Are You Conscious?

[PixyMisa]

Oh, one more thing to add on the private behaviours question:

The most recent episode of The Skeptic's Guide to the Universe included a discussion on recent research into synaesthesia. Definitely give it a listen if you haven't already. The upshot of this research is that not only do we know that certain people experience things in different ways, but that we can actually demonstrate and quantify this difference, and that it is related to physiological differences in the brain.

 

[FedUpWithFaith]

Sure, I'll unpack that for you.

You're pointing out that the problem with comparing private behaviours is that they're private; we don't have direct access to them,

Yes, agreed

so we can't directly quantify them.

No, I never said that. In fact, in this thread and in many other posts in my lifetime I've made many posts, in many regards similar to the balance of yours, that show that various forms of correlation and correspondence of ontological significance support at least the necessary (the sufficient is harder to support) conditions of neural causation of qualia.

I think you may have lost sight of the original issue I was posting to in response to your critique of UE. The bottom line is you can make all sorts of potentially causal and correlated observations about UE's consciousness (I've simplified this to qualia) but you can't observe his consciousness as the thing in itself. That is essentially what he said you disagreed with that prompted my orginal post in this series to you. This contrasts to the physical objects like trees that you can arguably both observe.

Blue is a physical property. Looking at something blue is a physical process; so too is recalling a memory related to the colour. The very experience of blue is a physical process. So any question of similarity or difference can be reduced to objective physical concepts, regardless of the fact that we're discussing private behaviours.

I meant the direct sense of experience of the color blue and that is the one aspect you left out. The qualia of blue is not the same as the physical projection of a blue image on somebody's retina, no matter how much you want to make it so. You can't know that what you experience as the absolute appearance in your mind of the color blue is the same as what UE sees, even if he makes all the same associations of serenity, etc.

Even if we assume you are correct that all the associated processes are physical (UE would not agree and you have not proven it) you still haven't breached the barrier of UE's original assertion - at least at the epistemological level. Where UE goes further, and I disagree, is that this barrier extends to the ontological level too.

It's just that the human brain is the third* most complex device known, so while this is possible in principle, it's not at all easy in practice.

Yes, my wife's purse being the obvious choice for #1 ;-)

 

[PixyMisa]

No, I never said that. In fact, in this thread and in many other posts in my lifetime I've made many posts, in many regards similar to the balance of yours, that show that various forms of correlation and correspondence of ontological significance support at least the necessary (the sufficient is harder to support) conditions of neural causation of qualia.

Yep, sure. That's why I said we can't directly quantify them. We can (and do) indirectly quantify them.

I think you may have lost sight of the original issue I was posting to in response to your critique of UE. The bottom line is you can make all sorts of potentially causal and correlated observations about UE's consciousness (I've simplified this to qualia) but you can't observe his consciousness as the thing in itself. That is essentially what he said you disagreed with that prompted my orginal post in this series to you. This contrasts to the physical objects like trees that you can arguably both observe.

I'm not sure what UE is talking about there.

Consciousness is not a thing in itself. It's a process. Like a computer program - or a television program. It's an ongoing interaction of elements of a physical system arranged in a particular way. It's a behaviour. A verb, rather than a noun. We can certainly examine it, but we can't point to it as existing in a particular place and time, any more than we can for any other verb.

I meant the direct sense of experience of the color blue and that is the one aspect you left out.

What's this "direct sense of experience" then? Tell me, and I will put it in.

The qualia of blue is not the same as the physical projection of a blue image on somebody's retina, no matter how much you want to make it so.

Whoever said I wanted to make it so? I don't even consider the term qualia to be meaningful.

It seems that qualia, whatever they are, are not the object being sensed, not the image or impulse arriving at the sensory organ, not the neural activity resulting from the activation of the senses, not the associations formed from that neural activity, and not the behaviours resulting from all of that.

So, could you please explain to me, as clearly as you can, exactly what function do qualia play?

You can't know that what you experience as the absolute appearance in your mind of the color blue is the same as what UE sees, even if he makes all the same associations of serenity, etc.

