Are You Conscious?

[FedUpWithFaith]

Heh, speaking of Seife, in his Zero: The Biography of a Dangerous Idea, he translates logos as "ratio" and interprets John with this as a starting point.

Yes, I recommend that book too. He is a terrific writer and I think even those here who think I'm full of crap will find both books worth reading and stimulating. I particularly like Seife's discussion of the equivalence under advanced mathematics realms of zero and infinity, referencing Cantor and Boltzmann among others.

But Seife takes the safe road. He doesn't really want to push the idea that information is physical. He tends to analogize the issues rather than take a literal fringe position of that form. For him, in Decoding, nature's recapitulation of the Turing Machine is more the main theme. Part of that is because he's a very objective journalist and probably doesn't want to risk looking too kooky.

 

[FedUpWithFaith]

And that would be part of the 'creation myth' aspect of your personal mythology, right? Not that there's anything wrong with that, or that it's "false."

I don't know why you want to characterize my beliefs as personal "mythology". Myths are by nature, totally or largely false and have a tendency to be be believed without evidence. I'm not sure this is worth arguing though.

Do you agree with this statement:

"Are we living in a simulated world? MIT Professor Set Lloyd argues that there is no difference between a simulated world in a quantum computer, and the real thing, given enough computational resources. This is simple enough to understand at the basic level given that bits are bits (or qu-bits, in their quantum version) and that a universal computer (such as the universe, or multiverse of universes) can perfectly recreate any computation possible in any other computer (or universe!)"

http://www.starstreamresearch.com/shaking_hands_with_the_future.htm

The part I highlighted is definitely true and has been proven mathematically by others besides Lloyd.

I don't think we know enough, and certainly I don't, to say to you with conviction that I completely agree with that first part of statement but i do consider it one of several plausible digital physics postulates. Others who espouse my basic philosophy do not agree that the computational basis of our universe has to be based on a quantum computer but there are some compelling reasons to believe this based solely on the nature of QM itself and the probability that it is a major door by which we will come to understand the more fundamental computational levels that underlie reality. Particularly intriguing is the seemlessness by which a computational view can yield non-locality and the very nature of quanta, if expanded as many scientists believe, to time and space, enables us to actually view reality as a discrete set of computed cycles. It also renders Zeno's Paradox a non-issue..

 

[Limbo]

Myths are by nature, totally or largely false and have a tendency to be be believed without evidence.

That's one way of looking at it, but it isn't the best way. It's more of a man-on-the-street way of looking at it.

Myths are by nature metaphors. 'Advanced being' is as much a metaphor as 'gods' are. 'Universal computer' is a metaphor as well. Beware you don't get stuck in the metaphors, that leads to fundamentalism. One must look past them.

"In this metaphor we actually have a picture of the computational universe, a metaphor which I hope to make scientifically precise as part of a research program." -Seth Lloyd

When you get down to it, all words are metaphors in a way. By incorporating a notion of 'advanced beings' in your worldview, you have a modern equivalent of 'gods' in your personal mythology, and you have a modern equivalent of a creation myth as well. It doesn't matter if you can back some of it up with math or not.

You have an element of 'trust' in your personal mythology, 'trust' in 'advanced beings'. Trust and faith are both fingers pointing to the same moon. Look past the fingers, or you get stuck on them and play word games. Accept and assimilate your shadow-self, quit projecting it onto others thus demonizing them as people of 'faith' or as 'woo-woos'.

If you learn to look beyond the words and symbols and metaphors to see the moon, you can begin to see where world myth and religion intersect. Then maybe you can let go of your prejudice. You're making a good start by going from a strong atheist to a medium one. Do you see where I'm coming from?

 

[FedUpWithFaith]

That's one way of looking at it, but it isn't the best way. It's more of a man-on-the-street way of looking at it.

Myths are by nature metaphors. 'Advanced being' is as much a metaphor as 'gods' are. 'Universal computer' is a metaphor as well. Beware you don't get stuck in the metaphors, that leads to fundamentalism. One must look past them.

