My Model of Human Consciousness

[CapelDodger]

It doesn't?

I think it does, but of course I can only speak for myself. My own self-awareness is merely a huge aggregation of symbols that are somehow related to myself. Is yours different?

My self-awareness is inherent. Born into a different culture and context I'd react to different symbols, but I'd still be self-aware and know it. And know that I know it.

It isn't that hard to think of various ways that a symbol for "self" might arise, given how from conception we are learning the differences between the part of the world that is self and the part that is non-self.

I'm aware of myself, actually, not symbolically.

And if such a symbol existed, could a neural network not include it in a reasoning chain, just like any other symbol?

Quote possibly. It still doesn't come close to explaining consciousness as we (or any other creature) experience it.

 

[rocketdodger]

My self-awareness is inherent. Born into a different culture and context I'd react to different symbols, but I'd still be self-aware and know it. And know that I know it.



I'm aware of myself, actually, not symbolically.



Quote possibly. It still doesn't come close to explaining consciousness as we (or any other creature) experience it.

Alright, lets try a different approach because you aren't seeing what I am saying.

Can you give me some details about how you are aware of yourself? Such as what that means? What goes through your head when you are aware?

You don't have to be specific, just give me something to go on.

 

[AkuManiMani]

... if you want to discuss specific ideas I would be happy to.

C'mon, RD, lets not play the evasion game

 

[rocketdodger]

C'mon, RD, lets not play the evasion game

I am not evading.

This isn't the religion and philosophy forum. Sweeping "no, that is wrong" generalizations don't fly over here.

If you have an issue with any of my OP, be specific and point out why. If you want to say "no, reasoning is not the root of human conscious experience" then read all of the OP to make sure you are on the same page as me and then explain what my model misses.

But just saying "no, that is wrong" and then using an entirely different definition than I am using to show why, as if you didn't read everything (probably because you didn't), isn't going to cut it.

 

[AkuManiMani]

I am not evading.

This isn't the religion and philosophy forum. Sweeping "no, that is wrong" generalizations don't fly over here.

If you have an issue with any of my OP, be specific and point out why. If you want to say "no, reasoning is not the root of human conscious experience" then read all of the OP to make sure you are on the same page as me and then explain what my model misses.

But just saying "no, that is wrong" and then using an entirely different definition than I am using to show why, as if you didn't read everything (probably because you didn't), isn't going to cut it.

You defined a percept as "a direct piece of information about the world". You went on to give examples such as a firing neuron, a waveform in a mic, and the voltage of a PE cell -- which is just another way of saying that everything is information. If said information is being processed in a system you define it as "reasoning". If a system has enough "reasoning" going on in the same pattern as the human brain then, by your reckoning, its consciousness or "something close to it".

You simply -assume- that processing information in the pattern of a BNN will produce subjective experience like an actual living brain. You did not bother to establish -why- this is necessarily the case. In your model, there is no explanation for how "information about an injury" becomes the sensation of pain, or how -any- information becomes a sensation. Again, there is just the tacit assumption that information being manipulated in a neural net constitutes subjective experience of said information.

This is just a cargo cult^WP theory of consciousness. You clearly have absolutely no clue how biological brains produce subjective experience so you just assume that if one where to slap together a brain-like construct then it must produce consciousness.

 

[Malerin]

I am not evading.

This isn't the religion and philosophy forum. Sweeping "no, that is wrong" generalizations don't fly over here.

If you have an issue with any of my OP, be specific and point out why. If you want to say "no, reasoning is not the root of human conscious experience" then read all of the OP to make sure you are on the same page as me and then explain what my model misses.

But just saying "no, that is wrong" and then using an entirely different definition than I am using to show why, as if you didn't read everything (probably because you didn't), isn't going to cut it.

I showed you why "no, that is wrong". You can be conscious without doing any reasoning at all. And you define "fact" without ever using the word "true". Kind of odd, that. When this is pointed out to you, you don't want to hear it. Whatever.

