I challenge you: your best alternate to materialism

[punshhh]

That which takes place inside the cell is also part of the computation.

Including the actions of the organelles?

Once again, you are attempting to crowbar in a distinction where none exists.

Where then does cellular metabolism end and neural computation begin? How do you know that consciousness is not generated in and sustained in the cellular metabolism? It is quite reasonable to consider that the life of the brain is generated and sustained by the cellular metabolism.

You have absolutely no reason to believe this.

I don't believe it, it is simply one possibility for its origin. Do you believe that it is due to the computation?

You have even less reason to believe this.

I have a reason to believe this, however I don't believe it, I consider it in the absence of either a full understanding of the origin of human consciousness, or a working synthetic consciousness. This gap in our knowledge is there, you can't deny it, or indeed ignore it.

And ditto the above. It is true that a computer simulation of an entity will not necessarily possess all of its physical properties (which is what makes it a simulation; if it did possess all of those properties, it would be the thing it was simulating), but again, consciousness is computational. There are no physical properties that it is missing.

Computation is a form of intelligence, information processing. What has this to do with consciousness? even if it plays a vital role in the experience of self-consciousness.

And no, saying "it has to be biological" with no supporting evidence does not change this.

No one is saying it has to be biological. One only need observe the data to see the link between consciousness and biological organisms. Until it has been demonstrated (which may be impossible), in AI, the link is undeniable.

 

[punshhh]

Wonderful. Now-

Its the supposed materialist position.

So. It makes perfect sense and addresses all the issues, but you don't like it, so you continue to argue in favor of nonsensical, incoherent guesswork because it makes you feel better. And you consistently retreat into meaningless straw men like "a world of intellect and language" and "ignoring anything outside the human mind", neither of which are true.

So you still don't get it, do you? All the chitta Chatta in the mind of humans can make as much sense as it likes, or not. But at the end of the day the reality we find ourselves in when we are born is out there, external to the mind and independent of its Chitta chatta.

If one seeks to know or learn from reality, one has to look beyond the mind. Which entails scientific and philosophical analysis. Social and cultural intellectual thought and language must be screened out and terminology developed to address the external world.

Sigh. Who's an idealist now?

Why, exactly?

Its time for you to take your blinkers off.

Yes, I do brush aside things that are incoherent and undefined, because they are incoherent and undefined. There is nothing to consider.

Yes, all sorted then(with language, or is it semantics)

Word salad is not a substitute for an actual argument.

Quite.

Without any evidence of them, yes.

Yes they may as well not exist. In fact lets stand on a pedestal and state things we don't know about don't exist, period.

This is not Tumblr. You do not get to make up your own meanings for words.

This is a philosophy forum, in philosophy, provided a definition is given, it can be addressed(more blinkers to come of perhaps).

 

[dlorde]

Yes, I see this, so each cell is a bit? Well I know it may perform more than one task and the distinctions are not as sharp. But one neuron is one bit and the neurons around it are other bits in the computation?
Presumably this would not include the actions of the mitochondria, or the nucleus?

No. Each cell is more like a complex switch or microprocessor. 'Bit' is short for binary digit. If you're looking for bits, the individual signal pulses between cells would best correspond.

The computer analogy is a very general, high level one, but if you don't have a basic understanding of computer science, you're best avoiding it altogether.

A little critical thought should tell you that the internal biology of the cell is only relevant in this context in relation to its influence on the cell's interaction with its environment; particularly, in this context, other cells. These influences can be modelled at various levels of detail, from changes through the cell's lifetime, to habituation & dishabituation, and neural and synaptic fatigue, refractory periods, and recovery. In this way you can model relevant cell function, i.e. behaviours that directly or indirectly influence other cells. All assuming you want to accurately emulate cell behaviour.

But the concept of abstraction means that you can ignore the detail at a lower level of abstraction when dealing with a higher level. You don't need to concern yourself with the details of the bonding angle between hydrogen and oxygen atoms in water molecules when dealing with the fluid dynamics of water, the bulk behaviour can be modelled without explicit knowledge of those details; similarly, you don't need to concern yourself with the metabolic details of the cell once you can model its gross behaviours (although, for medical reasons, the Human Brain Project is aiming for a molecular-level neuronal emulation).

