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Explain consciousness to the layman.

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Belz... said:
:p



Granted. But please stop adding conditions to satisfy your demands.
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I'm still saying the same thing I've been saying for a long time now - there's no physical theory of computation, and hence no physical theory of consciousness.

Arguments from incredulity, from where I stand.
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Arguments from credulity, from mine.
 
Belz... said:
Rather than sling mud at one another, why don't you tell us why you think genetics is overrated before we can close that parenthesis and move on ?
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There's a tendency to value digital information in and of itself - but it's important to understand that digital information always* needs some form of conversion into analogue form in order to be useful. Digital information in itself is meaningless. This applies to the genetic code, the works of Shakespeare, or a DVD of Avatar.

*It's possible that at some scale the universe is digital. That doesn't affect the general point, though.
 
westprog said:
There's a tendency to value digital information in and of itself - but it's important to understand that digital information always* needs some form of conversion into analogue form in order to be useful. Digital information in itself is meaningless. This applies to the genetic code, the works of Shakespeare, or a DVD of Avatar.*It's possible that at some scale the universe is digital. That doesn't affect the general point, though.
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Which of these things is 'digital'?

You don't know what the term means.

You larger points are also incorrect, but I am quite used to that by now.
 
How are you all doing with the "Explain consciousness to the layman" thing?
 
dlorde said:
Don't these Turing Machine Equivalents count?
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What I think I was trying to say was that it's not possible to build something that's equivalent to a Turing machine without having underlying technology working according to a different model. It's not possible to design an implementation of a Turing machine using only Turing machine functionality.

It's been claimed that the essential functionality of the brain is its capacity to carry out Turing-type computation, and that the elements of the brain which don't follow this model are just there to sustain the system. I don't accept this characterisation - I believe that the basic functionality of the brain is not Turing machine equivalent. The brain does not have real-time features in order to sustain Turing-machine type computation - it has real-time features to interact in real time with the world.

What about the non-deterministic Turing machine described here, or this non-deterministic Turing machine ?
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I'm sure that such a machine is an interesting idea, as with the probabilistic TM, but when we talk about Turing Machines, it's the original deterministic concept that's being referred to. Theories of computation apply to the original TM, not to variations on the idea. So far, it's been assumed that the deterministic TM is what we are talking about when we refer to computation producing consciousness.

It might be that a non-deterministic TM might be a suitable model for the operation of the brain. That hasn't been proposed yet.
 
Minoosh said:
Hunting mammoths strikes me to some extent as sport
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At the time that the selective pressures were in effect, there were no supermarkets. This was survival. But it turned out to work a bit differently than the usual tricks of longer legs or pointier teeth - it cascaded into unprecedented new abilities.

Just a few thousand years ago we devised systems for handing off knowledge to subsequent generations - and not just those who live contemporaneously with us. Whatever fueled the explosion in human ingenuity, it sets us apart from other animals.
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Yep.

We radically changed the terms of survival in a very brief period of time - relatively recent innovations like writing and agriculture seem to outpace biological evolution so significantly that they sure look like a qualitative leap in consciousness.
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Um, what? What does a qualitative leap in consciousness look like?
 
westprog said:
It is being claimed that by "doing computations", the brain exhibits consciousness. That's very similar to claiming that the planets are "doing calculus" and hence might experience some side-effect from this.
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Wrong.

It is similar to claiming that any system of objects satisfying kepler's laws of motion exhibit "orbiting."

Which happens to be a pretty strong claim, and one that most people agree with.

Try again?
 
Irony said:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_Turing_machine
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The UTM allows the simulation of any given TM. That's in the theoretical world of the Turing Machine, though. To actually build a Turing Machine implementation, you need to deal with concepts of timing and interactivity that aren't part of the Turing model.

This is normal for engineering concerns. There's a functional specification, which details what we want the item to do, and then a specification that shows how we can make it do what we want. In the case of the brain, we don't have such a specification, and we are in the position of reverse engineering our specifications given what we know about how it works.
 
