Are You Conscious?

[Belz...]

My point is that you can't do this for people and then decide it doesn't apply to computers.

That's the crux of the problem, isn't it ? Some people actually do this.

 

[Belz...]

The only reasons to assume that another person might have personal experience are that they look like I do, and I have it - and they claim to have it.

So a sentient machine would have to LOOK like you in order for you to accept it ??? That's your criterion ?

 

[Belz...]

What you are actually calling "private observation" is not this at all. Your consciousness cannot be observed by anyone else in principle.

An interesting claim. Care to back that up ?

 

[Limbo]

"When I was a freshman I postulated to one of my professors, that the language of computers (i.e. information) was far better suited describing the universe than current physical constructs. I thought I'd made a compelling and convincing case. He laughed me out of his office. Today, more than 20 years later, Seth Lloyd is making the rounds with the same idea. As he mentions in his insightful book, Programming the Universe. He credits his recent acceptance and success to the widespread use of computer technology. Apparently, timing is everything.

[...]

Looking at computers as metaphor, where did computer technology come from that gave these new more powerful ideas? Obviously it emerged out of ongoing historical technological trends. However, all of this progress is the result of scientific minds working on things. Whose minds were they, and what was inspiring them to work on the things they did? I think this is the more important question.

When you examine the historical roots of the PC revolution you'll find that things like PC's and the World Wide Web came from a very particular group of people. As pointed out in What the Dormouse Said: How the 60s Counterculture Shaped the Personal Computer, it was the insights gained from higher states of consciousness, specifically those unique to LSD, that gave rise to the PC revolution. As many people who have taken LSD, you experience your brain has a large set of programs, that you in turn can program, and better still, metaprogram "who" and "what" you want to become.

Please read our online book by John Lilly, Programming and Metaprogramming the Human Biocomputer, for a pioneering work in this area. It's also no secret that the 60's is often equated with a turn to Eastern mysticism for guidance. There's was good reason for this embrace, as many very intelligent people felt current Western ideas on the nature of reality were woefully incomplete in describing, let alone assisting in integrating these sometimes powerful and overwhelming transpersonal experiences."

http://astranaut.org/blog/archives/2006_06_uniting_consciousness_east_wes.php

 

[Belz...]

But isn't it the case that as long as you've been aware of anything at all - that is that you have observed anything at all - that you were observing your consciousness? Consciousness is not a thing you observe. It is the fact that you observe anything at all.

I don't really understand. I'm currently observing a computer screen. There's nobody else here. If somebody else was here then they could observe it too. I am also currently observing my consciousness and at the moment it contains, among other things, a computer screen.

Aren't those mutually contradictory ?

 

[Belz...]

They aren't practical problems. They are conceptual problems.

The problem for materialism, in one sentence, is that consciousness shouldn't exist, but clearly does.

So you keep saying. I see no reason to believe that your assertion is true, on its face. You might want to explain why you think it shouldn't exist.

 

[Belz...]

We know the meaning of the word because of our intimate, first-hand experience of consciousness

Or maybe because we infered it by observing other people.

 

[Belz...]

Thanks. Those studies, and the mechanical servers driven by brain impulses, are exploring the easy part, awareness.

Awareness of awareness: where is awareness of awareness? Hint. There isn't.

Isn't that the very definition of "conscious" ? Being aware of your own behaviours ? I.E.: awareness of awareness ?

 

[Belz...]

I understand that by my definition, infants are not fully conscious, and I would argue that is true up until a certain age.

So would I. Certainly my "sense of self" wasn't very well defined until I was about four. At least that's how I perceive it now, and how I perceived it around that age, already.

 

[FedUpWithFaith]

Wanna know how many times I've tried to explain this, and it's relevance, to people calling themselves "skeptics", and got ridiculed as for saying it? Especially on this board.

UE: "Zero = Infinity"
mob of skeptics: "He's a woo! Woooooooo! Zero does not equal infinity! Go away and come back when you've learned something about mathematics!"

