On Consciousness

[Piggy]

Consciousness is a self-referential informational process. From Descarte's cogito to Dennett and Hofstadter, that's what we've always meant by the term. Consciousness is a function of the brain. The brain is a computer.

It's not hard, Piggy. Complicated, yes. but not hard. All you have to do is stop believing in magic.

That is what you claim to be the contribution of seeing the brain as a computer?

I'm not impressed.

I don't see any contribution there, just restatement of your (still) unsubstantiated assertion.

If you want to call physics "magic", OK -- that's still my bet for what causes consciousness.

If you want to say it's caused by information, well, there are several problems here, not the least of which is the fact that there is no blue in the information which you claim causes blue.

Nothing in the sky performs blue. The light from the sky doesn't perform blue. My eyeballs don't either. Neither do the bits of my brain that aren't involved in consciousness.

What's worse, that same "information" which sometimes causes blue can cause any number of other behaviors besides blue, or no behaviors in the consciousness cluster at all.

If blue -- like all other phenomena that are part of consciousness, is caused by information, then how do you get from information which has nothing to say about blue, to blue?

 

[Piggy]

Well, you can of course also simulate it. But for things defined by their physical properties (e.g. acid) there's a divide that does not exist for things defined by their informational properties (minds, consciousness).

What makes you imagine that consciousness is defined by "informational properties"?

What about the smell of coffee is fundamentally "informational"?

 

[Piggy]

On what basis? Other than the usual arguments from personal incredulity and ignorance?

On what basis do I conclude that the Blue Brain simulation won't result in a conscious machine?

On the basis that it makes more sense, at this point, to posit that the phenomenon of consciousness is the result of the physical rather than informational architecture of the brain, even if the specifics of each instance of conscious behavior depend on the informational architecture.

It's a simpler way of looking at it, more in line with what we know about how the universe works, doesn't require any radical hypotheses, and it's working in the lab and the field.

The neurobio approach is making advances by asking "what is the brain doing when we're conscious in different ways, at different times?"

That's the whole point of the investigation of neural correlates, which is the dominant activity in the field at the moment.

Consciousness is behavior. To get a machine -- biological or not -- to exhibit real behavior in the real world, you have to build the right physical architecture some way or other.

That's not very controversial.

 

[Piggy]

No, they're not. The truck is a thing that moves from A to B while transporting something. The brain is a thing that gets data and outputs other data. How are they alike ?

The brain doesn't get any data. The brain's input is entirely physical, and that input is only "encoded with information" in the same way that ripples in a pond are "encoded with information" about the rock that was dropped in the pond.

The nonconscious parts of the brain do their thing, and the electrochemical reactions bounce around, and some leave the brain, and muscles move.

We don't need to talk about data and information to explain that, it's just much much easier if we do.

Other parts of the brain cause other types of behaviors such as odors and sounds and feelings of joy or dread -- that's what we call consciousness.

And that bit is handled entirely in the brain.

So although the behaviors of the brain and the truck and leaf are very different, it's still true that none of them can be replaced entirely by a computer simulation, because a computer running a simulation does different types of work than all 3.

No matter what the work is, if it has to be done during the point where you're replacing any real component with a digital simulation of that component, the work won't get done.

That's why you can't replace my truck's engine with a simulation of an engine and expect it to do everything it did before (like haul brush) and why you can't replace my body's brain with a simulation of a brain and expect it to do everything it did before (like perform colors and sounds).

Sure, my truck can do some things if you replace its guts with a computer simulation -- could still work the lights and the wipers and play the radio... but it can't do everything.

Ditto for a brain. Not all functions will work if you remove it and replace it with a digital sim.

 

[Piggy]

Not "special rules", but "different processes". See, the brain, as I said above, gets, processes, and outputs symbolic data. It just so happens that this is exactly what computers do, and nothing else in the universe does only that. To me that's a pretty convincing case for their similarity, and why one can emulate, simulate or be the other.

Does the brain really do that?

And if so, is that what the components that perform consciousness do?

Can you demonstrate that this is so?

 

[Piggy]

Who or what is the brain "performing" red to? You have to explain not just the performer and how it performs, but also the audience, and how THAT works. And why performance of qualia needed to evolve in the first place. The biological sciences have yet to isolate a performer or an audience in the brain of such things, have they?

How do you know the internal subjective experience of a non-biological data processing machine cannot possibly seem, to it, like magic?

That's like asking who or what the brain is performing breathing to.

The body just carries out its tasks, that's all. It just performs the way it's built to perform.

As I said before, the model of consciousness as (normative) hallucination eliminates the need for any audience.

When your body wakes up from deep sleep, it starts up certain behaviors that weren't occurring before, such as colors and sounds and the smell of coffee and a small pain in your back and so on.

