Has consciousness been fully explained?

[Dancing David]

That is certainly what they do at a system level. Is that not similar to what a computer does? That is my ultimate point. At their most basic level do computers compute according to this definition? It's electron flow through gates, just as with a single neuron we have EPSPs and IPSPs summating at the axon hillock and, in systems, differing levels of association through synaptic plasticity.

I can't answer the hardware question, my guess is no unless you mean a very a loose application.

I don't think cpmputer use a probablity system for generating signals and making processes run. But I know only a little about architechture and hardware.

 

[westprog]

Maybe a better distinction, for those who who are confused where to draw the line, is that if you want to call all reality a "computer", fine; however, we don't have access to all of reality, so it's kind of a moot point; we only have access to parts of reality, some of which, like brain neurons and mechanical switches, have properties which mimic bit manipulation in arithmetic, and as such are extremely good candidates for use in computation, either by man or nature; others, like apple trees and piles of rocks and the Mississippi, don't, and aren't. Thus, we tend to label "computers" whatever systematically exploits the properties of these arithmetic-mimickers per se, and whatever else doesn't, we don't.

The reason that computers work in communicating data to us is that that's what they are made to do. Of course a device that's intended to tell us the square root of 43 will do exactly that. The mistake is in assuming that there is some objective physical process going on. It's like claiming that motion happens with people and bikes, but nothing else.

Of course it seems to us as if there's something obviously in common between the living thing (us) and the devices we make to amplify our capacities, but science is about looking at these things objectively. Looking at things in terms of what we can do with them is engineering, and doesn't lead to insights about the fundamental nature of things.

 

[Ichneumonwasp]

The reason that computers work in communicating data to us is that that's what they are made to do. Of course a device that's intended to tell us the square root of 43 will do exactly that. The mistake is in assuming that there is some objective physical process going on. It's like claiming that motion happens with people and bikes, but nothing else.

Of course it seems to us as if there's something obviously in common between the living thing (us) and the devices we make to amplify our capacities, but science is about looking at these things objectively. Looking at things in terms of what we can do with them is engineering, and doesn't lead to insights about the fundamental nature of things.

I'm a bit confused about your answer above. What do you mean by "some objective physical process going on"? Clearly there is an objective physical process occurring in the computer. Whether or not a mathematical function can be carried out by the computer depends on how electrons move through logic gates. If they follow the correct sequence we see a useable answer. If they don't we see garbage.

The same thing happens with brains. "Correct" sequence -- good answer, scrambled signalling -- garbage.

Why does a top-down vs. bottom up type of "programming" make that much difference? Granted most computer programs nowadays followed different rules, different sequences, than the way our brains do it, but is it actually impossible for a computer to follow the same sequences, perform the same operations as the brain (leaving aside for the moment the issues over synaptic transmission).

 

[SnakeTongue]

It is not possible to set an experiment to define what is conciousness.

We all know we share different conciousness because we are the experiment itself.

Conciousness is not part of the time and space dimensions, therefore it cannot be fixed to be identified.

It is Ouroborus, the cycle which never ends.

http://www.ouroborus.dk/

No scientific method will ever provide the delimitations of conciousness...

Conciousness is the experiment and science is the result.

 

[blobru]

The reason that computers work in communicating data to us is that that's what they are made to do. Of course a device that's intended to tell us the square root of 43 will do exactly that. The mistake is in assuming that there is some objective physical process going on. It's like claiming that motion happens with people and bikes, but nothing else.

Computers are physical, yes. We construct them with physical gates that mimic bit addition. Objectively, that's what's going on: bit addition mimicry. Very useful, when you want to find the square root of 43 mechanically, and save yourself the paperwork.

Of course it seems to us as if there's something obviously in common between the living thing (us) and the devices we make to amplify our capacities, but science is about looking at these things objectively. Looking at things in terms of what we can do with them is engineering, and doesn't lead to insights about the fundamental nature of things.

It gives us excellent insight into what nature can exploit them to do; and often, via evolution, has exploited them to do. Organisms whose evolved structures exploit natural properties for higher-level functions (such as consciousness) are everywhere. Passing on the genes which code for such is kind of the point of evolution. I'm confused why scientific objectivity can't look at how things function at levels we recognize as "mechanical".

 

[Beth]

I’m clipping out the areas where we seem to be in agreement.

I think that Malerin and Westprog have a fair point regarding that either computation happens only when meaning is assigned by a conscious creature or it becomes a meaningless term applicable to everything in the universe. How can you distinguish the ‘computation’ done by neurons and rock piles without requiring an observer to extract meaning from one but not the other.