 

[MRC_Hans]

Yes, I see this, so each cell is a bit? Well I know it may perform more than one task and the distinctions are not as sharp. But one neuron is one bit and the neurons around it are other bits in the computation?

Not exactly one bit, no. That is what makes it complicated. A NAND-gate was mentioned, that is not just one bit, it is one computational element.

Presumably this would not include the actions of the mitochondria, or the nucleus?

My knowledge of neuroscience is limited. I don't think those take part in the action, however.

Does it matter?

Hans

 

[MRC_Hans]

I'm simply presenting an alternative explanation to the established "consciousness is just computation in the brain" view.

No, you are not. You are presenting a speculation. An 'explanation' needs to fit some facts,

Folk can repeat these mantras as much as they like, but the reality on the ground may be different and should not be ignored.

They are not mantras. They are theories, based on observable facts.
It is very insulting that you keep ignoring this.

Hans

 

[MRC_Hans]

This is a philosophy forum, in philosophy, provided a definition is given, it can be addressed(more blinkers to come of perhaps).

Ahh, yes, of course. And the topic here is "Your best alternative to materialism", and you have presented yours. Duly noted.

I hope you have duly noted that we are not impressed (otherwise, the loss is entirely yours). You have presented a completely unfounded idea.

If that's your best, fine.

.... Next?

Hans

 

[punshhh]

No. Each cell is more like a complex switch or microprocessor. 'Bit' is short for binary digit. If you're looking for bits, the individual signal pulses between cells would best correspond.

Thanks dlorde, yes I imagined each neuron is a complex switch. This doesn't alter my point, unless you are suggesting the chemical activity of the organelles in the cell is this microprocessor?

The computer analogy is a very general, high level one, but if you don't have a basic understanding of computer science, you're best avoiding it altogether.

Again, this is besides the point and is concerned with the intelligence of the brain. Unless you are saying that it is the weight of this high level computation which is the origin of consciousness( as opposed to self-consciousness).

A little critical thought should tell you that the internal biology of the cell is only relevant in this context in relation to its influence on the cell's interaction with its environment; particularly, in this context, other cells. These influences can be modelled at various levels of detail, from changes through the cell's lifetime, to habituation & dishabituation, and neural and synaptic fatigue, refractory periods, and recovery. In this way you can model relevant cell function, i.e. behaviours that directly or indirectly influence other cells. All assuming you want to accurately emulate cell behaviour.

Yes, presumably the cell is a living entity. Granted most organisms these days are multi-cellular, but the cells they are aggregated from have changed little from when they were unicellular organisms. It is entities which experience consciousness, multi-cellular organisms presumably experience a higher level consciousness than the unicellular organisms of which their body is constructed.

But the concept of abstraction means that you can ignore the detail at a lower level of abstraction when dealing with a higher level. You don't need to concern yourself with the details of the bonding angle between hydrogen and oxygen atoms in water molecules when dealing with the fluid dynamics of water, the bulk behaviour can be modelled without explicit knowledge of those details; similarly, you don't need to concern yourself with the metabolic details of the cell once you can model its gross behaviours (although, for medical reasons, the Human Brain Project is aiming for a molecular-level neuronal emulation).

Does this molecular-level neuronal emulation concern itself just with the processes in the neuron which are involved in its "higher level" computation. While not emulating all the molecules found in a cell?

 

[Nonpareil]

I'm simply presenting an alternative explanation to the established "consciousness is just computation in the brain" view.

No, you aren't. You are presenting speculation which actively ignores all evidence in play.

A view which may be overly reductionist

You have yet to present any reason to believe this.

You simply don't like the idea.

How do you know that consciousness is not generated in and sustained in the cellular metabolism?

How do you know that StarCraft is not generated in and sustained in the individual metal bits in your processor?

It is quite reasonable to consider that the life of the brain is generated and sustained by the cellular metabolism.

Life is not consciousness.

I don't believe it, it is simply one possibility for its origin. Do you believe that it is due to the computation?

We know that it is due to the computation.

You repeatedly ignoring this does not change it.

This gap in our knowledge is there, you can't deny it, or indeed ignore it.

I cannot point at which specific part of my video card processes the image now appearing on the screen. Therefore, I must accept that it is possible that electricity itself contains that image.

Computation is a form of intelligence, information processing.

Those two things are not equivalent.

My computer can process a great deal of information. It is not intelligent in any way, shape, or form.

