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Explain consciousness to the layman.

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Piggy said:
Did you really imagine that this could be ignored?
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Obviously everything has a shape, and the shape is often related to the function of functional objects; I was wondering why you thought it necessary to emphasise that.
 
Piggy said:
Your primary error is to look at the functioning of a physical organ of the body, which can only be reproduced by building a machine that performs similar physical functions, and then abstracting a symbolic representation of its behavior -- and not only that, but a symbolic representation of a logical abstraction of its behavior -- and (inexplicably) believing that the physical system that preserves this symbolic representation for you will somehow get you the results that you'd get if you built a replica.

You have to stay consistent.

You cannot speak of the physical behavior of one system and the logical behavior of another system as if they were equivalent.
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My difficulty in seeing how your argument applies here is that I don't see how emulating the processing functions and interactions of a neuron using an artificial processor (microprocessor) is somehow less physical than using a biological processor (neuron) do that processing. Both the artificial and biological processors are real, physical devices.
 
Leumas said:
In response to the above I submit the following quote from this article which is linked to in Piggy’s post that I quote below.

The above got me reminiscing about this old post
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Of course, if you actually checked the numbers, you'd realise that I'm right and you and Piggy - and that article - are wrong.

P.S. Guys, you're citing Gizmodo.
 
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I would like to be honest and say I'm new to this thread- can anyone sum it up in a few words? Piggy or Leumas would be appreciated, they are normally eloquent with a sparse use of words.
 
TheGoldcountry said:
I would like to be honest and say I'm new to this thread- can anyone sum it up in a few words? Piggy or Leumas would be appreciated, they are normally eloquent with a sparse use of words.
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There was once a princess named Consciousness.
Some thought she was real and some thought she was just imaginary.
The wicked witch said she was both at the same time and planned to imprison her in a machine.
The prince however knew she would only be real if she would be his partner in life.
So he planned to rescue her from the fate of living in a machine.
He would study her in her environment in great detail so that he
could understand what she needed to live.
This way he could rescue her from the machine fate and bring her to life
and live happily ever after.
 
TheGoldcountry said:
I would like to be honest and say I'm new to this thread- can anyone sum it up in a few words? Piggy or Leumas would be appreciated, they are normally eloquent with a sparse use of words.
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Piggy, Leumas, Westpro- consciousness is a mystery

Others- a sufficiently complicated computer simulation would be conscious.

Piggy, Leumas, Westpro- consciousness is a mystery


Others- a sufficiently complicated computer simulation would be conscious.


Repeat 1000 times.
 
tsig said:
Others- a sufficiently complicated computer simulation would be conscious.
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Which remains an unproven, bald, assertion backed only by 'SRIP!' and read "I Am A Strange Loop".


That's been repeated 1000 times in many threads. :)
 
tsig said:
Piggy, Leumas, Westpro- consciousness is a mystery

Others- a sufficiently complicated computer simulation would be conscious.

Piggy, Leumas, Westpro- consciousness is a mystery


Others- a sufficiently complicated computer simulation would be conscious.


Repeat 1000 times.
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Haha that's what I see, like a dog and cat chasing each other around a tree.

Put another way:

Dualists: Consciousness requires a magic bean.
Materialists: No, it doesn't.
Dualists: Prove that it doesn't.
Materialists: Prove that it does.

Repeat 1000 times. Damn sphexish.

Here's Daniel Dennett and Robert Wright chasing each other around this tree:


Continued:


I love it that when Dennett says, "I take on the burden of explaining WHY you have the intuition that you have that this is what consciousness is [subjective experience science will never explain], and I think I can give a pretty good explanation of why it seems that way to you," and Wright replies, "I don't want to hear that." Mysterians want to stay in their chapel of the mysterious, shut the windows, and lock the doors.

Here's a great lecture that may help some step away from the tree:

"The Magic of Consciousness" Daniel Dennett,
 
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Mr. Scott said:
Haha that's what I see, like a dog and cat chasing each other around a tree.

Put another way:

Dualists: Consciousness requires a magic bean.
Materialists: No, it doesn't.
Dualists: Prove that it doesn't.
Materialists: Prove that it does.

Repeat 1000 times. Damn sphexish.

