Explain consciousness to the layman.

[Mr. Scott]

Oh, well, if you've taught courses.

Westprog, you've admitted you DON'T KNOW how computers work, and say they could never be conscious, so you are arguing from ignorance.

I know exactly how computers work, have been studying how the brain works for a long, long time, and think computers can be programmed to be conscious.

My conversations with you remind me of the phrase "you can't win an argument with an irrational person." They are profoundly unrewarding, so I'm going to allow the synapses that support our exchanges to atrophy. Be good.

 

[Mr. Scott]

thanks, I wasn't questioning our curiosity, I was questioning people's need to define the human mind for everyone else. I haven't figured out my own brain, I probably know I never will, so I get a tiny bit annoyed when others proclaim to have it all figured out.

I don't think anyone claims they've completely figured it out, but I do understand a lot more than I did when I first became curious about the brain. I was 12 years old when I first debated the nature of consciousness with computer professionals. That was a VERY long time ago (the mid 60s) and I still remember much of what was said.

I think we are past the point of "the more you know, the more you find out what you don't know." The range of what we don't know about how the brain works looks like it's shrinking. The magic bean is disappearing.

 

[rocketdodger]

I thought the article might relieve your boredom with being always right..... I guess I failed….. However, it might be futile to “try again” given how you know it all already.

That is my point -- you keep insisting that I should "read a book" or whatever, without ever considering that I am well educated regarding exactly what human science knows about the neuron.

I have no doubt that if you started scanning the internet right now you would come up with facts that I am not familiar with -- I certainly don't know everything. However I seriously doubt that you are currently familiar with any facts that I am not also currently familiar with.

So can you just drop the pretense, and stop using some kind of argument from "more educated authority" in place of actually addressing the issues? Maybe stop the sarcasm, and just address the issues?

So because I know that an internal combustion engine (ICE) functions differently from a jet engine (JE) I am not allowed to use any argument for how it burns gasoline differently to produce power? After all an ICE also burns gasoline to produce power....so by your argument I cannot discuss how a JE does that differently because the ICE does it too.

But they don't burn gasoline differently!!

Gasoline burns the same when it burns regardless of where it burns. The chemical reaction is the same.

And the fact is, the same principle is at work in both an ICE and a JE -- expanding gases from that chemical reaction of combustion are used somehow for mechanical energy.

In fact one could say that you could devise many types of "engines" that use the same principle, in fact we have -- things like rotary engines, turbine engines, turboprop engines, rocket engines, you name it.

If the important thing an engine does is "propel," then it is inaccurate to suggest that the way an ICE "uses" the expanding gases is somehow "uniquely essential" to what is going on, given that we know of so many other ways an engine can make use of expanding gasses to propel whatever it powers.

Furthermore, it is obvious that you don't even need gasoline -- anything that expands rapidly will work. There are steam engines and even things like this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Orion_(nuclear_propulsion)

.... all of which make use of the same principle.

 

[rocketdodger]

I know exactly how computers work

I am convinced now that the difference between "knowing how computers work" and "knowing exactly how computers work" is far greater than those in possession of only the former can appreciate.

Picturing the workings of a computer in an abstract sense, as a series of registers which are operated upon by instructions, that fetch words of data from memory and write them back, according to long lists of instructions that are the result of "compiling" source code, is fine for someone that wants to sort of understand how what you see on the monitor is the result of what a programmer was doing at some point in the past. However you don't get an appreciation for just how rooted in our physical world a computer is if that is the limit of your knowledge.

Going all the way opens up a whole different world, IMO. Once you see just how those instructions operate on those registers, in terms of cascades of logic gates driven by clock pulses, and just how those words of memory are fetched in terms of logic gates driven by clock pulses, and just how things like the addition of two registers is actually performed by logic gates driven by clock pulses, and how such complex things like pipelining are accomplished by ... you guessed it, logic gates driven by clock pulses ... I don't see how it is possible to view the brain as being so fundamentally different from a computer.

Knowing exactly how computers work is rather enlightening and definitely fascinating, I wish more people took the time to read about it and really understand it. You can't appreciate just how smart humans are until you see what we can do with logic gates, and so it is funny that the anti-computationalists claim to have a better handle on appreciating human intelligence than we do. Writing poetry is impressive, but so is designing a CPU.

 

[westprog]

Westprog, you've admitted you DON'T KNOW how computers work, and say they could never be conscious, so you are arguing from ignorance.

If you really believe that, there's not much I can do to change your mind.

I know exactly how computers work, have been studying how the brain works for a long, long time, and think computers can be programmed to be conscious.

That's very often the argument here. It's phrased like a syllogism but it's really just a plea. I've studied this stuff, please believe me.

My conversations with you remind me of the phrase "you can't win an argument with an irrational person." They are profoundly unrewarding, so I'm going to allow the synapses that support our exchanges to atrophy. Be good.

I will just have to study harder. Clearly if I did a bit more work on the subject I'd learn all about those programming techniques for producing feelings. I suppose Mr Scott won't be telling me about it, but I can just listen in for when he tells somebody else.

 

[rocketdodger]

They are profoundly unrewarding

You shouldn't view it like that.

I have been very frustrated with this ongoing discussion for years, but I learned a ton and also made some pretty profound discoveries about the nature of life in our universe from trying to formulate arguments against the positions of people here.

So I don't ever regret it.

 

[westprog]

I don't think anyone claims they've completely figured it out, but I do understand a lot more than I did when I first became curious about the brain. I was 12 years old when I first debated the nature of consciousness with computer professionals. That was a VERY long time ago (the mid 60s) and I still remember much of what was said.

