Explain consciousness to the layman.

[yy2bggggs]

It's an inadequate metric.

That was not raised in his complaint. In particular, Mr. Scott was complaining about what "seems" to be true of particular people (unmentioned, but they are specific instances) in this thread. So there had better be particular people who he is talking about, who have described things sufficient for him to generate that complaint.

ETA: Just to rant a bit, it seems a major problem in noisy threads is that people seem to have specific bones they want to pick, and they're so sensitive to attacks against their particular bone, they see things expressed that were never mentioned. I'm particularly sensitive to this phenomenon... that's my bone I suppose.

 

[Mr. Scott]

What both sides? You're asking the same question he asked you, and in the middle, you listed the very metric you're complaining about people using as a metric, and as the only one we have.

Maybe that's the answer you want to hear? People assume that something that seems conscious is conscious because that's a metric, and because it's the only metric we have. Both of these things you presumably agree with. Now what is the problem again?

This thread is not about me it's about consciousness.

This obsession with figuring out what side someone is on is tiresome. "If you are not with me, then you are against me" is a classic false dichotomy. Is "winning for our side" the only thing that matters?

"Seeming conscious" is a lousy metric but apparently it's all we have. Until we perfect the gremlinometer, would someone suggest a better metric?

 

[yy2bggggs]

"Seeming conscious" is a lousy metric but apparently it's all we have. Until we perfect the gremlinometer, would someone suggest a better metric?

Oh, I have to ask this one.

By what metric is this metric a lousy metric? And yes, it's a very serious question.

 

[punshhh]

Of organised structured chemistry. Living entities are mostly distinct units like most other objects in our experience (only mostly because some normally independent creatures will sometimes aggregate together and behave as a single super-organism). The fact that they are self-regulating and self-maintaining reproductive units is interesting, but doesn't imply any mysterious 'spark of life' - assemble the chemical components in the right way, and they will function.

The entity in question is not a chemical reaction, it is not a chemical process even though that process is an integral part of its being a living organism. It is a life form exhibiting emergent properties of a living being. This is all well documented by science and I don't dispute it. Simply because it has been observed that the nervous system operates by the use of electro-chemical behavior, materialists have presumed that such emergent properties would also emerge from computers. And yet it has neither been demonstrated or the nature of the emergence in animals fully understood. Even less what consciousness is or accepted that phenomena immaterial in nature emerge out of this subtle assemblage of chemicals.

It's already happened - you say you think Synthia is a living organism. Synthia was built by Venter's team.

Yes, they have a long way to go though.

We can never know whether all the evidence is in. The more consistent evidence we have, the more certain we can be.

On the assumption of the materialist ontology.

OK, so being manufactured (artificial) does not, in your view, disqualify a product from being alive. I suppose that's progress.

This was always my position. Cheer up, don't expect to debunk me though

Just probing the inconsistencies in your statements.

I wonder why. It is relevant to this thread, though.

This is another issue, I suggest you discuss it with Mr Scott, he is expressing an interest.

I've been trying to get you to explain exactly why you feel only living things can be conscious; all I've had in response is evasion, distraction, and religious woo.

This is a ridiculous line, the default position is that consciousness is an emergent property of a living animal. No alternative has been demonstrated or convincingly described. All that I've heard about on this forum is descriptions of automatons.

Ah, so it's everyone else's fault that your attempts to explain fail...

I suggest you take a sober look at the debating behavior of the Skeptics on this site. It is riddled with lazy thinking, obsfucation and diversionary "debunking" behavior.

 

[punshhh]

This thread is not about me it's about consciousness.

This obsession with figuring out what side someone is on is tiresome. "If you are not with me, then you are against me" is a classic false dichotomy. Is "winning for our side" the only thing that matters?

"Seeming conscious" is a lousy metric but apparently it's all we have. Until we perfect the gremlinometer, would someone suggest a better metric?

Yes it would be nice to discuss consciousness in a constructive way.

 

[rocketdodger]

Oh, I have to ask this one.

By what metric is this metric a lousy metric? And yes, it's a very serious question.

If you start with the assumption that consciousness is somehow an "all or nothing" phenomenon, then any metric that doesn't lead to a simple home-pregnancy-test ease of use is "lousy."

I don't disagree with the logic here -- but the assumption that human consciousness is "all or nothing" is simply wrong, and we have known it to be wrong for hundreds of years.

 

[Belz...]

I really don't know what else you want.

I want more than nothing.

 

[Belz...]

It's an inadequate metric.

Why ?

Science is about models i.e. how things seem to work.

 

[tsig]

You've made up that assertion. I haven't even provided a definition of consciousness.

Yet you're trying to explain it.

 

[rocketdodger]

This obsession with figuring out what side someone is on is tiresome. "If you are not with me, then you are against me" is a classic false dichotomy. Is "winning for our side" the only thing that matters?

You don't quite seem to understand the mechanisms of debate, or even communication between intelligent entities in general.

