Has consciousness been fully explained?

[PixyMisa]

Should we consider enough rocks arranged in an appropriate pattern conscious?

If they are actually iterating through the steps of a finite state machine, then quite possibly, yes. Which is rather the point of the cartoon.

 

[Ichneumonwasp]

So it should be fair to say that if simulated water would not be wet "in this world", that is the same as saying that a simulation of water would technically not be wet or produce wetness and a simulated orange would technically not be an orange or produce an orange.

Why would it be fair to say that simulated water would not be 'wet' in the simulation? If we are talking about a robust simulation then whatever happens in the "real world" would happen in the simulated 'world'. Within the simulation the same laws of physics would apply (not in terms of actual particles and forces but in terms of the rules that are set up within the simulation).

The bit about electrons passing through gates refers to what actually happens in the "real world".

How could the rolling be "real" if the ball isn't real? The computer chips aren't rolling. And the ball can't be rolling since it isn't real.

Would we really say "the simulation of the ball is rolling" as opposed to "the computer is simulating a ball rolling"?

Also, is it really warranted to safely label consciousness as being defined as an action rather than a property? I don't think it's well enough understood at a physical level to make such an assumption.

Because of what an action *is*. Actions are not things, they are constituted in the relations of parts of 'things'.

A compter could simulate a ball rolling -- meaning that it could make it look like a ball is rolling across a screen by having pixels light up at the correct times with instructions that tell certain pixels to light up at certain times. That would be a computer simulating a ball rolling.

But why could it not consist in a robust simulation where everything is simulated down to the level of atoms. A simulated ball would be constituted of all those simulated atoms and the laws of physics would be simulated perfectly (for the purposes of the thought experiment). If something set that ball in motion in the simulation, then its movement would be governed by what constitutes it and the rules that govern movement as in the 'real world'. It's movement would not be prescribed by code telling the screen to make it look like it was moving. There would be no actual thing 'in this world' moving, but there would certainly be a relation of parts -- ball to ground, etc. -- that constitute movement. If an action is defined as a changing relation of parts, even if the parts are simulated, there is still a change in their relationships. That is movement. It is movement of a simulated ball.

And, yes, I think it is safe to say that consciousness is an action and not a property.

ETA:

Perhaps the confusion arises from thinking about simulated particles and then simulating balls? I haven't the slightest idea how such a thing could be carried out, but others have described that simulations can be programmed in such a way that behaviors not prescribed by code occur. Perhaps there is another way of thinking about it rather than concentrating on minutiae where we can become lost -- assume that we simulated an entire universe from its creation, simulating the particles and the forces that govern them and supply all the contingencies that resulted in the formation of the earth and the formation of life on earth -- the way the particles interacted. There would be no code saying "create organism here". And say that it perfectly recreated everything that happened in our universe, even to the creation of a simulated 'you'. There is nothing telling the computer to create 'you'; it happens as a result of the starting conditions of the simulation. Do you think that the simulated 'you' would be conscious or not if it carried out all the actions that you carry out 'in the real world'?

If that sort of programming is theoretically impossible, then the whole simulation thing is possibly wrong and the discussion needn't proceed any further without further clarification (at least for me). Is there some reason why such a simulation can not be carried out (I mean aside from all the knowledge and engineering issues)? Because, if it can, then I really don't see what the problem here is. I don't know enough about computer science or math to answer the question, but mathematicians and computer scientists have told me that it is theoretically possible.

 

[Ichneumonwasp]

Sounds fair. Thanks.

Earlier RD posted

"You have to be careful with "meaning" though because many people will take it out of context -- look how many people in this thread alone want to claim that "meaning" requires consciousness to begin with. Hello, circular logic!

People well versed in the mechanisms of natural selection can see how the meaning the activation of a neuron is objectively defined by how that neuron evolved. People without such imagination ... can't. For them, meaning is inherently linked with consciousness.

I wish there were better words for these things, since "meaning" and "purpose" and all the rest are so nested in our anthropomorphic tendencies."

You had earlier seemed to agree with the concept.