"In this metaphor we actually have a picture of the computational universe, a metaphor which I hope to make scientifically precise as part of a research program." -Seth Lloyd

Myths can be used as metaphors but that is not intrinsic to their nature. Sometimes they're just phony BS somebody once took for literal truth. I don't like to bander about labels in such a sloppy manner. When I say the fundamental essence of the universe/multiverse is a Universal Turing Machine I'm being literal. When Lloyd says something similar he's converying to you that he's trying to transform metaphor into a one-to-one mapping. That is far more powerful than just a metaphor.

I find beleiver's in woo love metaphors and over-ascribe them because they can't walk the extra mile to describe things more literally and accurately.

When you get down to it, all words are metaphors in a way. By incorporating a notion of 'advanced beings' in your worldview, you have a modern equivalent of 'gods' in your personal mythology, and you have a modern equivalent of a creation myth as well. It doesn't matter if you can back some of it up with math or not.

You're taking this too far. Your confusing my rational musings on plausible speculations with some sort of worldview that governs my thinking.

You have an element of 'trust' in your personal mythology, 'trust' in 'advanced beings'. Trust and faith are both fingers pointing to the same moon. Look past the fingers, or you get stuck on them and play word games. Accept and assimilate your shadow-self, quit projecting it onto others thus demonizing them as people of 'faith' or as 'woo-woos'.

Am I the one playing word games?

If you learn to look beyond the words and symbols and metaphors to see the moon, you can begin to see where world myth and religion intersect. Then maybe you can let go of your prejudice. You're making a good start by going from a strong atheist to a medium one. Do you see where I'm coming from?

Yes, I see where you're coming from, an odd world of patronizing mysticism. I happened to open the link you found the Seth Lloyd quote in. It confirmed to me what i already thought about your views, you are looking for any justification you can find in whatever fringe science you can to justify your beliefs. That site and your arguments are typical of the BS the Deepak Chopras of the world pull when they try to to justify their non-evidence, non-rational-based faith in God or woo or various conspiracy theories (for those of you who doubt - open the link he cited and see for yourself) by distorting and twisting Quantum Mechanics, Bell's Theorem, and all the more non-intuitive elements of science, as much of what I'm discussing, unfortunately, also conforms to. I enjoy the create poetic musings about creation and reality - that part of mythologizing - but not the extra step you implicitly seem to take to really believe beyond reason. You not simply mythologizing - you are using mythological metaphors to promulgate deeper non-rational "truths" you want to believe in. Just show us the evidence and please stop looking only for explanations that fit your preconceived notions. You applauded me for doing that above now now show us you are capable of it.

 

[PixyMisa]

The part I highlighted is definitely true and has been proven mathematically by others besides Lloyd.

Church-Turing thesis, yes. We had a very long discussion on that recently, with a number of people objecting to the implications.

Not one of them was able to provide a coherent reason for their objections. So it goes.

 

[FedUpWithFaith]

Church-Turing thesis, yes. We had a very long discussion on that recently, with a number of people objecting to the implications.

Not one of them was able to provide a coherent reason for their objections. So it goes.

There have been postulations of various forms of "hypercomputers" or "Super-Turing" machines that shatter Church-Turing constraints but with the exception of an analog one based on recurrent artificial neural networks there is no evidence or coherent logic to support the existence of such a computer as a realizable physical system. I have been avoiding this topic because my understanding of it is still far from what I consider comfortable. I'm actually studying several recent papers now and having some difficulty fully digesting the concepts and implications. I would love to join any discussion here with people highly knowledgeable on the subject.

Hypercomputation could potentially alter and make the entire digital physics philosophy even more interesting. But I'm already so far on the fringe as it is I didn't want to introduce even more second-order "fringyness".

 

[PixyMisa]

There have been postulations of various forms of "hypercomputers" or "Super-Turing" machines that shatter Church-Turing constraints but with the exception of an analog one based on recurrent artificial neural networks there is no evidence or coherent logic to support the existence of such a computer as a realizable physical system.

Well, I don't see how an anlog one based on recurrent artificial neural networks would exceed Turing equivalence either.