When these behaviors are happening, you (the person you think of yourself as) are happening. When you fall asleep and these behaviors stop, you stop.

Something similar happens when you dream.

Which means that all these things that start when you're conscious and stop when you're unconscious are consciousness and are you.

After all, my eyes don't really look out into the world and remotely detect what's really out there.

My conscious experience is me, and is everything that appears to be going on "out there".

Everything I feel like I'm seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting, feeling... that's what I am. There's no difference between me and my conscious experience. You could say, I am the qualia.

The sense of a self is one of things that consciousness can produce (or perform) but that's all.

Once you really come to terms with the fact that absolutely nothing you experience has any existence outside your experience, and that there's no difference between your experience and you, then a lot of apparent problems simply become non-problems.

 

[Piggy]

Yes, it's simulated. However, this does not divorce the information from the information.

No, but if you say that the simulator is "really" doing something that the machine is not physically doing, and that this "real" behavior conforms to the physics of the thing being simulated instead, then you've got a serious problem.

Which can be pretty much any switching mechanism. The operation of a computer does not need to be decoded, because it is itself a decoder.

I was speaking specifically of computers used as info processors in the ways that PCs often are. We input symbols, we get back symbols. Computer couldn't care less what they mean to us, and would have no way of knowing anyway.

 

[rocketdodger]

You keep saying you don't mean it, and then you make arguments which presume it.

That's what troubles me.

Or, you are just misunderstanding the arguments.

 

[rocketdodger]

You're not seeing what I have plainly said.

... snip ....

OK I understand what you are saying now.

The neurobiological approach sees things a bit differently, and this is what I've been saying about the requirements for doing work....

Per the NB approach, the neural correlates of consciousness (NCCs) aren't so much seen as a substrate supporting logic which in turn enables conscious behavior to occur, but as the direct mechanism itself -- one which is much often simpler to talk about in terms of information, but which nevertheless must be plain old physics at the end of the day.

Um, but I don't get this "viewpoint" from any of the researchers you have ever cited.

It seems to me like you are looking at NCC research and developing your own ideas that the non-logic portion of the physical behavior is somehow crucial.

EDIT -- it just occurred to me that perhaps you are simply a little confused, and think that the computationalists view the neurons of the brain as just the "hardware" running "software" which is merely the impulses traveling between them. This is absolutely not the case. The computationalist position is that the concepts of "hardware" and "software" do not apply to the biological brain, at least not in the way it does to silicon computers. The computational model, however, just assumes that the physical connectivity between neurons, which is entirely essential to the functioning of a neural network, can be emulated successfully in software. But that doesn't imply that it isn't important. On the contrary, the actual physical ( or emulated physical ) connectivity of neurons is the most important factor.

From a neurbio point of view, the challenge to building conscious machines is a bit different, because we assume that electro-mechanical engineering will be crucially important over and above its contribution to supporting the logic.

Lol, who is "we?" You and Baars? Had coffee with him lately?

I see no evidence that any researcher doing work in what you call "neurobio" has taken the position that there is something essential about the neuron "over and above its contribution to supporting the logic." I think you are fabricating this position and attributing it to a whole bunch of people that actually support the computational model but they would just rather do research on real brains than artificial ones.

 

[Piggy]

What, exactly, do you mean by a 'reader'? One can hook up a symbol manipulating computer to physical effectors and have its computations cause physical actions. I'm happy to accept that the interface to an effector is a 'reader' (although 'interpreter' seems more precise), but it leads me to query why you say the outcome of a computation requires a reader. Computations directed to controlling effectors require those effectors in order to cause an effect, if you remove the effector interface the computation can still be done, although to no useful effect.

Btw, where are the symbols that you think the computer is manipulating?

Is it really manipulating symbols when it's operating, or is the manipulation of symbols more appropriate to the programming of the machine?

Btw, it's important to note that I didn't say "the outcome of a computation requires a reader" -- I was only talking about symbolic, as opposed to physical computations.

If we take Turing straight, no chaser, then we can (and many scientists do) describe the entire universe in computational terms, where quite literally everything that happens is just part of a machine moving from state to state depending upon a set of rules (the laws of physics) that govern all transformations.

In fact, it's because the universe is always performing computations that we can piggy-back symbolically on some of them -- and modern computers offer us a way to do this very fast and predictably -- which gives us symbolic computations.

This is more narrowly what Turing was describing.

He started with the notion that everything that could be done by a human calculator (a person performing calculations with pencil and paper) could be done by a machine simply by setting it up to change the symbols in the right order, without the need for the machine to know what any of it meant.

But to be useful, this kind of computation does require users who know what the symbols at the end of the process are supposed to mean, otherwise the symbolic aspect of the computation is useless and the physical computation underlying it is all you're left with.

