Are You Conscious?

[Z]

Why does pain hurt?

??? Are you five?

Why is light bright? Why is red red? Why does a stench stink? Because that's how it's defined.

Why is there an unpleasant sensation(qualia, if you will), when I stub my toe?

So that you will react in such a way to reduce or remove the damage. Duh.

Think about it: two organisms develop. One has nerves that cause an 'unpleasant sensation' (as you call it) when it's exposed to extreme heat; the other does not. Extreme heat occurs. One moves away from the heat, in order to reduce the sensation; the other doesn't, and dies. Which one reproduces?

So we have sensations which we innately avoid, because such an automatic reaction allows our species to survive and reproduce.

More intruigingly to me is that not all pain 'hurts' the same way - that is, some people can react to pain in entirely different ways than other people. Some people even like pain - they find it pleasurable. Some can even ignore certain levels of pain entirely. They are aware of it, but in its purest terms - that damage has occured and should be tended to. I fall into this latter category with most low-level pains. It's neither unpleasant nor pleasant; it simply is, like light or heat or sweet or C flat.

 

[UndercoverElephant]

Well, it's good to know the hippy movement never died out...

If we get rid of the religious part of the equation, we may one day reach a new ideological framework for humanity which places a high value on the search for the best model of reality as an end in itself, emphasizing the interconnectedness and interdependence of extended systems. Religion is about division, after all.

We can't get rid of the religious part of the equation. Religion is no more about division than science is. Both aim at unity and fail miserably.

 

[Z]

I wish Pixy had made it more clear that SHRDLU spoke Korean.

Just tried copying and pasting some translated from English Korean characters from Babel Fish to SHRDLU. No luck.

Have you tried it?

Allow me a moment to recompose myself... (snicker snicker)

The point, Franky baby, is if you know its language, you can communicate with it to whatever degree it possesses. I'm not personally familiar with SHRDLU, so I have no idea what language or dialect or whatever it speaks. Meanwhile, any being can have a standard response when it doesn't understand something. I can say "I don't know what ____ means" in six different languages, none of which I speak - which is why I learned that phrase. If someone who only speaks German asked me the same questions, I'd sound to him like the SHRDLU sounds to you. So would that make me non-conscious?

As an 'evidence fail', it falls far short, Frank.

... did you try Esparanto? Just kidding!

 

[Z]

We can't get rid of the religious part of the equation. Religion is no more about division than science is. Both aim at unity and fail miserably.

I disagree utterly. Religion is all about division. Religion - every form I've found so far except, possibly, unitarianism - is about 'us' vs. 'them'. At its most simplified and dehumanized level, religion is about 'right' and 'wrong', which inevitably leads to 'us' vs 'them'. Historically, it's always about how 'our believers are human/have souls/deserve to rule the world' and 'their believers are inhuman/soulless/deserve a painful death which our god says we should help them achieve'.

Science is about discovery, and creating good models. Especially of four-masted sailing ships.

 

[UndercoverElephant]

I disagree utterly. Religion is all about division. Religion - every form I've found so far except, possibly, unitarianism - is about 'us' vs. 'them'.

Then you haven't looked hard enough.

 

[Belz...]

No, because nothing in the behaviour of other people is indicative that they are having experiences.

You're still using the reverse perspective from what I was proposing, in order to say this.

The only reason that we assume that they have experiences is because we have experiences ourselves, and we tend to think that they will be the same as us.

Interesting. So you deny that your near-entire set of behaviours, much of it being private, is modeled after other people's ?

I've noticed that this topic leads to people insisting on the truth of things that are highly dubious, and denying what is obviously true - and the more they think about it, the greater the tendency is.

So have I.

 

[Belz...]

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencet...takes-fembot-girlfriend-Christmas-dinner.html

Was that a joke ?

I hope so.

 

[Frank Newgent]

I wish Pixy had made it more clear that SHRDLU spoke Korean.

Just tried copying and pasting some translated from English Korean characters from Babel Fish to SHRDLU. No luck.

Have you tried it?

Allow me a moment to recompose myself... (snicker snicker)

The point, Franky baby, is if you know its language, you can communicate with it to whatever degree it possesses. I'm not personally familiar with SHRDLU, so I have no idea what language or dialect or whatever it speaks. Meanwhile, any being can have a standard response when it doesn't understand something. I can say "I don't know what ____ means" in six different languages, none of which I speak - which is why I learned that phrase. If someone who only speaks German asked me the same questions, I'd sound to him like the SHRDLU sounds to you. So would that make me non-conscious?

