Has consciousness been fully explained?

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Earthborn said:
That's because those computer simulation don't physically perform the same task. A simulated power plant doesn't produce power, it only outputs information about how a power plant produces power.
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And that objection is missing the point anyway. What is important is the part of the computer that is controlling the simulated power plant, the part that is controlling the electricity, and routing the power, or whatever a computer system might do in a power plant. If this computer was hooked up to a real power plant, it would be doing the same things.

A computer running a simulation of a human is not only simulating the particles, it is controlling them. A computer that was just simulating a lump of matter is different than one controlling a perfectly simulated human body in such a way that we would call it a perfect simulation of a human.
 
Piggy said:
The behavior of the brain. Like the behavior of the lungs makes me breathe.

We don't know exactly what that behavior is yet, but we can safely conclude that it is contained entirely within the brain, it involves neural activity in specific zones of the brain (such as the zone in Marvin's brain that was cut off when he lost his awareness of his emotional states), and it appears to be correlated with the simultaneous creation of 4 "signature" brain waves. Whatever else may be going on, we don't know.

But whatever the full picture turns out to be, there is 4-D spacetime behavior in my brain that turns Sofia on and off.
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I meant more that 'how would you characterise them', I am still going for the plural processes under a rubric.
 
Dancing David said:
Frank Newgent said:
That one doesn't directly experience "behavior" is my point.

Behavior is described from a 3rd person perspective.
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Not always, self reports of internal events are prone to validity issues, but they are still reports of behaviors.
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Unfortunately "reports of" have moved from '1st person (indescribable)' to 3rd person (shared-by-others) behavior.
 
Third Eye Open said:
And that objection is missing the point anyway. What is important is the part of the computer that is controlling the simulated power plant, the part that is controlling the electricity, and routing the power, or whatever a computer system might do in a power plant. If this computer was hooked up to a real power plant, it would be doing the same things.
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And, vice versa, if you add a simulated electric motor and connect it to the simulated power plant, it will work. The behaviours are the same - it's just that the substrate is different.

The same happens with a simulated brain: You produce all the expected behaviours, including consciousness. You can't have it any other way, unless you want to invoke dualism, or magic - which are essentially the same thing.
 
PixyMisa said:
And, vice versa, if you add a simulated electric motor and connect it to the simulated power plant, it will work. The behaviours are the same - it's just that the substrate is different.

The same happens with a simulated brain: You produce all the expected behaviours, including consciousness. You can't have it any other way, unless you want to invoke dualism, or magic - which are essentially the same thing.
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My bolding.

Expected behaviors. Systems theory depends on what is normative in order to be effective.

You are no less a "dualist" than anybody else.
 
rocketdodger said:
Your definitons aren't complete, though.

You can only say that OPR spilling OPR oil only ocurs in OPR.

That is rather obvious. So what? We can still say that oil spills -- it just isn't in OPR. Why is there a fixation with OPR?

I want you to tell me why, for instance, the navigation mechanics used by the A.I. I work with are any less "real" than the navigaiton mechanics used by a robot in OPR. Aren't they the same algorithms, operating on the same data? What difference does it make if the data comes from another module that interprets camera images <robot> or from raw data strutures stored as part of a simulated world < my A.I.> ? In the end, it is the same kind of decisions being made -- find the shortest path between two points of data in a data structure that models the world the entity inhabits.

And is that not what we do? Do our brains not also operate on data from the model of the outside world we hold in our heads?
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As anyone who's written control software knows, you can't use the same programs for operations on data, and control and monitoring. It doesn't work. Real time control is a different field. I'm not even sure if what a control program does can even be described as an algorithm.
 
Third Eye Open said:
Actually it seems to me that according to you they wouldn't be rocks without us to define them as such. They would just be a collection of particles -oh wait, but we aren't there to define something as a particle either.
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We have to decide whether a particle of dust embedded in a rock is part of the rock, or a separate rock in itself. Even if we allow that elementary particles have an existence in themselves, what combination of such particles constitutes a "rock" is entirely a matter of definition. We could apply different definitions which would give a different count of rocks. There's no inherent "number" quality applying to the pile.
 
Third Eye Open said:
Okee dokee. I no longer have any idea what is going on here.

How is a computer that is simulating the human brain different than a computer that is 'wired to do what a brain does'. Either way it's all bits and bytes moving around, groups of particles behaving one way and causing other groups to behave in other ways, etc.
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It's different in exactly the same way as a computer simulating an earthquake is different to a real earthquake. I don't know why this has to be explained over and over. The onus of proof is on the people claiming that in this one, special, particular case the simulation is the same as the thing simulated.
 
Piggy said:
It's easy to build small creatures that perceive and respond to the environment, and trickier but do-able to build ones that remember it and learn from it.
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It's actually impossible to imagine something that doesn't respond to its environment, and isn't changed in some way by its response to its environment. It's a universal property of everything in the universe.
 
Earthborn said:
That's because those computer simulation don't physically perform the same task. A simulated power plant doesn't produce power, it only outputs information about how a power plant produces power.

But take for example an artificial heart: assuming it works properly it performs the same function as a natural heart. It pumps blood. It takes in blood and puts out blood. The way I see it, the brain is a sort of information pump. It takes in information from the senses and the rest of the nervous system, and it outputs information to the rest of the nervous system, the muscles and other actuators. If it is possible to create a computer simulation of that brain, and that computer feeds all that information from a real body into the simulation and sends out the output of the simulation back to the body the same way the brain would do, then computer and simulation together function in exactly the same way as a brain would. They would physically perform the same task as the brain.

If my brain was replaced with such a computer running such a brain simulation program, the new computer controlled me would certainly not be any less confused about what you mean with "Sofia" as I am now. I see no reason why it would suddenly say "Piggy, I now understand what 'Sofia' is/are. Previously when I was a brain I had them, but now that I am a computer program I suddenly notice that they are missing." I am pretty sure it would consider your Sofia concept the same way as I do now; basically you just gave problematic concepts such as "consciousness", "awareness", or "soul" new name.
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The brain does not control a simulated arm. It controls a real arm. There are plenty of artificial arms around. They are used for jobs like spraying cars. They have computer interfaces. So we don't need to perform complex bio-mechanical interface science. We can just wire 'em up.

If we connect a simulation of a human being, of the type envisaged by the proponents of the Turing model of artificial intelligence, it will not be able to control the robot arm. We know this. We know this because the programs we have to use to control our robots aren't the same programs we use to simulate our robots.
 
Third Eye Open said:
And that objection is missing the point anyway. What is important is the part of the computer that is controlling the simulated power plant, the part that is controlling the electricity, and routing the power, or whatever a computer system might do in a power plant. If this computer was hooked up to a real power plant, it would be doing the same things.
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No, this is not the case. You can't plug the control portion of a simulation of a power plant into a real power plant. You have to design the control of a power plant from the ground up.
 
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