Explain consciousness to the layman.

[Piggy]

You and I have been over this before. Consciousness != being conscious, but even granting you that equivocation, "awake" isn't exactly a specific function yet you're unable or unwilling to refine it further. That about cover it?

No, in fact I see no relationship at all between that assertion and what we were discussing.

But of course consciousness = being conscious. What else could it be? To claim otherwise is like claiming that "awareness" can be happening without an instance of someone "being aware".

And your quibble about being awake doesn't merit a response.

I've given you a perfectly understandable and useful definition of consciousness. If you want to nibble it to death, that's up to you, but it's too tiresome to play along.

 

[Piggy]

Well, lets think about it a little.

First, do you claim to have non-subjective access to the external "objective" world of which you speak? If so, I would love to know how, because all the rest of us are stuck with using our senses and perceptions.

But assuming you do have such access ( you don't, but whatever, I won't dwell on it ), I don't think you can make such strong claims about the objective world.

We know that everything in the objective world is made of particles -- do you agree?

We are only able to detect particles via their interactions with other particles -- do you agree?

Furthermore the only exposure any particle has to any other particle is through these interactions -- do you agree?

If you agree with all of these premises, then you should agree that the only feature of particles that can be emulated is their interactions.

Now tell me where my logic breaks down:

1) we try to emulate the behavior of particle X by replacing it with a simulated particle inside a computer of infinite computing power and memory.

2) this doesn't work because now X has no way to interact with all of its neighbors in real space.

3) so we replace all of the neighbors of X with simulated counterparts, inside the same computer. Now X can interact with all its neighbors and they can interact with it.

4) however this just passes the buck to the neighbors of the neighbors of X. So we do the same thing.

5) eventually there are no particles in the universe, aside from the computer, and an entire simulated universe of particles inside the computer.

In this scenario, why haven't all the particles been emulated as well as simulated? If all that emulation requires is the ability to interact with neighboring particles, and that ability has been granted, why isn't it full emulation?

Uh.... let me get this straight....

You're proposing a thought experiment in which, somehow, we run a computer simulation and every time we simulate a particle we remove a particle from the real universe, and we do this until there are no more particles in the universe (except for those necessary to run the simulation, I suppose)?

Well, since removing the particles from our universe has no effect whatsoever on the simulation, we can dispense with that.

That leaves us with a plain old scenario of "What if we build a simulation of a particle system?"

Ok, so let's say we do.

We built it real rich, and let it run, and after a while (perhaps on fast-forward) that particle world gets so complex that something like living critters becomes part of the simulation.

Well, this isn't any different from saying "Let's set up a simulation of a weather system and let it run until it produces storms".

At no point do the storms become objectively real. The only real thing is the computer running the sim.

Ditto for our particle world. It's only a "particle world" to us because we know what the sim is supposed to represent. To my dog, the computer running the particle world sim is no different from the same computer running any sim.

If you think a real world is being created which can seem real to actual beings inside it, then please explain the mechanics.

Now, we might be able to do such a thing by manipulating the real world.

Suppose, for example, that the tiny black holes created by the supercollider have an interesting interior physics which makes them seem as vast in time and space from the inside as our universe does to us, although from our perspective the black holes are microscopic and vanish in fractions of a second.

In that case, real beings might evolve who have real thoughts about a real world.

In fact, our universe may be such a world, sitting in an aquarium on a shelf somewhere like an ant farm.

But it cannot be a representation, because there isn't any mechanism to make the medium -- paper and ink, clay, computers, whatever -- take on the characteristics of what's being represented... or if you do, then you have a functional model, not a representation.

 

[Piggy]

I've made my position clear on numerous occasions. I've never gone beyond stating that the computational is unproven. Piggy may go a bit further. You'll have to ask him.

Unproven and plagued with problems for which its proponents have no good answers.

 

[Piggy]

What?

You claim that a new world is created which has objective reality. So if our activity creates this new world, does our world not lose any mass or energy to it?

If this world is truly a different frame of reference from plain old physical reality, then our universe must lose mass/energy when it is created.

If it's not, then there is no other frame of reference... it's just plain old physical reality.

Non-sequitur.

Not at all. If you claim that representations create new worlds whose inhabitants experience themselves as real, then why does this happen with certain types of representations (e.g. computer simulations of brains) and not with others (e.g. computer simulations of nuclear power plants, or line drawings of animals)?

