Has consciousness been fully explained?

[PixyMisa]

What makes a mircrophone perceive vibrations as sound while a human corpse does not? An ear is essentially a microphone but all a microphone does is propagate the vibration pattern

It's a transducer, just like the ear.

[quoe]There are literally trillions of different impulses being propagated not only by the nervous system but across the membranes of numerous other tissue types. As of now we do not understand the physics of what makes some of these impulses become perceptions of particular sensations, or even how such things as sensations are related to physics in general.[/quote]
We understand the physics just fine, thanks.

What is complicated is the arrangement and interconnection of the neurons, not the physics. The physics is perfectly ordinary.

 

[westprog]

No, but I never suggested anything like that. What's the obsession around here with bad analogies ?

I'm talking about a model, running on physical hardware, connected to the outside world through suitable I/O converters. I never suggested leaving out the physical materials, or the I/O converters, so please don't insist on doing so.

To stick with a better analogy: if we have an accurate model of a piano, down to every detail, and the model can calculate exactly how the string would vibrate, and how that vibration would be transferred to the surrounding air, and we run that model on a physical computer, and attach a speaker to our sound card, would it sound like a piano ?

But this is not what has been suggested by the computationalists, and it's important that you differentiate what you are suggesting from what they are suggesting.

 

[westprog]

But you never explain why a physical replica of a neuron won't work just as well as the original.

An identical model of a neuron will work just as well. However, what can safely be left out and still produce consciousness?

If you don't know what function of the neuron produces consciousness, how can you produce a functional equivalent? Producing an identical replica of a neuron doesn't actually prove anything.

 

[westprog]

We mimic exactly the function,

How can you do that if you don't know what the function is?

 

[Orbini]

But this is not what has been suggested by the computationalists, and it's important that you differentiate what you are suggesting from what they are suggesting.

The things that I write are differentiated by me writing them. I trust you can read the name of the poster ?

 

[Orbini]

How can you do that if you don't know what the function is?

We observe a neuron by measuring the inputs and outputs, and then we make a very clever model that does exactly the same. It's quite simple, really. This can be done without understanding what the inputs and outputs actually mean.

 

[Paul C. Anagnostopoulos]

That hypothesis rest solely upon the assumption that consciouses vis consciousness is computation. As I've already said, understanding the computational architecture of the brain can only give us information as to how our conscious experiences are organized; it does nothing in the way of understanding what it is in physical terms. Such an understanding is absolutely necessary in order to gain the technical knowledge required to seriouly propose how to instantiate it artificially and to know what systems/substrates would be necessary & sufficient to meet those requirements.

I'm sorry, but I don't understand what the bolded sentence means.

~~ Paul

 

[Paul C. Anagnostopoulos]

Interesting recent paper by Sytsma and Machery:

http://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/4888/1/Two_Conceptions_of_Subjective_Experience.pdf

~~ Paul

 

[blobru]

Yes, I think we can speak about unconscious pain, and I think it is revealing. You may have been hit with something so painful -- like putting your hand on a burning stove -- that you removed your hand reflexively. And then you felt the pain afterwards.

I think it makes sense to speak of unconscious pain in this situation. There is no motivation to act, to do something; instead there is stimulus response.

Interesting, eh. As if processing the response to the obviously harmful hot stove had been given a higher priority than processing the pain it 'caused'.

As to what minimum amount of processing is necessary, I have no idea.

I've read Delta waves (up to 4 Hz) are associated with sleep / unconsciousness. From what little I know of EEGs, there does seem a correlation between the frequencies with which neurons fire and "intensity" of concentration; not all that surprising, I guess. (There also seems to be a sort of maximum for stimulus -- not necessarily painful, perhaps just novel -- where a typical reaction to "shock" is to lose consciousness.)

Which systems are necessary for consciousness? I think the only thing we can say with confidence is that the cingulate is necessary for the suffering aspects -- but there is clearly more to pain than simply that part of the picture.

Right. I find it interesting though that the "suffering aspects" (by which you mean the 'quale'/feeling of pain?) depend on a certain region of the brain. In understanding the origin of the felt aspects of consciousness, which to many are the most mysterious (how do neurochemical processes add up to feeling), it may be instructive to see how this region differs from others.

Not that I'm aware of. I would think that certain areas have to be involved but there are so many that it would amount to a run down of most of the cortex and subcortex.