What is this "absolute appearance"? What does it do?

Even if we assume you are correct that all the associated processes are physical (UE would not agree and you have not proven it)

Sorry, but this is baloney. We know perfectly well that all the associated processes are physical.

We - as a species - have been looking for the existence of any non-physical attribute of consciousness for longer than recorded history, and we have found absolutely no evidence of any such thing. More than that, we have been able to systematically map mind function to brain function, to show what aspects of consciousness happen where and how, to trace the path of (for example) visual perception from the retina through the brain, to determine what happens at each stage and even how long it takes.

And concurrently with that, we've mapped out what happens to the mind when the brain goes wrong. Which is often very unusual and sometimes disturbing, but leaves no room for a dualism of the gaps.

Neither mapping is complete - human brains a complex, and likewise human minds - but both are advancing steadily, while not a single piece of contrary evidence has ever been presented that stood up to scrutiny.

The idea that mind is what brain does is a scientific hypothesis, and we all know that scientific hypoheses are never proven, only supported or falsified. So the argument that this hypothesis hasn't been proven is a hollow one, and the argument that therefore there is some non-physical aspect to consciousness is an out-and-out fallacy. But more than that, we have more evidence to support this hypothesis than for any other idea that mankind has ever formed about the world. And, as I said, zero evidence to the contrary.

you still haven't breached the barrier of UE's original assertion - at least at the epistemological level. Where UE goes further, and I disagree, is that this barrier extends to the ontological level too.

Actually, I don't even consider the question meaningful, until you define it properly. That's always the problem with the term qualia, and indeed that's why the term was invented: So that the philosopher can say, no, I don't mean (any physical process or any result of a physical process), I mean the qualia itself. It's defined negatively, but we have no reason to think that the negative is anything but an empty set.

Or you can redefine qualia to mean something physical - in which case it is straightforward to account for it, but we'd do better yet to simply abandon the word.

 

[Soapy Sam]

Pixy- what term would you use for the experience of seeing the colour blue?
This is what I take the term "Qualia" to mean. The actual awareness, inside someone's bonce, of what blue is like.
(What's the singular of qualia ? Anyone?)
This question- (what's blue like to you- and how do you know it's the same as I see)- is a very old one. I recall asking my mother a simpler version when I was about 8, so it's not very profound, either.
It's the same question as "What is consciousness?"
What actually is "experiencing?"
I agree the cause is ultimately physical. I agree it happens in brains (We disagree about what kind of brains, but that's OT here) -but to say awareness / experience is a process seems incomplete. Processes involve energy conversion, the movement or state change of atoms, changes in material position; now all those occur in the brain, but none of them is experiencing the effect. They ARE the effect. What feels it?
So who or what is it that sees the colour? It isn't the brain. It's dark in there, fer godsake!

 

[PixyMisa]

Pixy- what term would you use for the experience of seeing the colour blue?

Experience.

This is what I take the term "Qualia" to mean. The actual awareness, inside someone's bonce, of what blue is like.
(What's the singular of qualia ? Anyone?)

Quale.

This question- (what's blue like to you- and how do you know it's the same as I see)- is a very old one. I recall asking my mother a simpler version when I was about 8, so it's not very profound, either.
It's the same question as "What is consciousness?"
What actually is "experiencing?"

Mu.

The point is that there isn't something experiencing. The experience is itself part of the process of the mind.

I agree the cause is ultimately physical. I agree it happens in brains (We disagree about what kind of brains, but that's OT here) -but to say awareness / experience is a process seems incomplete. Processes involve energy conversion, the movement or state change of atoms, changes in material position; now all those occur in the brain, but none of them is experiencing the effect. They ARE the effect. What feels it?
So who or what is it that sees the colour? It isn't the brain. It's dark in there, fer godsake!

Right. As I said earlier, consciousness isn't a thing. There isn't a consciousness to have the experience, that's what Dennett calls the Cartesian Theatre. The experience is one part of the whole process we call consciousness.

 

[UndercoverElephant]

You seem to be implicitly acknowledging a weakness in your arguments and/or beliefs. I appreciate the honesty.

