Explain consciousness to the layman.

[DavidByron]

And I think the answer is just right under our noses -- that you are focused on the experience, actively thinking about it, in the latter case but not the former. And since every case where we wonder about qualia involves thinking, and actually focusing on the experience of something like seeing red, it seems to me that explaining qualia is as simple as just thinking about an experience -- like thinking about seeing red.

Well I suppose the mind can fill in stuff for you a lot so maybe a lot of the stuff we think we are conscious of we're not really. For that matter you could question, for example if you were ever conscious at any point in the past.

"How can I tell that the past isn't a fiction designed to account for the discrepancy between my immediate physical sensations and my state of mind?"
--Douglas Adams

That doesn't seem all that plausible, but it seems a lot more plausible that our consciousness just wobbles in and out and we're not aware of it because whenever we try and think about it our brain calculates some suitably bland set of memories, like it conjures up suitably bland bits of our visual field to cover the blind spot. People often have the sense that they just skipped a few minutes and "woke up" especially while doing some boring semi-automatic process (like driving a car )

So I don't know for sure if I really see red out of the corner of my eye as it were, ie without focusing on the red. But it looks like you have several possibilities there (ignoring the past)

(1) aware of red out of the corner of your eye - does this really happen?
(2) focusing on red but not thinking about the redness
(3) thinking about redness without looking at anything red
(4) both focusing on red and thinking about red

Where by "focusing on" I mean directing your vision to center on the thing, and by 'thinking about' I mean probably some internal dialogue about it. You're saying you can't do (2) but I can. I am not sure if I can do (1). maybe if there was a lot of red.

To elicit a memory and not have it contaminated by your current thoughts would entail somehow doing it without thinking about it, and I don't see how memory can be consciously accessed in such a way.

Hypnosis maybe? I think you just have to be good at thinking about nothing. Medication maybe? Drunk?

when I am not thinking about seeing red, I have no idea what it is like to see red. Maybe I am different than most people, but that is just the way my brain works -- when I am sitting here typing, the red portions of the screen are just another aspect of my visual field. It isn't until I look at them and think "red" that I am "experiencing seeing red."

Can you look at the red and think about an elephant, or nothing at all?

 

[Leumas]

Wait -- are you saying that if I understood tornadoes better, I would realize that wind speed has nothing to do with it?

Hmmmm...

No... what I am saying is that connecting a "big fan" with some "seismic vibration" and "sound" to a computer simulation of a tornado along with a "huge screen" will not make a tornado regardless of the "photons" or the “pretty sky and forest in the background”.


Once you comprehend atmospheric pressure differentials and temperature gradients and humidity levels and the Coriolis effect and the dynamics of cumulonimbus clouds you may BEGIN to realize that you are missing a lot of understanding of the physics and dynamics of tornados….. but above all I think what you REALLY need is to stop using a “monumentally simplistic” conflation of fiction and reality and relying on definitions that aren’t “full explanations, nor particularly useful if one is trying to understand something in detail”.


Just look at this thing and then tell me how "monumentally simplistic" would be the person who thinks that "hooking up a big fan to a computer simulation" would generate a tornado?

 

[Pulvinar]

No... what I am saying is that connecting a "big fan" with some "seismic vibration" and "sound" to a computer simulation of a tornado along with a "huge screen" will not make a tornado regardless of the "photons" or the “pretty sky and forest in the background”.

I thought this thread was about consciousness. Is the real tornado itself ever inside your head? I hope not. It's only facts about the tornado that must reside there. If just the facts about the tornado are simulated, how do the facts themselves differ from real facts?

If I give you the number 42, can you tell if I got it from a simulation?

 

[Leumas]

Sorry I forgot to include the qualifier "type of" in that statement.

Consciousness is a type of information processing. As in, a square is a type of rectangle. Not all rectangles are squares, and not all information processing is a consciousness. That should answer any question you have.

I know this invalidates the entire rest of your post, so again I apologize for the oversight.

No it does not.... read the post again and you might see why not.

 

[Leumas]

I thought this thread was about consciousness. Is the real tornado itself ever inside your head? I hope not. It's only facts about the tornado that must reside there. If just the facts about the tornado are simulated, how do the facts themselves differ from real facts?