By definition the words a person can speak ( or write, as it were ) is a tiny subset of everything they think or mean. Likewise, the words we hear ( or read, as it were ) are a tiny subset of the thoughts those words lead to.

So you have two minds, with huge models within their minds of what the argument in question really entails, sharing information in a tiny channel. The only way we can function is to extrapolate more meaning and subtext from that tiny channel than there is on the face of it.

This isn't anything new, or even limited to humans. Think about it -- when a dog bears its teeth, other dogs don't think "he is just making a facial expression that exposes his teeth, that is all there is to it." They infer a ton of meaning from that simple expression, and rightly so.

So in a discussion like this, for instance, knowing someone's personal position is invaluable in extracting the proper meaning from any statement they make. If I hear someone like drkitten or yy2bggggs or darat make a statement about science, for instance, I am likely to take it on face value. If I hear them make a statement about non-science, I doubt their authority on it, and my thoughts would be flavored by that doubt. Conversely, if someone like westprog or punshhh makes a statement about science, I doubt their authority and it flavors my thoughts and responses -- only because I know that they are non-scientific people. And on the extreme end, if someone like !kaggen makes an argument that references science in any way I instantly dismiss it as being incorrect. I don't even need to spend time trying to understand the argument in such an extreme case, I know it is wrong apriori.

If you have non-scientific tendencies, and you ask a question that seems scientific, but you are really asking it as part of some wedge argument you seek to use, it really matters. In cases like that a simple scientific answer isn't sufficient. In cases like that the answer needs to be "here is the scientific answer, and let me head you off that train of thought you were going down, because it is wrong in all these other ways."

 

[rocketdodger]

Yet you're trying to explain it.

He hasn't provided a definition, yet he is sure that whatever the definition might be, we are wrong about how the phenomenon may be generated.

 

[Mr. Scott]

Oh, I have to ask this one.

By what metric is this metric a lousy metric? And yes, it's a very serious question.

For one thing, because of the high rate of false positives. I remember watching a paramecium on a microscope slide, and being shocked at how much it looked like a dog searching for a bone (or a skeptic trying to out a woo, or Robert Wright trying to out Daniel Dennett as a Satan worshiper

Let me throw this ball into the melee.

westprog asserted IIRC that a Turing Machine could not be conscious because it didn't have IO or timing control, and therefore couldn't perform interactive functions like controling a ball catching robot.

I'll propose that a true ball catching robot was conscious, because it saw the ball, remembered its position, saw the ball a fraction of a second later, compared its present position with its remembered position, extrapolated its position when it was near enough to catch, rehearsed catching in its internal model of the environment, then reached out its mechanical hand to the ball's future position and instructed the fingers to close in time to grasp the ball before it bounced out. I'm proposing that the robot had a tiny spark of consciousness. Real consciousness. If not, why not?

 

[rocketdodger]

For one thing, because of the high rate of false positives. I remember watching a paramecium on a microscope slide, and being shocked at how much it looked like a dog searching for a bone (or a skeptic trying to out a woo, or Robert Wright trying to out Daniel Dennett as a Satan worshiper

Let me throw this ball into the melee.

westprog asserted IIRC that a Turing Machine could not be conscious because it didn't have IO or timing control, and therefore couldn't perform interactive functions like controling a ball catching robot.

I'll propose that a true ball catching robot was conscious, because it saw the ball, remembered its position, saw the ball a fraction of a second later, compared its present position with its remembered position, extrapolated its position when it was near enough to catch, rehearsed catching in its internal model of the environment, then reached out its mechanical hand to the ball's future position and instructed the fingers to close in time to grasp the ball before it bounced out. I'm proposing that the robot had a tiny spark of consciousness. Real consciousness. If not, why not?

But you have just shown why the metric is sufficient.

In the first case, you argue that the paramecium seemed conscious -- yet you don't consider it so? I think you really mean "it seemed conscious when I just looked at it, but after thinking about the possible mechanisms, it does not *seem* conscious to me."

In the latter case, you argue that the robot may be conscious because of a list of internal behaviors. Doesn't that mean the robot "seems" conscious to you, upon closer inspection?

"Seems conscious" basically just means "as far as I have thought about it." That is all.

In other words the metric is as weak or strong as the thought put into it. That "seems" like a pretty good metric to me...

 

[Mr. Scott]

In cases like that the answer needs to be "here is the scientific answer, and let me head you off that train of thought you were going down, because it is wrong in all these other ways."

It's too easy for that to become an unintended straw man argument, putting words into your opponent's mouth.

You don't quite seem to understand the mechanisms of debate, or even communication between intelligent entities in general.

Sigh. Debate is about winning, not reaching the right answer.

I'd prefer we work together to find the right answer, and therefore, are on the same side. If the best debater wins with the wrong answer, we all lose. Still, we are in part a tournament species, and there's little getting away from that.

 

[tsig]

He hasn't provided a definition, yet he is sure that whatever the definition might be, we are wrong about how the phenomenon may be generated.