Neurons, within the nervous system, do something with the outputs in a coordinated fashion and rock piles generally don't. As I mentioned above, if falling rocks can be constrained by the same set of rules and can continue to perform the same sort of action that nerons do, then they can't really be functionally separated.
This needs to be contrasted with the other thing that gets thrown into the mix, which is that rocks falling are said to amount to computation if an observer sees two rocks add to another and says "that's 2+1=3". That isn't what neurons do. Neurons summate inputs. Rocks theoretically could do that if we lived in another universe where such actions are constrained in the same way that excitable tissue acts.

The existence of constraints and rules are not the issue regarding computation. It is the need for an interpretation of the resulting output. As you note above, rock piles and neurons are not functionally different. Both have constraints and follow rules. How can you distinguish the ‘computation’ done by neurons and rock piles without requiring an observer to extract meaning from one but not the other?

No, they do not have a fair point. They are wrong.
Regardless of the stupid semantic games, the fact remains that living entities can do things that, until humans found ways to get similar behavior out of inert materials, nothing else could do.

No one is arguing this point. The question I’m asking is: How can you distinguish the ‘computation’ done by neurons, rock piles or even computers without requiring an observer to extract meaning from one but not the other?

 

[AlBell]

How do you tell if another person is conscious?

How do you tell if you are conscious? You see no division between your subjectivity and what others might objectify as "DD's private behaviors"?

What is generating the sentence, that needs to be answered first.

As do my questions to you.

 

[Ichneumonwasp]

The existence of constraints and rules are not the issue regarding computation. It is the need for an interpretation of the resulting output. As you note above, rock piles and neurons are not functionally different. Both have constraints and follow rules. How can you distinguish the ‘computation’ done by neurons and rock piles without requiring an observer to extract meaning from one but not the other?

That is not what I said, though. While rock piles follow the constraints of physics, neurons follow not only the constraints of general physics but also another type of constraint the allows for what we seem to call computation (and by that I do not mean 'arithmetic').

Neurons summate inputs to a threshold and fire if that threshold is reached. The threshold (basically) is the same for the neuron at all times (the resting potential can be changed by various factors though so that it is easier for summating inputs to reach threshold). None of that happens with falling rocks; the same physcial constraints are simply not part of that system.

Falling rocks can be said to calculate only in an observer dependent fashion. The summation to threshold occurs in neurons no matter what we want to call it. Again, if we don't want to call that computation, then I have no issue with it. But I would also argue that electrons moving through gates is not computation in the same way. Personally I think it makes more sense to call both forms of computation. They just are not arithmetic.

 

[Meed]

Well, isn't the whole 'simulation' thing a bit of a polite fiction anyway? I am no computer whiz -- I built a couple of them and took one programming course in Pascal many, many years ago -- but isn't programming just a top-down way of getting the electrons in the machine to go where we want them to?

Absolutely. That is why I don't understand PM's allusion to another "world".

 

[Meed]

You are wasting your time, both Malerin and Westprog are playing this foolish game:

1) show that computationalists think consciousness arises from computation
2) show that computation is either everywhere or nowhere, because there is no "physical" definition for it
3) show that therefore everything is conscious or nothing is
4) Thus anyone who supports the computational model must admit that soup and cheese is conscious, an absurdity, and the anti-computational position wins by default.

(bolding added)

Considering you've suggested that toasters have consciousness, you aren't too far away from soup and cheese.

 

[Dr.Sid]

For me consciousness is something like: I'm noticing I'm doing something.

First step is processing of information. Now the very simple organisms do that. Computers do that. Just some data in, some data out.

Next step is generalization of the information. The 'mind' must search for patterns and then process the patterns in special way. Again organisms, at least higher ones do that. Common computers does not do that. Their algorithms are fixed. But generalizing and self-learning software be all means does exist.

The next step is to include output of the information processing back into input, so that the 'mind' can see: there is something in the world which process information.

The last step needs physical body (more or less). The 'mind' has to realize that there are entities which do process information .. but one of them is special. It is always present. The 'mind' also has much more information about it then about other such entities. It can see what it sees (inputs), what it does (outputs), and even some parts of the processing process .. the thoughts. Sooner or later mind will allocate new generalization term for it, ie. ego.

In other words 'I think therefore I am' can be understood as 'There is something which thinks, lets call it I'.

IMHO mind is not free .. it is combination of deterministic and chaos processes, none of which gives it any freedom. Freedom in my sense is 'having lots of options' from which I will choose always the same if the chances are very different, and randomly, if they are similar. This definition allows it perfectly. It also allows computers to be conscious. At the moment they might be a bit simple for such generalization, but not that far. Problem is that to find out computer is conscious, the computer would also have to express it's inner states in understandable way .. which IMHO is much more of a problem.

 

[Meed]

BTW, rocketdodger I'm still waiting on your support for the claim that there is no mathematically describable difference between animals and electronic toasters.