No, I am appreciating the difference between science, religion and philosophy. Religious claims tend not to be supportable by the sort of mechanisms that can be used to support science (empirical data) or philosophy (logical arguments). This is not a "weakness." It's just the way things are.

To review my understanding of your position, you seem to be representing 0/infinity as the catalyst of the framework for the mysterious lattice of information that yields the illusion we call reality.

No, it's more than a catalyst. Catalysts just speed up or slow down reactions between existing entities. The 0/infinity is the root of all existence - the beginning and the end.

I'm not sure I see the need or understand the basis for pushing this view other than the fact that it comes from Hindu ideas you liked. Why is 0/infinity not considered information, i.e., it has no messaging aspect to inform the other information that underlies reality?

It is not information because it contains no internal complexity. There's nowhere to store any information.

Originally I came to this view because I was trying to answer the question "how could something come from nothing." The answer is "nothing isn't really nothing, but potentially everything.

Let me try to concretize things a bit. Have you studied Zuse, Fredkin, or Wolfram ideas and simulations that provide insight as to how cellular automata in computing space could enable math and information to yield what you consider to be reality or an illusion thereof? Do any other these ideas resonate with you or map to yours?

Well, I've read "A New Kind of Science". Makes perfect sense to me.

Could they provide the plausible mechanism for your ideas?

Yes. Or at least there was nothing in Wolfram's book which contradicted anything I believe. The basic idea is compatible.

If so, can you provide a plausible mechanism by which 0/infinity works to initiate that framework? Could it be, rather, that it acts through the nature of information itself rather than enabling something on its own?

Not sure I understand the question. Are you asking how we get from zero to an information system like a cellular automaton? If so, I guess that is a question for mathematicians and physicists.

 

[Soapy Sam]

Pixy-
I have struggled to find a useful analogy for awareness / consciousness / experience (ACE) - (See what I did there?) - *Muttley the dog shakes his head in disgust, yawns and rolls over*

The speed of a car was one attempt. The car is doing 30mph, which is a direct result of all those bits going up and down, explosions, fuel pumps etc... emergent phenomenon & all that. But the car is not aware of doing 30mph (Forget the driver for now).
You may feel the car IS aware of it in the sense of having a speedometer. I see that as where the analogy- any analogy- fails.
The problem with ACE is - not only do I experience it: I experience experiencing it.

Now it may be that the same is true in some way of any system. Maybe the car experiences doing 30. Maybe a rock experiences being a rock. I doubt it.

Maybe there is no useful analogy for ACE and that's why it's such a bugger to discuss.Maybe the difference between conscious matter and non conscious matter is some sort of phase change?

I dunno, Pixy. I know there's no little homunculus in my head watching the screen, but I do think I am real , for a certain meaning of "real". I sleep and awake and remain Galadriel- here is continuity of process. There is memory. Something is me. If ACE is purely process, who has my dreams? Who am I when I'm asleep? You say yourself you have given sane and correct answers when dragged barely to a conscious level. So have I- and had no recollection of it next day until told. If that wasn't me- who the hell was it?

 

[Dancing David]

My take is slightly different I grew up as a mystical person, religously obesessed. I came to the conclusion that modern materialism (pragmatic physicalism) was the most reasonable as a result of my spiritual journey.

And all I have to say about qualia is this, show me a qualia without a neural network. It doesn't matter if I see the 'color' blue and you see 'cross hatching' in grey.

It is a learned and developed neural pattern of representation, regardless. (Or that is the most likely given the current evidence)

David the pagan atheist.

 

[Dancing David]

Pixy-
I have struggled to find a useful analogy for awareness / consciousness / experience (ACE) - (See what I did there?) - *Muttley the dog shakes his head in disgust, yawns and rolls over*

The speed of a car was one attempt. The car is doing 30mph, which is a direct result of all those bits going up and down, explosions, fuel pumps etc... emergent phenomenon & all that. But the car is not aware of doing 30mph (Forget the driver for now).
You may feel the car IS aware of it in the sense of having a speedometer. I see that as where the analogy- any analogy- fails.
The problem with ACE is - not only do I experience it: I experience experiencing it.