 

[westprog]

I've given you a perfectly understandable and useful definition of consciousness. If you want to nibble it to death, that's up to you, but it's too tiresome to play along.

It may well be possible to improve on it, but it's certainly better than "what the brain does".

It's not so much a definition as an isolation of an observation. However, it is fairly objective, and meshes our experience of consciousness with the possibility of measuring what is going on.

 

[Beelzebuddy]

But of course consciousness = being conscious. What else could it be?

"Consciousness" is often used for more specific actions than "being conscious" can fit. For example, if you were to drive somewhere in that fugue state where you arrive at your destination with no experience of the journey, there are some who would not call that consciousness despite you being conscious the entire time. Assuming that that will be the definition everyone here uses is a little premature, is all I'm saying.

I've given you a perfectly understandable and useful definition of consciousness. If you want to nibble it to death, that's up to you, but it's too tiresome to play along.

On the contrary, your definition is fine. It's so similar to mine that I'm just not seeing any nit worth picking. Look how pedantic Westprog had to get to try and illustrate any differences.

 

[westprog]

Unproven and plagued with problems for which its proponents have no good answers.

I'm not too far away from that.

 

[rocketdodger]

Uh.... let me get this straight....

You're proposing a thought experiment in which, somehow, we run a computer simulation and every time we simulate a particle we remove a particle from the real universe, and we do this until there are no more particles in the universe (except for those necessary to run the simulation, I suppose)?

Well, since removing the particles from our universe has no effect whatsoever on the simulation, we can dispense with that.

That leaves us with a plain old scenario of "What if we build a simulation of a particle system?"

Ok, so let's say we do.

We built it real rich, and let it run, and after a while (perhaps on fast-forward) that particle world gets so complex that something like living critters becomes part of the simulation.

Well, this isn't any different from saying "Let's set up a simulation of a weather system and let it run until it produces storms".

At no point do the storms become objectively real. The only real thing is the computer running the sim.

Ditto for our particle world. It's only a "particle world" to us because we know what the sim is supposed to represent. To my dog, the computer running the particle world sim is no different from the same computer running any sim.

If you think a real world is being created which can seem real to actual beings inside it, then please explain the mechanics.

Now, we might be able to do such a thing by manipulating the real world.

Suppose, for example, that the tiny black holes created by the supercollider have an interesting interior physics which makes them seem as vast in time and space from the inside as our universe does to us, although from our perspective the black holes are microscopic and vanish in fractions of a second.

In that case, real beings might evolve who have real thoughts about a real world.

In fact, our universe may be such a world, sitting in an aquarium on a shelf somewhere like an ant farm.

But it cannot be a representation, because there isn't any mechanism to make the medium -- paper and ink, clay, computers, whatever -- take on the characteristics of what's being represented... or if you do, then you have a functional model, not a representation.

No, you misunderstand my question, and you keep going off on tangents.

Please focus !

I claimed that what we currently know of physics leads to the conclusion that the *only* objectively "real" property of particles is their ability to interact with each other.

You can't even say particles are real in a sense that they are separate from this property, because it is currently impossible to detect or make sense of particles without reference to other particles.

In fact, there isn't even any objective evidence that a "particle" is a real thing, besides the fact that logic tells us there must be "something" that is doing all the "interacting" at the "particle" level.

When we look at the results of a particle collider, we can't be sure about what actually collided, all we can see is that something interacted with something and left results, results I might add that are nothing but more interactions between these somethings. We happen to call these somethings particles, but there is zero evidence that particles do anything other than interact with each other.

In fact I can make an even stronger claim -- that physics leads to the conclusion that particles are nothing more than interactions with other particles. You can explain all of physics without a non-interacting particle, you can get rid of non-interacting particles in all the known models and they don't change a bit.

Do you agree or disagree with this ?

 

[Belz...]

Clearly, "something like what a computer does" is a fairly vague description, and not something suitable to base a theory on.

It's called a computer, for pete's sake.

 

[Belz...]

But it's clear that brains and computers are neither structurally nor functionally equivalent.

The thing is, you're limiting "computer" to "my computer". You're defining computer to exclude the brain.

