On Consciousness

[Pulvinar]

Sorry for missing your post. Searle (and me) are saying consciousness is a physical aspect of the universe that currently we are only sure about in ourselves. I do not see how one makes a program that has subjective experience, even in principle.

So if you say you're sure you're conscious, and I say I'm sure, and a computer say's it's sure, you'll only believe me. What could the computer say or do that would change your mind?

How solid do you see the dividing line between who is/isn't allowed subjective experience?

HardAIMachine machine = new HardAIMachine();
wavelength = machine.getwavelength();
if (wavelength > 630.0 && wavelength < 740.0) machine.experience("red");

It would be possible to do the first line as well as the the part in the if statement conditionals, but I do not see how you program the 'experience' function, or even something like it.

For the experience function it could, at a minimum, store the value "red" (or any unique pattern) in its associative memory, associating it with whatever else was currently active. Later recall of the event would then be brought up by activating enough of (and strongly enough) those associated states/signals, including the "red" sensation. The constellation of associations with "red" would be "redness" from this agent's perspective.

(as a practical matter it wouldn't have a getwavelength function, just a RGB values, but that's not important here)

 

[Pulvinar]

Hofstadter is interesting and Dennett is just plain wrong (about both Consciousness and Scotomas)

Regarding scotomas, have you read this thesis? (PDF)

 

[Belz...]

The royal we, huh.

No, actually. Did you really think that was a clever retort ?

Plus, what form of dualism are you rejecting?

All of them. Studying reality usually means you don't consider fairy tales.

Really, I do not care because if you reject the idea of qualia you are also rejecting the idea of observation and perception because qualia is just a type of perception concept.

No. The concept of qualia assumes that consciousness is an object rather than a process or behaviour. It assumes that it can be broken down into quanta, and this is so because it asssumes there is a soul of some kind. Otherwise there'd be no use for it. Can you break down "running" into quanta ?

 

[Belz...]

A CPU can "operate" without an OS. It cannot fully function without an OS.

Quick question: Did Enniac or the Analytical Engine have OS's ?

 

[Belz...]

Hofstadter is interesting and Dennett is just plain wrong (about both Consciousness and Scotomas). Your rejection of consciousness as subjective perception is based on a baseless bias for 'objective' reality and mental models. It is useless having a discussion with someone having a bias so, again, good luck.

 

[Belz...]

Your world-view is unscientific.

An interesting statement. How is rejecting nonsensical concepts (dualism) and embracing evidence-based inquiry unscientific ?

 

[Dancing David]

Science as it is mostly practiced (sans the occasional neurosurgeon poking around someones head and asking questions of said person) is about phenomena we can all agree about at the same time. If you poke someones head they very well could be seeing, hearing, tasting, etc. things no one else is, or do you doubt that?

And that is a false statement, untrue and some sort of strawman and special pleading.

Sorry about the caps. I will make sure and use lower case from here on out.

Plus, why is it poorly defined? Raw feels people use every day to describe all sort of things, "this is red", "that is blue", etc. Are those descriptions vague or filled with faerie dust. Come on.

Evidently you can't describe or define qualia.

I already did.



More rhetorical nonsense. Address the ideas or slink of into a corner. This word play is boring, pointless and wrong.

As far as I can tell, there is no difference in the concepts except that qualia are perceptions given in a form with as little interpretation added as possible.

"That is a Jumbo Jet", not qualia.

"That has a red color, whatever it is that is in the upper left hand of my vision", qualia.

Hope that helps.

Excuse me, if you actually know anything about science then you know why their definitions are not 'nterpretation added as possible'.

So you now face a dilemma, are qualia the same as perceptions or related to perceptions?

Do yo agree that perceptions are studied by science or not?

 

[Dancing David]

On the contrary, I am very much in favor of what neurobiologists study and how they do it (as well as Scientists in general, I think the philosophers are mostly useless though). In general, I only have a problem with PixyMisa types who say they have something that is conscious and so on.

So, your statements were about what?
How consciousness can not be studied by science?

And then how consciousness is composed of qualia.

So are qualia perceptions or not.

Science studies perceptions, of all sorts quite a bit.

You made broad statement that would be better stated carefully.

A cat can not tell you what color it is seeing, a human can.

Excuse me, you are arguing from ignorance, not a very good place to argue from.

So since cats are color blind, you would use a bird or color perceiving insect. Place a neural probe in the visual cortex or whereever you think the insect processes color. Expose the ye of the subject to various colors and tones, watch what happens,

Cats were used for visual acuity and positional perceptions.

That is a practical matter as well as also being one of perception. If you put the probe in and you read off the result from the probe itself, there is no difference between the LHC and the examples you gave. That is science as it is most often practiced (the only kind p-zombies seem to be able to understand).