What we think of as zero or nothingness does not, cannot and never has existed.

UE: The Man's distinction of equivalence and equality are valid. That's why I used "equivalence" and it's actually more complicated than that. There are different types of infinities with different forms of symmetrical equivalences.

Your reply did jog my memory though about your claims of believing information being the essence of existence. I recall now that you believe(d) in aspects of Hindu mysticism, a foundation of which is the "Brahmin" which is the being/nothingness of zero/infinity that somehow conjoins with "information" (I'm not sure you and I agree on what information is) to produce reality.

While I, like many physicists, find an intuitive fascination with elements of Hindu mysticism (I guess if you study enough religions you're bound to at least come by insights that mirror some deep aspect of reality - if only by accident.) the concept is too namby-pamby for me to build a philosophy around. What does that really mean?

The epiphany for me came when I read both Zuse and Tegmark and later others who presented conceptually plausible mechanisms and/or frameworks whereby math/information/computation can actually yield "reality". Now I would be the first to concede that the mechanisms Zuse, Tegmark, loyd, Scmihuber and others have postulated are incomplete and could be dead wrong. This is a nascent science/philosophy. In that sense, they present a status not unlike string theory which I also tend to believe is true. They can be supported by rational logic and present a harmony of congruance and convergence with many physical theories known to be true as well as resonance with rational philosophical guidelines.

What I now recall about our differences, but I could be wrong so please correct me, is that you wanted to insist that the foundational information plane, which I think you believed to be confined to the noumena, could have no physical explanation in the sense of being scientifically accessible, testable, or logically defined. Somehow, it was a plane potentially understandable, tied to, or at least communicable with, only consciousness. You never really supported these ideas other than to claim it was consistent with Kant and Wittgenstein (possibly true though I recall you got hit hard on that part too) and I considered your views to be a rather lackluster form of mysticism that can't be expected to explain very much. They can only be retrofitted into some pre-conceived hierarchy of ideas - like Kant's.

Have you read any Tegmark, Schmidhuber, Chaitin etc. Have you seen that they have actually made some potentially testable predictions (though not possible via current technology yet) in physics and math, i.e., how much information the universe can hold and the implications thereof, computable reversibility, the discrete nature of space and time, and, in certain forms of digital physics, the impossibility of real infinities, to name a few?

I felt that if you had, you might have had some epiphanies of your own and I would love to see how you would interpret them through your views of Kant and Wittgenstein - and other philosophers. I continue to respect your views on those philosophers even though I don't always agree with you.

 

[PixyMisa]

So would I. Certainly my "sense of self" wasn't very well defined until I was about four. At least that's how I perceive it now, and how I perceived it around that age, already.

Yep. It depends on exactly how you define it, but human cognition doesn't fully develop until the age of 10 to 12.

 

[FedUpWithFaith]

Well, I don't see how an anlog one based on recurrent artificial neural networks would exceed Turing equivalence either.

I'll recommend Godel, Escher, Bach again. It's not very technical, but it's very thorough, and an enjoyable read. And it's a good place to start before moving on to the more technical treatments of the subject.

Here ya go Pixy:

Hava Siegelmann. Neural Networks and Analog Computation: Beyond the Turing Limit Boston: Birkhäuser.
Hava Siegelmann. The simple dynamics of super Turing theories; Theoretical Computer Science Volume 168, Issue 2, 20 November 1996, Pages 461-472.
You can find the second paper here:
http://binds.cs.umass.edu/papers/1996_Siegelmann_TheorCompSci.pdf

And yes, I recommend both Hofstadter's GEB and "I am a Strange Loop"

 

[FedUpWithFaith]

"When I was a freshman I postulated to one of my professors, that the language of computers (i.e. information) was far better suited describing the universe than current physical constructs. I thought I'd made a compelling and convincing case. He laughed me out of his office. Today, more than 20 years later, Seth Lloyd is making the rounds with the same idea. As he mentions in his insightful book, Programming the Universe. He credits his recent acceptance and success to the widespread use of computer technology. Apparently, timing is everything.