If you adopt Wolfram's definition, then my brain computes, my laptop computes, my heart computes, the oceans compute, and stars compute.

I wasn't aware that hearts and oceans and stars perform calculations or algorithms.

 

[rocketdodger]

If you think a real world is being created which can seem real to actual beings inside it, then please explain the mechanics.

This is your problem, you think "objectively real" actually means something. It doesn't, sorry to be the bearer of bad news.

I think the sim is a world -- not a real world, just a world -- which can seem real to the beings inside it. I didn't call them "actual" beings because that doesn't mean anything either.

The mechanics are simple: Just simulate every single particle in their world, using rules identical to the rules of particle interaction in our own world.

How would their subjective experience of their world not be equivalent to our subjective experience of our world? Just tell me how they would feel different. Don't blab on about "but it isn't real" because they don't care what you think, it *feels* real to *them*. How is their perception of what is real to them different than your perception of what is real to you?

Suggesting that because you know they are in a simulation from our point of view they are somehow less real from their own perspective is just an absurd proposition. If there is a God, and he tells you "you should not consider yourself real, because you are existing in a world that is a simulation from my perspective" would you say "oh, I guess I am not real then?" No, of course you wouldn't, that is just absurd. You would likely say "you are wrong, I am real, see I exist in my reality." So what gives?

 

[westprog]

The thing is, you're limiting "computer" to "my computer". You're defining computer to exclude the brain.



I wasn't aware that hearts and oceans and stars perform calculations or algorithms.

If you can produce a definition of "computer" that includes brains and electronics, but excludes hearts and oceans and stars, then please, go for it. I'd love to see one. (No, saying that it includes electronic computers and brains but nothing else isn't sufficient).

 

[rocketdodger]

If you can produce a definition of "computer" that includes brains and electronics, but excludes hearts and oceans and stars, then please, go for it. I'd love to see one. (No, saying that it includes electronic computers and brains but nothing else isn't sufficient).

Hearts are based on computation, so someone put them on the wrong side.

 

[rocketdodger]

I wasn't aware that hearts and oceans and stars perform calculations or algorithms.

Hearts certainly do

 

[Piggy]

It may well be possible to improve on it, but it's certainly better than "what the brain does".

It's not so much a definition as an isolation of an observation. However, it is fairly objective, and meshes our experience of consciousness with the possibility of measuring what is going on.

It's about the best we can do at the moment. At any rate, it's close enough for rock'n'roll when it comes to having a discussion.

And btw, you've omitted an important bit of the functional definition: it's what our brains are doing when we're awake or dreaming, which it's not doing when we're asleep and not dreaming or when we're under profound sedation, and the effect is a sense of self which is also a sense of experience.

That definition allows us to observe consciousness (to know it when we see it) and it allows us to investigate it scientifically.

This type of functional definition is always necessary in any period before a phenomenon can be properly investigated... and working human brains are damned hard to investigate.

For instance, at some point, the aurora borealis could only be described as something like "colored lights that are sometimes seen in the sky in the extreme north which do not appear to be coming from any known source".

A scientific definition could only be arrived at once the equipment and methods were developed to understand what was going on.

That's why demands for rigid scientific definitions of consciousness, at this time, can only serve to scuttle discussion.

 

[Limbo]

And btw, you've omitted an important bit of the functional definition: it's what our brains are doing when we're awake or dreaming, which it's not doing when we're asleep and not dreaming or when we're under profound sedation, and the effect is a sense of self which is also a sense of experience.

One time I was asleep and not dreaming when I woke up in the blackness of deep sleep. As I gained lucidity the blackness peeled away to infinity. I had a body of pure thought. Moving my mind-stuff arm around was immensely amusing.

 

[Piggy]

No, you misunderstand my question, and you keep going off on tangents.

Please focus !

I claimed that what we currently know of physics leads to the conclusion that the *only* objectively "real" property of particles is their ability to interact with each other.

You can't even say particles are real in a sense that they are separate from this property, because it is currently impossible to detect or make sense of particles without reference to other particles.

In fact, there isn't even any objective evidence that a "particle" is a real thing, besides the fact that logic tells us there must be "something" that is doing all the "interacting" at the "particle" level.

When we look at the results of a particle collider, we can't be sure about what actually collided, all we can see is that something interacted with something and left results, results I might add that are nothing but more interactions between these somethings. We happen to call these somethings particles, but there is zero evidence that particles do anything other than interact with each other.