What has this to do with consciousness? even if it plays a vital role in the experience of self-consciousness.

What does the thing consciousness is have to do with consciousness? Again, I point you to Christof Koch.

All consciousness is computational. Not all computation is consciousness.

No one is saying it has to be biological. One only need observe the data to see the link between consciousness and biological organisms. Until it has been demonstrated (which may be impossible), in AI, the link is undeniable.

Airplanes don't exist and flight is an exclusively biological process.

So you still don't get it, do you? All the chitta Chatta in the mind of humans can make as much sense as it likes, or not. But at the end of the day the reality we find ourselves in when we are born is out there, external to the mind and independent of its Chitta chatta.

Quite. Which I have never denied. In fact, this is exactly what I have been saying this entire time.

A natural result of this is that, if your "chitta chatta" does not correspond in any meaningful way to this external world, what you think you are saying is, in fact, word salad. This is why definitions are important, and why such positions as idealism and solipsism are entirely incoherent. There is no meaningful way in which they can be said to be true, because there is no situation where they will ever correspond, at all, to anything in the external world.

Yes, all sorted then(with language, or is it semantics)

It's called "rationality". You should try it some time.

Yes they may as well not exist. In fact lets stand on a pedestal and state things we don't know about don't exist, period.

You are free to do this, of course, just as you have always been free to straw man ceaselessly in an attempt to hide the weaknesses of your own position.

This is a philosophy forum, in philosophy, provided a definition is given, it can be addressed(more blinkers to come of perhaps).

The issue comes when you pretend that you have made some sort of point.

You define "consciousness" as "metabolism", then say that consciousness is exclusively biological since only biological entities have a metabolism. That's wonderful.

No one cares.

It isn't in any way a useful definition, it has nothing to do with the entity actually being discussed, and attempting to act as though you have contributed anything to the discussion by saying it is rather silly.

When this is pointed out, you switch to saying that consciousness requires a metabolism, and is thus exclusively biological in nature. This is flatly wrong, and there is no evidence whatsoever supporting it. You simply look at the systems which contain what you recognize as consciousness, see that they have metabolisms, and assert that it must have a link to their organic natures.

This is entirely equivalent to saying that building flying machines is impossible because all known flying systems are organic. It is rather silly on the face of it. All evidence points to flight being the result of aerodynamic properties; the fact that only organic systems naturally result in it is rather a banal thing to point out.

We have mountains of evidence indicating that consciousness is computational. We know that consciousness arises from the brain; we know that the brain is a computer; we know that altering the computations taking place alters the consciousness of the subject; we know that we can decode the computations taking place and translate them into coherent outputs. Literally every piece of evidence we have indicates that consciousness is computational and only computational.

You say that this is "overly reductionistic". We ask what it is reducing. You answer with concepts like the atman, which are entirely incoherent and undefined beyond a basic "magical life force". We point out that saying "you are ignoring the atman" is a meaningless phrase if you cannot coherently define what the atman is, let alone produce evidence of its existence. You claim that this is a semantic argument.

And you proceed to get sillier from there, then tell us that we are the ones getting lost in a sea of meaningless words.

It's getting rather old.

 

[Ron_Tomkins]

Why waste time with philosophical rhetorics, when it's so simple? Look, there's nothing but evidence of the material. There's not a single evidence of one thing that isn't material or that can't be traced to a material thing.

 

[Nonpareil]

Why waste time with philosophical rhetorics, when it's so simple? Look, there's nothing but evidence of the material. There's not a single evidence of one thing that isn't material or that can't be traced to a material thing.

Ah, but it might not actually* be material!

*: For an undefined value of "actually".

 

[MuDPhuD]

. It is entities which experience consciousness, multi-cellular organisms presumably experience a higher level consciousness than the unicellular organisms of which their body is constructed.

What is it about a single cell that leads you to presume it "experiences" consciousness? Specifically what about a multicellular life form, say a mushroom, or a fern, leads you to presume it "experiences" consciousness?

Do you avoid answering my questions because the answers are embarrassing to your argument?

 

[Hlafordlaes]

Why waste time with philosophical rhetorics, when it's so simple? Look, there's nothing but evidence of the material. There's not a single evidence of one thing that isn't material or that can't be traced to a material thing.

