Am I the atoms that make me?

[Robin]

So you concede that if a robot were able to discuss its theories about its own consciousness,

The ability to discuss theories does not define consciousness. But in order to do science we have to discuss theories.

Similarly I would have said a theory of gravity would entail scientists getting together and discussing the data and hypotheses. That does not imply that gravity is dependent on scientists ability to discuss it. I thought that would have been obvious

... find a mechanism in common, and exhibit behavior that one could attribute to a conscious being, then it would indeed be conscious?

Absolutely - if there is a mechanism that neuroscientists hypothesise generate conscious subjective experiences and this mechanism existed in a robot and the robot exhibited behaviour that was consistent with subjective states then that would certainly be evidence in favour of the proposition that the robot was conscious.

What is your point?

An awareness of the environment that includes and is strongly contingent upon one's awareness of their perception of their own being.

I will have to get back to this, I don't really understand how it is a behavioural definition.

 

[Robin]

Yes it does. It includes a procedure based on rules that will make it pass the turing test. It's just that the mind in it plays a different part than usually when talking. That does not prove that the room has a mind, but it certainly doesn't seem to exclude the possibility, at least to me.
So consciousness is then not something "conjured out of thin air", but rather conjured out of a set of information processing rules.

A procedure is not a machine. Rules are not a machine.

 

[rocketdodger]

What is your point?

Well I thought you were saying something like only humans can be conscious, but I guess you weren't, so never mind.

I will have to get back to this, I don't really understand how it is a behavioural definition.

I mean "exhibiting the behavior of" an awareness of ...

 

[Robin]

Well I thought you were saying something like only humans can be conscious, but I guess you weren't, so never mind.

No, but on the other hand I am saying that consciousness is a function of the hardware, not just the software. I don't rule out that there are substrates apart from biological brains that can be conscious.

 

[Damien Evans]

I just want you all to know that this is way over my head and now I have a headache. My poor brain...

 

[Darat]

I am genuinely unsure of what you mean by that, so the following is a genuine attempt to clarify:

Do you mean that you could know what it was like to eat a peach by having a hallucination of eating a peach?

Are you suggesting that if I had a hallucination of eating a peach and had never actually eaten a peach, then I would know what it was like to eat a peach?

If not, then how are you suggesting that I could know what it was like to eat a peach without actually eating one?

I was using hallucinations as a wider example than just the eating of a peach however to just look at that one example.

What you are asserting is that the only way to "experience" the sensations and so on of eating a peach is to actually eat a peach yet we have evidence that complex "experiences" can be created that do not match what we usually associate with "experiencing" something. So with the use of chemicals or even crude electrodes I could in principle make "you" experience a complex sensation that is the same as when you "experience eating a peach" but you would not have physically eaten a peach.

 

[Darat]

...snip...

Do you see where I am going with this? Any definition you give to consciousness that includes anything other than behavior is arbitrary, and that kind of game can just as well be used to prove that you yourself are not conscious.

Ah - but that's not my position, I'm quite firmly in the camp that consciousness is one of those words that in the words of the great philosophy Inigo Montoya "You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means."

 

[Phaedrus74]

I am genuinely unsure of what you mean by that, so the following is a genuine attempt to clarify:

Do you mean that you could know what it was like to eat a peach by having a hallucination of eating a peach?

Are you suggesting that if I had a hallucination of eating a peach and had never actually eaten a peach, then I would know what it was like to eat a peach?

If not, then how are you suggesting that I could know what it was like to eat a peach without actually eating one?

I was using hallucinations as a wider example than just the eating of a peach however to just look at that one example.

What you are asserting is that the only way to "experience" the sensations and so on of eating a peach is to actually eat a peach yet we have evidence that complex "experiences" can be created that do not match what we usually associate with "experiencing" something. So with the use of chemicals or even crude electrodes I could in principle make "you" experience a complex sensation that is the same as when you "experience eating a peach" but you would not have physically eaten a peach.

Which means (correct me if I'm wrong Darat) that your belief that you have eaten a peach, like your belief that you are conscious at this time is insufficient evidence to justify the belief.

And there's the rub with consciousness, we (humans) are from very early on trained to behave towards other people as if we (and they) are conscious. Anything exhibiting behaviour that is indistinguishable from conscious (intentional) behaviour is entitled to be presumed to be a conscious (self-aware) agent. Only a consistent violation of our expectation with respect to the behaviour of a conscious agent might entitle us to change our minds regarding the entity in question. But outside overt behavioural clues there is no way to check.