Probably because they are saying pretty much the same things now.

I think we are past the point of "the more you know, the more you find out what you don't know." The range of what we don't know about how the brain works looks like it's shrinking. The magic bean is disappearing.

 

[rocketdodger]

I've studied this stuff, please believe me.

Where did you study, where they told you that a rock makes a suitable calculator ??

 

[rocketdodger]

Probably because they are saying pretty much the same things now.

You just have no idea do you?

Try reading the references in that paper dlorde linked to the other day, you will be astounded at how much progress has been made in the field of machine consciousness in just the last 10 years.

Well, I don't think you will be astounded, because you will just write it off, but any unbiased observer would be astounded.

 

[punshhh]

You just have no idea do you?

Try reading the references in that paper dlorde linked to the other day, you will be astounded at how much progress has been made in the field of machine consciousness in just the last 10 years.

Well, I don't think you will be astounded, because you will just write it off, but any unbiased observer would be astounded.

Tut tut,

machine intelligence, not machine consciousness.

 

[PixyMisa]

Tut tut,

machine intelligence, not machine consciousness.

Quite right. Machine intelligence is bloody complicated. Mere consciousness is easy.

 

[dlorde]

You shouldn't view it like that.

I have been very frustrated with this ongoing discussion for years, but I learned a ton and also made some pretty profound discoveries about the nature of life in our universe from trying to formulate arguments against the positions of people here.

So I don't ever regret it.

This ^

As well as learning new stuff about the topic at hand, you can also pick up useful lessons in human nature from the kind of comments that this topic tends to attract

 

[rocketdodger]

Tut tut,

machine intelligence, not machine consciousness.

No I didn't mean "actual machine consciousness" since obviously that is subjective for each person, as this thread shows.

I meant the research field of "machine consciousness" :http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artificial_consciousness

If you just peruse the notes from the conferences the various organizations have had in the last 10 years, especially the last 5, you will be quite surprised at how much research has been done, even in things like phenomenal consciousness for machines.

 

[Frank Newgent]

Mere consciousness is easy.

Would the ethical issue need to be assessed as to what rights your consciousness would have under law?

 

[Mr. Scott]

When Babbage was demonstrating his analytical engines c. 1840, it immediately sparked discussion about whether or not machines could "think" like people.

I think a mechanical machine could be conscious, in principle, but of course astronomically difficult in practice.

If we were to magnify a conscious brain enough, I assert we would see it functioning much like a mechanical machine. There would not be the slightest trace of the magic bean.

This video shows a recent implementation of Babbage's difference engine. You can watch it running and picture the cellular mechanisms of consciousness at work.



Half of Babbage's brain is on display in the Science Museum, London. In college, he was a member of "The Ghost Club, concerned with investigating supernatural phenomena." (wiki)

 

[westprog]

Tut tut,

machine intelligence, not machine consciousness.

Just a little tweak to change the meaning around...

 

[punshhh]

If we were to magnify a conscious brain enough, I assert we would see it functioning much like a mechanical machine. There would not be the slightest trace of the magic bean.

I agree and yet my magic bean has not gone away.

I shall now describe my magic bean.

It has occurred to me that alongside the characteristics of spacetime and matter which results in the laws of nature described by physics. There is also a characteristic which results in the appearance and existence of life. Such characteristics are not as yet understood.

Matter as modeled by physics may not in practice exhibit such characteristics. So much of the appearance of the phenomena of existence is taken on faith as the laws of nature, while in fact we don't know what the laws of nature are beyond what science has described thus far. Or any measure of the extent of this understanding.

 

[rocketdodger]

There is also a characteristic which results in the appearance and existence of life. Such characteristics are not as yet understood.

No, those characteristics are understood.

Life is a set of particles in a configuration that behaves in such a way as to increase the chances of remaining in a similar configuration that can behave in a similar way.

Very simple, very elegant, yet it leads to amazing complexity of behavior.

That is the difference between a human and a rock, fundamentally. When lava is coming towards us, we move out of the way, thus keeping the configuration ( I.E. "not dead" ) that allows us to repeat similar behavior in the future.

Any system can do this, it just so happens that life is by far the best at it. That is why life has existed for billions of years in a very similar form, and why all of us can trace our line of cells back to the very first cell billions of years ago.

If you think about it, given how fragile a cell is compared to a rock, it is amazing that a little cell has managed to keep itself going for billions of years. Billions of years.

 

[PixyMisa]

I agree and yet my magic bean has not gone away.

I shall now describe my magic bean.

It has occurred to me that alongside the characteristics of spacetime and matter which results in the laws of nature described by physics. There is also a characteristic which results in the appearance and existence of life. Such characteristics are not as yet understood.

No. Life is chemistry.

Matter as modeled by physics may not in practice exhibit such characteristics.

It does.

 

[Piggy]

I have no idea what you are even talking about when you try to make an arbitrary distinction between "logical" behavior and "physical" behavior, given that everything is physical.

That makes no sense.

The distinction's not arbitrary.

Yes, everything is physical, all real events are matter and energy.

But if you take the example of the marble machine, you can easily see that an animal can use physical computations to help him with symbolic (or logical) computations.

Only the physical computations exist independently, as matter and energy.

The logical (or symbolic) computations exist in a system which includes a designer/reader, as well as a physical medium that is used for en-/de-coding the information.

That's not an arbitrary distinction.

In fact, it's a very important one.