On Consciousness

Is consciousness physical or metaphysical?

  • Consciousness is a kind of data processing and the brain is a machine that can be replicated in othe

    Votes: 81 86.2%

  • Consciousness requires a second substance outside the physical material world, currently undetectabl

    Votes: 3 3.2%

  • On Planet X, unconscious biological beings have perfected conscious machines

    Votes: 10 10.6%
  • Total voters
    94
  • Poll closed .
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dlorde said:
For once, I agree with you. A novel sensation ;)
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I'm thinking (and am aware of these thought and words, plus the taste of tomato soup in my mouth) that there needs to be a separate thread about the properties (or otherwise?) of "absolutely nothing". :)
 
Jeff Corey said:
Every behavior called conscious is intrinsically biological and not something else.
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Yeah, no. Sorry. It's all computation; it just happens to be done on a biological computer because that's what we had lying around.

The behaviours we ascribe to consciousness are informational rather than directly physical, so biology itself can't be of the essence.
 
PixyMisa said:
Tensordyne's assertion that humans can escape Godel's Incompleteness Theorems is a shining example. It's exactly equivalent to saying humans can escape 2+2=4.


Indeed, but not in the way you think.
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Sorry, but I was asking for anything I said that was incoherent or nonsense, since I am one of those of whom you speak.
 
Roboramma said:
I'm unclear what qualifies as a "behavior called consciousness", but would you agree that passing the mirror test is a behavior called consciousness?
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I do not believe that passing the mirror test is a sure sign that the entity or device in question definitely has any kind of subjective experience.

For example, no doubt someone could build/program a very basic "robot" that can do one thing and one thing only - scan its mirror image and detect a difference from a stored template of its "clean face" and then finally move some kind of automated arm to the point of difference on its "face" when a difference was detected.

My opinion is that such a device is extremely unlikely to experience any kind of "feelings" or "self awareness" as I might when doing the mirror test. Therefore I would say it is not "conscious" in the sense that I understand that word to mean in this discussion.

However, others may disagree. If I'm wrong, what kind of "subjective, first person, experience" might that device be having? Does a camera with appropriate auto focus have some kind of "feeling" when pointed at a mirror?

How can we tell who is correct?
 
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Jeff Corey said:
Sorry, but I was asking for anything I said that was incoherent or nonsense, since I am one of those of whom you speak.
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You're a special case. I certainly disagree with you on some points, but I didn't mean to lump you in with those I disagree with on all points, and if I caused offence I apologise unreservedly.
 
Clive said:
I do not believe that passing the mirror test is a sure sign that the entity or device in question definitely has any kind of subjective experience.

For example, no doubt someone could build/program a very basic "robot" that can do one thing and one thing only - scan its mirror image and detect a difference from a stored template of its "clean face" and then finally move some kind of automated arm to the point of difference on its "face" when a difference was detected.
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Sure. But that didn't actually happen. So while the mirror test is only indicative, it's a good indicator. (Also, it may still give false negatives for species that aren't visual-centric, so it's far from perfect.)

The way you tell is by exploring the range of stimuli that can elicit complex responses of this sort. If there's only one, or a few very specific stimuli that elicit direct and perfectly consistent responses, that indicates a mechanical system of the type you suggest. If it's a broad and complex range of responses to a similarly broad range of stimuli, that suggests consciousness.
 
PixyMisa said:
You're a special case. I certainly disagree with you on some points, but I didn't mean to lump you in with those I disagree with on all points, and if I caused offence I apologise unreservedly.
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...could you possibly be any more obsequious?


Have not had time to respond to your verbal orgasm yet DD...but the time will come. Unfortunately, I have to make a living.
 
PixyMisa said:
You're a special case. I certainly disagree with you on some points, but I didn't mean to lump you in with those I disagree with on all points, and if I caused offence I apologise unreservedly.
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Well maybe you should review what you said and restate it in a less offensive way.
You gain no support by your contemptuous attitude toward those who don't agree with your basic theoretical assumptions.
 
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annnnoid said:
...could you possibly be any more obsequious?
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When I'm wrong, I admit it. When I cause offence inadvertently, I apologise.

I disagree with Jeff on some points. I disagree with you about everything. Implying that the two of you fall into the same category was a mistake.
 
Jeff Corey said:
Well maybe you should review what you said and restate it in a less offensive way.
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Sure!

There are many posters (look at the poll results!) who argue convincingly, based on best current theory and an immense body of evidence, that consciousness is produced through computation.

There are a few posters who disagree; only one of them has put forward any coherent points or arguments, or provided any evidence at all; the remainder consistently assert things that are flatly nonsensical.
 
Its not often at jref that the smart people reveal the limits of their intelligence in belligerent ways. This thread is shamefully idiotic, and I request that it be moved to R and P.
I'd request humor, but it isn't funny enough.
Sometimes, i just want to smack someone up-side the head.
Yet, I resist, because I'm conscious.

What is the advantage in this anti-magical thinking?
Why must the color blind insist that others can't perceive colors?
Is it fear?
Must we pretend to understand that which we can't begin to understand, for the sake of mental comfort and intellectual lethargy?

I've seen the flip side of this tendency amongst the quazi-spiritual folks.
One gets vaguely curious about the unfathomable mystery in front of us; can't handle it; next thing you know, they've become Mormons. Now they have all the answers.
Now, they don't have to think or wonder, ever again.

After all these pages in this thread, what have we learned about consciousness?
 
My problem is that all the computational stuff is nonsense to me. I'm just interested in trying to explain behavior at the raw empirical level.
Computer consciousness or not is irrelevant. Pzombies eating branz are irrelevant.

Damn it Jim, I'm just an old country behaviorist.

ETA: Response to #2274.

Quarky, man what is your problem? The adults are trying to have a discussion.
 
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Jeff Corey said:
My problem is that all the computational stuff is nonsense to me. I'm just interested in trying to explain behavior at the raw empirical level.
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But at what level of abstraction? The brain is a computer (a pulse-coded switched digital network) and the neurons are the logic gates, so when you get down to that level of detail, dealing with computation is unavoidable.

When you're looking at a broader picture, you can use black-box models for the various brain functions, and it works perfectly well. But when you drill down from the black-box models, or build up from the molecular level, in the middle it's a computer. (An odd, squishy, unreliable computer, but still...)

Damn it Jim, I'm just an old country behaviorist.
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There are worse fates in life. ;)
 
PixyMisa said:
The brain is a computer (a pulse-coded switched digital network) and the neurons are the logic gates
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So what I'm saying here:

The brain is clearly Turing-complete. For example, a human can manually step through the function of any arbitrary computer program - simulate the operation of the computer. We had to do this in second-year computer science for PDP-11 assembler. Ah, the joys of octal stack traces...

The brain is not a hypercomputer, since hypercomputers work by performing infinite amounts of work in finite time, which is physically impossible. (Mathematically it's just fine, but you can't actually build one.)

And, importantly, there is nothing in between - speaking mathematically again, there's systems that aren't Turing-complete (like a pocket calculator), Turing-complete systems, and hypercomputers that don't exist.

So whatever the brain does with information - sensory data, memory and so on - can be done with any sufficiently large and suitably programmed (or designed) general-purpose computer.

And when we're talking about the behaviours ascribed to consciousness, we're talking about responses to information. So such a computer can exhibit all the behaviours of consciousness.

And if it exhibits all those behaviours, then what reason have we to say it is not conscious?
 
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