If I parse the sentence I italicized, "People well versed in the mechanisms of natural selection can see how the meaning [of] 'the activation of a neuron' is objectively defined by how that neuron evolved.", does that seem to be the intent?

If my parsing is correct, I'd note that 'natural selection' is a meaningless term without a lifeform, capable of faulty reproduction, available for any selection having meaning to be possible. If so, consciousness (assuming life is conscious) is required for "meaning". Or have I missed the point?

I think you may have missed the point. Consciousness is not required for the type of meaning we were discussing. There are meanings that are directly tied to survival -- so for instance, light to a single celled organism can mean something that aids its survival, but I don't think most people want to say that it is conscious of light.

 

[Ichneumonwasp]

deleted

 

[Ichneumonwasp]

Wrong, the snail brain has been extensively used as a model brain to study how the human brain might work. Kandel being a pioneer in this work for which he received a Nobel Prize in Physiology in 2000.

I'm afraid that is wrong. Kandel's work concerns networks of neurons, not brains. He has been studying how networks of neurons learn. Aplysia is an easy model because it has a very limted number of neurons and because those neurons are big and easy to work with, but I don't think he would say that it has a brain.

 

[Meed]

What does "actual" mean?

Because there is an orange in the simulation.

No.

So the only fields of study that explain anything are particle physics and number theory?

Most fields of study don't claim the existence of other worlds.

But yes. It doesn't matter if you don't like it; it is what it is.

Cite?

 

[Meed]

That's not a question, it's a fact.

No.

Certainly. Because those minds are taking place in bodies in our world.

However, your statement does not address the point in any way.

The claim implies I can interact with a simulated human mind in any way that I can interact with a real human mind. But I can only interact with a real human mind by interacting with its body. The simulated human does not have a body "in our world", as you put it, thus we cannot interact with it the way we would with a real human mind.

 

[Ichneumonwasp]

The claim implies I can interact with a simulated human mind in any way that I can interact with a real human mind. But I can only interact with a real human mind by interacting with its body. The simulated human does not have a body "in our world", as you put it, thus we cannot interact with it the way we would with a real human mind.

Why couldn't it be linked to an audio system so that you could hear a voice? There are still electrons going through gates to drive the audio output. How would that be substantively different from hearing someone talking in the other room?

 

[!Kaggen]

I'm afraid that is wrong. Kandel's work concerns networks of neurons, not brains. He has been studying how networks of neurons learn. Aplysia is an easy model because it has a very limted number of neurons and because those neurons are big and easy to work with, but I don't think he would say that it has a brain.

Wrong

Title:

Input organization of two symmetrical giant cells in the snail brain-
E. R. Kandel and L. Tauc

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1357578/

 

[Ichneumonwasp]

Wrong

Title:



http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1357578/

This is just a terminology issue, but 'brain' there really means more along the lines of ganglia. There is no set cut-off point for where we call things brains and ganglia but I know he used to refer to those structures as ganglia earlier in his career.

The issue is not important really. As to the answer of do they have a mind, I think that answer depends on how you define mind. Come up with set definitions of these words and you can answer your own question.

 

[Meed]

Why would it be fair to say that simulated water would not be 'wet' in the simulation? If we are talking about a robust simulation then whatever happens in the "real world" would happen in the simulated 'world'. Within the simulation the same laws of physics would apply (not in terms of actual particles and forces but in terms of the rules that are set up within the simulation).

The bit about electrons passing through gates refers to what actually happens in the "real world".

Why? Because of the part of my post before the bit that you quoted:

But I think we agreed there is no actual simulation world or any other world outside "this world" that we know of. We can speak of one that is constructed from the abstraction of our own conceptualization. As you said:

"Well, isn't the whole 'simulation' thing a bit of a polite fiction anyway? I am no computer whiz -- I built a couple of them and took one programming course in Pascal many, many years ago -- but isn't programming just a top-down way of getting the electrons in the machine to go where we want them to?"