 

[UserGoogol]

The irony is that while Searle is careful to define what he means by consciousness, the people here who disagree with him and call him an idiot don't define what they mean by consciousness. That puts Searle ahead in my book.

Here is Searle's definition from "The Problem of Consciousness":

By `consciousness' I simply mean those subjective states of sentience or awareness that begin when one awakes in the morning from a dreamless sleep and continue throughout the day until one goes to sleep at night or falls into a coma, or dies, or otherwise becomes, as one would say, `unconscious'.

Above all, consciousness is a biological phenomenon. We should think of consciousness as part of our ordinary biological history, along with digestion, growth, mitosis and meiosis.
- John Searle "The Problem of Consciousness"

I fail to see how this definition of consciousness clashes with the information processing formulation of consciousness. There is a system, and this system has various inner states, (that is, the properties of the system itself), and the system can observe with its states in some way. Of course, so can we, but when we observe it, we observe it in a fundamentally different way, because we observe by looking at it and having it effect our mind-systems, whereas with consciousness, the state is already in our mind-system and therefore we have "privileged access to it."

(To pick an example from the link) I do think shingles can be meaningfully classified as conscious, actually, and serve as an illustrative example. Like humans, they are a complex system with "internal state." The strains on the wood seem to qualify as inner, for instance. You bend the shingle, and the system automatically reacts to this. If you bend the system (within the elastic limit) and let go of it, it will instantly move back to its original position. Of course, we can look at a shingle and thus see its states, but we can't know "what is it is like to be a shingle" because the human mind and shingles are such radically different systems that our mind cannot really replicate the states that a shingle goes through when it is bent, and we can only examine it "externally" by thinking about how it looks and how the strain can be mathematically described while a shingle merely "feels" its bentness.

(That said, this consciousness is certainly of a less substantial sort of consciousness than human consciousness, due to a lack of the feedback loop of self-consciousness and a minimum amount of intelligence. (I think that in some sense shingles have intelligence, but that's a topic for another discussion.))

I also think that Dennett is awesome, for the record.

 

[rocketdodger]

No, but on the other hand I am saying that consciousness is a function of the hardware, not just the software. I don't rule out that there are substrates apart from biological brains that can be conscious.

Oh. Then we have nothing to argue about.

 

[Soapy Sam]

Searle is an idiot. Consciousness is clearly an information process, because the only attributes it has are informational.

What do you mean by "an information process", Pixy?
If we suppose consciousness to be a neural process, ( which I assume we do), then it is a chemical process. Also a physical process, because chemistry is physics.
Are all chemical processes "information processes". Is photosynthesis (for example) an information process? How does converting sunlight and CO2 into oxygen and starch differ from converting Chinese into English?

Information processing is a physical phenomenon, because there isn't anything else in the Universe.

OK, but again, that doesn't really inform, because, as you say, it describes everything, so does not discriminate or distinguish.
What we need to define (It seems to me) is how consciousness differs from other chemical / physical processes (if it does) and then we should see if inorganic machinery can support the difference.

I think we would all agree there are things inorganic machinery does very well that organic machines do not. (High temperature , repetitive, rapid, precision rotary movement being one obvious example). So it seems quite reasonable that there may be things organic machinery does well, which inorganic machinery does poorly or not at all. General data processing is not one of these. Processing sensory data to create a model of the world does seem to be, though- and I suspect that is largely what awareness is. So far, every self aware entity I know of is organic. So far. This may be historic chance, but it is still a fact that must be faced. Unless we include thermostats or similar systems. If we do, then OK, but I doubt most people would see a thermostat as "aware" any more than a branch is "aware" when it bends in the wind.

Searle (and other thinkers like him) only run into difficulty because they ascribe magical properties to consciousness. If you ascribe magical properties to anything, you're going to have as hard a time explaining it as Searle does with consciousness.

I agree, if he actually did this. It's years since I read him. Can you give an eg where he does this?

Take his Chinese Room example. Does the Chinese Room exhibit consciousness? Yes, clearly. It acts, by definition, just like a native Chinese speaker. Searle argues against the obvious by failing to locate consciousness when he takes the room apart - which is the fallacy of composition that Tricky pointed out.