In fact I can make an even stronger claim -- that physics leads to the conclusion that particles are nothing more than interactions with other particles. You can explain all of physics without a non-interacting particle, you can get rid of non-interacting particles in all the known models and they don't change a bit.

Do you agree or disagree with this ?

You've got a long road to get back to consciousness from here, I can tell you.

But no, it's absurd -- at any level of magnification -- to talk exclusively of interactions without talking of anything which is interacting.

In other words, if you want to speak of the quantum froth as "interactions" then it makes no sense to remove from the picture anything which might be interacting.

You could say that there is only one thing which is "acting", I suppose. Bouncing off itself, as it were, speaking metaphorically.

Now, the good news is that we don't have to divvy reality up that way.

And there's a parallel for this when we're talking about consciousness, too.

We instinctively want to talk about a "self" or a "person" who "has" an "experience".

But this really makes little sense. The experience that's going on right now is me. When "I am having a dream", the dreaming is both the experience and the experiencer.

So, back to your post....

This I certainly agree with:

In fact, there isn't even any objective evidence that a "particle" is a real thing <snip>....

When we look at the results of a particle collider, we can't be sure about what actually collided, all we can see is that something interacted with something and left results, results I might add that are nothing but more interactions between these somethings. We happen to call these somethings particles, but there is zero evidence that particles do anything other than interact with each other.

A quibble, tho, the results are not the interactions. Strictly speaking, they can't be, since the interactions are events which must end at some point prior to any "results" of those events.

And we don't have any direct access to those interactions anyway. Our evidence of them -- which is to say, the "result" of the experiments -- is indirect, symbolic.

But this statement...

physics leads to the conclusion that particles are nothing more than interactions with other particles

... simply doesn't make semantic sense.

In any case, I'm not seeing the point of delving into this bit of esoterica.

What does this have to do with consciousness? (Speaking of focus.)

 

[Piggy]

The thing is, you're limiting "computer" to "my computer". You're defining computer to exclude the brain.

Which gives you an opportunity to correct me.

When you say that the human brain "is a computer" and you don't mean that it is equivalent to your laptop, then what do you mean?

I wasn't aware that hearts and oceans and stars perform calculations or algorithms.

Like I said, it depends on what you mean.

As Wolfram uses the word, they do.

A computation is an operation that begins with some initial conditions and gives an output which follows from a definite set of rules. The most common example are computations performed by computers, in which the fixed set of rules may be the functions provided by a particular programming language.

The field of computer science studies the nature of computation and its uses, among other things. A set of rules used to carry out a computation is known as an algorithm.

Almost all processes that are not obviously simple can be viewed as computations of equivalent sophistication.

More specifically, the principle of computational equivalence says that systems found in the natural world can perform computations up to a maximal ("universal") level of computational power, and that most systems do in fact attain this maximal level of computational power. Consequently, most systems are computationally equivalent. For example, the workings of the human brain or the evolution of weather systems can, in principle, compute the same things as a computer. Computation is therefore simply a question of translating inputs and outputs from one system to another.

 

[rocketdodger]

But no, it's absurd -- at any level of magnification -- to talk exclusively of interactions without talking of anything which is interacting.

In other words, if you want to speak of the quantum froth as "interactions" then it makes no sense to remove from the picture anything which might be interacting.

I agree.

My point, however, is not that there are no particles. My point is that particles can really be whatever our minds want them to be -- the ONLY constraint we currently know about is that they interact with each other according to the physical laws of the universe.

They might all have little smiley faces on them, that is neither here nor there, all we can ever know about them for sure is the way they interact with each other.

A quibble, tho, the results are not the interactions. Strictly speaking, they can't be, since the interactions are events which must end at some point prior to any "results" of those events.

And we don't have any direct access to those interactions anyway. Our evidence of them -- which is to say, the "result" of the experiments -- is indirect, symbolic.

Yes, that is my point. What we think are particles collide, the collision sends off new particles or affects nearby particles, and eventually those effects cause changes in the particles of our sensory system ( or some automated detection system ).

The only causal link between anything in the universe is a chain of interactions between particles.

But this statement...



... simply doesn't make semantic sense.

Why not?