"[...] The simulation is the process of electrons moving around through gates, but we can talk about that process as "another world" just as we can talk about a simulated orange as an orange. It isn't really an orange; it is really a process, an action. [...]"

Maybe I was wrong that we agreed. It sounds like you're saying we can talk about this "fiction" as if it is real, but that it, in fact, isn't real.

There is no actual distinct "world" from our world created by a simulation. It can be useful or convenient to talk about it as an abstract conceptualization, but that is just in our heads. Thus, if something does not exist "in our world" then it does not exist.

Because of what an action *is*. Actions are not things, they are constituted in the relations of parts of 'things'.

A compter could simulate a ball rolling -- meaning that it could make it look like a ball is rolling across a screen by having pixels light up at the correct times with instructions that tell certain pixels to light up at certain times. That would be a computer simulating a ball rolling.

But why could it not consist in a robust simulation where everything is simulated down to the level of atoms. A simulated ball would be constituted of all those simulated atoms and the laws of physics would be simulated perfectly (for the purposes of the thought experiment). If something set that ball in motion in the simulation, then its movement would be governed by what constitutes it and the rules that govern movement as in the 'real world'. It's movement would not be prescribed by code telling the screen to make it look like it was moving. There would be no actual thing 'in this world' moving, but there would certainly be a relation of parts -- ball to ground, etc. -- that constitute movement. If an action is defined as a changing relation of parts, even if the parts are simulated, there is still a change in their relationships. That is movement. It is movement of a simulated ball.

Well, there would be a thing 'in this world' moving: the simulator. All those electrons moving through gates, resulting that subset of output to change in a way that would be isomorphic to a rolling ball. Maybe you could call the movement of the electrons "rolling" during this process. It's not an outlandish argument. I personally don't think that would be an accurate assessment though. I don't think an action that something fictitious engages in counts as a real action.

Perhaps the confusion arises from thinking about simulated particles and then simulating balls? I haven't the slightest idea how such a thing could be carried out, but others have described that simulations can be programmed in such a way that behaviors not prescribed by code occur. Perhaps there is another way of thinking about it rather than concentrating on minutiae where we can become lost -- assume that we simulated an entire universe from its creation, simulating the particles and the forces that govern them and supply all the contingencies that resulted in the formation of the earth and the formation of life on earth -- the way the particles interacted. There would be no code saying "create organism here". And say that it perfectly recreated everything that happened in our universe, even to the creation of a simulated 'you'. There is nothing telling the computer to create 'you'; it happens as a result of the starting conditions of the simulation. Do you think that the simulated 'you' would be conscious or not if it carried out all the actions that you carry out 'in the real world'?

Well ignoring the fact that it would be impossible, given the time and space constraints of the universe, to simulate the entire universe...

No, I don't think it would be accurate to describe it as "recreating" everything. The simulated "me" would not be conscious, because it would not actually exist and not actually carry out the actions that I carry out in the real world.

This is for the same reasons as I've pointed to regarding simpler simulations. I don't see why it would be different.

 

[!Kaggen]

It is revealing that a Nobel Laureate such as Eric Kandel, who specialized in neuroscience, is so modest about the question in the OP.


How close are we to understanding consciousness?

I think we have not made much empirical progress. But I think we have made a fair amount of conceptual progress. The work of Gerald Edelman and Antonio Damasio and of Christof Koch and Francis Crick has been influential in getting people to think about these problems in a useful way.

What do you think researchers will find consciousness to be?

Oh, my gosh. I have no guesses. I think it's a very deep problem, and I don't really have any original ideas about that.

http://discovermagazine.com/2006/apr/eric-kandel


Why is it that computationalists are so sure of themselves?

 

[Malerin]

Nobel Schmobel. The man's obviously an idiot

 

[Ichneumonwasp]

It is revealing that a Nobel Laureate such as Eric Kandel, who specialized in neuroscience, is so modest about the question in the OP.


How close are we to understanding consciousness?

I think we have not made much empirical progress. But I think we have made a fair amount of conceptual progress. The work of Gerald Edelman and Antonio Damasio and of Christof Koch and Francis Crick has been influential in getting people to think about these problems in a useful way.

