Has consciousness been fully explained?

[rocketdodger]

It means that it is possible to simulate something in a non-computational way.

That still means nothing to me because I have no idea what you mean by "simulate" and "non-computational." Especially given that you don't agree with anyone else's definition of "computation" to begin with.

Perhaps you could provide a working definition of those terms ...

 

[my_wan]

The word "or" means the opposite of equate.

ETA: An emergent property is an extra property. But emergent property is not dualism since the emergent property is still physical in nature.

Yes, I understood the logic. I used the same or operator in my rebuttal. Your logic went...
Either:
1) extra property = dualism
Or:
2) extra property = some sort of "emergent property" idea.

Although I used the or operator to include dualism, and provided a distinct rebuttal for it, my rebuttal was primarily concerned with 2). The notion that emergent equates to extra properties is misleading. It's merely a relabeling of a variable set as if an individual variable. In that sense it actually involves a reduction of labeled properties rather than an extra property. To call it an extra property is tantamount to saying property set X = property Y, thus property Y is an "extra" property of property set X. No, it "is" property set X.

Hopefully that makes the distinction more clear, and is a very necessary thing to understand if you wish to have any basis for understanding emergent properties.

 

[bluskool]

Yes, I understood the logic. I used the same or operator in my rebuttal. Your logic went...
Either:
1) extra property = dualism
Or:
2) extra property = some sort of "emergent property" idea.

Although I used the or operator to include dualism, and provided a distinct rebuttal for it, my rebuttal was primarily concerned with 2).

Okay, it read to me like you thought I said 1. Extra property = emergent property or 2. dualism = emergent property, but moving on...

To call it an extra property is tantamount to saying property set X = property Y, thus property Y is an "extra" property of property set X. No, it "is" property set X.

You are right, both 1. and 2. are wrong. I was confusing "emergent property" with "epiphenomenalism."

 

[bluskool]

If you want to say it like that, fine. As long as you understand that we might be simulated life talking about simulated consciousness in our simulated universe.

I don't see the need to make such a distinction, though. We are alive, we are conscious, relative to the space we inhabit. If we create a simulation, and there is simulated life in that simulation, then that life is alive relative to the space it inhabits.

It is always relative to the same space.

The strawman people are up in arms about is the claim that a simulated cell would be alive relative to our space. But that is absurd, and nobody has made such a claim. Quite obviously such a cell would not be alive relative to our space because it is nothing more than bits of data in a computer in our space.

That is such a stupid claim, in fact, that I didn't think it was necessary to clarify that I was not making it. I didn't think I needed to say "when I claim that a cell in a simulation is alive, I mean it is alive relative to the simulation space it inhabits, not that it is alive relative to our space." Apparently I did need to say that, though.

Okay, so do you think that the simulation of consciousness would need to be put into the system or would it just sort of happen?

 

[Meed]

Name a quality that can't be defined as either a variable or constant. Thus these "qualities" have a quantity when fully defined. Both constants or a variables are defined by degrees of freedom. Constants obviously have fewer the variables.


Heat is a good example. It is the kinetic energy transfered in an ensemble of collisions. The distribution of this kinetic energy is proportional to mv², distributed among all the translational and rotational degrees of freedom of the medium parts 'm', called the equipartition of energy. It's why iron gets so much hotter in the sun than many other materials. The specific heat of a material is merely a resulting property of the degrees of freedom.

I think you're over complicating things. My point was a very simple one. Namely, you can't define a process as only applying to things which are "hot" and then say it doesn't apply to humans, because humans are far less hot than the sun. Both have heat, so no clear basis for distinction has been provided.

I made this point, using an arbitrary example, because I felt that RD was doing this (of course I may have misunderstood). He/she was using qualities such as "displays non-linear internal change in response to the enivronment" (paraphrasing) and then emphasizing that rocks display this quality far less than cells (e.g. "rocks just sit there").

OTOH, RD has admitted that by his/her definition, rocks can "compute" under certain circumstances. So why this difference was being emphasized I'm not really sure.

As for a mouse running versus a rock rolling being a counter-example to my above point, I still fail to see it. Rolling is not different than running due to a difference in scale along some uni-dimensional axis. As such, I'm also not seeing the relevance of the technical definition of degrees of freedom.

 

[Meed]

I am confident that we could, with just a little thought, come up with some kind of a locomotion system that blurred the distinction between rolling and running.

In such a case, the difference is defined by other systems that interact with it.

Sure, gray areas are going to be unavoidable with many definitions. I'm not saying gray areas necessarily invalidate a technical concept. But there should at least be enough justified distinction to give us an idea of where that gray area is.

 

[AlBell]

I didn't think I needed to say "when I claim that a cell in a simulation is alive, I mean it is alive relative to the simulation space it inhabits, not that it is alive relative to our space."

And so now the 'simulated conciousness' in only conscious in the simulation, and not conscious relative to our space? I think some posters aver the hardware/software running in 'our space' is conscious, in our space.

 

[Meed]

Which is my whole point, right? I am trying to convey the notion that it is OK to jump from quantitative differences to qualitative ones. I am doing that by showing that we do it all the time anyway without thinking about it.

We do it all the time with natural semantic concepts, where it is very difficult to define why one concept is different than another. But if you're proposing a new (or at least unfamiliar) for the purpose of some sort of philosophical or scientific definition, then it's going to take more work. For example, if I had never seen anything rolling or running before, you could not simply say "running is what that mouse is doing and rolling is what that rock is doing" and expect me to have anything, but a vague idea of the distinction.