Here's Daniel Dennett and Robert Wright chasing each other around this tree:


Continued:


I love it that when Dennett says, "I take on the burden of explaining WHY you have the intuition that you have that this is what consciousness is [subjective experience science will never explain], and I think I can give a pretty good explanation of why it seems that way to you," and Wright replies, "I don't want to hear that." Mysterians want to stay in their chapel of the mysterious, shut the windows, and lock the doors.

Here's a great lecture that may help some step away from the tree:

"The Magic of Consciousness" Daniel Dennett,
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Nice Straw Story.
 
PixyMisa said:
Of course, if you actually checked the numbers, you'd realise that I'm right and you and Piggy - and that article - are wrong.

P.S. Guys, you're citing Gizmodo.
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It might not be true any more, but the statement was quite factual at the time. It was one of those late afternoon goldbricking exercises. If you added up all the activatable proteins in all the synapses in the brain, and all the transistors and bits of memory in all the processors and hard drives on earth, the brain would just barely win out.

'Course, two years of Moore's Law have probably demolished that lead. On the other hand, we didn't bother accounting for any non-synaptic proteins which might conceivably affect information processing in some important way, so the brain may yet have a surprise or two in the numbers race.
 
Beelzebuddy said:
It might not be true any more, but the statement was quite factual at the time. It was one of those late afternoon goldbricking exercises. If you added up all the activatable proteins in all the synapses in the brain, and all the transistors and bits of memory in all the processors and hard drives on earth, the brain would just barely win out.

'Course, two years of Moore's Law have probably demolished that lead. On the other hand, we didn't bother accounting for any non-synaptic proteins which might conceivably affect information processing in some important way, so the brain may yet have a surprise or two in the numbers race.
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There are 300 times as many synapses in the human brain (100 trillion) as there are stars in our galaxy (300 billion).
 
tsig said:
Piggy, Leumas, Westpro- consciousness is a mystery

Others- a sufficiently complicated computer simulation would be conscious.

Piggy, Leumas, Westpro- consciousness is a mystery


Others- a sufficiently complicated computer simulation would be conscious.


Repeat 1000 times.
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I think it's more like this:

Piggy, Leumas : It may be possible one day to make a conscious machine, but you'll never do it with a simulation, it has to be a hardware based architecture.

Rocket Dodger, DLorde and others: The architecture isn't that important, what matters is the processing.

Westprog: A machine can never have a soul.

Me: I wish Star Trek was real, so we could just ask Data, he'd sort all this out just like plucking a chicken, or making soup, or something...

ETA: Oops forgot Pixy Misa: There are already conscious machines, you people just don't get it.
 
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Mr. Scott said:
No.

What you have been saying is equivalent to saying that a giant printing press, built of Lego and string, could not print.

I'm saying that a conscious human brain, built as a digital computer, would also be conscious.

Explain, specifically and succinctly, exactly why it wouldn't. Assume the brain and the computer simulation have the same IO.
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You are simply assuming that what a computer does is similar to what a brain does, and that what a printing press does isn't. Of course if you start out by assuming the thing you want to prove you can derive what you want.

I'll explain why the computer can't be conscious if you'll explain, specifically and succinctly, why the printing press wouldn't be conscious.
 
dlorde said:
My difficulty in seeing how your argument applies here is that I don't see how emulating the processing functions and interactions of a neuron using an artificial processor (microprocessor) is somehow less physical than using a biological processor (neuron) do that processing. Both the artificial and biological processors are real, physical devices.
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If we are in fact able to emulate a single neuron using an artificial device, that will be a huge breakthrough. We certainly can't do it with microprocessors.
 
Brainache said:
I think it's more like this:

Piggy, Leumas : It may be possible one day to make a conscious machine, but you'll never do it with a simulation, it has to be a hardware based architecture.

Rocket Dodger, DLorde and others: The architecture isn't that important, what matters is the processing.

Westprog: A machine can never have a soul.

Me: I wish Star Trek was real, so we could just ask Data, he'd sort all this out just like plucking a chicken, or making soup, or something...

ETA: Oops forgot Pixy Misa: There are already conscious machines, you people just don't get it.
Click to expand...

It's certainly clear that no matter how many time the same arguments are rehearsed, there will be people who will simply not read them.
 
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