[...]

Looking at computers as metaphor, where did computer technology come from that gave these new more powerful ideas? Obviously it emerged out of ongoing historical technological trends. However, all of this progress is the result of scientific minds working on things. Whose minds were they, and what was inspiring them to work on the things they did? I think this is the more important question.

When you examine the historical roots of the PC revolution you'll find that things like PC's and the World Wide Web came from a very particular group of people. As pointed out in What the Dormouse Said: How the 60s Counterculture Shaped the Personal Computer, it was the insights gained from higher states of consciousness, specifically those unique to LSD, that gave rise to the PC revolution. As many people who have taken LSD, you experience your brain has a large set of programs, that you in turn can program, and better still, metaprogram "who" and "what" you want to become.

Please read our online book by John Lilly, Programming and Metaprogramming the Human Biocomputer, for a pioneering work in this area. It's also no secret that the 60's is often equated with a turn to Eastern mysticism for guidance. There's was good reason for this embrace, as many very intelligent people felt current Western ideas on the nature of reality were woefully incomplete in describing, let alone assisting in integrating these sometimes powerful and overwhelming transpersonal experiences."

http://astranaut.org/blog/archives/2006_06_uniting_consciousness_east_wes.php

This was a good post Limbo and I found a lot to agree with here. I would disagree, however, that LSD was the prime mover of computer innovation. Many great researchers used no drugs at all, many used pot. Carl Sagan, writing as Mr. X before his death, describes how pot helped him come up with some of his best ideas. I myself, practice meditation. I definitely agree that there are many means to make the mind more receptive to ideation and discovery that can be induced both naturally and artificially.

I don't like the term "higher states of consciousness" for several reasons. First, we can barely agree on what consciousness is much less break it down into states. And it suggests all sorts of woo-woo mysticism, as if we're accessing something beyond our own minds etc.

Where you and I agree is that the are means and attitudes by which our minds can be more creative and receptive to new ideas and ways of thinking. At the same time, many of these means also make us more susceptible to believing BS. That's why it helps to have a skeptical outlook and to critically question everything you believe. You will also find that to be a common theme for those who brought us the computer revolution. Don't leave that out. A highly disproportionate number of them are/were atheists too. What does that tell you?

 

[PixyMisa]

Here ya go Pixy:

Hava Siegelmann. Neural Networks and Analog Computation: Beyond the Turing Limit Boston: Birkhäuser.
Hava Siegelmann. The simple dynamics of super Turing theories; Theoretical Computer Science Volume 168, Issue 2, 20 November 1996, Pages 461-472.
You can find the second paper here:
http://binds.cs.umass.edu/papers/1996_Siegelmann_TheorCompSci.pdf

Okay, without grinding through the maths, the obvious problem is the assumption that the Universe is continuous. Physics disagrees. While it's not clear that spacetime is quantised, the Planck length and Planck time are the smallest meaningful units. So in our Universe at least, a Turing machine is equivalent to any realisable computer.

 

[Limbo]

I don't like the term "higher states of consciousness" for several reasons. First, we can barely agree on what consciousness is much less break it down into states.

Do you feel the same way about the term "altered states of consciousness"?

And it suggests all sorts of woo-woo mysticism, as if we're accessing something beyond our own minds etc.

Beyond our own ego-self, I would say. And as I'm sure you're willing to acknowledge, there is more to consciousness than our ego.

Where you and I agree is that the are means and attitudes by which our minds can be more creative and receptive to new ideas and ways of thinking. At the same time, many of these means also make us more susceptible to believing BS. That's why it helps to have a skeptical outlook and to critically question everything you believe. You will also find that to be a common theme for those who brought us the computer revolution. Don't leave that out. A highly disproportionate number of them are/were atheists too. What does that tell you?