Sometimes I feel the need to bust out and nail it like that, too. But then I don't get enough keyboard exercise. I'm here for finger therapy.

 

[Dancing David]

I'm simply presenting an alternative explanation to the established "consciousness is just computation in the brain" view. A view which may be overly reductionist and certainly presumes consciousness in AI.

Folk can repeat these mantras as much as they like, but the reality on the ground may be different and should not be ignored.

I would not presume consciousness in AI, I would say that AI could eventually be made to meet the criteria of consciousness.

 

[dlorde]

Thanks dlorde, yes I imagined each neuron is a complex switch.

And yet you said: "Yes, I see this, so each cell is a bit? ... one neuron is one bit and the neurons around it are other bits in the computation?". One of these is not like the other.

This doesn't alter my point, unless you are suggesting the chemical activity of the organelles in the cell is this microprocessor?

No. As I said, you're best avoiding that analogy if you don't understand its limitations.

Again, this is besides the point and is concerned with the intelligence of the brain. Unless you are saying that it is the weight of this high level computation which is the origin of consciousness( as opposed to self-consciousness).

I presume you know what you're trying to say here; to me it's word salad. If it's important, please try to restate it more coherently.

It is entities which experience consciousness, multi-cellular organisms presumably experience a higher level consciousness than the unicellular organisms of which their body is constructed.

This equivocation of consciousness just confuses things. When discussing consciousness and the brain, I'm referring to cognition (which involves interacting neural networks), rather than individual cellular responses.

Does this molecular-level neuronal emulation concern itself just with the processes in the neuron which are involved in its "higher level" computation. While not emulating all the molecules found in a cell?

I don't know exactly; they won't be emulating all the molecules in the cell, they'll be modelling the relevant biochemical pathways. As I said, it's for medical reasons, they want to model drug interaction, they're not aiming for artificial consciousness.

 

[dlorde]

I would not presume consciousness in AI, I would say that AI could eventually be made to meet the criteria of consciousness.

Quite. If the AI met the criteria of consciousness, you wouldn't have to presume it

 

[Ron_Tomkins]

Ah, but it might not actually* be material!

*: For an undefined value of "actually".

So? You still have to prove that it (whatever "it" is) isn't in fact material.

Like I said, there isn't a single evidence of anything not being material, or traceable to the material.

 

[tsig]

Why waste time with philosophical rhetorics, when it's so simple? Look, there's nothing but evidence of the material. There's not a single evidence of one thing that isn't material or that can't be traced to a material thing.

Yes, I look around and all I see is materiel things yet I am told that there is more to it than that but no one seems to agree on what that more is or how to discern it.

 

[Nonpareil]

So? You still have to prove that it (whatever "it" is) isn't in fact material.

Like I said, there isn't a single evidence of anything not being material, or traceable to the material.

Yes, that's rather my point. Those who say that it is "actually" something else are stretching the definition of "actually" so far that it loses all meaning.

 

[punshhh]

Not exactly one bit, no. That is what makes it complicated. A NAND-gate was mentioned, that is not just one bit, it is one computational element.

Ok, yes I have looked up NAND-gate and the other kinds of gate.

My knowledge of neuroscience is limited. I don't think those take part in the action, however.

Does it matter?

Yes because my point is that it may be the part of the cell not involved in the performing the task of being a bit which generates the basic consciousness of the organism. If this is the case, then the computation is not the origin of the consciousness in the organism. Even though the computation enables it to be experienced and to be experienced in more complex organisms as self-consciousness.

So if you emulate the computation involved in self-conscious experience, in the absence of this cellular metabolism, you may fail to make your emulation conscious/self-conscious, it is simply an automaton.

 

[punshhh]

No, you are not. You are presenting a speculation. An 'explanation' needs to fit some facts,

There are a few facts, it's more a question of perspective I think. In my control, there is a biological organism which is conscious, these are the facts and one could look at the evidence of its evolution.This is sufficient evidence for me to consider if the consciousness observed in the control is not necessarily produced in the nervous system of the organism, but some other part of its life. What we observe as consciousness in the nervous system my be a combination of metabolic life and the computation occuring in the nervous system(intelligence). Neither producing self-consciousness in isolation.

They are not mantras. They are theories, based on observable facts.
It is very insulting that you keep ignoring this.

Appologies, I understand the theories concerned, I am questioning their rigour in this regard.