 

[mimada]

Rocketdodger, I think you could have avoided this issue with semantics if you stated that you are interpreting or defining a fact as "a relationship between percepts or other facts" for the purpose of this discourse. The same goes for your definition of "reasoning".

 

[rocketdodger]

You defined a percept as "a direct piece of information about the world". You went on to give examples such as a firing neuron, a waveform in a mic, and the voltage of a PE cell -- which is just another way of saying that everything is information.

What are you talking about?

This isn't that hard. You can partition information between what comes directly from the world and everything else. That "everything else" is obviously within the system in question. I don't see why you are unable to understand this simple concept.

The information that reaches your brain directly from the world only arrives via your sensory neurons. Obviously.

The information that reaches a robot directly from the world only arrives via its sensors -- like a microphone or a PE cell.

What don't you understand?

If said information is being processed in a system you define it as "reasoning". If a system has enough "reasoning" going on in the same pattern as the human brain then, by your reckoning, its consciousness or "something close to it".

What are you talking about?

An entire post was dedicated to the definition of reasoning and some ways it is accomplished. Nowhere did I state that "information processing" is equivalent to "reasoning." On the contrary, I clearly stated that reasoning is simply the process of inferring new facts from existing ones.

How about you read before you post? Is that such a difficult doctrine to follow?

You simply -assume- that processing information in the pattern of a BNN will produce subjective experience like an actual living brain. You did not bother to establish -why- this is necessarily the case. In your model, there is no explanation for how "information about an injury" becomes the sensation of pain, or how -any- information becomes a sensation. Again, there is just the tacit assumption that information being manipulated in a neural net constitutes subjective experience of said information.

wtf? I wrote a whole paragraph about pain.

This is just a cargo cult^WP theory of consciousness. You clearly have absolutely no clue how biological brains produce subjective experience so you just assume that if one where to slap together a brain-like construct then it must produce consciousness.

Well, darn! I don't know why I wasted my time writing such a huge OP when you have been able to condense my argument into "if one were to slap together a brain like construct then it must produce consciousness."

I should come to you first next time, eh? Save myself the effort?

 

[rocketdodger]

Rocketdodger, I think you could have avoided this issue with semantics if you stated that you are interpreting or defining a fact as "a relationship between percepts or other facts" for the purpose of this discourse. The same goes for your definition of "reasoning".

But there is no issue with semantics.

My definition of fact is equivalent to "a true statement about the world," with the understanding that "truth" is relative and "statements" are actually relations.

And my definition of reasoning is the accepted formal definition used by mathematicians and computer scientists around the world.

Malerin and Aku are simply playing the same game they always play. As a theist, Malerin purposefully subverts any attempt at formal arguments because he knows once an argument is formalized a theist looses any chance at countering it. And Aku has his own kooky belief that consciousness comes from an undiscovered fundamental force of physics that creates consciousness "fields." Alas, he has no way to formally construct a specific argument, so he purposefully subverts any request for specifics from the start (once things get specific he can't even contribute to the discussion).

You don't have to take my word for it -- just look at their posting history. I had hoped to get some of the more intelligent and learned forum members over here, so I could discuss things seriously and formally, but so far the activity has been mostly these two trolls.

 

[rocketdodger]

I showed you why "no, that is wrong". You can be conscious without doing any reasoning at all. And you define "fact" without ever using the word "true". Kind of odd, that. When this is pointed out to you, you don't want to hear it. Whatever.

And I explained to you why you don't have a clue what you are talking about. Here it is, again, because I enjoy pointing out how wrong you are all the time.

1) The logical definition of "reasoning" isn't dependent upon consciousness. It is simply a form of computation. That is kind of why we have entire sub-fields of computer science dedicated to working with reasoning systems. And that is also why I made it very clear what I mean by reasoning in the second post in this thread.

But you don't need to take my word for it, smart guy:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Backward_chaining
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forward_chaining

2) Any statement, in any language, is a type of relation. That is, it takes two concepts and ties them together with some piece of information. Go ahead and find a counterexample if you disagree.

