Explain consciousness to the layman.

[Irony]

Which of course in no way invalidates the analogy, but I'm sure it gives you a nice well-informed glow. "Hey, I made an irrelevant point on the Internet and threw in a gratuitous insult." "High five, dude!"

Of course it doesn't invalidate the analogy. In fact, it improves it. Like you said, consciousness is tied to the brain like respiration is tied to lungs; they aren't necessary.

Cue you complaining about how I just said everything can respirate because you can't distinguish between "X is not necessary" and "no medium whatsoever is necessary".

 

[westprog]

You seem to think

What would make this trot along more smoothly is if we concentrated on what people say, not what they "seem to think".

WB gave a fairly clear hypothetical example, and as is usual in these discussions, proposed certain conclusions consequent on a particular outcome. I pointed out that if we are to consider one particular outcome, we should also consider the contrary. There was no implication that all the resources of the Artificial Intelligence community have been fruitlessly exhausted.

 

[PixyMisa]

I'll join westprog in pointing out that emulation on a computer does not equal, or even imply, replication vis-a-vis consciousness or any IRL event.

How can something appear to be consciousness without being consciousness?

It's also getting laughable that the claim any Turing machine can do it, then admitting Turing machines do not and cannot exist; yes, universal computing machines are an IRL implementation of a theoretical Turing machine.

You seem confused.

 

[PixyMisa]

No real time system performing monitoring and control can be modelled as a Turing machine.

Mathematics for this theorem, please.

Now.

(That is not to say that it cannot be emulated as a computation - an entirely different matter).

Mathematics for this theorem too, please.

What is going on is not computation, and treating it as such is not useful or helpful.

And this one.

Many real time control systems have a negligible compuational element. Sometimes the response required is a simple as opening a valve when an indicator exceeds a particular value. Modelling such an interaction with a programming language - like PASCAL, say - which uses the Turing model is not possible.

And this one.

In order to perform such operations, languages need to add in features such as interrupts and pauses which are extraneous to that model.

And this one.

This also means - and this is the critical, essential element - that it is not possible to make assumptions about the behaviour of the realtime system based on reasoning using the Turing model.

And this one.

Westprog, please refrain from making any further bizarre claims until you have established or retracted your existing list of bizarre claims.

 

[Minoosh]

Well, gosh, another long consciousness thread and since it's current here I am proposing a theory about theories of consciousness.

I'm equally dubious about the AI/"emergent"/complexity model and the vague notion that quantum, non-algorithmic processes are somehow involved, so I'm fairly neutral.

OK, now my theory-of-theory, or at least something I wondered about, based on things like Schrodinger's cat ... we tend to go deep talking about human consciousness, and maybe engage in some species-centric solipsism by supposing a soon-to-be-poisoned cat is not itself conscious. It made me wonder ... is anybody looking at animal consciousness? Doggy qualia? You live with an intelligent animal, you observe it, and it seems obvious that such an animal has subjective interior experiences and perhaps a degree of self-awareness. Yet those conjuring up Platonic realms seem to be talking strictly about humans. My theory is that theorists in the quantum models dismiss animal consciousness, that it "doesn't count." This in turn may lend credence to the AI-type theories. Like I said I'm not sold on either, but I think if the cat is poisoned, it's either dead or alive before a human observer collapses the quantum wavefunction.

 

[PixyMisa]

There's a lot of research going on in animal neuroscience - partly because cutting people's heads open and sticking electrodes in them is frowned upon these days. (And even so, it's important to always mount a scratch monkey.)

The quantum consciousness guys don't really do research, they just write books.

 

[Minoosh]

(And even so, it's important to always mount a scratch monkey.)

That sounds vaguely obscene.

The quantum consciousness guys don't really do research, they just write books.

And cynically I'd say, isn't it convenient that the theories don't currently lend themselves to research. I still think there's room for speculative thinking within the framework of an informed view of quantum mechanics. And the latter is where many/most of the theorists are out of their depth.

Yet still, I think our minds may really be the result of something other than classical computing. I can't really explain why. It could be I have a desire to not be a machine. On the other hand being a machine could be a nice life - if something goes flooey, IT can fix it.

 

[westprog]

Of course it doesn't invalidate the analogy. In fact, it improves it. Like you said, consciousness is tied to the brain like respiration is tied to lungs; they aren't necessary.

Cue you complaining about how I just said everything can respirate because you can't distinguish between "X is not necessary" and "no medium whatsoever is necessary".