If I give you the number 42, can you tell if I got it from a simulation?

Yes....it came from Deep Thought.

See this clip.

 

[Pulvinar]

Yes....it came from Deep Thought.

See this clip.

Yep, or it could have been a "real" fact about Earth Mk I:

http://www.examiner.com/weather-in-chicago/update-42-tornadoes-struck-kansas-and-oklahoma-monday-at-least-2-dead-and-over-100-injured

 

[rocketdodger]

No... what I am saying is that connecting a "big fan" with some "seismic vibration" and "sound" to a computer simulation of a tornado along with a "huge screen" will not make a tornado regardless of the "photons" or the “pretty sky and forest in the background”.

I have never ever said that a simulated tornado is a real tornado. You tried to find a quote, and you couldn't. Saying a simulated consciousness is a real consciousness has nothing to do with tornadoes.

The tornado argument isn't even something you are part of. It is between me and piggy, and you don't seem to understand the context. Nobody is saying that a simulated tornado is a real tornado.

The argument between me and piggy is about whether or not the simulation actually exists when a person is not observing it. My question is, if you hook up a fan to the computer running the simulation, it can blow stuff, similar to how a tornado blows stuff, even if there is no observer. Of course it can't blow stuff *exactly* like a tornado, that is stupid. I just said "similar," meaning, if there is a leaf on the road a mile from the tornado, and it gets blown by a 20mph wind gust from the storm, well the fan can certainly do that.

I don't know what it means for something to be able to blow a leaf yet not exist -- that sounds kind of absurd to me. I am sure piggy is just communicating poorly, and he has some idea that he can't get across, so I am waiting for him to clarify wtf he is talking about. This has nothing to do with consciousness at this point, it is simply an argument about the use of language in this discussion. I expect he really means to say something like "interpretation of the simulation" when he says "simulation," but who knows.

Edited by jhunter1163: 

Edited for civility.

 

[westprog]

Do you think the brain is separate from the body?

No, I don't. I think that the control system of the brain, the sensory feedback of the brain, the conscious part of the brain, and the body form an interlinked system, and I don't think considering the brain in isolation is the correct approach. I thought that was implicit in what I've been saying.

 

[westprog]

You could prove you had reproduced consciousness in a robot fairly easily by just building the robot and then asking it if it was conscious or not. But apparently the robot would have to be smarter than about 75% of the people taking part in this thread. Or perhaps just less insanely dogmatic......

The trouble with that approach is that it's trivially easy to build a computer which asserts its own consciousness.

 

[westprog]

I don't.

You don't know if you were awake or asleep when you made your post?

 

[westprog]

Well, you're simply contradicting yourself here.

You admit that the simulator isn't producing a real tornado, then you go on to claim that you don't see how the simulated tornado could possibly not exist.

What leads to changes in the world, in this case, is the behavior of the machine... since that's the only behavior we have.

Except, of course, for the other necessary part in the system... the programmer/reader.

I would like you to name one "change in the world" which is caused by the running of a digital computer simulation of a tornado which is the type of change we would expect from a tornado and not from a simulator machine, except for causing a human being to imagine a tornado which is what the simulator machine is designed to do.

I don't believe you can do that.

In fact, I'm sure you can't, but I do invite you to try.

As I've said, and conclusively demonstrated, the only place where the target of the simulation exists is in the mind of a programmer/reader.

When you look at the simulator machine and think about a tornado, that's where the tornado exists.

It does not, and cannot, exist in the machine or anywhere else.

It's possible to get the sensory effect of a tornado from a film of a tornado, or a sound recording of a tornado, or somebody making the noise of a tornado. That doesn't mean that there's a "world of the tornado".

If you were to rent Twister and show it on your big screen 5.1 sound home theatre, then you'd get the sensory experience of a tornado. That doesn't mean that Helen Hunt was interacting with the tornado in the world of the simulation. Helen Hunt is interacting with the tornado in the mind of the person watching the film. No such interaction is happening elsewhere.

 

[westprog]

OK well how about,

An algorithm is a series of steps, applied in sequence, to an apparatus. Each step is one of a finite number of simple manipulations of the apparatus. The end state of the apparatus is then said to be the result of the algorithm.