3) The extent a relation corresponds to reality -- or truth -- is relative, not absolute, as far as an intelligent agent is concerned. That is a big problem with intelligent agents -- they can be wrong. Or have you never heard of a delusional human or malfunctioning robot? Have you never, ever, ever been wrong about something in the world yourself? Never seen a shadow that looked like a critter until you got close enough to see it was a shadow, or anything like that? For the time being, until you correct that, your brain accepts it as a fact about the world, and you act accordingly. Again, if you disagree, feel free to elaborate on why.

 

[Malerin]

But there is no issue with semantics.

My definition of fact is equivalent to "a true statement about the world," with the understanding that "truth" is relative and "statements" are actually relations.

Ah, so anyone who doesn't agree with this is a troll?

I don't happen to believe truth is relative (not even sure what you mean by this. Coherence view of truth?) A proposition is true if and only if it corresponds to reality.

 

[Malerin]

And I explained to you why you don't have a clue what you are talking about. Here it is, again, because I enjoy pointing out how wrong you are all the time.

1) The logical definition of "reasoning" isn't dependent upon consciousness. It is simply a form of computation. That is kind of why we have entire sub-fields of computer science dedicated to working with reasoning systems. And that is also why I made it very clear what I mean by reasoning in the second post in this thread.

But you don't need to take my word for it, smart guy:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Backward_chaining
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forward_chaining

2) Any statement, in any language, is a type of relation. That is, it takes two concepts and ties them together with some piece of information. Go ahead and find a counterexample if you disagree.

3) The extent a relation corresponds to reality -- or truth -- is relative, not absolute, as far as an intelligent agent is concerned. That is a big problem with intelligent agents -- they can be wrong. Or have you never heard of a delusional human or malfunctioning robot? Have you never, ever, ever been wrong about something in the world yourself? Never seen a shadow that looked like a critter until you got close enough to see it was a shadow, or anything like that? For the time being, until you correct that, your brain accepts it as a fact about the world, and you act accordingly. Again, if you disagree, feel free to elaborate on why.

I don't have a problem with your definition of reasoning. I have a problem with this:

I believe reasoning is the root of human conscious experience

This is demonstrably false. It's quite easy to be conscious without a "process of inferring new facts from existing facts" going on.

 

[rocketdodger]

Ah, so anyone who doesn't agree with this is a troll?

I don't happen to believe truth is relative (not even sure what you mean by this. Coherence view of truth?) A proposition is true if and only if it corresponds to reality.

Fine -- then when I say "a fact is in an entity's knowledge base," you can interpret that from your absolute-truth theist worldview position to be "the entity thinks the statement is true, but it might be wrong, although this is irrelevant, because the entity thinks it is true, and will act as if it is true, and any related subjective experience will take place as if it is true -- but still, it might be wrong, and this is important, because God is always right."

 

[rocketdodger]

This is demonstrably false. It's quite easy to be conscious without a "process of inferring new facts from existing facts" going on.

It is demonstrably true ... that you didn't read any of the OP.

If you had, you would understand that I state that the action of an individual neuron is equivalent to reasoning, and thus any neural activity at all is reasoning, even if on a level far below your conscious awareness.

For example, when you see a face, you don't consciously reason about every relationship between every shape and color -- yet you instantly know if you have seen the person before or not. That isn't by magic, Malerin. It is because far below your conscious awareness series of filters are reasoning about the facts coming from the neurons in your retina. Retinal Neuron #23425 fires -- FACT -- A PHOTON HAS STRUCK ME. If other neurons relay similar facts, a shape feature detector might fire -- FACT -- BECAUSE OF FACTS (PHOTONS HAVE STRUCK) FROM RETINAL NEURONS #23425 THROUGH #23698, I INFER THAT THERE IS A LINE AT LOCATION X IN THE IMAGE. And in turn, this fact might be enough to trigger yet another feature detector, that picks up "eye" shapes -- FACT -- BECAUSE OF FACTS FROM LINE DETECTORS #265 THROUGH #269 AND CIRCLE DETECTOR #867, I INFER THAT THERE IS AN EYE AT LOCATION Y IN THE IMAGE. Put that together with a few more feature detectors and you have a face detector. Put that together with memory and you can instantly recognize someone without thinking about it at all.

