Are You Conscious?

[PixyMisa]

The "Turing paradigm" simply doesn't deal with the situation. The Turing machine deals with the data it gets.

So do computers.

There is no concept of missing or erroneous data.

There is exactly the same concept of missing or erroneous data with Turing machines as there is with physical computers.

The real-time paradigm is what we use to deal with the situation.

No.

 

[PixyMisa]

Is your goal to -simulate- magnetic fields and electrical currents or -physically- generate them?

Red herring, category error.

 

[Frank Newgent]

Why should a methodological behaviorist believe that, like thinking and feeling, cancer is a private behavior?

I stated that it is a private behavior, now I will qualify that it is unknown to the individual until such time as it is made known. I am not making absolute claims or anything.

If you can look at someone's skin and say 'yup there is a radial asymmetry to that mole and it appears darker than the others’, that is a description of something that can be easily seen and observed. The doctor still had to shave it off and have someone send it to the lab to confirm the possible diagnosis of melanoma. Levels of observation and data.

Wittgenstein might argue that if something is an invasive melanoma then it cannot be (logically) private, and that if something is private it cannot be invasive melanoma.

However I have to get my cholesterol level checked or my blood pressure, those are private behaviors made public. I know the problem is with the use of the word 'private' and its connotation, so maybe the better term would be 'not-public'.

High blood pressure is sometimes called "the silent killer" which indeed seems to fit with your idea of "non-public".

Reward your blood pressure when its systolic/diastolic counts remain below 120/80. My blood pressure responds well to non-fat ice cream, bacon, and Mylar balloons.

To keep lipoprotein densities high after such positive reinforcement, bad cholesterol may need to be punished. This could include coating the artery walls with an emetic or the use of electroconvulsive therapy on cholesterol counts with protein-density issues.

In the case of a lymphoma that is undiagnosed it is not easily visible or known through cursory observation, but with a biopsy or blood tests a 'non-public' behavior becomes 'public'. But hey I didn't make the words, I just use them.

If a lymph node enlarged and no lymphoma classification systems had grouped it... would it still be a hematological malignancy?

There are in fact components to ‘thought’ that are unknown to the individual experiencing verbal cognition, but I agree the use of ‘private’ and ‘public’ is not great and may be reworked eventually. I know people don't like the use of the word 'behavior' to decribe non-volitional functions as well.

Behavior theorists define learning as nothing more than the acquisition of new behavior. Cancer cells learning to break away from a primary tumor, learning to enter lymphatic and blood vessels, or learning to to be deposited within normal tissue elsewhere in the body are good examples of such new behavior acquisition.

 

[PixyMisa]

Behavior theorists define learning as nothing more than the acquisition of new behavior. Cancer cells learning to break away from a primary tumor, learning to enter lymphatic and blood vessels, or learning to to be deposited within normal tissue elsewhere in the body are good examples of such new behavior acquisition.

No.

 

[Robin]

A while ago in this or a related thread the question was asked about how we might define a computation to differentiate it from a physical process.

I have given it some thought and will have a stab:

physical process: a deterministic or an arbitrary process where each state's measurement does not necessarily have a precise symbolic representation

computation: a deterministic process where each state's measurement can have a precise symbolic representation.

 

[Beth]

I admit it doesn't feel like that, but the alternatives make even less sense (either the brain uses non-computable physics, or some other people might be p-zombies, but not me)

Also, from a biological evolution standpoint, public behavior is the only thing that ever matters. As far as evolution is concerned, p-zombies are good enough.

The inescapable conclusion is that this is what it feels like to be a p-zombie.

Or that p-zombies cannot exist. That's what I conclude anyway.

 

[PixyMisa]

A while ago in this or a related thread the question was asked about how we might define a computation to differentiate it from a physical process.

I have given it some thought and will have a stab:

physical process: a deterministic or an arbitrary process where each state's measurement does not necessarily have a precise symbolic representation

computation: a deterministic process where each state's measurement can have a precise symbolic representation.

Hmm. I'll have to think about that. You do have something.

 

[Frank Newgent]

Behavior theorists define learning as nothing more than the acquisition of new behavior. Cancer cells learning to break away from a primary tumor, learning to enter lymphatic and blood vessels, or learning to to be deposited within normal tissue elsewhere in the body are good examples of such new behavior acquisition.

No.

 

[AkuManiMani]

Awww... Lookadabunnysocute!^^

 

[Robin]

Not yet in practice, of course.

The point is that empirical confirmation doesn't add anything if we agree that the brain is computable.

But we can't agree that the brain is computable. If reality is continuous rather than discrete then no real value is computable.

It might be approximateable, but even at a billion decimal places you would still be as far from computing the number as you were at 1 decimal place.

So I reserve judgement for the time being and am happy to look the fool when the empirical confirmation comes in.

 

[PixyMisa]

But we can't agree that the brain is computable. If reality is continuous rather than discrete then no real value is computable.