Any good?

Apart from the highlighted words, how does this exclude any interaction between any two physical objects? What is a "simple" manipulation?

 

[AlBell]

No, because there is no such thing as a simulated consciousness.

A consciousness in a simulation is a real consciousness, because consciousness is information processing, and all information is still information.

A tornado is wind, moisture, debris, etc. Simulated wind, simulated moisture, and simulated debris, etc, are not equivalent to wind, moisture, debris, from our perspective. Thus a simulated tornado is not the same as a real tornado.

If, on the other hand, a tornado was just information processing like consciousness is, then it would be different. But it isn't.

As has been pointed out many times, IRL at the '4 forces' level, of course it is just information processing.

Consciousness to our knowledge requires substrate architecture as well as SRIP, and as yet we don't know how this would be accomplished in a computer program because we don't yet know what architecture is actually required.

 

[dlorde]

There are two possibilities for what you are "thinking," ( and I accept the sort of intuitive definition you gave ) -- either you are thinking about seeing red, or you are not. That "not" could include just about anything, for example say there is a cute girl next to you and you are utterly focused on her presence although you are pretending to look at the Rothko.

Now obviously when you are not thinking about seeing red you are unaware of the fact that you may be experiencing seeing red. And it isn't until someone asks you about it -- perhaps the girl, maybe she says "isn't this red exquisite?" -- that you realize you were experiencing seeing red.

Sounds to me like you're describing what happens when you change your focus of attention, the spotlight of conscious awareness.

 

[yy2bggggs]

You don't know if you were awake or asleep when you made your post?

You mean this entire thread, we've just been trying to talk about whether or not we're awake?

Well, I certainly understand that!

 

[yy2bggggs]

Ah, colors and consciousness. Reminds me of the amazing color changing card trick!

 

[DavidByron]

The trouble with that approach is that it's trivially easy to build a computer which asserts its own consciousness.

The whole point of the scientific method is to address the issues of people falsifying their data and results in the way you suggest. If someone says they have created a robot that is conscious then others can attempt to replicate that experiment to see if the first guy was cheating by simply programing it to lie. Or for that matter to check a much more reasonable problem like that the guy wasn't cheating but had a badly designed robot that ended up lying without being deliberately programed to do that.

Do you have any other objection to the test for consciousness that I suggested?

 

[DavidByron]

Apart from the highlighted words, how does this exclude any interaction between any two physical objects? What is a "simple" manipulation?

Can you give me a definition of non-physical algorithm that you are happy with so I can get an idea of how specific you want the words to be? I think there's merit in keeping these sorts of definition a bit vague but not too vague. So give me something to get an idea of where you are coming from with that question. How would you define the same word where it appears in a definition of an algorithm with intent? Your objection doesn't appear to be related to the concept of intent which was what you original idea here was.

I guess there's an idea that you have a physical apparatus that is subject to physical manipulations that can put it into different states and a "simple" manipulation is something that just moves from one state to another (in a way that can be more or less reversed) instead of just burning the whole thing down. I'd say that simple would also mean low energy change.

Wasp messing around doing waspi-ish things is simple. Rock falling is not simple. Wasp turning into a bar of gold or exploding is not simple.

 

[westprog]

You mean this entire thread, we've just been trying to talk about whether or not we're awake?

Well, I certainly understand that!

We don't necessarily know what consciousness is. However, we can usually tell the difference between being asleep and being awake, and we can reasonably surmise that this difference has something to do with consciousness.

 

[westprog]

The whole point of the scientific method is to address the issues of people falsifying their data and results in the way you suggest. If someone says they have created a robot that is conscious then others can attempt to replicate that experiment to see if the first guy was cheating by simply programing it to lie. Or for that matter to check a much more reasonable problem like that the guy wasn't cheating but had a badly designed robot that ended up lying without being deliberately programed to do that.

Do you have any other objection to the test for consciousness that I suggested?

But what constitutes cheating? If the machine comes out with the claim of consciousness, it's certainly because it was programmed to come to that conclusion. How do we determine that the methodology it is using to come to its conclusion is valid? Won't it simply replicate the initial assumptions programmed in?