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

[Belz...]

And the thread reaches its absurdity saturation point.

I notice you didn't counter what I said. Derision can be fun, but it doesn't mean a thing. So...

1. P-Zombies are incoherent.
2. If I were a P-Zombie, you couldn't tell the difference.

So why should you accept 3, namely that _I_ could tell the difference if I were a P-zombie ?

 

[Paul C. Anagnostopoulos]

So I was doing okay with the probes-across-the-universe thought experiment, but now I'm having trouble with the teleported-brains experiment.

Let's say we make a copy of my brain every millisecond for a few seconds and array them across the same field with the horses. Let's assume the brains are halted in time right down to every electrochemical process. Are the brains conscious?

I don't see how. Certainly each one alone isn't, because they are halted. Are they conscious as a group? It doesn't seem like they would be.

What is the difference between the brains and the probes?

~~ Paul

 

[Paul C. Anagnostopoulos]

Constructed out of what? How does one construct a subjective experience?

Out of bits and pieces of disjoint awareness ability. We slowly learn by interaction with our environment to gain coherent self-awareness and ultimately qualia.

I'm simply saying that it might be learned behavior just like most of the rest of our behavior. There still has to be some fundamental awareness bits and pieces, so there is still a problem to be solved, but it might be a much simpler problem.

~~ Paul

 

[Belz...]

It would not have beliefs or experiences. It would claim to have beliefs or experiences.

A person knows itself to be a person. An inanimate object does not. A p-zombie doesn't believe itself to be a person, because it doesn't believe anything.

Yes, but IT doesn't know that, does it ? It can't tell the difference and, I submit, neither could any one of us.

I know that I am because I am having subjective experiences. Indeed, the subjective experiences are the only thing I can really be certain of.

Really ? How do you know those experiences exist at all ? That's one reason why solipsism is BS.

You infer your own consciousness from your behaviour, compared to those of other people. I don't know about you, but I noticed, even back then, a marked difference in my "consciousness" when I was about four. So, what happened ? Did my qualia get an upgrade ? Or did my perception of my behaviours simply get sharper through experience ?

 

[Paul C. Anagnostopoulos]

By what mechanism am I having this conscious experience if the mechanism of my brain is in millions of unconnected parts?

The idea is that consciousness is computed, so we can compute it in disjoint processors as long as they each have all the inputs from the previous step. It is the ongoing computation that is consciousness. Consciousness is not a separate thing that has to arise out of the computation like some sort of ether. It does not require a critical mass of processors in one spot. It does not require any communication between the processors as long as the inputs are provided. It is no different from computing the payroll.

That said, I'm starting to have a problem with all this, although I cannot put my finger on what the problem is.

~~ Paul

 

[Robin]

What? No, not in the slightest. Read what cyborg just said, that might help.

You mean I might just have the illusion these words I am reading, but am not really reading them.

No you're not. In fact, "all at once" isn't even defined for you.

How did I read the sentence then. If there is no pathway of information whatsoever between "No you're not" and "defined for you"?

What does it matter? This is really just word-play.

Why - you are suggesting that it could be a reality. That it is possible that I might actually be millions of unconnected devices scattered across space. So it is not word play.

I could see read this whole sentence if my consciousness of it arose decades later than the program steps finished, but where would that consciousness be? Suppose the devices self destructed after they had completed, then this consciousness would have emerged from nothing.

And again, the devices are unconnected so how am I reading a whole sentence when no whole sentence is stored on one device?

Again - what is the mechanism you are proposing?

Back to my password example, only this time you check the timestamps on your email and realise that my "reply" arrived five minutes before you sent your question.

Do I have a time machine now? No, not at all. It means nothing; it's just a parlour trick. And if we had planned it in advance, like your pre-recorded consciousness, not only would it not be a violation of the laws of physics, it wouldn't even be a coincidence.

But only if the information arrived a long time after it had left. So when did the consciousness emerge? It is an important question.

And if the devices are unconnected, how did the information get assembled?

How do I read a whole sentence the information for the whole sentence is scattered in unconnected devices?

