horses.

It's now official. I have a permanent headache from this thread.

~~ Paul