Explain consciousness to the layman.

[PixyMisa]

Nope.

There are plenty of people who say it wouldn't be so bad to be killed the instant the copy is made.

There are zero people who say it would be OK to get killed at any instant later.

Point of order: There are people who say this. They are, in my opinion, crazy (or at the very least, deeply wrong), but they exist.

 

[PixyMisa]

I look at your signature, that paean to thought, and wonder if this order of thinking is qualitatively different than the thinking theoretically inducible in a machine.

We are machines - so, no.

 

[westprog]

Without reference to the "spiritual" I can say we all share the general experience of thinking, so we're all qualified to discuss that general experience in lay terms. Physicist and mathematicians are qualified to sling around lay terms, but laymen aren't qualified to sling around physics terms.

However, at present, consciousness is not a well-defined term in physics. Or neurology, computer science, philosophy or anything else. That's why physicists, speaking as physicists, tend to avoid talking about it. In terms of physics, saying that "consciousness is produced by self-referential information processing" is meaningless. That doesn't necessarily mean that it's meaningless in real life. It's just a statement like "happiness is not achieved by gaining material possessions", that doesn't have a strict scientific definition.

 

[PixyMisa]

However, at present, consciousness is not a well-defined term in physics. Or neurology, computer science, philosophy or anything else. That's why physicists, speaking as physicists, tend to avoid talking about it.

Nope.

Physicists, speaking as physicists, tend not to talk about neuroscience in general, because it's not a problem of physics, it's a problem of neuroscience. They'd be looking at the wrong level of abstraction to make meaningful contributions (for the most part).

Hence Roger Penrose, who looked at the level of abstraction he was used to and came up with utter nonsense.

In terms of physics, saying that "consciousness is produced by self-referential information processing" is meaningless.

Again, that's not an abstraction in terms of physics, it's an abstraction in terms of computer science or cognitive science.

That doesn't necessarily mean that it's meaningless in real life. It's just a statement like "happiness is not achieved by gaining material possessions", that doesn't have a strict scientific definition.

And that is simply untrue. Muons don't have a definition in paleobiology, and plesiosaurs don't have a definition in quantum electrodynamics, but that's your fault for selecting the wrong dictionary for the task.

 

[Beelzebuddy]

However, at present, consciousness is not a well-defined term in physics. Or neurology, computer science, philosophy or anything else. That's why physicists, speaking as physicists, tend to avoid talking about it. In terms of physics, saying that "consciousness is produced by self-referential information processing" is meaningless. That doesn't necessarily mean that it's meaningless in real life. It's just a statement like "happiness is not achieved by gaining material possessions", that doesn't have a strict scientific definition.

In neuroscience, "the Higgs field is a hypothetical, ubiquitous quantum field that has a non-zero value in its ground state" is meaningless, but that doesn't make it a statement like "happiness is not achieved by gaining material possessions."

[ETA] Ninjas.

 

[Minoosh]

No - the thought that Russell praises is not qualitatively different than the thought that may someday arise on another machine.

Machines emerged from the cosmos, thoughts emerged from machines, is there something that will emerge from thought?

Would it be out of line to say thought is an emergent property of the universe?

When Russell calls thought "the light of the world," does he mean it is the light of humanity - the best we've been able to do so far? Or is there something more to it?

Point of order: There are people who say this. They are, in my opinion, crazy (or at the very least, deeply wrong), but they exist.

Are you saying that sane people are deeply interested in self-preservation? Is "I want to live" the rock-bottom definition of sanity, because organisms are essentially programmed to want to stay alive as long as possible, and an organism that doesn't care one way or another is malfunctioning?

I hate to think what these questions say about my life.

OK, say we don't have to be conscious in order to have a self-preservation instinct, but we do have to be conscious in order to fear death. What purpose is consciousness really serving? Maybe you need it to have higher-order Bertram Russell thought, but why is this whole business of thinking necessary?

I suppose it isn't any more than necessary than "life" - it's simply what arises, by degrees, when conditions are ripe for molecules to start replicating themselves.

Sorry to be thick, so far I've avoided consciousness threads - for a reason.

 

[PixyMisa]

Are you saying that sane people are deeply interested in self-preservation?

Pretty much by definition.

Is "I want to live" the rock-bottom definition of sanity

It's not the whole of it, but it's the key.

because organisms are essentially programmed to want to stay alive as long as possible, and an organism that doesn't care one way or another is malfunctioning?

An organism that doesn't care one way or another is food.

I hate to think what these questions say about my life.

That you're alive.

OK, say we don't have to be conscious in order to have a self-preservation instinct, but we do have to be conscious in order to fear death. What purpose is consciousness really serving? Maybe you need it to have higher-order Bertram Russell thought, but why is this whole business of thinking necessary?

Planning. See the example of the digger wasp, which is effectively an automaton - it can get stuck in a behavioural loop, because it has no metacognitive faculties.

I suppose it isn't any more than necessary than "life" - it's simply what arises, by degrees, when conditions are ripe for molecules to start replicating themselves.

Sorry to be thick, so far I've avoided consciousness threads - for a reason.

I don't blame you.

 

[Complexity]

Machines emerged from the cosmos, thoughts emerged from machines, is there something that will emerge from thought?

I don't have a clue. I don't think anyone does either.