A couple of things. That you associate skepticism with atheism, that atheism is compatible with mysticism, that God is a metaphor, and that the when a skeptic/athiest escapes that particular metaphor they are in danger of being caught by new metaphors that replace the old. Universal computer, for instance.

 

[PixyMisa]

When you examine the historical roots of the PC revolution you'll find that things like PC's and the World Wide Web came from a very particular group of people. As pointed out in What the Dormouse Said: How the 60s Counterculture Shaped the Personal Computer, it was the insights gained from higher states of consciousness, specifically those unique to LSD, that gave rise to the PC revolution. As many people who have taken LSD, you experience your brain has a large set of programs, that you in turn can program, and better still, metaprogram "who" and "what" you want to become.

Or as a large plate of lemon jello. Or fifteen singing lobsters.

Limbo, this is complete drivel. There's no such thing as "higher states of consciousness". There's such a thing as psychoactive drugs. They do not offer insight into anything.

Please read our online book by John Lilly, Programming and Metaprogramming the Human Biocomputer, for a pioneering work in this area. It's also no secret that the 60's is often equated with a turn to Eastern mysticism for guidance. There's was good reason for this embrace, as many very intelligent people felt current Western ideas on the nature of reality were woefully incomplete in describing, let alone assisting in integrating these sometimes powerful and overwhelming transpersonal experiences."

Since you ask so politely, no. It's also no secret that 60's and 70's drug culture faded out without producing anything more than dead musicians. Talented, but dead.

 

[FedUpWithFaith]

"Originally Posted by UndercoverElephant View Post
What you are actually calling "private observation" is not this at all. Your consciousness cannot be observed by anyone else in principle."

An interesting claim. Care to back that up ?

Since I've been ragging on UE let me take his back for a change and back it up.

Prove to us that the qualia you perceive as blue doesn't appear to UE as red or that you feel hot pain exactly the same as he does.

You'll find you have to rely on inference from identical architectural generation of qualia (which presumes materialism) which is a weak argument that tends to collapse if I ask you the same question with respect to some potentially alien or AI consciousness whose neural architecture is different. The only way to salvage that position is to argue that all other forms of consciousness are impossible or that they must all be isomorphic, i.e., that there is some principle, as yet undiscovered, that would force all conscious qualia to be perceived the same way by everyone and every form of consciousness. Highly unlikely - just consider red-green color-blindness.

 

[PixyMisa]

Prove to us that the qualia you perceive as blue doesn't appear to UE as red or that you feel hot pain exactly the same as he does.

What does that even mean?

 

[FedUpWithFaith]

What does that even mean?

OK, we agree blue light presentation, as we each perceive it corresponds to wavelengths of about 450-495 nm, yes?

However, how do you know or how can you prove that what you experience as blue (the qualia of blue) is the same as UE? How do you know that what he experiences isn't more like your yellow or your red?

Likewise, I could make a similar argument for any type of sound, pain, feeling, etc. as well as the nature of our awareness and thinking.

I agree with UE that there are limits about what we can know or say about qualia, which some people here seem to be equating with "private behavior". He and I fundamentally differ in that he believes there is a ontological barrier and cause for this where I view it purely as an epistemological limitation.

Some things simply aren't knowable and can be proven so, like Godel and Heisenburg show us in different regimes of math and physics. However, UE wants to make the ontological jump to justify consciousness as a state of being that contradicts any attempt to understand it outside of itself (or some deeper fundamental reality).