That's what I mean by symbolic computation requiring a reader.

I don't think neural work in the brain is symbolic, and I don't think the neural work in a computer running a paint sprayer is symbolic either.

And yet what I'm asking my pocket calculator to do is essentially symbolic. That is, from my point of view. What it actually does, without regard to me, is not symbolic at all.

In the case of consciousness, who or what is the 'reader'? It seems clear, as evidenced by 'locked-in' syndrome, that consciousness doesn't require physical effectors, but seems able to be maintained effectively in isolation. I can only think that by your requirement above, consciousness must be reading itself - a clear expression of SRIP

From the physicalist point of view, what's important to understand in the production of consciousness are the physical computations of the brain, not the symbolic computations, so you don't need a reader.

The brain has received no codes, no symbols, and it is not going to produce any.

The result of a physical computation is simply a new shape of the physical stuff involved in the computation. That's how the brain works, by constantly reshaping itself physically.

For folks with locked-in syndrome, the physical electro-chemical activity in their brains is sufficient in the right real estate to allow consciousness to occur, but their motor responses are shut down.

Feedback loops are everywhere in the brain, including areas that have no effect on consciousness, so yeah, you could say SRIP is going on here, but that's a trivial observation.

We don't know how it is that the brain performs these behaviors, such as pain and sound and color, but we know it can do it entirely on its own.

In any case, the "reader" issue doesn't come up for consciousness precisely because there's no reason to invoke symbolic computation to attempt to explain it.

 

[Piggy]

No offense, but I certainly think you are guilty of quote-mining in almost every single case. I absolutely cannot stand quote mining ...

Then I suggest you get your own damn quotes from widely published neuroscientists who say that the mechanism of consciousness is known and that it's self-referential information processing.

Don't come accusing me of quote-mining if you're not going to pony up with anybody saying that SRIP is the known mechanism underlying consciousness.

And they'd better have credentials at least as good as the folks I cited.

At certain points I have to stop talking with you because you resort to stuff like this. I'll come back later.

 

[Piggy]

Lol, who is "we?" You and Baars? Had coffee with him lately?

Made me laugh, too, when I read it.

I see no evidence that any researcher doing work in what you call "neurobio" has taken the position that there is something essential about the neuron "over and above its contribution to supporting the logic." I think you are fabricating this position and attributing it to a whole bunch of people that actually support the computational model but they would just rather do research on real brains than artificial ones.

I don't have a problem with the research. I think if you look at that MIT symposium video I posted, you'll see 3 guying saying stuff we both agree with.

I don't disagree with the computational model as it's being used in research on the brain.

My disagreements are with certain conclusions drawn about consciousness from the research by some folks on this forum, that's all.

As for any researchers working from "the position that there is something essential about the neuron 'over and above its contribution to supporting the logic'," no I don't know of anyone either.

 

[Mr. Scott]

When your body wakes up from deep sleep, it starts up certain behaviors that weren't occurring before, such as colors and sounds and the smell of coffee and a small pain in your back and so on.

Those are behaviors? Not by any common definition of that word.

I'd still say you'd need a qualia detector to know that you have qualia at all.

Where do you find the certainty that a complete computer emulation of a human brain (say, with a real color camera and speech synthesis) couldn't possibly report an experience of qualia?

In Dennett's talk on free will, he mentioned the headline of a review of his book on consciousness that made me laugh out loud: "Yes, we have a soul, but it's made of lots of tiny robots."

 

[tensordyne]

Video of Chalmers stating how it is as far as consciousness research goes.

http://youtu.be/r4SLOr2icnY

 

[tensordyne]

Those are behaviors? Not by any common definition of that word.

The topic of behavior and consciousness has come up on this forum in the recent past (that I am aware of). Consciousness is not behavior (contra to the cousin of the computationalists the bahviorists), it is an internal state of being. A black box could just be sitting there, experiencing (and thus is conscious) a sunny day. You would not be able to tell from outside of the box that this is happening, which is why consciousness is not fundamentally about behavior.

I'd still say you'd need a qualia detector to know that you have qualia at all.

You have one qualia detector, your own consciousness. There is something it is like for you to experience red, right?

Where do you find the certainty that a complete computer emulation of a human brain (say, with a real color camera and speech synthesis) couldn't possibly report an experience of qualia?

Emulate or simulate? If you are simulating the brain (or anything else) there is never any reason to expect that the simulation will do anything beyond hopefully giving good predictions of what is being simulated. As far as emulation goes, you can program computers to say all sorts of things, that doesn't mean a thing.

The question is not if a machine made above could not possibly report back whatever you want it to in terms of experience as far as emulation goes, the question is, why should you believe it? The same goes for humans and other animals. I have my own answer for that; I am sure you have your own as well.