I'd also still like to see the mathematical support you were referring to when you claimed that conscious things exhibiting SRIP is the only mathematically supportable conclusion.

On the flip side, we can examine whether there is any qualitative difference between examples of SRIP that we don't consider immediately conscious -- like the infamous electronic toaster with many features, or even the programmable thermostat -- and things like squirrels, dogs, monkeys, or people. And the answer is that no, there really is no mathematically describable difference.

[...]the only real mathematically supportable conclusion is that conscious things exhibit some type of SRIP.

 

[rocketdodger]

No one is arguing this point. The question I’m asking is: How can you distinguish the ‘computation’ done by neurons, rock piles or even computers without requiring an observer to extract meaning from one but not the other?

They are, and so are you.

You can distinguish the computation done by neurons and computers from whatever rock piles do based on the simple fact that systems of neurons in people and systems of transistors in computers can react to their environment in ways that piles of rocks cannot.

For example, if a person is falling towards a rock pile, the rock pile just sits there.

If a rock pile is falling towards a person or a robot, the person or robot can look up, observe the rocks, and then move out of the way so that they are not destroyed.

This isn't rocket science -- rocks, cheese, and soup simply cannot change their internal state according to their external state in the same cascading nonlinear way that cells and computers can.

No observer is required for this effect to happen. The mechanisms of cellular computation allow cells to live. Rocks are not alive. Even if there was no observer to look in a microscope and see it, bacteria and trees and all that other stuff would be doing their thing in this world and it would still be very different from whatever rocks do. And, if every human was to die, our autonomous robots would continue to function -- in a very different way from rocks -- as if nothing happened. None of this depends on observers.

 

[rocketdodger]

(bolding added)

Considering you've suggested that toasters have consciousness, you aren't too far away from soup and cheese.

I suggested toasters might be conscious, given the very broad definition of SRIP.

I never said toasters are conscious like humans, or that they exhibit human consciousness.

I might point out that the other side has implied that only healthy, normal, developed humans are in fact conscious, while mentally disabled humans, babies, monkeys, dogs, dolphins, and all the rest are not.

So which side are you on? Do you want to equate human consciousness with consciousness, or accept that human consciousness is above and beyond the basic consciousness that many animals (and less fortunate humans) might experience?

 

[rocketdodger]

BTW, rocketdodger I'm still waiting on your support for the claim that there is no mathematically describable difference between animals and electronic toasters.

I'd also still like to see the mathematical support you were referring to when you claimed that conscious things exhibiting SRIP is the only mathematically supportable conclusion.

I said there was no mathematically describable qualitative difference. Meaning, there isn't any fundamental system behavior exhibited by animals and not inanimate objects that isn't reducible to SRIP.

Do you dispute that? Can you find something that animals do that an inanimate object does not do that isn't reducible to a type of SRIP? Really -- can you?

Furthermore, can you come up with a single conscious behavior in humans that isn't also just another flavor of SRIP?

 

[AlBell]

Ichneumonwasp: The summation and arithmetic occurs sfawk only when it is occuring within a living self.

Flights of fancy that purport a self results from summation and arithmetic on non-living platforms have a long long way to go to demonstrate it.

 

[Ichneumonwasp]

Absolutely. That is why I don't understand PM's allusion to another "world".

I think he meant it as a "world" -- meaning scare quotes and all. There is no physical reality to a simulation. The simulation is the process of electrons moving around through gates, but we can talk about that process as "another world" just as we can talk about a simulated orange as an orange. It isn't really an orange; it is really a process, an action. I think that's all he meant; at least that's how I understood it.

 

[Ichneumonwasp]

Ichneumonwasp: The summation and arithmetic occurs sfawk only when it is occuring within a living self.

Flights of fancy that purport a self results from summation and arithmetic on non-living platforms have a long long way to go to demonstrate it.

Sure, I agree. I just don't think that we can discount the possibility on any grounds that I have yet heard. I certainly don't buy Searle's argument about computation, though I did when I first heard it (which is why I still have great sympathy for the physicalist camp).

 

[rocketdodger]

Ichneumonwasp: The summation and arithmetic occurs sfawk only when it is occuring within a living self.

Flights of fancy that purport a self results from summation and arithmetic on non-living platforms have a long long way to go to demonstrate it.

But the only reason you think it is different to begin with is that you can sit there talking to a living self and not a non-living platform.

If you were able to have the same kind of conscious interaction with a non-living platform, that seemed like it had a self just as you do, why not admit the similarity?

The issue is really with people that say "even if I had commander Data in front of me, playing poker with me, I would still not consider him conscious." Nonsense.

 

[Dancing David]

This is one of Westprogs ploys to avoid issues, you can define it all you want. Just don't discuss digital computers with him/her.

It is politer than Franko's "Then rocks rolling down hills are conscious."