I really believe the best analog and metaphor we have for this problem is Godel Incompleteness. Godel proved that the are self-evident truths (axioms) that cannot be reduced or proven but can be used to prove everything else we understand about formal mathematical systems. Someone like me is satisfied by that answer - moreso since Chaitin has proven math's empirical nature. I recognize that's simply the nature of mathematics, like it or not. There are natural epistemological limits. But if UE was arguing about decideabiliity like he argues about consciousness he would insist that there has to be some deeper being or alternative plane to account for this reality. As an open-minded skeptic, I have to say that maybe there is some amazing discovery awaiting us that would somehow circumvent Godel without being supernatural. But I haven't a clue nor any good evidence to support such a conjecture. So why believe in it?

My inking about UE, which I think he confirmed once to me but I'll let him speak for himself, is that he believes in something like psi or ghosts or wants to believe and he's looking for a philosophical justification for this. And he's smart enough to find the best arguments to give his views a chance. I'm always leery of those who backfit data and ideas like this. But we're all guilty of it from time to time so I'd be a hypocrite to try to judge him too harshly.

 

[UndercoverElephant]

UE: The Man's distinction of equivalence and equality are valid. That's why I used "equivalence" and it's actually more complicated than that. There are different types of infinities with different forms of symmetrical equivalences.

OK...to be perfectly honest I'm not a great mathematician and the subtle differences you are discussing above aren't of any great significance to me. I can understand why they might be of great significance to somebody else.

Your reply did jog my memory though about your claims of believing information being the essence of existence. I recall now that you believe(d) in aspects of Hindu mysticism, a foundation of which is the "Brahmin"

Brahman. "Brahmin" is a Hindu holy man.

which is the being/nothingness of zero/infinity that somehow conjoins with "information" (I'm not sure you and I agree on what information is) to produce reality.

While I, like many physicists, find an intuitive fascination with elements of Hindu mysticism (I guess if you study enough religions you're bound to at least come by insights that mirror some deep aspect of reality - if only by accident.) the concept is too namby-pamby for me to build a philosophy around. What does that really mean?

Atman=Brahman couldn't really be more explicit. It means the root of personal existence is numerically identical to the root of all existence. Both are also, ultimately, equivalent to absolute nothingness, which is also infinity.

The epiphany for me came when I read both Zuse and Tegmark and later others who presented conceptually plausible mechanisms and/or frameworks whereby math/information/computation can actually yield "reality". Now I would be the first to concede that the mechanisms Zuse, Tegmark, loyd, Scmihuber and others have postulated are incomplete and could be dead wrong. This is a nascent science/philosophy. In that sense, they present a status not unlike string theory which I also tend to believe is true. They can be supported by rational logic and present a harmony of congruance and convergence with many physical theories known to be true as well as resonance with rational philosophical guidelines.

What I now recall about our differences, but I could be wrong so please correct me, is that you wanted to insist that the foundational information plane, which I think you believed to be confined to the noumena, could have no physical explanation in the sense of being scientifically accessible, testable, or logically defined. Somehow, it was a plane potentially understandable, tied to, or at least communicable with, only consciousness. You never really supported these ideas other than to claim it was consistent with Kant and Wittgenstein (possibly true though I recall you got hit hard on that part too) and I considered your views to be a rather lackluster form of mysticism that can't be expected to explain very much. They can only be retrofitted into some pre-conceived hierarchy of ideas - like Kant's.

OK...there's two much in here where we need to go back over the details before I could give you a sensible response.

My position is that the realm of information is the only things which actually exists, and that what we think of as "matter" and "consciousness" are just component parts of it. They only make sense from our own point of view. If we could have a "God's-eye view", there would just be information, plus this entity which I describe as zero/infinity.

Have you read any Tegmark, Schmidhuber, Chaitin etc. Have you seen that they have actually made some potentially testable predictions (though not possible via current technology yet) in physics and math, i.e., how much information the universe can hold and the implications thereof, computable reversibility, the discrete nature of space and time, and, in certain forms of digital physics, the impossibility of real infinities, to name a few?

I am familiar with some of Tegmark's work. Very interesting, but there's not much I can do with it except wait and see what comes of it and what people who have a deeper understanding of physics than me think of it.