As an 'evidence fail', it falls far short, Frank.

... did you try Esparanto? Just kidding!

Have I been typing Indonesian or Spanish to you? No.

But thanks for the information.

Guess we'll have to wait for Pixy to explain what SHRDLU is supposed to do.

 

[Paul C. Anagnostopoulos]

The problem was first pointed out by Nietzsche when he said "God is Dead". What he meant was that he saw a modern world coming which has completely lost touch with the value systems that had held societies together in the past, especially the Greeks who he admired so much. And he was dead right.

He was? So the value systems in the dark ages were better?

The ruling ideology of the day is consumerism. Our political system can't solve the problem because the politicians are followers, not leaders. All they care about is getting re-elected. They will not provoke idealogical change, regardless of how desperately it is needed. The only forces capable of overturning the ruling ideology of the day are science and religion, but science and religion are currently involved in a completely pointless ideological conflict of their own.

What's the problem to be solved, again?

I have a dream, Paul. My dream is that an alliance (not a fusion or synthesis) of scientific and religious leadership can, when push comes to shove, help to establish a new ideological framework for humanity - one which places a high value on the search for truth as an end in itself and emphasises the interconnectness and interdependence of all things.

How does that feed all the poor bastards in Africa?

Think that is an impossible dream? It may seem so now, but in ten or twenty years time when the populace finally realise they are indeed heading for eco-geddon and the old system begins to visibly break down, then just maybe it is possible. I hope so, because the alternative is likely to be the complete disintegration of the modern world and the deaths of several billion people.

If overpopulation is a real problem, it isn't going to be solved by any touchy-feely quasi-religious coming together of humanity.

That said, why can't we all just get along?

~~ Paul

 

[Gestahl]

Theres is nothing about our biology that -doesn't- involve SRIPs and it never stops performing SRIPs, yet we're only conscious for limited periods of time. Doesn't that raise any red flags for you indicating that maybe -- just maybe -- SRIP is not an adequate definition?

I understand this response. Mosquitos do SRIP, and we can be quite certain they aren't as conscious as we are. They simply do not have the representational capacity. I think some software is more conscious than a mosquito.

The key (and shame on the physicalists here that do not clarify this) is the our kind of consciousness requires a lot more than simple SRIP to mean what the people you are discussing with mean by consciousness. Just SRIP gives you a mosquito, a reflex action, sleepwalking, or other such things. On top of that you need representational richness (this includes the representation of other consciousnesses, and lies at the heart of our ability to empathize), memory, and abstractive capability. This gets us up to the level of a dog, or other "smart animal". The final step to all this is the ability to represent the representation, if you will: i.e. to not only be informed of something, but to represent it. Along with this comes the ability to represent that which represents, and thus comes self-awareness. All this continues to stack up recursively feed into itself in tangled knots. Then you start getting the type of consciousness you keep objecting can't come from simple SRIP, but at it's base, that's all it is.

Consciousness isn't all or nothing, and there is no critical neural mass, nor self-representational capability, where we can say "Aha! *Now* it's fully conscious." The problem we are having here is you ask for definitions, and we have given you necessary, but not sufficient conditions.

 

[Paul C. Anagnostopoulos]

Think about it: two organisms develop. One has nerves that cause an 'unpleasant sensation' (as you call it) when it's exposed to extreme heat; the other does not. Extreme heat occurs. One moves away from the heat, in order to reduce the sensation; the other doesn't, and dies. Which one reproduces?

But why does the the first organism experience pain? Why not just mechanically move away, like some creatures do? Surely the answer has something to do with the way in which the reaction evolved.

But none of this answers the question: How does the experience work?

More intruigingly to me is that not all pain 'hurts' the same way - that is, some people can react to pain in entirely different ways than other people. Some people even like pain - they find it pleasurable. Some can even ignore certain levels of pain entirely. They are aware of it, but in its purest terms - that damage has occured and should be tended to. I fall into this latter category with most low-level pains. It's neither unpleasant nor pleasant; it simply is, like light or heat or sweet or C flat.

This is precisely the sort of data that brings up the question, since clearly the experience is different for different people. From this we infer that there is actually an "experience" that we can talk about; we can't just dismiss the experience as a nonexistent folk-psychology construct.