What do you think researchers will find consciousness to be?

Oh, my gosh. I have no guesses. I think it's a very deep problem, and I don't really have any original ideas about that.

http://discovermagazine.com/2006/apr/eric-kandel


Why is it that computationalists are so sure of themselves?

I don't think anyone here is sure about understanding consciousness (but I can only speak for myself really). My understanding of what they have been saying is that it depends first on how you define it -- that's why they bring up SRIP, but no one pretends that is anything like human-type consciousness -- and second that it should be computable, but that's about it. That really doesn't tell us anything about how it works or how the brain does it. Everyone is pretty much in the dark about how it happens, because saying that it should be computable doesn't really tell us much.

 

[!Kaggen]

This is just a terminology issue, but 'brain' there really means more along the lines of ganglia. There is no set cut-off point for where we call things brains and ganglia but I know he used to refer to those structures as ganglia earlier in his career.

The issue is not important really. As to the answer of do they have a mind, I think that answer depends on how you define mind. Come up with set definitions of these words and you can answer your own question.

The issue is very important.
We are stuck with language when it comes to describing biology and this issue of what is a brain, let alone a mind and consciousness is still not clear even to a Nobel prize winning neuroscientist.
This is why philosophy is still important in these areas.
Philosophy helps clear through the maize of terminology we inherit.
Trying to replace biology descriptions with mathematical abstractions is clearly no solution.
All that it does, as Westprog has alluded to, is to lead to ridiculous conclusions when you start believing the abstractions are actual descriptions.

Owen Barfield had a nice term for this: "Idolatory"

 

[Meed]

Why couldn't it be linked to an audio system so that you could hear a voice? There are still electrons going through gates to drive the audio output. How would that be substantively different from hearing someone talking in the other room?

You'll have to keep implementing more and more of these "why couldn't you?"s until you have an actual model of a human, not a simulation, if you want to keep with the claim that we can interact with it in any way that we can interact with a real human.

 

[Meed]

I don't think anyone here is sure about understanding consciousness (but I can only speak for myself really). My understanding of what they have been saying is that it depends first on how you define it -- that's why they bring up SRIP, but no one pretends that is anything like human-type consciousness -- and second that it should be computable, but that's about it. That really doesn't tell us anything about how it works or how the brain does it. Everyone is pretty much in the dark about how it happens, because saying that it should be computable doesn't really tell us much.

You have a very different reading of PixyMisa and rocketdodger's posts than I do. My understanding is that they are sure about it, that they consider there to be only one good definition of it and that, more than just being "like" human-type consciousness, their definition captures human consciousness, as well as other consciousness, perfectly.

Additionally consciousness has been described as "easy" and "not a problem".

So, I think !Kaggen's point is perfectly relevant in the context of the thread.

 

[Ichneumonwasp]

Maybe I was wrong that we agreed. It sounds like you're saying we can talk about this "fiction" as if it is real, but that it, in fact, isn't real.

There is no actual distinct "world" from our world created by a simulation. It can be useful or convenient to talk about it as an abstract conceptualization, but that is just in our heads. Thus, if something does not exist "in our world" then it does not exist.

We can talk about it as an action. There really are actions going on that create the simulation; in a sense there is another world, but it isn't a world as define it of 'things' because simulated objects are not things.

Well, there would be a thing 'in this world' moving: the simulator. All those electrons moving through gates, resulting that subset of output to change in a way that would be isomorphic to a rolling ball. Maybe you could call the movement of the electrons "rolling" during this process. It's not an outlandish argument. I personally don't think that would be an accurate assessment though. I don't think an action that something fictitious engages in counts as a real action.

Why not? Aside from your gut reaction, on what grounds do the changing interactions in a simulation differ from the changing interactions in the 'real world' -- in terms of the interactions and not the things doing it?

Well ignoring the fact that it would be impossible, given the time and space constraints of the universe, to simulate the entire universe...

Well, yes, that is why it is a thought experiment.