 

[cyborg]

That said, I'm starting to have a problem with all this, although I cannot put my finger on what the problem is.

It's just not grand enough to satisfy our hubris.

 

[PixyMisa]

I think that one of the chief characteristics of both the brain and of computer programs is that they are not self-referential.

I think this is probably one of the silliest things that's been posted so far in this thread, and you've had some stiff competition.

I have written a number of self-referential computer programs. It is a common and very useful technique.

A Turing machine reads instructions from a tape, and depending on the instruction and its state register, it moves the tape, writes to the tape, and updates its state register.

Because it can read and modify its own instructions, it can execute any definable self-referential operation.

By the Church-Turing thesis, this is true also of algorithms, of recursively-definable functions, and of lambda calculus.

And of computers. And, since human brains are demonstrably at least as powerful as a Turing machine - since we can mentally single-step through the operation Turing-complete architecture, something I personally had to do in a Computer Science 2A tutorial session - so too of brains.

Human beings are conscious, to some extent, of a lot of processes in their body. They can feel themselves breathing, test their pulse, look at their body moving. The one thing that they aren't conscious of is the actual process of their brain.

Generally speaking, yes,

The best one can manage is a headache.

Yes. There are no pain sensors in most of the brain, but there are in the blood vessels. That's where headaches arise. (Well, there, and the meninges, and tissues outside the brain itself, and silly posts on web forums.)

There's a hole in the head where consciousness of the rest of the body and the world resides.

Equivocation. You mean awareness.

The same applies to computer programs. The chief characteristic of computer equipment is isolation. Each component is shielded as much as possible from every other component, so it can't effect it.

No, sorry, wrong, wrong, totally wrong. Components are isolated so that other components don't affect them when they're not supposed to. If a component is isolated so that other components don't affect it, it's not plugged in.

This makes me glad I don't work tech support at your office...

 

[Robin]

The idea is that consciousness is computed, so we can compute it in disjoint processors as long as they each have all the inputs from the previous step. It is the ongoing computation that is consciousness. Consciousness is not a separate thing that has to arise out of the computation like some sort of ether. It does not require a critical mass of processors in one spot. It does not require any communication between the processors as long as the inputs are provided. It is no different from computing the payroll.

But if I read and understood your post and the information for all of it scattered in unconnected devices - how did I understand the whole thing?

Remember, no one device has sufficient information for even an instant of consciousness.

 

[PixyMisa]

But I am not the observer - I am the conscious mind that it is creating. So I am asking, does that conscious mind appear 50-100 years after the program has completed running?

Appear to whom?

And define appear, please. It matters.

 

[Robin]

It's just not grand enough to satisfy our hubris.

On the contrary it is the grandest and most extravagant metaphysical system I have heard.

 

[Robin]

Appear to whom?

Me of course - the consciousness created by the millions of unconnected devices with insufficient information for even an instant of consciousness on any one..

And define appear, please. It matters.

Are you reading these words?

They are appearing to you.

That is how you are able to read them.

 

[Dancing David]

Make it feel that it is conscious?

As I said to Paul, if I am not really conscious, just being tricked into feeling I am conscious then consciousness is an irrelevant unknowable thing.

So it is this feeling that I am conscious that I have right now that I am calling consciousness.

I am not the one who constructed the p-zombie, it was some other dude. I think I am a p-zombie.

 

[westprog]

Out of bits and pieces of disjoint awareness ability. We slowly learn by interaction with our environment to gain coherent self-awareness and ultimately qualia.

I'm simply saying that it might be learned behavior just like most of the rest of our behavior. There still has to be some fundamental awareness bits and pieces, so there is still a problem to be solved, but it might be a much simpler problem.

~~ Paul

It might be simpler, but it would still be fundamental. And decomposing conscious experience is not a straightforward thing to do.

 

[cyborg]

You mean I might just have the illusion these words I am reading, but am not really reading them.

That doesn't really relate to the previous example.

You are certainly reading words. Illusions can only take place where this happens:

Event X is interpreted to be operating under model A but actually operates under model B.