I'll recommend Godel, Escher, Bach again. It's not very technical, but it's very thorough, and an enjoyable read. And it's a good place to start before moving on to the more technical treatments of the subject.

 

[.13.]

In order for the above to have significance, we have to be very clear about exactly what we mean by "process information". You may be late coming to this particular discussion, so I'll reiterate that I've asked exactly how a computer processes information in a sense that any other physical object doesn't.

I'd be surprised if no one hasn't answered that question previously. I'm not familiar enough with information theory to give a proper answer.

I'm not sure why this is relevant, though. Your CPU and your table have different microarchitectures. Your table doesn't have one.

I'm not exactly sure why you would object to this: "Information processing and subjective experience are linked in the way that if you don't have the processing then you can't experience. Atleast I've never seen any evidence that a system that does not process information could experience anything. Wether there is anything other than information processing involved is another matter. But what is important in my opinion is that we have never observed that extra thing. We know we experience and we know that the brain processes information. But we don't know what else is there if anything." I thought that would be as non-controversial as anything could be. Is it that you believe there is evidence that something can experience without processing information? Or that brains are not information processors? Or something else? I'm including humans in 'systems'.

 

[.13.]

The trouble with this claim is that we have no scientific-standard evidence that any system can experience anything. We have evidence that brains process information, but the only "evidence" we have that consciousness even exists is our own direct experience of consciousness (and that's not a scientific claim). We also imply from the behaviour of other animals that they too experience things, but that's not scientific either. Without a non-controversial, physical definition of consciousness, we can't provide any non-controversial scientific evidence about it.

I'm including humans when I say 'system'. In the sense you're using 'consciousness' I haven't observerd that myself. See below. But I disgree that it isn't scientific to say other animals experience things. Based on their observed behaviour we can say, scientifically in my opinion, that they experience light and sound. Or are you using 'experience' in some other sense that doesn't necessarily apply to animals?

We don't know how "we experience" is connected to brain processes. We know that some, maybe all, of what we experience is being determined by brain processes - IOW we can safely conclude, even though it is strictly speaking a non-scientific claim, that the contents of consciousness is dependent on brain activity. What we do not know is why/how there is any consciousness to have any content in the first place.

The thing is that I don't believe that 'consciousness' exists, as described above. While I have observed what you call contents, e.g. this post I'm replying to, I have never observed the container.

It's like we are sitting in front of the screen in a cinema and we are trying to work out what we are looking at. Eventually we figure out that the contents of what we are looking at is being determined by the contents of the reel of film - we learn that if we damage the film then similar damage occurs to the picture we see. Then somebody asks the question, but what is the screen itself? That isn't being produced by the reel of the film. If we start claiming that "the screen arises from the reel of film" or worse, ""the screen IS the reel of film" then we are talking nonsense. The truth is that the screen is itself - a screen - and we are missing a crucial piece of the system - the projector and the lamp inside, which between them turn the image on the reel of film into an image on the screen.

We have a similar situation with consciousness and brain activity. We know there is some sort of informational connection but then we run into difficulty. What, exactly, is the nature of this connection? Is this even a valid scientific question? How does the information encoded in the brain activity get turned into information presented to us as subjective experience? There is a missing part of the explanation here and we can't fill in that missing part simply by using words like "is" or "arises from" unless we can clearly explain what these words are supposed to mean in this context, and justify the claim.

Keeping in mind the limitations of analogies here's what I think:

I think there is no screen. We are looking at the film and there are no intermediaries between us and it. In my view you are asking a wrong question "How does the information encoded in the brain activity get turned into information presented to us as subjective experience?" In this context 'us' seems ill-defined. Is it something that lives inside the brain? The way I see it is that the information is encoded in the environment and we decode it. It's not decoded for us.