Now it may be that the same is true in some way of any system. Maybe the car experiences doing 30. Maybe a rock experiences being a rock. I doubt it.

Maybe there is no useful analogy for ACE and that's why it's such a bugger to discuss.Maybe the difference between conscious matter and non conscious matter is some sort of phase change?

I dunno, Pixy. I know there's no little homunculus in my head watching the screen, but I do think I am real , for a certain meaning of "real". I sleep and awake and remain Galadriel- here is continuity of process. There is memory. Something is me. If ACE is purely process, who has my dreams? Who am I when I'm asleep? You say yourself you have given sane and correct answers when dragged barely to a conscious level. So have I- and had no recollection of it next day until told. If that wasn't me- who the hell was it?

My resolution after many years of thinking about buddhism is that it was your body.

 

[FedUpWithFaith]

Consciousness is not a thing in itself. It's a process. Like a computer program - or a television program. It's an ongoing interaction of elements of a physical system arranged in a particular way. It's a behaviour. A verb, rather than a noun. We can certainly examine it, but we can't point to it as existing in a particular place and time, any more than we can for any other verb.

Using the phrase "a thing in itself" is a a more layman-like philosophical term of art. I used it to convey the same thing that more formally would be stated as consciousness qua consciousness. But I try to avoid such phrases when dealing informally because they sound pretentious. If you read my earlier posts, you'll see I also argue with UE that consciousness is a process. That does not contravene it having states of being and properties that are accessible or inaccessible between supposedly similar processes, e.g., between your consciousness and mine.

Fundamentally, we agree consciousness is a process like a computer or television program. Both are essentially the result of goal-directed actions on bits of information in some serial and/or parallel sequence. You have quite rightly described all sorts of states of consciousness that can be outwardly observed to infer similar behavior from an outward perspective. However, the unique and amazing thing we have not yet explained (or we would probably know how to generate strong AI by now) is the very nature of how consciousness, UNLIKE today's computer or television programs, self-referentially generates its own internal perspective or strange loop.

It is that internal perspective (also a process or state of a process) qua perspective (i also refered to it earlier as the direct sense of experience), that you can never access with UE by its very nature. For me, unlike UE, that does not imply other causes beyond the physical or accessibility to any other planes of existence or being. In that sense, you and I are in agreement.

Whoever said I wanted to make it so? I don't even consider the term qualia to be meaningful.

It seems that qualia, whatever they are, are not the object being sensed, not the image or impulse arriving at the sensory organ, not the neural activity resulting from the activation of the senses, not the associations formed from that neural activity, and not the behaviours resulting from all of that.

...

Actually, I don't even consider the question meaningful, until you define it properly. That's always the problem with the term qualia, and indeed that's why the term was invented: So that the philosopher can say, no, I don't mean (any physical process or any result of a physical process), I mean the qualia itself. It's defined negatively, but we have no reason to think that the negative is anything but an empty set.

Or you can redefine qualia to mean something physical - in which case it is straightforward to account for it, but we'd do better yet to simply abandon the word.

You claim to agree with the idea of the "strange loop" yet you accord qualia no meaning. I think I've done a perfectly good job of defining qualia and providing examples of what they are. Qualia could be a form of illusion from various perspectives, but they are still useful in describing states of a system, from both internal and external perspectives. If you are intent on denying qualia exist as Dennett does (although he is often muddled in hedging his bets somewhat), then I don't think this argument can proceed further. We are at an impasse.

So, could you please explain to me, as clearly as you can, exactly what function do qualia play?

I don't claim to know the answer. If I did I suspect I'd know how to create conscious robots. If you've read my earlier posts then you will see I believe qualia contain and can convey no useful information. They do appear to behave as a form of data compression (in a closed recurrent or infinite loop this may be the only useful "work" they do) and may be an emergent property of self-referential computation. If so, I suspect its a necessary emergent property because I don't think evolution would yield and perpetuate something unnecessary and without direct purpose unless there was a deeper, presumably subconscious, purpose that mandated its existence, hence another major reason for my disdain of p-zombie arguments.