Complexity said:
I really like the way you twist the heel of your shoe, grinding...
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It might look like that, but quite honestly, I'm wondering if I'm missing something here, and I'm trying to pinpoint where my feeling of uncertainty lies. The contradiction between my reading on Turing machines and Westprog's definitive assertions about Turing machines and their application suggests that we're somehow talking past each other with different interpretations of something. I'm wondering what that might be. OTOH one of us might just be wrong...
 
dlorde said:
It might look like that, but quite honestly, I'm wondering if I'm missing something here, and I'm trying to pinpoint where my feeling of uncertainty lies. The contradiction between my reading on Turing machines and Westprog's definitive assertions about Turing machines and their application suggests that we're somehow talking past each other with different interpretations of something. I'm wondering what that might be. OTOH one of us might just be wrong...
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Oh, the latter, and there is no doubt who is wrong.

You are being far too kind.

(smiling, thinking about grinding...)
 
westprog said:
What I think I was trying to say was that it's not possible to build something that's equivalent to a Turing machine without having underlying technology working according to a different model. It's not possible to design an implementation of a Turing machine using only Turing machine functionality.
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Surely that's why it's called Turing equivalent ? You can't actually build a Turing machine, but you can build something that is considered equivalent.

I believe that the basic functionality of the brain is not Turing machine equivalent.
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That's fine, but you need to show why.

The brain does not have real-time features in order to sustain Turing-machine type computation - it has real-time features to interact in real time with the world.
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Well yes. It is a real-time Turing machine equivalent. There's nothing to stop a Turing machine being real-time.

I'm sure that such a machine is an interesting idea, as with the probabilistic TM, but when we talk about Turing Machines, it's the original deterministic concept that's being referred to. Theories of computation apply to the original TM, not to variations on the idea. So far, it's been assumed that the deterministic TM is what we are talking about when we refer to computation producing consciousness.
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All these variations on Turing machines are equivalent. I thought the whole point of the discussion on Turing machine equivalence and the brain was to establish, as best we can, whether it is reasonable to consider the brain as a Turing machine equivalent. If deterministic, non-deterministic and real-time TMs are equivalent, and each can simulate the other, then (leaving the fancy algebra aside) issues of non-determinism and real-time processing are not an obstacle to considering the brain to be a Turing machine equivalent.

It might be that a non-deterministic TM might be a suitable model for the operation of the brain. That hasn't been proposed yet.
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In the sense that a deterministic TM is equivalent to a non-deterministic TM, it has, but nevertheless, consider it explicitly proposed - with real-time too.
 
dlorde said:
It might look like that, but quite honestly, I'm wondering if I'm missing something here, and I'm trying to pinpoint where my feeling of uncertainty lies. The contradiction between my reading on Turing machines and Westprog's definitive assertions about Turing machines and their application suggests that we're somehow talking past each other with different interpretations of something. I'm wondering what that might be. OTOH one of us might just be wrong...
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That's certainly possible. However, since I'm expressing disbelief that the brain necessarily operates as a Turing Machine, it would be better to get the precise definition from somebody who is putting forward the hypothesis with confidence.

The actual claim varies from person to person. There are people who claim that it's possible that some kind of artificial brain might be created. That's a fairly weak claim, and it's not what I'm disputing. There are other people who claim that it is a matter of certainty that a computer running a program, without interaction or time dependency, could produce a subjective experience identical to that of a human being. (They might well wish to rephrase that, and it would probably be best to take their version of what they believe rather than mine).

I'm not making any particular claims of my own, beyond asserting that consciousness is not fully understood or even defined. It might be a good idea to get the claims that I'm trying to disagree with.
 
Mr. Scott said:
It seems that some people believe that if an entity seems conscious then it is conscious.
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There seems to be a much bigger problem going in the other direction.
Let's suppose that there's no way to tell whether an entity is conscious, or merely appears to be conscious, given we only observe that entity's behavior.

But since observing behavior is all you have, you should just stop there. Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must remain silent.

Nevertheless, some particular person is ready to keep going with a specific conclusion, and to even dare to claim that it is backed up by observation.

If you cannot tell a conscious entity from a p-zombie, then you ipso facto disqualify yourself from being able to identify p-zombies.

So when said person claims he has found a p-zombie, I'm perfectly justified to drop my jaw.
Anything can appear to be conscious to us, in part because of our flawed and hyperactive agency detection.
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By like fashion, anyone can appear non-conscious to us, in part because of our overly sensitive dehumanization tendencies; we tend to identify with those like us, and
dehumanize outgroups.

Both tendencies should be averted. I don't think drawing the line in the sand with behavior is all that bad; it's certainly better by far than claiming one knows what he claims he cannot know.
 
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