That is science, you unstated special pleading is noted. Science notably psychology does deal ( sometimes well sometimes not) with subjective experience.

Science is a method not the means. Subjective experience is studied using science quite frequently. Your unstated case for phenomenology or whatever it is is hard to discuss. Subjective experience is studied, reporter validity is an issue.

Putting a probe in a fellow human who can tell you something about what the probe causes in terms of perception on that person is different, for what I consider should be obvious reasons. We all see the results of a probe that reads voltage, the only one who 'sees' the results of the probe that is there to elicit some perceptual reaction is the person being probed.

Or is that faerie dust?

So those who study perceptions , and there is a huge area of study, do they study qualia or not?

The perception is the 'seeing'. Unless there is dualism involved.

 

[Dancing David]

It isn't that simple.

I can ask you whether certain CPU instructions "precede" operating systems, and argue that since the CPU came about first in computing history of course instructions must precede the OS, but in fact the CPU is so intrinsically linked with the OS at this point that many instructions can genuinely be said to require an OS in the first place.

In the case of emotion vs. attention, I challenge you to find an animal that solidly demonstrates emotion without also demonstrating attention. Furthermore I challenge you to specify a human emotion that cannot also be said to require attention. If a mind is not capable of attention, what would an emotion even be?

Excuseme?

gently, where the heck is the CPU in the animal model?

Multiple parallel and crosslinked processors would be a better, yet still poor analogy. You overe xtended your analogy by far.

"Emotions' are comprised of seperate events, and then kludges under one ill defined term.

There are the limbic system events
There are the body responses and homeostatic responses to all sorts of regulatory systems some not limbic (adrenal)
There are responses to perceptions that do not rise to the level of cognition

So you seem to have excluded these as part of the 'emotions' in your model that you pushed too far.

 

[Dancing David]

Thanks for doing the survey (of two, so far!). Point of inquiry, M in M-zombie is Mental? Never heard of that one before. Is there any literature for the less informed about that subject you might want anyone to read?

I will only admit to being an R-Zombie fan.

Mind-zombie, minds are semantic concepts equatable to consciousness.

 

[tensordyne]

So if you say you're sure you're conscious, and I say I'm sure, and a computer say's it's sure, you'll only believe me. What could the computer say or do that would change your mind?

How solid do you see the dividing line between who is/isn't allowed subjective experience?

I know I am conscious and think you are too because you share the same type of physical makeup. A computer has a different physical setup, so I have no way of knowing (or logically inferring) if it is conscious or not. I will tell you if it has a similar kind of consciousness as ours once we figure it out how ours works.

As far as a computer saying anything, the phrase garbage in / garbage out comes to mind. You can have something conscious say it is not conscious, say that it is conscious, and the same for plausibly unconscious objects. This means nothing. Consciousness is about an internal state of being.

 

[Dancing David]

The following is my view in a nutshell. It is taken from the Wiki article on Searle.



Take it or leave it or whatever because I am done.
I tire of dealing with fools.

Epimistemically subjective is special pleading.

There are no such things, there are events, all events are open to the scientific method, including concepts like beauty.

The is also a fallacy of construction and a false dichotomy.


Subjective has to do with value judgement and more private events, they are still amenable to study and the methods of science.

 

[Dancing David]

Hofstadter is interesting and Dennett is just plain wrong (about both Consciousness and Scotomas). Your rejection of consciousness as subjective perception is based on a baseless bias for 'objective' reality and mental models. It is useless having a discussion with someone having a bias so, again, good luck.

 

[Dancing David]

You have answered your own question, if I could only feel my own head then my subjective experience would be feeling my own head (taste, smell were not specified). I have no idea what it would be like to be blind and deaf from birth however.

You do bring up an interesting point though that I have kind of addressed already. The further someone else is physically from you, the less you can take it that they perceive things the way you do. This is a problem with the epistemology of consciousness that unfortunately can not be escaped. That does not mean one should give up though.

I think you may be using the broader sense of perception there, interpretation of the sense events processed into perceptions then are interpreted through a wide variety of models and filters (vague and poor terms those), which are related to personal history , 'temperament', social mores and setting, culture, etc...

Yet while the sensation/perceptions of each individual are personally idiomatic to the extreme, even at the biological level, there are commonality that are again open to scientific inquiry.

Asserting some epistemical privilege is still just that asserting.



Assumptions that one truly understands or maps another human's experience are always unwarranted.

 

[tensordyne]

So, your statements were about what?
How consciousness can not be studied by science?