(the very question is without meaning however I approach it)

Would it be out of line to say thought is an emergent property of the universe?

I suppose.

When Russell calls thought "the light of the world," does he mean it is the light of humanity - the best we've been able to do so far? Or is there something more to it?

I think your first guess is part of the answer. I've read a lot of Russell and this quote resonates strongly with his other writings. There is nothing religious about his statement, if that is what you are asking about.

Here are some other Russell quotes that I like:

Men fear thought as they fear nothing else on earth - more than ruin, more even than death.

Most people would sooner die than think; in fact, they do so.

I was told that the Chinese said they would bury me by the Western Lake and build a shrine to my memory. I have some slight regret that this did not happen, as I might have become a god, which would have been very chic for an atheist.

More at: http://www.positiveatheism.org/hist/quotes/russell.htm

 

[westprog]

In neuroscience, "the Higgs field is a hypothetical, ubiquitous quantum field that has a non-zero value in its ground state" is meaningless, but that doesn't make it a statement like "happiness is not achieved by gaining material possessions."

[ETA] Ninjas.

No, it doesn't. However, one is physically meaningful, and the other isn't.

If a theory of consciousness cannot be expressed in terms that are physically meaningful, that implies to me that it isn't there yet.

 

[westprog]

Sorry to be thick, so far I've avoided consciousness threads - for a reason.

Take care. Express doubt and ambivalence, and you will be accused of pushing unproven hypotheses and magic. There's only one acceptable party line on this skeptics forum.

 

[angrysoba]

I don't know if anyone has said this yet but there is an old joke:

Two behaviourists have sex. After they finish one says to the other: "How was it for me?"

 

[PixyMisa]

Take care. Express doubt and ambivalence, and you will be accused of pushing unproven hypotheses and magic. There's only one acceptable party line on this skeptics forum.

No.

No, it doesn't. However, one is physically meaningful, and the other isn't.

Equivocation. "Physically meaningful" is not the same as "defined by physicists".

If a theory of consciousness cannot be expressed in terms that are physically meaningful, that implies to me that it isn't there yet.

Yes. Since in this case it can and has been, what is your objection?

 

[Minoosh]

Take care. Express doubt and ambivalence, and you will be accused of pushing unproven hypotheses and magic. There's only one acceptable party line on this skeptics forum.

Well for some reason, so far, most posters have been kind to me even with my professed sympathy for non-material, non-computational theories. They seem (so far!) to cut me more slack than they do you. I'm not aligned with any camp here. Wooish theories may have my sympathies, but the hard-headed empiricists have my respect.

 

[Belz...]

Yes, I was thinking of you when I put in the qualifier "I can say."

Well, the problem is, you are wrong about everybody, not just Complexity.

 

[Belz...]

There are plenty of people who say it wouldn't be so bad to be killed the instant the copy is made.

Not me, by the way. I'll walk.

 

[tsig]

Not me, by the way. I'll walk.

Esp. since the transporter keeps having problems. (That's how we wound up with a double to begin with)

 

[Mr. Scott]

Great......very nicely put.

But just a slight nitpick..... there are no random modules.... there are occasional random misfirings or activations of some modules that are not due to external (to the module) effects.

Thanks!

Sure, and module may fire randomly for no meaningful reason, but that's not what I mean by a random module. I mean a module that provides a miscellaneous embellishment that we might mistakenly consider to be essential to consciousness. For example, a module who's* job causes boredom appropriately, not randomly.

*Intentionally playful anthropomorphism.

 

[Mr. Scott]

Isn't that [1) include the conscious process as part of the modeled environment] the essence of what we call consciousness? That you are part of the model?

I think that's the essence of what makes us wonder about consciousness. I doubt that lower mammals do this, but I think they are nevertheless unambiguously conscious.

 

[Mr. Scott]

Yeppers.

Glad to see you are putting some serious thought into this!

Now -- assuming this is correct -- do you see any reference to the future state? That is, at an instant in time t, the system is getting input from the senses that corresponds to a world state of no later than time t, right? So the very latest model state will be of the world at time t, correct?

I ask you this -- does this imply that our consciousness is restricted to knowledge of the present and past only? That there is no actual "perception" of moving into the future, other than the fact that the present-past states shift one instant in that direction? I think it does. If the model only includes the present and past states, then ... it only includes the present and past states.

Thinking about this question made me realize that stepping into the teleporter and being destroyed wasn't so bad after all, since there is by definition no actual link to the future in our lives. If we live only in the present/past, then being destroyed and continuing to exist in a copy is logically no different than what happens every other instant in our lives.

When I was concocting 1-2-3, I was wondering if #4, anticipating the future, was an essential feature of consciousness. I concluded it was not, but it's certainly an essential feature of survival, and an essential feature of the brain, but that's a different question.

The question your point invokes: If we can't picture the future, are we not conscious?

 

[Mr. Scott]

Nope.

There are plenty of people who say it wouldn't be so bad to be killed the instant the copy is made.

There are zero people who say it would be OK to get killed at any instant later.

The idea of people sitting in the teleporter and pressing a button to immolate themselves is just stupid, and furthermore a grossly dishonest red herring that is only used to sell snake oil to conversation observers.

The movie "The Prestige" plays with this issue in a very haunting way.