 

[FedUpWithFaith]

No, I am appreciating the difference between science, religion and philosophy. Religious claims tend not to be supportable by the sort of mechanisms that can be used to support science (empirical data) or philosophy (logical arguments). This is not a "weakness." It's just the way things are.

In the highlighted-bolded text you have just perfectly articulated, in fact virtually defined, why I find religious claims to be nonsense . And apparently unlike you, I always view nonsense claims as weak. ;-)

So now that you've ruled out empirical evidence and logic what's left? -- purely subjective anecdotal experience that can't be empirically repeated across subjects. It's subject to hallucination, delusion, wishful thinking, and faith. It may support your claims but it's the weakest form of support there is, especially if it intrinisicly eludes any form of verification.

No, it's more than a catalyst. Catalysts just speed up or slow down reactions between existing entities. The 0/infinity is the root of all existence - the beginning and the end.

Catalysts also enable reactions to take place/start (by lowering activation energy) under certain conditions. This was the meaning I intended.

Originally I came to this view because I was trying to answer the question "how could something come from nothing." The answer is "nothing isn't really nothing, but potentially everything.

Your 0/infinity may really be unnecessary if you take a Platonic view of information and math at a fundmental level. There is no need to postulate a beginning or end to numbers, operators, and logic if we free mind from being necessary for their existence.

 

[UndercoverElephant]

And all I have to say about qualia is this, show me a qualia without a neural network.

That's not really the contentious issue. Well...there are certainly some people out there who believe in entirely disembodied consciousnesses, but this isn't the serious opposition to the materialist position. Most people accept that you're going to need something like a neural network. The question is whether anything else is also required. The suggestion is that the brain is not merely a neural network but a "quantum computer", or has some other key property in addition to the neutral network. The NN just explains the origin of the complexity of qualia, not their raw existence.

 

[UndercoverElephant]

In the highlighted-bolded text you have just perfectly articulated, in fact virtually defined, why I find religious claims to be nonsense . And apparently unlike you, I always view nonsense claims as weak. ;-)

That depends what context they are taken in. Look at my signature line. Alice in Wonderland is full of all manner of nonsense, and all sorts of other ideas which are in no way "supported" by anything else. That doesn't stop it being philosophically very deep and classic piece of literature. You just have to know how to read between the lines and get a grasp of what the message actually is.

Religion is a specialised form of art.

So now that you've ruled out empirical evidence and logic what's left? -- purely subjective anecdotal experience that can't be empirically repeated across subjects. It's subject to hallucination, delusion, wishful thinking, and faith. It may support your claims but it's the weakest form of support there is, especially if it intrinisicly eludes any form of verification.

It's treacherous as hell. For somebody accustomed to the security offered by science, even philosophy looks suspiciously like a bog, where you permanently risk falling into a hole if you take a wrong step. Religion is even worse.

For the two decades I was an outspoken atheist, my main interest apart from science was music. I am a songwriter, or at least I was at one time. When it came to trying to understand the mystical stuff, the most important part of my brain was the same part which understood the way music works. It was primarily a right-brained activity, not a left-brained activity. Right-brained activity is all about gestalt shifts, gaining glimpses of bigger pictures, flashes of creative inspiration...stuff that the logical, semantic, linguistic left-brain is not so good at. From my perspective, you are judging a right-brained, artistic activity by left-brained, scientific standards.

Your 0/infinity may really be unnecessary if you take a Platonic view of information and math at a fundmental level. There is no need to postulate a beginning or end to numbers, operators, and logic if we free mind from being necessary for their existence.

I am definately a platonist with respect to mathematical entities.

 

[PixyMisa]

Fundamentally, we agree consciousness is a process like a computer or television program. Both are essentially the result of goal-directed actions on bits of information in some serial and/or parallel sequence. You have quite rightly described all sorts of states of consciousness that can be outwardly observed to infer similar behavior from an outward perspective. However, the unique and amazing thing we have not yet explained (or we would probably know how to generate strong AI by now) is the very nature of how consciousness, UNLIKE today's computer or television programs, self-referentially generates its own internal perspective or strange loop.