No, I don't think it would be accurate to describe it as "recreating" everything. The simulated "me" would not be conscious, because it would not actually exist and not actually carry out the actions that I carry out in the real world.

This is for the same reasons as I've pointed to regarding simpler simulations. I don't see why it would be different.

I hear you saying that it just wouldn't be real because there are no real things there, but I'm not hearing what in the interactions of the parts is different between a simulation and the real world.

Let me try aother example -- we have created computer simulations of evolution. We start with simulated organisms or simulated DNA codes and 'subject' them to simulated environmental changes. In that situation we see the simulated DNA code change over time. There is nothing in the computer program that tells the DNA how it must change; it simply sets up the rules of the game and lets things progress.

In that program is it not proper to say that the simulated DNA evolved? Or must we say that it simulates evolution? I would say that the simulated DNA evolves because the simulated DNA actually changes within the simulation according to a set of rules that is similar to what we see in the real world; to say that we are simulating evolution implies that we are just telling the stuff that looks like DNA to change in the same way that it seems to change in the 'real world'. But that isn't how the program is set up.

 

[Beth]

Do you think that the simulated 'you' would be conscious or not if it carried out all the actions that you carry out 'in the real world'?

This is the crucial question now isn't it. It is here that the issue of duality comes into focus. If you think that the simulated 'you' would be conscious this implies to me that you are arguing for the existance of minds that have no physical body. Which is the definition of duality as I understand it.

 

[rocketdodger]

I at least am having trouble parsing "People well versed in the mechanisms of natural selection can see how the meaning the activation of a neuron is objectively defined by how that neuron evolved.".

Could you explain that in a bit more detail?

Sorry it took so long to get back to this...

1) Natural selection -- in any sense, not just biological -- is simply a layman's term for the mathematical fact that any entity which exists longer, or has a chance to exist longer, has a greater chance of being observed in the future, all else being equal.

2) In a specifically biological sense, because of the mechanisms life relies upon to survive into the future, this implies greater reproductive survivability of individual organisms will lead to a higher chance of observing those cell lines in the future. "reproductive surviviability" means that the individuals survive in such a way as to extend their cell lines into the future -- that can be either a long lifespan of the individual, if reproduction is difficult, or just enough lifespan to be able to reproduce a sufficient amount, etc. The whole point, though, is extending the cell line into the future by any mechanism available to life.

3) For complex reasons that are the result of natural selection pressures from both the non-living environment as well as other life forms, evolution has led to some very different survival strategies between cell lines. For example bacteria aren't very intelligent, they just spread, grass is more advanced, and the human cell line has evolved the ability to make complex decisions in order to increase their reproductive survivability.

3a ) One of those evolved strategies is to use some kind of a decision system to aid in reproductive survivability. Single cells do it all over the place -- that is how they control their internal environment and keep the chemical reactions going like they need to in order to sustain the life of the cell. Multicellular organisms do it in many ways, including both the diffusion of chemicals through tissue as well as the much faster and more precise electrochemical phenomenon we observe in neurons.

3b) It isn't that hard to see why an organism might find the ability of a neuron to switch much more precisely than any other biological mechanism very useful -- just look at any higher life form that uses neurons and see what they can do that other's can't. For instance, plants need light and they grow towards light, but it takes time. Flatworms, on the other hand, are equipped with a very rudimentary neural network (compared to humans) that allow them to actually move towards (or away from ) light at their full crawl speed. And of course humans use their neural network to do all sorts of things and that is the reason we are at the very top of the food chain and the planet is filling up with us.

4) Thus the "meaning" behind any single activation of a neuron is, in a broad sense, nothing more than whatever behaviors led up to that activation and whatever behaviors will result from it, all in order to increase the survivability of the cell line. Because of natural selection.

4a) And if you start there -- increasing survivability -- then you can skip over to the behaviors higher organsims exhibit that don't increase survivability and see that they are simply a by-product of the evolved behaviors that do. And so even if a neuron fires because you are admiring a work of Warhol, the meaning of that firing extends back in time across the entire cell line and is quite clear, albeit very very complex.