Ok, that was my much more limited understanding. No one area being conscious relies on.

Happy New Year to you too.

Yes, unfortunately there does not appear to be any simple answer with pain. The motivation to act is the suffering aspect but that just doesn't cover the issue of feeling pain intensity, which is certainly part of the conscious experience.

I was hoping that any discussion of the suffering might move things along, since that is a huge part of what we mean by the phrase "what pain is like". Since the suffering aspect of it appears to be something different from what we might expect -- it seems to be a motivation to act rather than just some vague sensory notion -- I hoped we might use that to view all 'feelings' in a way that can bridge this supposedly unbridgeable gap between neuron firings and qualia. I'm not sure that is going to work, though, reading some of the other discussions.

Hey, you never know. 2011 may be the year of consciousness on some obscure Toltec calendar -- lost mandala with a bridge across an unbridgeable gap chiselled in obsidian, shown guarded by a great feathered serpent, who demands for passage to nineteem vigesimal points the airspeed velocity of tortilla-laden undead parrots -- hidden away in a mesoamerican jungle somewhere. Then again... maybe not.

Be that as it may, I think the brain's separation of pain into feeling and response, where the response is unconscious and the feeling conscious, may give us a clue about the function of consciousness (part of the so-called "HPC"). It's interesting that anything we are conscious of is separated like that, a perception that doesn't have to acted on immediately (at least, there's always the sense that one could put off acting just a little longer). It's as if being conscious allows the brain to represent its environment, external and internal, without comment (okay, guys, here's what's going on -- remind you of anything?) The "guys", unconscious pattern-matching routines, let's say, are free to focus on the interesting bits, find approximate categories and symbols for them to enable abstract thought and planning in the context of one's knowledge and knowhow. It may be that consciousness works as pre-abstraction, or pre-symbolic-abstraction at least, as it's already a sort of sensory abstraction; that say, unconsciousness only works with symbols, that is, categorized and labelled thoughts, and that "consciousness", as uncategorized, unlabelled information, is a strategy for, or even essential to, allowing us to try out as many new interpretations as feasible before we categorize and act on it -- either habitually, or in a tentative, exploratory fashion, as we're still not sure what we're dealing with, how to categorize it; or we want to test what we think we know systematically, dig deeper.

Anyways, rambling as usual. But "consciousness" as temporarily uncategorized, unintegrated information struck me as relevant somehow, the potential advantages for an intelligent system, in the context of the HPC, from your discussion of pain's complexity.

 

[Ichneumonwasp]

Be that as it may, I think the brain's separation of pain into feeling and response, where the response is unconscious and the feeling conscious, may give us a clue about the function of consciousness (part of the so-called "HPC"). It's interesting that anything we are conscious of is separated like that, a perception that doesn't have to acted on immediately (at least, there's always the sense that one could put off acting just a little longer). It's as if being conscious allows the brain to represent its environment, external and internal, without comment (okay, guys, here's what's going on -- remind you of anything?) The "guys", unconscious pattern-matching routines, let's say, are free to focus on the interesting bits, find approximate categories and symbols for them to enable abstract thought and planning in the context of one's knowledge and knowhow. It may be that consciousness works as pre-abstraction, or pre-symbolic-abstraction at least, as it's already a sort of sensory abstraction; that say, unconsciousness only works with symbols, that is, categorized and labelled thoughts, and that "consciousness", as uncategorized, unlabelled information, is a strategy for, or even essential to, allowing us to try out as many new interpretations as feasible before we categorize and act on it -- either habitually, or in a tentative, exploratory fashion, as we're still not sure what we're dealing with, how to categorize it; or we want to test what we think we know systematically, dig deeper.

Anyways, rambling as usual. But "consciousness" as temporarily uncategorized, unintegrated information struck me as relevant somehow, the potential advantages for an intelligent system, in the context of the HPC, from your discussion of pain's complexity.

We still need to figure out how different behavioral impulse compete and how decisions occur within context; then we need to understand how attention works and how attention of attention works and how it shifts from one area to the next. Presumably the 40 Hz event related potential represents directed attention to a particular issue/consciousness of some thing.

 

[westprog]

Are you claiming a single neuron as a subjective experience, or that it operates using yet unknown laws of physics ?

Everything operates using as yet unknown laws of physics. That's a reflection on our current state of knowledge - i.e. incomplete.