My own position is that all the materialistic attempts to provide a comprehensible, logically-consistent answer to these questions are doomed to fail, and that the reason is that the metaphysical system defended by materialists simply does not contain enough parts. It has no conceptual room for whatever else is required as part of the explanation, which is why some materialists end up denying that consciousness even exists. As soon as you acknowledge that it exists then you are destined to have to explain how brain activity is connected to something else which clearly isn't brain activity, and it is impossible to do so and still defend a coherent form of materialism at the same time. Either there is brain activity and something else, or there's just brain activity. If there's just brain activity then the question "how does consciousness arise from brain activity" is in the same category as "how do evil spirits take possession of humans?"

First of all I have to say that I don't know enough about the 'metaphysical system defended by materialists' to actually defend it. Nor have I any take on wether materialists are doomed to fail on this question. Though I don't believe consciousness exists as you described above, I don't consider myself a materialist.

Since I don't believe in this type of consciousness I agree that it clearly isn't brain activity. But it isn't anything else either. To briefly re-iterate why I believe this: I haven't observed this container called 'consciousness' in me, only that which you call contents. Brain activity can be demonstrated to exist. But this 'something else' besides brain activity has not been observed as far as I know.

 

[PixyMisa]

I'd be surprised if no one hasn't answered that question previously. I'm not familiar enough with information theory to give a proper answer.

I'm not sure why this is relevant, though. Your CPU and your table have different microarchitectures. Your table doesn't have one.

You missed the (long and ongoing) argument where Westprog refuses to admit that computers exhibit different behaviours to unconnected piles of wire, transistors, resitors and capacitors.

It's not so much that no-one has answered his question, it's that he refuses to accept the answers.

 

[Dancing David]

Where does retrocausation fit in?

Show it and we will talk about it.

 

[Dancing David]

Where does retrocausation fit into your logical connection between consciousness and IP? Is retrocausation given a place at your table? Or is it left out in the cold? Can you have causation without retrocausation?

I hope you give an example, I will not post response until we see that.

 

[PixyMisa]

Since I don't believe in this type of consciousness I agree that it clearly isn't brain activity. But it isn't anything else either. To briefly re-iterate why I believe this: I haven't observed this container called 'consciousness' in me, only that which you call contents. Brain activity can be demonstrated to exist. But this 'something else' besides brain activity has not been observed as far as I know.

An important point.

Certain posters here insist that there is some aspect of consciousness that clearly cannot be attributed to brain activity, and that therefore materialism is false. However, they are completely unable to define what this aspect of consciousness is, much less demonstrate that it exists. They claim victory anyway, and then get more than a little upset to find people still arguing with them.

 

[Dancing David]

Rather glib, but ok.

What about my first question?

And point out this retrocausality, then we can talk about it. Like an example?

 

[PixyMisa]

Where does retrocausation fit in?

Fiction, by author.

 

[UndercoverElephant]

Yes, I recommend that book too. He is a terrific writer and I think even those here who think I'm full of crap will find both books worth reading and stimulating. I particularly like Seife's discussion of the equivalence under advanced mathematics realms of zero and infinity.

Wanna know how many times I've tried to explain this, and it's relevance, to people calling themselves "skeptics", and got ridiculed as for saying it? Especially on this board.

UE: "Zero = Infinity"
mob of skeptics: "He's a woo! Woooooooo! Zero does not equal infinity! Go away and come back when you've learned something about mathematics!"

What we think of as zero or nothingness does not, cannot and never has existed.

 

[UndercoverElephant]

Keeping in mind the limitations of analogies here's what I think:

I think there is no screen. We are looking at the film and there are no intermediaries between us and it. In my view you are asking a wrong question "How does the information encoded in the brain activity get turned into information presented to us as subjective experience?" In this context 'us' seems ill-defined. Is it something that lives inside the brain? The way I see it is that the information is encoded in the environment and we decode it. It's not decoded for us.

First of all I have to say that I don't know enough about the 'metaphysical system defended by materialists' to actually defend it. Nor have I any take on wether materialists are doomed to fail on this question. Though I don't believe consciousness exists as you described above, I don't consider myself a materialist.

Since I don't believe in this type of consciousness I agree that it clearly isn't brain activity. But it isn't anything else either. To briefly re-iterate why I believe this: I haven't observed this container called 'consciousness' in me, only that which you call contents. Brain activity can be demonstrated to exist. But this 'something else' besides brain activity has not been observed as far as I know.