It's the last day of the year and a blue moon, so I'm playing Devil's advocate.

~~ Paul

 

[Belz...]

Sounds good to me. It isn't entertaining anymore, just pathetic. I'll leave the fun of arguing with you to the next naive newbie who enjoys self-flagellation.

I don't see Pixy put many people on ignore, FedUp... perhaps politeness would work better than cynicism.

 

[Malerin]

??? Are you five?

Why is light bright? Why is red red? Why does a stench stink? Because that's how it's defined.

Wait, I thought it was all stilted refractory isometric properties (or whatever SRIP is)? You're very close to admitting qualia exist. Watch out there!

And defining pain as an unpleasent sensation doesn't explain why we feel pain, why sensations exist at all, and how they exist.

So that you will react in such a way to reduce or remove the damage. Duh.

That doesn't explain why I have the subjective experience of pain. Are you claiming pain is a necessary condition for an organism (or machine) to "reduce or remove damage"? I believe you could design a pretty simple machine to "reduce damage" to itself. Would you say it's in pain?

Think about it: two organisms develop. One has nerves that cause an 'unpleasant sensation' (as you call it) when it's exposed to extreme heat; the other does not. Extreme heat occurs. One moves away from the heat, in order to reduce the sensation; the other doesn't, and dies. Which one reproduces?

When you touch a hot stove, what happens first, the sensation of pain or the reflexive withdrawal of the hand?

 

[Belz...]

1. What do qualia do?

Honest answer: I'm not sure.

So they are neither observed nor defined functionally ? So why posit them ?

Precisely what behaviour is it that we ascribe to consciousness that SHRDLU does not exhibit?

I'm not going to answer this now since we can't get past #1 and because you insist self-referential processing is self-awareness. I would say certain forms of self-referential processing yield self-awareness.

Assuming that consciousness doesn't necessarily lead to behaviour and that Pixy's definition is true, how would you go about knowing that a computer, a thermostat, or a human, is in any way, shape or form, aware or self-aware ?

So... if not self-referential processing, then what ?

 

[Belz...]

Not quite. Those who need those things will never reach agreement with those who need them not to exist.

Need ? What possible advantage is there to NOT having an immortal soul ?

 

[Malerin]

But why does the the first organism experience pain? Why not just mechanically move away, like some creatures do? Surely the answer has something to do with the way in which the reaction evolved.

But none of this answers the question: How does the experience work?


This is precisely the sort of data that brings up the question, since clearly the experience is different for different people. From this we infer that there is actually an "experience" that we can talk about; we can't just dismiss the experience as a nonexistent folk-psychology construct.

It's the last day of the year and a blue moon, so I'm playing Devil's advocate.

~~ Paul

You should play it more often!

 

[Malerin]

So they are neither observed nor defined functionally ? So why posit them ?

Because they exist?

Belz stubbs his toe. "Son-of-a- I mean, Oh my! That hurt was sensory data I could do without. I must attend to the injured body part and take steps so that does not happen again."

Assuming that consciousness doesn't necessarily lead to behaviour and that Pixy's definition is true, how would you go about knowing that a computer, a thermostat, or a human, is in any way, shape or form, aware or self-aware ?

By assuming Pixy's definition isn't true?

 

[FedUpWithFaith]

Everyone who understands what is going on on Planet Earth at the start of the 21st century should give a damn. Unfortunately, due to the fact that we are ideologically screwed, almost nobody does. All they care about is how much money they've got and what's happening on the TV.

I did a lot of reflection last night and I'm quite sure I came up with an unassailable explanation for consciousness and being that when people realize it's true - they'll immediately be able to put it to use to solve all the world's problems. I'd tell you about it but they're having a sale on Snuggies on QVC right now. And after that, Oprah's got another of her "favorite things" shows.... can't miss that...

 

[PixyMisa]

He was?

Well, he's dead, so UndercoverElephant is half right.

How does that feed all the poor bastards in Africa?

It doesn't, but now their souls are improved by their suffering...

If you mix together equal parts desert topping and floor wax, you don't get something with all the best properties of both, you get a useless inedible mess. And religion isn't that useful to begin with.

That said, why can't we all just get along?

Because someone is wrong on the internet!

 

[Belz...]

experiences are.

Small correction: experiences do.