Has consciousness been fully explained?

[rocketdodger]

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.

wtf?

You are proposing that somehow the data given to a "real time control" computer by it's sensors is ... "not" data?

You are proposing that somehow the sequences of operations performed on the registers of a "real time control" computer's chips are ... "not" sequences of operations?

 

[rocketdodger]

The main argument here is between the people who think that the Turing/computational model is the certain/likely explanation for consciousness, and those who believe that this is unproven, unlikely, or undoubtedly wrong. Insofar as there are two camps, that is what the dividing line is.

This is somewhat misleading.

The argument is between people who think that every behavior, both private and public, exhibited by entities that are known to be conscious could also be exhibited by any other computational process of sufficient complexity and organization, and those that believe this is unproven, unlikely, or wrong.

You are painting this argument as "A toaster has dreams, I am sure of it" vs. "I don't think you have checked your math correctly."

It is more like "Why can't a robot as complicated as a human have dreams?" vs. "becase, sofia, nyah na na na nyah na na, and Roger Penrose said so."

Lets not get confused about who is in which camp, and the apparent education levels here. Everyone in the first camp is either knowledgeable in these fields or else humble enough to not make claims. Everyone in the latter camp is ... neither.

Do you dispute this? Are there any professionals in any relevant field, be it computer science, neuroscience, behavioral science, biology, or anything like that, in the latter camp on this forum?

 

[rocketdodger]

All I can do is go with what the experts think, and computer science experts (in my experience) seem to think that computers could in principle be conscious. I don't know any neuroscience experts. As far as I understand the subject matter, it makes sense to me, so I accept it.

Yep. The relative number of experts who know anything at all about this issue that side with the computational model is overwhelming.

Nobody should blindly accept argument from authority, but when so many experts can explain their reasoning so clearly and it makes sense to an educated individual, well that is saying something about the strength of the position.

 

[rocketdodger]

This seems to me a rather controversial statement. If a Turing machine definitely can't, one has to wonder what sort of machine can.

Pretty much illustrates the level of purposeful stupidity we have to deal with in here.

If I said "a circle can roll well" people say "nu-uh, a circle can't do anything, a circle is a shape."

No-<rule8> sherlock, I obviously mean "a circular object" can roll well.

Hence, people are seriously disputing what a "turing machine" can and cannot do because a "turing machine" only exists in computer science textbooks. What a joke.

Lets just set the record straight, once and for all, eh?

A "Turing Machine," for the purposes of this discussion, is a system of physical entities that can exhibit a set behaviors called "turing completeness." Nothing more.

Thus any system of physical entities that features turing completeness is a turing machine. It might also be other things. Like a brain, or a calculator.

For one to say "A turing machine can't do what a brain does" is both stupid and obvious at once. It is like saying "a vehicle can't do what a car does."

 

[Dancing David]

Not the same? What is this dualist sorcery you speak of?

Non-alcoholic beer!

 

[PixyMisa]

Recall that PM did not claim this was his "opinion", but that it was a "mathematical fact".

In fact, that's not what I said at all. I said that any possible physical process is simulatable by a Turing machine.

It is perfectly possible to mathematically describe a process that cannot be computed or simulated by a Turing machine. However, no such process is physically possible - cf. hypercomputation, which, as noted earlier, comes in two varieties, the physically impossible and the simply undefined.

All possible physical processes are finite in extent and can be fully described with finite precision (following Heisenberg & Planck); there are no actual infinities involved. Thus no physical process can compute anything that a Turing machine cannot, and any physical process is simulatable by a Turing machine. (To arbitrary precision and accuracy, which is already established to be sufficient.)

In the following paragraph, they add:

It is straightforward to describe notional machines, or ‘hypercomputers’ ( Copeland and Proudfoot (1999a)) that generate functions not Turing-machine-computable (see e.g. Abramson (1971), Copeland (2000), Copeland and Proudfoot (2000), Stewart (1991)). It is an open empirical question whether or not the narrow this-worldly version of thesis M is true. Speculation that there may be physical processes -- and so, potentially, machine-operations -- whose behaviour conforms to functions not computable by Turing machine stretches back over at least five decades

I don't know whether this is a red herring or pure incompetence on their part, but either way it is completely irrelevant. It is simple enough to describe such a machine, yes; however, all such machines are impossible - when they are properly defined, they turn out to contain actual infinities - e.g. the analog X-machine, the real computer, artificial recurrent neural networks. All are physical impossibilities, therefore the brain cannot be one, therefore the mind cannot be the product of one, therefore one cannot be required to simulate it.