The essential point - which I have reiterated, and will state again - is that respiration, whether using gills, lungs or whatever - is a physically well defined process. We can't do respiration by using silicon instead of oxygen, or by interpretive dance.

There are no* physical restrictions on computation. I suspect that the Chinese Room was an effort to find the most ludicrous method of producing consciousness, but there is apparently no limit to what can be considered a computation. Elements that have no physical connection can be considered a computation. If a pattern can be deduced (or could theoretically be deduced by some possible encoding scheme) then the subjective experience of consciousness will be produced. There doesn't seem to be any location where this happens, or time when it takes place, in any clearly defined way. We could do a computation with interpretive dance.


*Beyond the simple requirement of enough complexity in the system to reflect the computation. (It seems to be State The Obvious Day every day).

 

[tsig]

All the biological processes in the body are connected with specific physical processes.

Of course computation has to be done with some kind of physical activity. However, it is not linked with any specific physical process. If the generation of consciousness is indeed a matter of computation, then it is unique as a biological function in that it is not tied to anything specific. In particular, it is entirely unfocused in time and space. There is no location for the computation. There is no physical definition of what, precisely, is going on. There is no practical way to determine what in fact constitutes a computation, and physically, either computations are happening all the time, everywhere, or they aren't happening at all.

If we are dealing with a well-defined, well-understood phenomenon like respiration, we know where it happens, how it happens, and we can duplicate all the processes artificially. There is a physical theory of what happens.

To claim that because something is associated with a set of events that happen somewhere in the universe, that it constitutes a physical theory seems to me to stretch the concept beyond the point of usefulness.

Computations are happening everywhere, all the time?

 

[PixyMisa]

There are no* physical restrictions on computation.

*Beyond the simple requirement of enough complexity in the system to reflect the computation. (It seems to be State The Obvious Day every day).

And the organisation of the system. And quantum mechanics, and thermodynamics.

So when you say "There are no physical restrictions on computation.", you mean "There are physical restrictions on computation."

Which is, I'm sure you'll agree, a different statement.

I suspect that the Chinese Room was an effort to find the most ludicrous method of producing consciousness

It was a reductio ad absurdum argument. One that failed - because such an argument requires you to establish a contradiction, not merely reach a conclusion you dislike.

but there is apparently no limit to what can be considered a computation.

Because computation is defined functionally.

We could do a computation with interpretive dance.

So?

 

[tsig]

Here is a thought experiment I once wrote up for another thread, that I think is relevant, here. ( http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showthread.php?p=7639678 ) Unfortunately, it will take a few paragraphs to explain.

You can replace the word "sentience" with "consciousness" or "qualia" or whatever other term you need.

Let us suppose that scientists actually discover what sentience actually is: The whole process by which it happens, etc. For this exercise, the exact details are not important, for us. But, we can feel free to speculate on a general approach: There might be a mechanism by which small amounts of chaos are introduced into a neural network, allowing for fleeting moments of independent action (seemingly random to outside parties). That, plus other well-studied ingredients might all be what is necessary for a complete working sentient entity. I will call it the MB-Trouble Algorithm, since it was inspired by the pop-up dice dome in that board game. It is important to emphasize that ALL of the details are known in the universe of this experiment, even if they are not all known to us readers.

In the same universe as this thought experiment, there are humans who (for whatever reason) volunteered to allow their brains to be manipulated, to test the MB-Trouble model. The exact physiological structures are discovered, and messed with in the lab. And, every time it happens: Sentience fails in that human in precisely the way the model would predict. Pulling on one thing causes them to act more like a chat bot, with no actual understanding of what is going on. Pushing on another causes them to behave more like a Chinese room: They might have in internal understanding of things, but much of their communication is clearly done without it. We can assume the experimental protocols are solid. So, they know it is a good model that applies to human sentience. (See my ideas for testing sentience in a prior post.)

Now comes the grand day, when they simulate this MB-Trouble Algorithm in a computer system. Remember that they are ONLY building a MODEL of MB-Trouble. They are not emulating every single molecule of every single cell of every single neural process, etc. They aim only to simulate its principal ingredients: an abstraction of the chaos-inducer, plus all the other necessary ingredients I could not actually name, yet.

And, in this universe, the Algorithm works as predicted: The simulation is able to pass any and all tests for sentience you could name: Turing tests, mirror-recognition tests, novel problem solving skills, random number choosing, etc. And, of course, when the simulation happens to be broken in one spot, it fails the same way humans did, when that part was broken in their brains.