 

[Fudbucker]

It basically is a binary collection of switches. It's a pulse-coded switched digital network.

Not according to what others are saying:

"Human brains store information using many different strategies, none of which are very analogous to binary in a digital computer."
Paul King, Computational Neuroscientist

MIT neuroscientist, Guosong Liu, has found that human neurons compute in trinary, using signals that are the equivalents of -1, 0 and 1.

The brain as a whole operates more like a social network than a digital computer, with neurons communicating to allow learning and the creation of memory, according to O'Reilly.
psychology Professor Randall O'Reilly

 

[tsig]

I'm just so tired of having to wade through walls of text in order to make sense of your responses to what should be extremely simple questions. You insist on smothering people with words, typically when you are just wrong about something.

Piggy, you can't divorce information from physical behavior because everything is physical behavior.

You are as wrong as wrong can be. "We" don't consider the world of the simulation to be different from the physical activity of the simulator, I have no idea why you keep saying this even though we keep saying we don't mean it. How stubborn does someone need to be to repeatedly tell multiple people that they mean something other than what they explicitly say they mean?

Some seem to think that lots of words substitute for substance.

Reading his posts are like a mirage in the desert, instead of a cool drink of water you get a mouthful of sand.

 

[rocketdodger]

Then I suggest you get your own damn quotes from widely published neuroscientists who say that the mechanism of consciousness is known and that it's self-referential information processing.

But I don't claim there are widely published neuroscientists who say such a thing.

That is the singular fact of the matter that you seem to not understand.

Don't come accusing me of quote-mining if you're not going to pony up with anybody saying that SRIP is the known mechanism underlying consciousness.

Again -- I don't claim there are widely published neuroscientists who say such a thing.

In fact, I have made zero claims about what any researchers "say." All my claims have been about the research itself. This is the fundamental difference between your position and mine. I say "we have research showing X," and you respond with "but so and so says Y." You never -- ever -- reference actual research showing X to be false.

Regarding SRIP, since frankly I am sick of it, that is Pixy's torch to carry: All I have claimed is that the frameworks posited by widely published neuroscientists all reduce to a form of SRIP. Whether or not they explicitly state "my framework is a form of SRIP" is as irrelevant as whether or not a mechanical engineer explicitly states that his engine follows the laws of thermodynamics, whether or not a biologist points out that cells he is studying contain carbon and oxygen, or whether a mathematician points out that the integers he is using can be arrived at by repeatedly summing the number 1.

If you disagree that any of these frameworks is a form of SRIP, then we can have that specific discussion.

But you can't simply claim that because a specific phrase isn't mentioned in an article that the stuff in the article doesn't meet some external definition of that phrase. I can show you tens of thousands of mechanical engineering research articles that make no mention of the laws of thermodynamics -- are you gonna claim that the stuff in the research doesn't satisfy those laws? I can show you tens of thousands of biology papers that never mention any chemicals at all -- are you gonna claim chemicals have nothing to do with biology? I can show you all the math major's theses in any school and I doubt even 1% of them mention the fact that you can make any integer by simply adding 1 to a number over and over -- are you going to argue that the integers used in those theses can't be made in this way?

The question you have been ignoring -- I don't know why, since it is the only question that should matter to you -- is whether or not Bernard Baars would say "yes, given the definition of SRIP that PixyMisa is using, a framework like 'Global Workspace' is an instance of SRIP."

Do you think he would say that? Or do you think he would say "no, it is not an instance of SRIP?"

Everything else just seems like beating around the bush. If the answer is "yes, I think he would" then why on Earth are you even arguing this point so relentlessly? If the answer is "no, I don't think he would" then what reason do you have for reaching that conclusion? Either way, taking the position that "since Baars never mentions SRIP, whatever he is talking about must not be an instance of SRIP" seems bizarre. That's like saying Mendel "didn't deal with genetics because he never mentioned DNA in any of his research."

 

[Mr. Scott]

The question is not if a machine made above could not possibly report back whatever you want it to in terms of experience as far as emulation goes, the question is, why should you believe it? The same goes for humans and other animals. I have my own answer for that; I am sure you have your own as well.

I should have added one word, which I thought was understood:

Where do you find the certainty that a complete computer emulation of a human brain (say, with a real color camera and speech synthesis) couldn't possibly honestly report experience of qualia?

I await your response.

 

[rocketdodger]

As for any researchers working from "the position that there is something essential about the neuron 'over and above its contribution to supporting the logic'," no I don't know of anyone either.

But you just said there were, in the statement of yours that I quoted:

From a neurbio point of view, the challenge to building conscious machines is a bit different, because we assume that electro-mechanical engineering will be crucially important over and above its contribution to supporting the logic.

I interpreted that "we" to mean Piggy + the "neurobio" researchers.