 

[PixyMisa]

Yarp. Not perfect, but you are pretty close to correctly applying the label this time. Technically it is an argument against materialism rather than an argument for dualism. I tend to lean more toward idealism or neutral monism than dualism, although all the philosophical stances have major flaws.

Cornsail, if you will, I'd like to go back to this for a moment.

You say you lean towards idealism or neutral monism. Now, there are many forms of idealism, so I don't know exactly what you mean there, but neutral monism is straightforward enough - it says that neither the mental nor the physical are the fundamental nature of reality, but that both reduce to a third, "neutral" substance.

The problem with this is that it isn't true. While it is certainly possible that the physical reduces to something else - though why we should care is not as clear - we know perfectly well that the mental reduces to the physical. Neutral monism, unlike most forms of metaphyics, founders not because it is unprovable but because it is provably false.

So why would anyone lean toward it at all?

 

[!Kaggen]

Cornsail, if you will, I'd like to go back to this for a moment.

You say you lean towards idealism or neutral monism. Now, there are many forms of idealism, so I don't know exactly what you mean there, but neutral monism is straightforward enough - it says that neither the mental nor the physical are the fundamental nature of reality, but that both reduce to a third, "neutral" substance.

The problem with this is that it isn't true. While it is certainly possible that the physical reduces to something else - though why we should care is not as clear - we know perfectly well that the mental reduces to the physical. Neutral monism, unlike most forms of metaphyics, founders not because it is unprovable but because it is provably false.

So why would anyone lean toward it at all?

You sure you understand neutral monism?

It seems to me they say mental and physical are merely descriptions of an underlying neutral element.

Thus mental events may be described by physical events in there system.
They do not deny this.

So where is the falsification?

 

[PixyMisa]

You sure you understand neutral monism?

It seems to me they say mental and physical are merely descriptions of an underlying neutral element.

Right. That's what I just said. It's not true.

The mental reduces to the physical. The physical may reduce to something else, but that's irrelevant. The mental reduces to the physical, therefore neutral monism is baloney.

 

[westprog]

I am not assuming that any simulated control system would necessarily be able to run the real power plant.

In post #1320 I was not even claiming that simulation of the brain capable of controlling the human body is definitely possible. My argument in that post only requires one to acknowledge that a hypothetical brain simulation controlling a physical body (by running on a computer connected to that body) is a conceivable concept that cannot be ruled out as definitely impossible. If the universe is as digital physicists think it is, then it certainly is not impossible; just extremely difficult.

What I've denying is specifically that a Turing Machine can fulfil the function of the brain. That is to say, that the brain can be replaced by something that functions without dealing with timing issues. I don't believe that this is unlikely - I think it's impossible.

The claim seems to be that because an implementation of a Turing machine has, of necessity, to deal with timing issues, it can therefore do the job. This seems dubious to me. The claim is that if consciousness is based on computation which can be done by a Turing machine, and therefore the brain can be replaced by a Turing machine which can duplicate the conscious experience seems to beg the question.

If Piggy thinks a physical brain can produce those "Sofia events" while this brain simulator cannot, then he is claiming body containing the brain simulator is a P-Zombie. Instead he has been arguing that simulations cannot possibly affect anything in the physical world, ignoring the roboticists who test control programs in simulation before loading the same programs into physical robots.

Apparently in Piggy's mind "quite rare" becomes "cannot possibly happen, ever".

Or controlling the physical apparatus that runs the power plant by emulating a computer running the control programs.

This seems to me a rather controversial statement. If a Turing machine definitely can't, one has to wonder what sort of machine can.

A computer with an interrupt facility can do the trick. N.b. check the Turing model and you'll find no such thing.

As I understand it, even the physicists who favour the idea of a Turing machine Universe admit that it is still an open question whether hypercomputation is physically impossible or not. However for it to be possible, some pretty bizarre and inelegant physics would need to be true and because of that theoretical physicists tend to prefer to think that is most likely physically impossible.

That still relies on brain function being a purely computational process - which we already know is not the case.

 

[westprog]

This is somewhat misleading.

The argument is between people who think that every behavior, both private and public, exhibited by entities that are known to be conscious could also be exhibited by any other computational process of sufficient complexity and organization, and those that believe this is unproven, unlikely, or wrong.

You are painting this argument as "A toaster has dreams, I am sure of it" vs. "I don't think you have checked your math correctly."

It is more like "Why can't a robot as complicated as a human have dreams?" vs. "becase, sofia, nyah na na na nyah na na, and Roger Penrose said so."

Lets not get confused about who is in which camp, and the apparent education levels here. Everyone in the first camp is either knowledgeable in these fields or else humble enough to not make claims. Everyone in the latter camp is ... neither.