In this thought experiment there is NO DOUBT we have simulated the VERY THING that makes "understanding", "meaning" , "semantics", "sentience", "qualia", "consciousness" and "strong intelligence" actually happen.

What, then, is the difference between this simulation of sentience, and that which is found in natural, organic humans?! ​

I know Universal Computing Machines are an implementation of Turing Machines. (To me, the words are practically synonymous.) But, since other people took issue with the word "Turing", and this thread isn't about "Turing", I decided to pick my battles and move on to other things to say about the topic of the opening post.

It's a simulation.

 

[PixyMisa]

That sounds vaguely obscene.

The story behind it is actually rather tragic: http://www.catb.org/jargon/html/S/scratch-monkey.html

 

[westprog]

Computations are happening everywhere, all the time?

Well, if computations can be done by means of a Chinese room, or a row of pebbles - then they exist in all possible patterns, everywhere.

There is a tendency to describe a computation as something done wittingly by a conscious mind. That's how I would prefer to describe it, but clearly you can't have consciousness creating computation and computations creating consciousness.

 

[PixyMisa]

Well, if computations can be done by means of a Chinese room, or a row of pebbles - then they exist in all possible patterns, everywhere.

Please show the mathematics for this theorem.

There is a tendency to describe a computation as something done wittingly by a conscious mind. That's how I would prefer to describe it

Why?

but clearly you can't have consciousness creating computation and computations creating consciousness.

Why not?

 

[PixyMisa]

Well, if computations can be done by means of a Chinese room, or a row of pebbles

And also: The computations aren't done by the room, or the pebbles. Computations are done using the room, or the peoples.

The room and the pebbles are datastores without a processor.

 

[westprog]

Except if the model itself has something to say about it. Which is rather the point in this context -- if a model of a consciousness is claiming it is conscious, what do you do?

If, if, if. What if it insists that it isn't conscious? I'm inclined to make my judgement when it happens, not based on made up cases.

 

[PixyMisa]

If, if, if. What if it insists that it isn't conscious?

Then it's conscious.

 

[!Kaggen]

bump

Any system that can perform calculations and select what calculations to perform.

That does not seem a very useful definition since to calculate and to compute are pretty much synonymous. Saying a computer is something that computes is pretty redundant although I can see how it would be a useful definition for your purposes

 

[PixyMisa]

That does not seem a very useful definition since to calculate and to compute are pretty much synonymous.

No. Wrong.

Any system that can perform calculations and select what calculations to perform.

Saying a computer is something that computes is pretty redundant although I can see how it would be a useful definition for your purposes

No. Wrong.

 

[!Kaggen]

No. Wrong.

Any system that can perform calculations and select what calculations to perform.


No. Wrong.

Wait a bit.

Before we get onto the self-referencing you want to add to the definition of a computer lets agree that the terms compute and calculate are synonymous.

http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/compute

com·pute
   [kuhm-pyoot] Show IPA verb, -put·ed, -put·ing, noun
verb (used with object)
1.
to determine by calculation; reckon; calculate: to compute the period of Jupiter's revolution.
2.
to determine by using a computer or calculator.
verb (used without object)
3.
to reckon; calculate.
4.
to use a computer or calculator.
5.
Informal . to make sense; add up: His reasons for doing that just don't compute.

http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/calculate

cal·cu·late
   [kal-kyuh-leyt] Show IPA verb, -lat·ed, -lat·ing.
verb (used with object)
1.
to determine or ascertain by mathematical methods; compute: to calculate the velocity of light.
2.
to determine by reasoning, common sense, or practical experience; estimate; evaluate; gauge.
3.
to make suitable or fit for a purpose; adapt (usually used passively and with an infinitive): His remarks were calculated to inspire our confidence.
4.
Chiefly Northern U.S.
a.
to think; guess.
b.
to intend; plan.

and more

http://thesaurus.com/browse/compute

now

http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/computer

com·put·er
   [kuhm-pyoo-ter] Show IPA
noun
1.
Also called processor. an electronic device designed to accept data, perform prescribed mathematical and logical operations at high speed, and display the results of these operations. Compare analog computer, digital computer.
2.
a person who computes; computist.

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

A computer is a programmable machine designed to automatically carry out a sequence of arithmetic or logical operations

I don't see any reference to self-referencing or your new terminology and select what calculations to perform in these definitions of computers. Is the emphasis supposed to make it more applicable?


Oh wait...I see what your trying to do

You want to define a computer as a self-referential information processor so that if you define a brain as a self-referential information processor then it follows that the brain is a computer.

Neat