It seems odd that at this late stage into the thread he'd throw out the "We don't even know what it is we're talking about" defense.


Rather undercuts all his other posts.

 

[westprog]

Oh, I have to ask this one.

By what metric is this metric a lousy metric? And yes, it's a very serious question.

Because it's entirely subjective. The test is that we would trust the impressions of a person or people to tell whether an entity is conscious or not. There is no objective basis whatsoever.

It's like saying that the test for the presence of dioxin in drinking water was to ask an expert for his opinion. We wouldn't regard that as a test at all.

 

[Mr. Scott]

But you have just shown why the metric is sufficient.

In the first case, you argue that the paramecium seemed conscious -- yet you don't consider it so? I think you really mean "it seemed conscious when I just looked at it, but after thinking about the possible mechanisms, it does not *seem* conscious to me."

In the latter case, you argue that the robot may be conscious because of a list of internal behaviors. Doesn't that mean the robot "seems" conscious to you, upon closer inspection?

"Seems conscious" basically just means "as far as I have thought about it." That is all.

In other words the metric is as weak or strong as the thought put into it. That "seems" like a pretty good metric to me...

Again, you turn a question about consciousness into accusations about Mr. Scott. I will no longer entertain these diversions, and I've already explained why.

By "seems conscious" I mean the gut feeling that an entity is conscious. Should gut feeling even be considered a "metric?" Gut feelings are always suspect and often wrong, e.g., the only thing that makes people conclude qualia are incomputable and immaterial is gut feeling.

 

[tsig]

For one thing, because of the high rate of false positives. I remember watching a paramecium on a microscope slide, and being shocked at how much it looked like a dog searching for a bone (or a skeptic trying to out a woo, or Robert Wright trying to out Daniel Dennett as a Satan worshiper

Let me throw this ball into the melee.

westprog asserted IIRC that a Turing Machine could not be conscious because it didn't have IO or timing control, and therefore couldn't perform interactive functions like controling a ball catching robot.

I'll propose that a true ball catching robot was conscious, because it saw the ball, remembered its position, saw the ball a fraction of a second later, compared its present position with its remembered position, extrapolated its position when it was near enough to catch, rehearsed catching in its internal model of the environment, then reached out its mechanical hand to the ball's future position and instructed the fingers to close in time to grasp the ball before it bounced out. I'm proposing that the robot had a tiny spark of consciousness. Real consciousness. If not, why not?

It didn't hold out for a million dollar contract.

 

[!Kaggen]

You don't quite seem to understand the mechanisms of debate, or even communication between intelligent entities in general.

By definition the words a person can speak ( or write, as it were ) is a tiny subset of everything they think or mean. Likewise, the words we hear ( or read, as it were ) are a tiny subset of the thoughts those words lead to.

So you have two minds, with huge models within their minds of what the argument in question really entails, sharing information in a tiny channel. The only way we can function is to extrapolate more meaning and subtext from that tiny channel than there is on the face of it.

This isn't anything new, or even limited to humans. Think about it -- when a dog bears its teeth, other dogs don't think "he is just making a facial expression that exposes his teeth, that is all there is to it." They infer a ton of meaning from that simple expression, and rightly so.

So in a discussion like this, for instance, knowing someone's personal position is invaluable in extracting the proper meaning from any statement they make. If I hear someone like drkitten or yy2bggggs or darat make a statement about science, for instance, I am likely to take it on face value. If I hear them make a statement about non-science, I doubt their authority on it, and my thoughts would be flavored by that doubt. Conversely, if someone like westprog or punshhh makes a statement about science, I doubt their authority and it flavors my thoughts and responses -- only because I know that they are non-scientific people. And on the extreme end, if someone like !kaggen makes an argument that references science in any way I instantly dismiss it as being incorrect. I don't even need to spend time trying to understand the argument in such an extreme case, I know it is wrong apriori.

If you have non-scientific tendencies, and you ask a question that seems scientific, but you are really asking it as part of some wedge argument you seek to use, it really matters. In cases like that a simple scientific answer isn't sufficient. In cases like that the answer needs to be "here is the scientific answer, and let me head you off that train of thought you were going down, because it is wrong in all these other ways."

What a load of bollocks.
The only thing you got right was to state that you ignore what I have to say. However your reasons are wrong. It us simply because you are incapable of understanding anything except your own thoughts and even this is a stretch.

 

[westprog]

Yet you're trying to explain it.

No, actually. I'm pointing out that the primary accepted explanation is not proven, and is not well-defined.

You seem particularly prone to various ideas about what I'm actually claiming, which AFAIAA is quite divergent from what I've been saying. In particular, that I'm claiming that consciousness necessarily has a non-material basis. I can't remember ever expressing this opinion, but somehow it's made its way into your belief system.

As far as the definition of consciousness goes - I think that there are possibly good grounds to believe that not only is consciousness (in particular, subjective experience) undefined, but that it's inherently undefinable. This does not mean that we are unable to talk about it at all. The test is that we are, in fact, able to talk about it.