I have no problem with consciousness being studied by science. All for it. The world-view of about 80% of the people polled in this thread though is wrong.

The great thing about science is that you can still do it even if your world-view is all crazy (isn't the Head of the Genome Project a Xtian?), as long as you follow the rules.

And then how consciousness is composed of qualia.

So are qualia perceptions or not.

Science studies perceptions, of all sorts quite a bit.

You made broad statement that would be better stated carefully.

Consciousness is about what it is like to be something. For us that is a bundle of sensations that include hearing, tasting, smelling, touching and seeing. I do not need to be more careful than that.

Excuse me, you are arguing from ignorance, not a very good place to argue from.

I am sorry, I have yet to meet a cat who can tell me what it is like to be a cat (that is not to say there are other things one can not do). Let me know where said beast exists and I will acquiesce.

So since cats are color blind, you would use a bird or color perceiving insect. Place a neural probe in the visual cortex or whereever you think the insect processes color. Expose the ye of the subject to various colors and tones, watch what happens,

True, I was not thinking about the color blindness of cats. Just a point of order, and not that it really affects anything, but here is what Wiki has to say:

However, domestic cats have rather poor color vision and (like most non-primate mammals) have only two types of cones, optimized for sensitivity to blue and yellowish green; they have limited ability to distinguish between red and green, although they can achieve this in some conditions.

Cats were used for visual acuity and positional perceptions.

Great, all for it.

That is science, you unstated special pleading is noted. Science notably psychology does deal ( sometimes well sometimes not) with subjective experience.

Looked up special pleading to make sure you are using it right. I explained why I think we should figure out the mechanisms of consciousness in humans first were due to practical and epistemic reasons. If you disagree, that is fine, but I did not engage in special pleading because I gave reasons (beyond pleading) for why a particular case is special. Nice try though.

Science is a method not the means. Subjective experience is studied using science quite frequently. Your unstated case for phenomenology or whatever it is is hard to discuss. Subjective experience is studied, reporter validity is an issue.

And science USES subjective experience to do it, its called observation. We search out for epistemically objective facts using our ontologically subjective experience (and the abstract mind the Hard-AI'ers think consciousness is about).

So those who study perceptions , and there is a huge area of study, do they study qualia or not?

Everyone probably uses the qualia concept almost everyday. That is cold, it is red, etc. etc. You could argue that every perception comes with some amount of interpretation. That is fine, the less interpretation you have, the more qualia-like it is. This is not that complicated.

The perception is the 'seeing'. Unless there is dualism involved.

I do not care about dualism or monism or any of the rest of it. I just really dislike Hard-AI types talking about consciousness when all they are really talking about is behavior or abstract constructions (which is fine, study them too and I am all for that, as long as it is stated as such).

 

[Belz...]

Everyone probably uses the qualia concept almost everyday. That is cold, it is red, etc. etc. You could argue that every perception comes with some amount of interpretation. That is fine, the less interpretation you have, the more qualia-like it is. This is not that complicated.

How does that make it true ?

 

[tensordyne]

Assumptions that one truly understands or maps another human's experience are always unwarranted.

The above is the heart of the matter. Is it so crazy to say that the way you experience blue is the same as the way I do (assuming we are both healthy and without major genetic differences)? Or how about twins? Does not the principal of uniformitarianism imply that if we have two identical systems in the exact same environment that they should experience the same things? Is this not at least some kind of starting point?

If your statement above is true then there is no way to study consciousness in and of itself. We would all be studying how we map our individual consciousnesses to various common concepts (the idea that keeps getting repeated ad nauseum on this thread), not how we can determine objectively what it would like to be a particular thing relative to what we can determine from our own mode of consciousness.

I want to know how it is that I perceive the color red. The physics behind each step in the chain that leads me to perceiving red. How consciousness works in terms of physics. Consciousness definitely does not work the way the Dennett crowd say it works. Magical complexity to the rescue is not very appealing to me.

But I digress. I leave it to the neurologists to figure it out while bowing out as gracefully as I can.

 

[PixyMisa]

How does that make it true ?

How does it even make it meaningful?

 

[PixyMisa]

If your statement above is true then there is no way to study consciousness in and of itself.

We can't study anything in and of itself.

 

[tensordyne]

How does that make it true ?

How does it make it false? Why does it have to be 'true'? Why can it not just be an understood concept we can agree to use in a pragmatic way? That is how it is used after all.

When I ask someone to give me a report of what they experience I want the report as early as possible after the experience and in terms of observations with as little interpretation to go along with it as possible, aka, I want the qualia of what they experienced.

Tell me the word or words you would use to describe observations without or with as little interpretation as possible and I will use that. It seems qualia as "raw feels" works pretty well.