OK, I don't understand what position you are defending. Half of what you say makes you sound like a phenomenalist or idealist. The other half sounds like materialism.

I don't understand why you think that information-processing entities should experience anything at all. I can't see where you have answered that question, apart from to say that you think it is logically necessary that anything which processes information experiences things. Why is it logically necessary?

 

[The Man]

Wanna know how many times I've tried to explain this, and it's relevance, to people calling themselves "skeptics", and got ridiculed as for saying it? Especially on this board.

UE: "Zero = Infinity"
mob of skeptics: "He's a woo! Woooooooo! Zero does not equal infinity! Go away and come back when you've learned something about mathematics!"

Well, if you are not going to learn mathematics, at least learn the difference between Equality (=) and Equivalence (≡).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equality_(mathematics)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equivalence_relation

Connections to other relations

Equality is both an equivalence relation and a partial order. Equality is also the only relation on a set that is reflexive, symmetric and antisymmetric

What we think of as zero or nothingness does not, cannot and never has existed.

Actually they both do exist, even if only as abstract concepts. Although nether might have physically measurable characteristics one can define, one can still define those concepts and specifically their differences.

This of course brings us to one of the ongoing points of this discussion. If one is not defining consciousness as some, or requiring some set of physically measurable values then it too is simply and entirely an abstract concept. Where as something defined as a set of physical measurable values can be consider to have some existence attached to the existence of those physical values. Particularly in the case of required values, with the lacking of those values demonstrating the lacking of the ascribed defined condition. For example we can define 0 as a sum of equal and opposing values, each of which could be measured independently and represent 0 only as their summation. However a purely abstract concept exits only as its definition, as exemplified if one defines 0 as no values at all. 0 generally encompasses both those definitions so the lacking of any measurable value does not constitute the lack of 0 value, nor does certain combinations of values mean that the resulting value is not 0.

In both cases the actual definition applied is critical, one defines some measurable extent or extents and the other does not. Also the latter relies entirely upon that definition and although one personal language definition might be equivalent to another it is unlikely that they will actually be equal. So a definition of consciousness that encompasses measurable attributes or values, by that definition falls more into the purview of a public (or more easily made public) language. A definition of consciousness that requires or encompasses no measurable values or attributes falls more into the purview of a private language (or becomes more difficult to communicate in public). So, again although two private definitions of consciousness might be equivalent it is unlikely (if not impossible) that they will be equal. Much like with 0 one could use both definitions in a self consistent fashion such that the specific lack of some measurable value does not denote a lack of consciousness. However that can result in the conundrum of not being able to define anything as not being conscious, thus that definition of consciousness carries no particular distinction.

 

[Limbo]

Myths can be used as metaphors but that is not intrinsic to their nature.

Yes it is. Myths start as a psychological experience of the myth-maker (artists, mystics) that has then to be expressed through language, art, symbolism, ritual. There is then an interplay between the expression of the experience and the folk, between the esoteric and the exoteric, a to-and-fro.

Even if the psychological experience to be mythologized is taken literally by the myth-maker, it is still from the psyche and hence symbolic in nature. The form is always secondary.

Sometimes they're just phony BS somebody once took for literal truth.

In other words, someone gets stuck in the metaphor.

When I say the fundamental essence of the universe/multiverse is a Universal Turing Machine I'm being literal. When Lloyd says something similar he's converying to you that he's trying to transform metaphor into a one-to-one mapping. That is far more powerful than just a metaphor.

That's what they all say. You are getting stuck in the metaphors. I agree that a Universal Turing Machine is one way of mythologizing reality, it's not incompatible with my own views, and such metaphors demand the reality of psi even if you don't realize it. Another metaphor that expresses the same sort of thing is Maya (illusion).

 

[Belz...]

I have no evidence chat bots, or toasters, or computers, have private behavior.

That's funny, because I have no evidence that YOU have private behaviours, except through your public ones.