E.g.

X is "sequential light points seen"
A is "moving object reflects light"
B is "moving light stream reflected from object"

There is no interpretation of events when you are reading - you're taking whatever it is you're visually perceiving and decoding it into language.

 

[westprog]

I notice you didn't counter what I said. Derision can be fun, but it doesn't mean a thing. So...

1. P-Zombies are incoherent.
2. If I were a P-Zombie, you couldn't tell the difference.

So why should you accept 3, namely that _I_ could tell the difference if I were a P-zombie ?

If you were, you couldn't tell anything. If you weren't, you would know it.

 

[cyborg]

On the contrary it is the grandest and most extravagant metaphysical system I have heard.

Where is the metaphysics in saying that a system that looks and behaves like a computational system is a computational system?

Where is the metaphysics in appreciating that the reported experience of conscious decisions do not tie up with the measured times at which apparently "responsive" signals are sent?

Where is the metaphysics in the application of one of the very many ways in which conciousness can be alterned and noting that it affects the normal, very computational looking, operation of the brain?

I am not seeing the extravagence - I see a very simple assertion.

It looks like, it sounds like and it moves like a computer - it is a computer.

 

[Dancing David]

The "subjective" part is superflous - one only needs worry about the "experience" part.

Doo dee doo dee dooo, um that is not going to go over well. If you label it as quale or subjective, then it is magically delicous.

:whistle

 

[AkuManiMani]

Sure. And [consciousness] reduces neatly to a material process.

Yet you're still trying to reduce it to an abstract computational process. The logical conclusion of your conception of consciousness is that that material composition of the system in question is irrelevant. So, run by me again: how is your definition of consciousness "materialist"?

 

[PixyMisa]

You mean I might just have the illusion these words I am reading, but am not really reading them.

No, that is not what I mean.

How did I read the sentence then. If there is no pathway of information whatsoever between "No you're not" and "defined for you"?

I don't know what you are arguing here.

If you are millions of unconnected devices scattered across space, then "all at once" is not defined for you. Relativity comes into play.

Why - you are suggesting that it could be a reality. That it is possible that I might actually be millions of unconnected devices scattered across space. So it is not word play.

Oh, certainly, we can do that.

The question of "When does consciousness arise?" doesn't actually mean anything, though. As I said a hundred or so posts back, there are only two ways that you can even know that there is a consciousness there: Either you know, in advance, exactly what those unconnected devices are doing, or you connect them.

In the first instance, the devices are actually irrelevant; in the second instance, relativity immediately stomps on you, hard.

I could see read this whole sentence if my consciousness of it arose decades later than the program steps finished, but where would that consciousness be?

Scattered across millions of devices and light-years of space.

Suppose the devices self destructed after they had completed, then this consciousness would have emerged from nothing.

Suppose you died tomorrow. Then your life would have emerged from nothing. No, wait, that makes no sense whatsoever.

And again, the devices are unconnected so how am I reading a whole sentence when no whole sentence is stored on one device?

Why is this even a problem? You read the sentence, the operations in your brain were recorded, and now the recording has been subdivided and replayed.

Where is the sentence? It's on all the devices put together.

Again - what is the mechanism you are proposing?

I'm not proposing any mechanism for anything. I don't understand why you think one is needed?

But only if the information arrived a long time after it had left.

Of course.

So when did the consciousness emerge? It is an important question.

It's not even a meaningful question. Until you interact with the consciousness, you don't know it's there. Unless you know that it's there in advance, in which canse the devices themselves are irrelevant, because they are replaying information you already have.

And if the devices are unconnected, how did the information get assembled?

It doesn't get assembled. Why would you think it did?

How do I read a whole sentence the information for the whole sentence is scattered in unconnected devices?

Where's the problem? That's what reading a whole sentence is, for you. Weird existence, but hey, it's your hypothetical.

Again, it's just a recording. It's another instance of your earlier consciosuness. It experiences the same experiences. By definition. The nature of the outside Universe is completely irrelevant.