Do you dispute this? Are there any professionals in any relevant field, be it computer science, neuroscience, behavioral science, biology, or anything like that, in the latter camp on this forum?

FFS. Have you even been reading the thread? I've written control and monitoring systems to for chemical works and water-processing plants. You've had a post from someone who spoke directly to someone who worked with Church, of Church-Turing. It's the usual thing - we know how to identify the experts - they agree with us! If they disagree, they aren't experts. This got to the lunatic extent of someone a few months back claiming that Penrose wasn't a physicist.

Of course people who've invested their careers in proving a particular point of view will support that point of view. That doesn't make them experts.

 

[westprog]

wtf?

You are proposing that somehow the data given to a "real time control" computer by it's sensors is ... "not" data?

You are proposing that somehow the sequences of operations performed on the registers of a "real time control" computer's chips are ... "not" sequences of operations?

An interrupt signal that triggers code is not data - at least not in the same sense as used in a computation.

 

[westprog]

This is somewhat misleading.

The argument is between people who think that every behavior, both private and public, exhibited by entities that are known to be conscious could also be exhibited by any other computational process of sufficient complexity and organization, and those that believe this is unproven, unlikely, or wrong.

See what he did there? My italics. That is what's called "begging the question".

 

[rocketdodger]

An interrupt signal that triggers code is not data - at least not in the same sense as used in a computation.

How is a "signal triggering code" not a computation?

This is why I don't really accept that you have been a professional programmer, or that if you were, you didn't really understand the underlying science of what you were doing.

 

[AlBell]

Right. That's what I just said. It's not true.

The mental reduces to the physical. The physical may reduce to something else, but that's irrelevant. The mental reduces to the physical, therefore neutral monism is baloney.

It would certainly cut down on the number of posts on consciousness, free will, etc if you could just convince quite a large number of people you were correct.

Your assertion, and stance on the matter (so to speak), is noted as such.

 

[DaiBato]

Can human consciousness survive death? That's the big question here.

 

[rocketdodger]

FFS. Have you even been reading the thread? I've written control and monitoring systems to for chemical works and water-processing plants.

Right. And you claim what what you did might not be considered "algorithms?"

This is like someone claiming they were once a mechanic but actually an internal combustion engine might not have any moving parts.

So pardon me for not paying much attention to your supposed "credentials."

You've had a post from someone who spoke directly to someone who worked with Church, of Church-Turing.

I thought that post was specifically about Pixy's CT claims. I don't recall that anectdotal statement referencing the other stuff being discussed in this thread. Am I wrong?

It's the usual thing - we know how to identify the experts - they agree with us! If they disagree, they aren't experts. This got to the lunatic extent of someone a few months back claiming that Penrose wasn't a physicist.

Penrose is not an expert in any relevant field. Whether he is a physicist or not is besides the point.

When Roger Penrose says "well, I worked on trying to produce conscious programs for years, and everything we thought would do it just failed" then we will listen to him. But for someone who likely hasn't ever written a program with more than a few thousand lines of code to make sweeping generalizations about the field of computer science is what we call talking out of one's <rule8>.

I don't care how smart Penrose is when it comes to math or physics, he doesn't know jack about the only aspect of computer science that even matters here -- what happens in really complex systems. Nobody can know that, until they themselves work with really complex systems.

And that is my main point -- people like you and piggy and kaggen etc. who don't seem to even understand the fundamentals of computer science, never mind have written or even worked with something complex enough to pronounce judgement one way or another, just repeatedly vomit this "nu-uh, because I said so" nonsense into threads and call it a "discussion."

This isn't a discussion, it never has been, it is fairly intelligent people arguing with what seem like walls.

Of course people who've invested their careers in proving a particular point of view will support that point of view. That doesn't make them experts.

Wait, you think that people have careers in neuroscience, computer science, biology, etc, just because they want to prove that strong AI is possible?

???

 

[gentlehorse]

Can human consciousness survive death? That's the big question here.

Which is usually followed up with the emergency back-up big question: What about dog consciousness? (At least among dog-loving philosophers--)

Welcome!

 

[rocketdodger]

See what he did there? My italics. That is what's called "begging the question".

Oh, forgive me.

How about this:

The argument is between people who think that every behavior, both private and public, exhibited by entities that are known to be conscious could also be exhibited by any computational process of sufficient complexity and organization, and those that believe this is unproven, unlikely, or wrong.

Better?

 

[AlBell]

Which is usually followed up with the emergency back-up big question: What about dog consciousness? (At least among dog-loving philosophers--)

Welcome!

Yeah, but does a dog have buddha-nature?