I do not get your meaning here. translation is a process- a form of simple information processing. You can't "find a process" by taking a location apart.

Pixy, if you define consciousness as "acting like (a person of type X in situation Y) then yes , the Chinese Room is conscious and so is a Sinclair Spectrum that runs a chess program. (It would probably beat me 4 games out of five). So is a thermostat. ( And a thermistor is a technical genius) But seriously- is that what you honestly think consciousness is?

I know you are a champion of computer based consciousness. I also know that nothing I ever saw in any computer output looks remotely like the outpourings of your personality on all manner of matters, here or on "Ambient Irony", whether it be on computers, shopping or the fun of families. By your very example, I think you disprove your case. Machines are NOT like people and why would we wish to force them into such an ill suited mould?

Consciousness is most exactly NOT what computers display. It's what people display.
Of course it's a brain function, of course it's chemistry, of course it's a process. If there's room in there for a magical essence, I have no idea where. I do think it's a process spun off by natural selection and one that may only have happened a few times in 3 billion years. It's rare. (A fact we may miss because we swim in a soup of it).
Can machines achieve it? We don't remotely know, because we have only partial models of how it arises. Can they simulate / emulate it, a bit at a time? Yes, it appears so. That's your chess playing Chinese Translation Program.
They can emulate flying a Spitfire too, but it is not flying a Spitfire. It is a different process entirely.
Can they experience it ? I personally doubt it, though this is purely opinion and so damned shaky ground. But let's not pretend this is a simple matter, because it isn't.

 

[Dancing David]

Absolutely - if there is a mechanism that neuroscientists hypothesise generate conscious subjective experiences and this mechanism existed in a robot and the robot exhibited behaviour that was consistent with subjective states then that would certainly be evidence in favour of the proposition that the robot was conscious.

That is my point exactly.

the actions of a biological mechanism are behaviors, including the internal ones. It is maddening but it does make sense. Some behaviors are observable only from the external evidence.

Which leads to the conclusion that I am a p-zombie. I merely exhibit the deatures of consciousness, I am not conscious.

 

[Robin]

That is my point exactly.

the actions of a biological mechanism are behaviors, including the internal ones. It is maddening but it does make sense. Some behaviors are observable only from the external evidence.

Which leads to the conclusion that I am a p-zombie. I merely exhibit the deatures of consciousness, I am not conscious.

How do you know?

 

[Robin]

I was using hallucinations as a wider example than just the eating of a peach however to just look at that one example.

What you are asserting is that the only way to "experience" the sensations and so on of eating a peach is to actually eat a peach yet we have evidence that complex "experiences" can be created that do not match what we usually associate with "experiencing" something.

So with the use of chemicals or even crude electrodes I could in principle make "you" experience a complex sensation that is the same as when you "experience eating a peach" but you would not have physically eaten a peach.

For a start, don’t forget that I was defining what I meant by a subjective experience.

If you say that you could make me experience the sensation of eating a peach without actually eating a peach then we surely have a common referent to the term “experience a sensation”.

If so then at least I have succeeded in my purpose of defining the term.

I concur that I could also have the experience of eating a peach if my brain was manipulated to have exactly the same biochemical events that occur when I actually eat a peach, that does not seem to alter the point about what a subjective experience is.

 

[Robin]

I fail to see how this definition of consciousness clashes with the information processing formulation of consciousness. There is a system, and this system has various inner states, (that is, the properties of the system itself), and the system can observe with its states in some way. Of course, so can we, but when we observe it, we observe it in a fundamentally different way, because we observe by looking at it and having it effect our mind-systems, whereas with consciousness, the state is already in our mind-system and therefore we have "privileged access to it."

(To pick an example from the link) I do think shingles can be meaningfully classified as conscious, actually, and serve as an illustrative example. Like humans, they are a complex system with "internal state." The strains on the wood seem to qualify as inner, for instance. You bend the shingle, and the system automatically reacts to this. If you bend the system (within the elastic limit) and let go of it, it will instantly move back to its original position. Of course, we can look at a shingle and thus see its states, but we can't know "what is it is like to be a shingle" because the human mind and shingles are such radically different systems that our mind cannot really replicate the states that a shingle goes through when it is bent, and we can only examine it "externally" by thinking about how it looks and how the strain can be mathematically described while a shingle merely "feels" its bentness.