Consciousness doesn't do this. That's just making the same error regarding the nature of consciousness. Rather, that's what consciousness is.

What's more, computer programs do this all the time. Not all of them, but as a programming technique it's actually very common. I've developed a number of conscious computer systems myself.

You claim to agree with the idea of the "strange loop" yet you accord qualia no meaning.

Bingo. We can point to strange loops. Here it is, this is what it does, here is how it acts and interacts.

I think I've done a perfectly good job of defining qualia and providing examples of what they are.

No, sorry, you haven't done this at all. You've told me what they aren't.

Okay. A unicorn is not a horse. A unicorn is not a goat. I'm going to assume that a unicorn is not a tree or an ocean or the planet Uranus either.

That doesn't help me. We define things by what they do. What do qualia do?

Qualia could be a form of illusion from various perspectives, but they are still useful in describing states of a system, from both internal and external perspectives.

Could be? Never mind could be. What do they do?

If you are intent on denying qualia exist as Dennett does (although he is often muddled in hedging his bets somewhat), then I don't think this argument can proceed further. We are at an impasse.

If any one alters the definitions, I cannot pretend to argue with him, until I know the meaning he assigns to these terms. - David Hume 1711-1776

The same goes, of course, for making up new words and not defining them.

I don't claim to know the answer. If I did I suspect I'd know how to create conscious robots.

Already done.

If you've read my earlier posts then you will see I believe qualia contain and can convey no useful information.

Not a terribly useful concept, then, is it?

They do appear to behave as a form of data compression

Wait, what? You can either have

qualia contain and can convey no useful information

or

appear to behave as a form of data compression

but certainly not both.

(in a closed recurrent or infinite loop this may be the only useful "work" they do)

You just denied that they do any work at all.

and may be an emergent property of self-referential computation.

Or not.

If so, I suspect its a necessary emergent property because I don't think evolution would yield and perpetuate something unnecessary and without direct purpose unless there was a deeper, presumably subconscious, purpose that mandated its existence, hence another major reason for my disdain of p-zombie arguments.

Consciousness, that is, self-referential information processing, opens up an entire new class of rapid adaptive behaviours that aren't possible without it. It's an enormous evolutionary advantage.

That's why people live in cities. Sure, ants and termites live in cities, but they've done so for tens of millions of years; we've done it for only ten thousand, and without any need for speciation.

 

[PixyMisa]

In the highlighted-bolded text you have just perfectly articulated, in fact virtually defined, why I find religious claims to be nonsense . And apparently unlike you, I always view nonsense claims as weak.

Precisely. Asserting that a weak claim isn't weak doesn't actually stop it from being weak.

So now that you've ruled out empirical evidence and logic what's left?

Nothing. He loses the argument. He might continue posting, but once you've ruled out empirical evidence and logic, you've lost the argument.

 

[PixyMisa]

Pixy-
I have struggled to find a useful analogy for awareness / consciousness / experience (ACE) - (See what I did there?) - *Muttley the dog shakes his head in disgust, yawns and rolls over*

The speed of a car was one attempt. The car is doing 30mph, which is a direct result of all those bits going up and down, explosions, fuel pumps etc... emergent phenomenon & all that. But the car is not aware of doing 30mph (Forget the driver for now).
You may feel the car IS aware of it in the sense of having a speedometer. I see that as where the analogy- any analogy- fails.
The problem with ACE is - not only do I experience it: I experience experiencing it.

Absolutely. That's the loop. That's the self in self-reference.

Dennett points to the Cartesian Theatre as a trap, because having consciousness experiencing things doesn't actually answer the question, because then what experiences consciousness? The solution is that consciousness experiences itself. It's a loop.

Now it may be that the same is true in some way of any system. Maybe the car experiences doing 30. Maybe a rock experiences being a rock. I doubt it.

Well, for a rock, you're right to doubt; it's defined by its bulk properties and the term "experience" isn't even meaningful.