If all we can measure are the effects particles have on each other, the particles effectively are nothing more than a placeholder.

The fact is, physics says absolutely nothing about particles by themselves. Nothing. The only information we have about particles pertains to how they interact with each other.

In fact the idea of a particle by itself isn't even valid -- there is zero evidence that it is even possible for a particle to exist in isolation.

In any case, I'm not seeing the point of delving into this bit of esoterica.

What does this have to do with consciousness? (Speaking of focus.)

I am trying to show you that simulating a group of particles on a computer is identical to emulating a group of particles, from the perspective of other particles in the simulation.

If interacting with other particles is the ONLY property a particle is capable of having -- and this is what physics tells us, or at least physics doesn't know of any other properties -- then the world that interaction takes place in is entirely irrelevant, because the concept of "interaction" has nothing to do with frames of reference or worlds or reality or any of that.

An interaction is an interaction, plain and simple. There is no such thing as a "simulated" or "emulated" interaction, all interactions are still interactions just the same.

 

[Piggy]

This is your problem, you think "objectively real" actually means something. It doesn't, sorry to be the bearer of bad news.

I think the sim is a world -- not a real world, just a world -- which can seem real to the beings inside it. I didn't call them "actual" beings because that doesn't mean anything either.

The mechanics are simple: Just simulate every single particle in their world, using rules identical to the rules of particle interaction in our own world.

How would their subjective experience of their world not be equivalent to our subjective experience of our world? Just tell me how they would feel different. Don't blab on about "but it isn't real" because they don't care what you think, it *feels* real to *them*. How is their perception of what is real to them different than your perception of what is real to you?

Suggesting that because you know they are in a simulation from our point of view they are somehow less real from their own perspective is just an absurd proposition. If there is a God, and he tells you "you should not consider yourself real, because you are existing in a world that is a simulation from my perspective" would you say "oh, I guess I am not real then?" No, of course you wouldn't, that is just absurd. You would likely say "you are wrong, I am real, see I exist in my reality." So what gives?

Yes, "objectively real" does, in fact, mean something.

And pointing to the uncertainty of the quantum foam is a red herring, because we don't need to concern ourselves with that level of magnification.

When the parents tape the drawing of the sleeping baby to the door, there's a real sleeping baby in the house, and there's a piece of paper with ink on it on the door. That's objectively real.

If you want to argue about that, you'll have to do it without me, because your'e entering into discussion-busting philobabble at that point.

Now, when the housekeeper arrives, the light reflecting off the paper enters her eyes and sets off a cascade of neural events in her brain which, we don't know how, cause the idea of "there's a baby sleeping inside the house" to pop into the housekeeper's head.

That idea, however, is imagination. No new baby is created in the process.

What's objectively real is the neural activity in the housekeeper's brain.

And these are the only two realms we can discuss... what's going on in the world of matter and energy that we're a part of, and what we imagine.

(Btw, discussions of the limations of our senses are also a red herring here.)

There is no "world of the representation" with a baby in it. It simply does not exist. There's a piece of paper with ink on it taped to a door, and there's a thought in a woman's head. But no "world of the simulated baby" with any claim to reality.

And because such a world does not exist, it simply makes no sense to inquire about the properties of its inhabitants.

The same is true if we make a sculpture of the sleeping baby, or an animated cartoon, or a computer simulation. In these cases, what is objectively real is the stone, or the celluloid, or the computer. And that's all. And they're all behaving like stone, celluloid, and a computer (respectively).

When I look at the carved stone, or light projected through the moving celluloid, or lights changing on the computer's monitor, it causes my brain to think of a sleeping baby. But there is no real baby, and no new world for that baby to exist in.

There is only this world, and our imaginations.

So no, you can't run a simulation and then talk about what the inhabitants of that simulated world think or feel, because there is no such world to ask about, and no such folks to ask about.

There's a computer doing what a computer does, behaving in essentially the same way it behaves when it runs simulations of rivers or epidemics or anything else. And there's your imagination which is triggered to think about human beings when you observe the simulation, which is not flesh and blood but lights on a screen or ink on paper or the vibration of a speaker cone.

That's all there is in this world, my friend, when you do what you're describing.

It's you taking your eye off the ball, I'm afraid.

You gotta keep your feet on the ground and your mind out of the ozone.