(That said, this consciousness is certainly of a less substantial sort of consciousness than human consciousness, due to a lack of the feedback loop of self-consciousness and a minimum amount of intelligence. (I think that in some sense shingles have intelligence, but that's a topic for another discussion.))

I also think that Dennett is awesome, for the record.

Well we must be working from different definitions. A minimum amount of intelligence is, I would say, an necessary prerequisite for something to be called consciousness or subjective experience. I do not think a shingle "feels" its bentness at all. There may be more to the noumena of a shingle than our perception of it, but not subjective experience.

 

[Dancing David]

How do you know?

I can't consciousness is made up term for a bunch of other things. I am just an organic machine that exhibits all the behaviors of consciousness without being conscious.

Which is why I ask people to not be vauge but to deliniate what they mean by consciousness. My favorite is self awareness, what is that?

Sensation, perception, cognition or cognition about the others?

So if one wants to posit that there is some ineffable quality of consciousness, how do you define it? What behaviors indicate it? How do you know that you are conscious?

 

[Dancing David]

For a start, don’t forget that I was defining what I meant by a subjective experience.

If you say that you could make me experience the sensation of eating a peach without actually eating a peach then we surely have a common referent to the term “experience a sensation”.

If so then at least I have succeeded in my purpose of defining the term.

I concur that I could also have the experience of eating a peach if my brain was manipulated to have exactly the same biochemical events that occur when I actually eat a peach, that does not seem to alter the point about what a subjective experience is.

No but it gets close to defining it.

The 'subjective experience of eating a peach' is what? The sensations, the perceptions, the thoughts, emotions , memories and habits. It is all of those seperate experineces and events.

So what part makes it subjective? It is all the biological action of an organic machine.

 

[Robin]

No but it gets close to defining it.

The 'subjective experience of eating a peach' is what? The sensations, the perceptions, the thoughts, emotions , memories and habits. It is all of those seperate experineces and events.

No, not really, you were not reading my example. Take sensations. My hand touches snow, the snow causes my nerve ends to behave in a particular way and send particular sorts of signals to my brain which responds in a particular way to these signals with a series of electro-chemical events. All these are components in creating the experience, but the experience does not refer to any of these, it refers to the end result - what it is like to feel cold.

Memories reside mainly outside of subjective experience. When we remember something we recall the memory into our subjective experience - so they are different things.

A habit is quite a separate thing from a subjective experience.

Emotions are subjective experiences (although an emotion might refer to the underlying neurological events that create the experiences) but not all subjective experiences are emotions.

So what part makes it subjective? It is all the biological action of an organic machine.

Come and look at it through my eyes. Just come and be inside my brain and you will know exactly what I mean. You can't? That is what makes it subjective. You could examine my brain minutely with whatever instruments you pleased and you would have no idea what it is like to be me, nor I what it is like to be you.

In other words "subjective" and "biological action of an organic machine" are not mutually exclusive terms.

 

[Robin]

I can't consciousness is made up term for a bunch of other things. I am just an organic machine that exhibits all the behaviors of consciousness without being conscious.

What is a behaviour of consciousness? How do you define a behaviour of consciousness? For example if someone buttons up their shirt, is that a behaviour of consciousness?

Which is why I ask people to not be vauge but to deliniate what they mean by consciousness. My favorite is self awareness, what is that?

Which is precisely why I did not use the term. I don't think it is a necessary condition for consciousness.

So if one wants to posit that there is some ineffable quality of consciousness, how do you define it? What behaviors indicate it? How do you know that you are conscious?

Again, how do you know anything? Everything you know, you know via consiousness. There is no other way of knowing anything. Either you know nothing at all or you are conscious. Asking the question "Am I conscious" is a conscious action.

This is the trouble with the subject. Everybody is so obsessed with the fact that they cannot directly observe consciousness in others they overlook the fact that they can directly observe consciousness in themselves. In fact they cannot avoid observing consciousness in themselves, short of rendering themselves unconcious.

 

[Robin]

Oh. Then we have nothing to argue about.

Here is where I think we differ. I would say:

"A substrate capable of performing the information processing tasks necessary for consciousness is not necessarily capable of producing consciousness."

But if I am understanding you and others you are saying this statement is untrue.