For a modern car, though, things are different. Particularly the more expensive models have an entire network of computers monitoring and controlling the engine and steering and brakes and various interior conditions - and each other and themselves. A modern car knows that it's travelling at 30MPH and can report a variety of information associated with travelling at 30MPH. It's very much aware, and depending on the precise programming techniques in use, very possibly conscious.

Maybe there is no useful analogy for ACE and that's why it's such a bugger to discuss.Maybe the difference between conscious matter and non conscious matter is some sort of phase change?

Godel, Escher, Bach. This is exactly what Hofstadter does, he establishes the necessary analogues, step by step. If you've been a computer programmer for 20-odd years, it comes naturally, but if not - and I had only been programming for a couple of years when I first read it - Hofstadter opens up new horizons.

He approaches the question through music and mathematics and art and architecture... And ant colonies. Wonderful book.

I dunno, Pixy. I know there's no little homunculus in my head watching the screen, but I do think I am real , for a certain meaning of "real".

Rainbows are real, and shadows. But real what?

I sleep and awake and remain Galadriel- here is continuity of process. There is memory. Something is me. If ACE is purely process, who has my dreams?

The dreams are the process, or part of it.

Who am I when I'm asleep?

You. It's a wonderfully flexible word, because it needs to be.

You say yourself you have given sane and correct answers when dragged barely to a conscious level. So have I- and had no recollection of it next day until told. If that wasn't me- who the hell was it?

That was you. At least, I'm pretty sure.

 

[The Man]

That was you. At least, I'm pretty sure.

Indeed, let’s not forget that even when you are conscious a considerable portion of you still remains, well, unconscious. Processes, behaviors, reflex reactions or even instinctive responses all taking place with potentially no awareness or conscious recognition of them on your part, until maybe after the fact if even that. Breathing is a good example, I can consciously control my breathing perhaps to the point of becoming unconscious, at which point my breathing simply resumes. For the most part while conscious I am not consciously aware of or involved in my breathing. So if I’m potentially not conscious of most of me (or most of the processes and such that are actually me) am I actually conscious?

 

[FedUpWithFaith]

That's not really the contentious issue. Well...there are certainly some people out there who believe in entirely disembodied consciousnesses, but this isn't the serious opposition to the materialist position. Most people accept that you're going to need something like a neural network. The question is whether anything else is also required. The suggestion is that the brain is not merely a neural network but a "quantum computer", or has some other key property in addition to the neutral network. The NN just explains the origin of the complexity of qualia, not their raw existence.

Despite the pseudoscience I think you've bought into a quantum computer probably doesn't offer this property either - though the superposition of states potentially offers some insights and potential solutions to the self-referentiality concepts I've been trying to explain to you.

I assume you're referring to Penrose and Hammeroff. Not only do just about all neuroscientists dismiss them (yes, I know, not a good argument) but there isn't a shred of evidence so far to support their conjectures (a better argument) and moreover, ironically, Tegmark is one of the main physicists who demonstrated mathematically that Penrose's supposedly plausible mechanisms are, in fact, not possible or, in the least extemely implausible (a strong argument). There is really nothing to hang your hat on there Geoff. Look elsewhere, like the recurrent neural network paper I cited earlier on hypercomputation. Though I don't believe a word of what I'm about to tell you, there are conceptually interesting (I'm too timid to say plausible) and almost aethetically appealing connections between that and your 0/infinity ideas based on the intrinsic need and symmetry of 0/infinity in creating oracles (a technical term in the hypercomputation realm) for computing indecidable propositions. I bet if you study that stuff you'll find much more to resonate with your thinking including free will, than the quantum stuff. Start with wikipedia, they seem to have a decent intro.

 

[FedUpWithFaith]

Consciousness doesn't do this. That's just making the same error regarding the nature of consciousness. Rather, that's what consciousness is.

Now you're simply being argumentative for argument's sake and silly to boot. Semantically there's no difference. Something can be what it does. In fact, if it's a process, as we both agree consciousness is, then its the only coherent semantic description lest you want to fall deeper into reification in the abstract which you essentially accused others of doing in the concrete (usually correctly).