 

[westprog]

I didn't say you should assume it. I asked people to explain the difference between real and simulated consciousness. My second sentence ("Similar to the way you might explain the difference between real computation and simulated computation, perhaps.") was just a sarcasm.

~~ Paul

Then the difference between consciousness and simulated consciousness is the same as the difference between any physical function X and a simulation of X. I.e. a simulation can show how something might behave, but it does not produce the same effects.

In order for the simulation of consciousness to be the same as consciousness, consciousness cannot be a physical process.

 

[westprog]

Or you can just go ahead and try to instantiate it artificially, and see if it works. If it doesn't work, we may get a clue where to fix it. That approach is preferable over just thinking about it, and saying it can't be done.

How can we tell when we've created consciousness? How can we measure it? How do we quantify it?

We can't claim that we've succeeded in producing an effect that we can't even measure.

 

[westprog]

We observe a neuron by measuring the inputs and outputs, and then we make a very clever model that does exactly the same. It's quite simple, really. This can be done without understanding what the inputs and outputs actually mean.

How do you know what inputs and outputs are necessary to the function, and which aren't?

 

[westprog]

The things that I write are differentiated by me writing them. I trust you can read the name of the poster ?

It's necessary in this particular discussion to be very precise as to what is meant. "Simulation" has been used in a lot of different ways.

 

[blobru]

We still need to figure out how different behavioral impulse compete and how decisions occur within context; then we need to understand how attention works and how attention of attention works and how it shifts from one area to the next. Presumably the 40 Hz event related potential represents directed attention to a particular issue/consciousness of some thing.

I hadn't heard of 40 Hz being a significant threshhold (the chart I'm looking at places it in the Gamma range -- associated with short term memory tasks). But yeah, the binding between feeling and behavior: I'm assuming it's very basic for something as immediate as pain; not so for other less urgent data; however, I may be completely wrong -- anything we're conscious of may be bound to a behavioral impulse (perhaps with something like the colors of a sunset the impulse is "relax and contemplate"; the symbol for the integral "plug in the values, follow the steps"; the latter of course a learned association). I think in many instances, learning, for example, the ability to attend to something free of any behavioral binding, until, in the context of learning, we either get it or give up, would be a terrific advantage (unlike with pain asymbolia, where, as you discuss, the feeling unbound from the behavior robs the subject of her motive to react, as if the "pain" were just a dull fact).

 

[PixyMisa]

Everything operates using as yet unknown laws of physics. That's a reflection on our current state of knowledge - i.e. incomplete.

No. Yes, there are unknown areas, but in most cases you can do the calculations and get the right answer, which means that those unknown areas are provably irrelevant.

This is maths, not magic. If it gives you the right answer, you can stop looking.

 

[PixyMisa]

Then the difference between consciousness and simulated consciousness is the same as the difference between any physical function X and a simulation of X. I.e. a simulation can show how something might behave, but it does not produce the same effects.

But it produces the same information.

In order for the simulation of consciousness to be the same as consciousness, consciousness cannot be a physical process.

Wrong. Consciousness is an informational process; all we are interested in is that information; that is what we get.

The end. Your argument is dead and buried and starting to smell and really, best forgotten.

 

[AkuManiMani]

I thought it was obvious from the last dozen posts that I was talking about a computer running a functional model of a single neuron. We mimic exactly the function, but using a different physical substrate. At the edges, where the neuron interfaces with the rest, we use a suitable I/O converter to translate the digital numbers in the computer to electrical impulses, compatible with a real neuron's connections.

If we could make the electronics small enough, we could in theory remove a neuron from a person's brain and replace it with a tiny microchip, restoring all the connections to neighboring neurons. Inside the chip, it would work completely differently, but looking from the outside, it would behave exactly the same.

Clear ?

Like I said, it would be a lot simpler to put that line of thinking to the test by just using the ready-grown brain of a cadaver; all of the neural architecture is already in place. Based upon what you're suggesting, it should be a relatively strait-forward task of getting it to produce convincing behaviors without consciousness.

 

[Orbini]

How do you know what inputs and outputs are necessary to the function, and which aren't?

We solve that the same way we solve any other science/engineering problem: we start with the obvious ones, and see if it works. If it doesn't, then we look closely at the differences, and with enough research we can see how to incorporate the less obvious ones.

A neuron is a complex cell, but it's still finite.