If, yes. But quantum mechanics tells us that reality is not meaningfully continuous - that while spacetime may or may not be actually quantised at the Planck scale, it is effectively so.

It might be approximateable, but even at a billion decimal places you would still be as far from computing the number as you were at 1 decimal place.

The problem is, we have no reason to believe that reality is continuous, and no reason to think that it would matter even if it were. Your position is that there is a functional difference between arbitrary precision and infinite precision in modelling the behaviour of real physical systems. But said systems display no such sensitivity themselves. You have to really whack the brain hard to disrupt consciousness even momentarily.

 

[PixyMisa]

That makes a lot more sense. Hello Oolong!

 

[falkowsi]

Is your goal to -simulate- magnetic fields and electrical currents or -physically- generate them?

The first item is just simulation. Simulated movements, and simulated electrical fields. In the original item, it was about whether it is possible to create a faithful simulation of the brain. At this point, I'm only concerned with accuracy of the simulation, and not attach any meaning to it in terms of consciousness. Obviously, the simulation runs on physical hardware, e.g. a powerful computer system.

Do you mean by the simulation or the actual physical hardware? Somehow I think you're still missing the point

The second item deals with transforming the inputs from the real, physical world into numbers that we plug into the simulation, and take simulated outputs, and turn them into real physical effects. In the case of the dynamo, we would be interested in the current output, so we attach a physical device to the computer that can take a digital signal, and turn it into a physical current. This would be a real physical entity that we can measure with a current meter.

In case of our brain simulation, the physical input would be a camera system, and microphone, and the output would be a speaker. If you like, you can also add mechanical limbs, and other parts of the anatomy.

If you hook up a sound card to a computer, which has been programmed to say "good morning", you aren't denying that real physical sounds come out of the speaker ?

Do you agree that it is - in principle - possible to produce such a system to provide a faithful brain simulation, plus an interface to the real world, including a speaker, such that we can hear the simulated person speak to us ?

Note that at this point I'm not concerned with the meaning of consciousness. It is just a matter whether a faithful simulation is possible.

 

[falkowsi]

But we can't agree that the brain is computable. If reality is continuous rather than discrete then no real value is computable.

It might be approximateable, but even at a billion decimal places you would still be as far from computing the number as you were at 1 decimal place.

There are limits to the accuracy of the brain. Things like a mild fever will already adjust all chemical balances inside the brain. The same thing happens when you shake your head, have a beer, get tired, have low blood sugar, breathe really quickly, ...etc...

These things do have an effect on our perception, so there are noticeable shifts in the brain chemistry, and they are much bigger than the billionth decimal place. Nevertheless, consciousness isn't affected until you have an extreme fever, or pass out from the alcohol, take a big blow to the head, ...etc...

It doesn't look like infinite precision is obtainable in our heads, nor does it look like it is necessary.

 

[nescafe]

In the case of consciousness however, we're not so much speaking of the -processing- of information but the -experience- of information.

My intuition is that they are one and the same. Yours (obviously) is not. Neither of us have anything empirical to say about it that is decisive.

Computation just refers to the functional constraints imposed upon a given physical system but computation itself is not physics.

The guys working on digital physics (Fredkin and Tegmark (when he is feeling wacky)) have some not-totally-insane arguments along the lines of physics being computation (or straight up maths, which is close enough).

In principle, computation cannot explain subjective experience. At best, it describes how those experiences are organized.

I am afraid you are asserting as fact something that you have no way of proving, and that no-one has any reason to accept as axiomatic.

 

[westprog]

The guys working on digital physics (Fredkin and Tegmark (when he is feeling wacky)) have some not-totally-insane arguments along the lines of physics being computation (or straight up maths, which is close enough).

Even if it is true that physics is computation, it doesn't necessarily hold that computation is physics.

 

[Belz...]

If a track is X seconds long and it takes Y seconds to play, then that is equivalent to "not working". Anyone trying to access multimedia on a slow machine knows exactly what I mean.

Not working all that well, perhaps, but "not working" ?

You can consider whatever you like.

Indeed. It's simply very telling when you refuse to continue to adress points in a discussion for no reason.

 

[Belz...]

Assuming that it is conscious, the hypothetical designer should be able to tell us what it's experiencing and how similar or different it's experiences are from our own.

No. You're moving the goal posts. You agreed that it possessed consciousness because its was indiscernable from a conscious entity.

I can't tell you what you're experiencing, even though I'm pretty sure you're conscious.

 

[westprog]

Not working all that well, perhaps, but "not working" ?

There's a specified performance below which it is considered to be "not working". In the case of an MP3, playing it so that it takes twice as long to complete as it should is a pretty good description of "not working". It's worse than silence in most cases.

 

[Belz...]

There's a specified performance below which it is considered to be "not working". In the case of an MP3, playing it so that it takes twice as long to complete as it should is a pretty good description of "not working". It's worse than silence in most cases.

No, because silence would be "not working". Slower is annoying, but if you just want to get the damn thing to go from start to finish, slower is "not working properly" but definitely not "not working".