I've developed a number of conscious computer systems myself.

As a rather respected AI/neuroscientist let me just say you've succeeded in convincing me you're either not conscious or crazy. I doubt even your idol Dennett will take your back. But if I'm wrong, please let us all know when you collect your Nobel.

Bingo. We can point to strange loops. Here it is, this is what it does, here is how it acts and interacts.

Oh really? After reading thousands of papers, how did I miss such a major discovery of the neural circuitry and underlying processes that show precisely how they compute? I must be a complete fool. Could you please point these strange loops out in detail and tell me exactly what their self-referential algorithm/connectionism is and how it promulgates in the neural network? Or since you're a programmer who's created conscious robots, perhaps you can prove how your reflexive programming yields self-awareness.

In doing so remember not to be a hypocrite and carefully define your terms as per your Hume quote: "If any one alters the definitions, I cannot pretend to argue with him, until I know the meaning he assigns to these terms. - David Hume 1711-1776"

That doesn't help me. We define things by what they do. What do qualia do?

Hmmm, seems to help prove my point above.

FUWF:"If you've read my earlier posts then you will see I believe qualia contain and can convey no useful information."
Not a terribly useful concept, then, is it?

Not in my view, no, but that statement was made in the Wittgensteinian sense pertaining to information that is potentially present only to the I. You are trying to deny the existence of the subjective or claim that it is completely isomorphic to objective observation. Good luck with that. You haven't done anywhere near the level of both scientific and philosophical heavy lifting required to conclude this and neither has your love Dennett. In neuroscience circles the joke about Dennett's book Consciousness Explained was to call it "Consciousness Ignored"

The difference between us is I don't deny they exist and I think their cause, though subconscious, is the more critical foundation of human thought, cognition, and awareness.

FUWF: "They do appear to behave as a form of data compression"
Wait, what? You can either have

FUWF: "qualia contain and can convey no useful information"
or

FUWF: "appear to behave as a form of data compression"
but certainly not both.

I actually meant to say as a result of data compression. But I also could have said they behave as a residual of data compression (which itself could be a self-inclusive and self-referential process). If you understand information theory then you shouldn't have a problem with this. Qualia would have all the residual information "squeezed out" and unavailable to Shannon criteria for further information sending.

Consciousness, that is, self-referential information processing, opens up an entire new class of rapid adaptive behaviours that aren't possible without it. It's an enormous evolutionary advantage.

It's effortless to believe this if I accept what you implicitly seem to believe is consciousness, which is indistinguishable from the p-zombies I despise. I believe it anyway, but not in your level of conception of consciousness.

 

[FedUpWithFaith]

Nothing. He loses the argument. He might continue posting, but once you've ruled out empirical evidence and logic, you've lost the argument.

Something tells me he won't be sufficiently impressed by the judge and jury and neither am I.

And what have I accomplished if I beat "him" and won the argument and he stops posting? In whose eyes? Did I persuade him to consider new ideas and reconsider his own? Did I help you to explore some new truth or simply act as a sycophant to reinforce yours? Perhaps there is someone who was on the fence lurking who weighed the arguments on both sides and found my arguments most persuasive. But it apparently didn't mean enough to them to bother posting to thank me for offering them some new insight or idea or to offer ideas of their own.

So Hoorah for me!

Wait, at least UE showed some doubt and vulnerability and was, if grudging, prepared to acknowledge the weaknesses in his own arguments as I did. A huge improvement over the UE I knew at Dawkins. But perhaps he was so embattled there he felt he could show no weakness lest he be pounded into the dust for it.

As Sam Harris said, "without doubt there can be no dialogue". Although I will admit to ego-centric enjoyment in the sport of debate I much prefer engaging in real dialogue. On that score, I find UE a much more enjoyable adversary than you. With you, I get the feeling that there is nothing I could ever say to change your mind. If I'm wrong I apologize. I'm a newbie and maybe my conclusion is premature.. But I see you have 1000's of posts here. Maybe you could point me to a few to where you changed your mind on a topic of major significance to you. Or are you the smartest guy here?