But don't think for an instant that there is nothing going on in your head. That is absurd. Neurons are constantly working, doing what they do -- summing up inputs and firing when a threshold is reached. And that operation is mathematically analagous to ... surprise, inferring a new fact from existing facts, or reasoning. To be specific, it is closer to a form of Bayesian inference than straight up rule based inference.

EDIT -- And again, you don't have to take my word for it. Feature detectors have been known for almost 50 years and they operate exactly how I describe here, in layers. I already provided a link, in fact. You can also look up neural behavior to confirm that a neuron behaves exactly as I describe.

 

[mimada]

I would like some clarification.

You stated:

I believe reasoning is the root of human conscious experience.

and

... I state that the action of an individual neuron is equivalent to reasoning, and thus any neural activity at all is reasoning, even if on a level far below your conscious awareness.

so is this equivalent to:

"I believe neural activity is the root of human conscious experience"?

 

[Malerin]

It is demonstrably true ... that you didn't read any of the OP.

If I'm quoting the OP, that's obviously not true.

If you had, you would understand that I state that the action of an individual neuron is equivalent to reasoning, and thus any neural activity at all is reasoning, even if on a level far below your conscious awareness.

An individual neuron does not engage in a "process of inferring new facts from existing facts" or anything remotely equivalent to that. The most powerful computers don't do this. Inference is a conscious-based activity.

 

[mimada]

An individual neuron does not engage in a "process of inferring new facts from existing facts" or anything remotely equivalent to that. The most powerful computers don't do this. Inference is a conscious-based activity.

I'm afraid that's not entirely true. Look up "Inference Engine".

 

[rocketdodger]

I would like some clarification.

You stated:


and



so is this equivalent to:

"I believe neural activity is the root of human conscious experience"?

Yep.

Which is trivially true of course. The point of this thread was to introduce the particular way I view neural activity -- reasoning.

 

[mimada]

Yep.

Which is trivially true of course. The point of this thread was to introduce the particular way I view neural activity -- reasoning.

So to further clarify, neural activity is the physical process and reasoning is the abstraction of this process?

 

[AkuManiMani]

What are you talking about?

This isn't that hard. You can partition information between what comes directly from the world and everything else. That "everything else" is obviously within the system in question. I don't see why you are unable to understand this simple concept.

The information that reaches your brain directly from the world only arrives via your sensory neurons. Obviously.

The information that reaches a robot directly from the world only arrives via its sensors -- like a microphone or a PE cell.

What don't you understand?

I think everyone here gets that information can be conveyed and received as signals via any apparatus and processed in numerous ways. But its quite a leap to assume that on this basis alone signals become subjective experiences. Just because a system is receiving and processing information does not mean said system is cognizant of that information. Increasing the sophistication of processing --- I'm sorry, 'reasoning' -- does not make it's activities any more conscious.

What are you talking about?

An entire post was dedicated to the definition of reasoning and some ways it is accomplished. Nowhere did I state that "information processing" is equivalent to "reasoning." On the contrary, I clearly stated that reasoning is simply the process of inferring new facts from existing ones.

So taking inputs ['percepts'] to produce outputs [new 'facts'] is not information processing?

How about you read before you post? Is that such a difficult doctrine to follow?

Its not hard to follow at all. I just know when to call a spade a spade.

wtf? I wrote a whole paragraph about pain.

Well hows about that -- you did

Well, darn! I don't know why I wasted my time writing such a huge OP when you have been able to condense my argument into "if one were to slap together a brain like construct then it must produce consciousness."

I should come to you first next time, eh? Save myself the effort?

Or you could be honest with your self and admit that you have no idea what consciousness is or how to produce it.