 

[Meed]

If you claim that the only "real" X can be here in our space, and that anything resembling X in a simulation space with respect to our space isn't "real" I.E. is it not another X, just a "simulated X," then the knowledge that we were in a simulation to begin with sort of blows your claim out of the water.

Not really. If we are a simulation then we're simulating something. By definition we're not the same as what we're simulating in every respect.

Of course, I could be wrong, since it is obvious to anyone who actually ponders the issue that since it is impossible to determine whether we are in a simulation to begin with then it is clearly possible for life and consciousness to exist within a simulation,

This is not sound reasoning.

and there are still a whole bunch of people that can't seem to understand that mathematical fact.

Explain how it's a mathematical fact.

 

[Meed]

And so now the 'simulated conciousness' in only conscious in the simulation, and not conscious relative to our space? I think some posters aver the hardware/software running in 'our space' is conscious, in our space.

Saying simulated consciousness is only conscious "in the simulation" is like saying brain consciousness is only conscious in the brain. If we're talking about computer simulations, these work with inputs and outputs (i.e. the external world). Does "simulation space" actually exist or is it an abstraction convenient for extracting meaning from the simulation?

 

[AlBell]

And so now the 'simulated conciousness' in only conscious in the simulation, and not conscious relative to our space? I think some posters aver the hardware/software running in 'our space' is conscious, in our space.

Saying simulated consciousness is only conscious "in the simulation" is like saying brain consciousness is only conscious in the brain. If we're talking about computer simulations, these work with inputs and outputs (i.e. the external world). Does "simulation space" actually exist or is it an abstraction convenient for extracting meaning from the simulation?

Indeed. Now, back to that 'aliveness'.

 

[my_wan]

When we speak of a simulated environment, the variables defining this environment are real world variables. They are not a separate space that our senses have access to, only a separate set of variables which those sense are tuned to. Speaking of simulated environment as if it's a separate space implies to me a dualism between our space and simulation space. It's not, we merely view the the real world variables defining that simulated space from a different perspective. Yet our senses and theirs involves real world variables in the same world.

 

[westprog]

That still means nothing to me because I have no idea what you mean by "simulate" and "non-computational." Especially given that you don't agree with anyone else's definition of "computation" to begin with.

Perhaps you could provide a working definition of those terms ...

For example, a video of a train ride played through goggles can simulate a train ride. It might be convincing enough to make someone think he's in a train. That would be quite a different kind of simulation to an artificial mind being given the data indicating a train ride.

 

[westprog]

This is not sound reasoning.
.

non sequitor - see JREF, consciousness threads.

 

[rocketdodger]

Okay, so do you think that the simulation of consciousness would need to be put into the system or would it just sort of happen?

Well it would either need to be the result of billions of iterations of evolution within the simulation or else someone putting it in.

So both, if you consider "just sort of happen" == "billions of iterations of evolution"

Certainly you couldnt just set up a random assortment of simulated neurons or simulated transistors and expect them to be conscious when you pressed F5

 

[rocketdodger]

Sure, gray areas are going to be unavoidable with many definitions. I'm not saying gray areas necessarily invalidate a technical concept. But there should at least be enough justified distinction to give us an idea of where that gray area is.

Well I am arguing the converse -- I say that if there isn't enough gray area then a distinction should be justified.

Just because westprog can produce a number of gray area examples doesn't mean that the "switching" distinction between a transistor and a bowl of soup isn't justified.

 

[AlBell]

When we speak of a simulated environment, the variables defining this environment are real world variables. They are not a separate space that our senses have access to, only a separate set of variables which those sense are tuned to. Speaking of simulated environment as if it's a separate space implies to me a dualism between our space and simulation space. It's not, we merely view the the real world variables defining that simulated space from a different perspective. Yet our senses and theirs involves real world variables in the same world.

Hypothesized by some; facts not in evidence.

Is life something different and beyond SRIP?

 

[rocketdodger]

And so now the 'simulated conciousness' in only conscious in the simulation, and not conscious relative to our space? I think some posters aver the hardware/software running in 'our space' is conscious, in our space.

Consciousness is relative to the self. It has to be, that is what SRIP means. Self Referential.

So if the "self" is defined in a given space, the consciousness must by definition be in that space.

People who think software is conscious in our space mean that the software is aware of itself as software is aware of itself. That is, a data structure is aware of itself as a data structure, etc.

If the software is actually just a substrate layer for something else in a simulation -- for example, a model of biological neurons -- then the software is obviously not aware of itself as software. It is the software as a neural model being aware of itself as a neural network. It doesn't have any reference to the "software" aspect of itself.

Just like you yourself are not aware of your own neurons and certainly not the particles that compose them. To you, "self" is what you see in the mirror. To a simulated person, self would be something within that simulation, not the transistors running the simulation.

 

[AlBell]

Consciousness is relative to the self. It has to be, that is what SRIP means. Self Referential.

Agreed, so far as it goes.

To you, "self" is what you see in the mirror.

No. That is not my "self".

To a simulated person, self would be something within that simulation, not the transistors running the simulation.

None of us have a clue what "self" might mean to a simulated lifeform in that simulation.

 

[rocketdodger]

Explain how it's a mathematical fact.

Hmmm, that will take some time. I am pretty sure I can come up with something ...


Are you actually disputing that it is impossible, or do you just want to see a proof?