Materialists......

[Tricky]

Prove you are conscious.

I cannot "prove" anything. I can only satisfy the criteria by which you judge consciousness or "thinking". If you'll give me a list of what you believe those criteria are, then I'll see if I can satisfy them to your satisfaction.

Does a computer think? Depends on what you mean by "think".

 

[UndercoverElephant]

Oh, I "get it" just fine. However, I don't agree. I believe you are wrong.

Well, I know that you are wrong.

Arguably, that is the only way it can be done at present (and I believe there are those here who will argue with you even on that point), but that in no way makes it impossible that we will solve the way that the brain does it.

You keep saying that, yes. But you aren't actually a software engineer, are you?

You do not know what you are talking about.

I think you give us too little credit.

And I think you are way out of your depth, tricky. There's plenty of people who understand this, like, for example, nescafe who responded to my initial post on this with:

Your point about not being able to extract a given memory from a neural network as easily as from a standard computer memory is well-taken.

He got it, you don't. I'm not going to reply to you anymore on this, Tricky. it is not a matter of opinion. It is a matter of fact - and you aren't in a position to tell me I am wrong. You are not a software engineer. I am.

 

[UndercoverElephant]

They store/access data to support their primary use, but that storage is not the primary use. It looked like the two terms were, to an extent, being used interchangably in this thread, when they are not.

The data stored in your brain is stored in the same way that the neural net stores the data in needs to distinguish between patterns. The data in your brain is not stored in a symbolic "language of thought" of the sort proposed by Fodor several decades ago. "LOT" theories are also dead in the water.

 

[Paul C. Anagnostopoulos]

Then don't use it in my context either. Part of the difference between weather and atmopheric processes is that weather is "atmospheric processes as they are perceived by me". You wouldn't use the word identical in that context, so why do you use it in this one?

I wouldn't use it in this one. I would say "inner experiences are a result of brain processes." However, if you asked me whether there is anything else involved in inner experience, I would say no. So I suppose someone could argue they are identical. But clearly the concepts aren't.

~~ Paul

 

[Paul C. Anagnostopoulos]

He got it, you don't. I'm not going to reply to you anymore on this, Tricky. it is not a matter of opinion. It is a matter of fact - and you aren't in a position to tell me I am wrong. You are not a software engineer. I am.

Do you take pompous pills in the morning, Geoff? Did Tricky say it was just as easy to extract information from a neural net as it is from a conventional database?

Are you suggesting that it is technologically impossible to extract information from a neural net without running it?

~~ Paul

 

[Tricky]

Well, I know that you are wrong.

You keep saying that, yes. But you aren't actually a software engineer, are you?

You do not know what you are talking about.

I am quite sure that it cannot be done with any software that you are currently using. Perhaps not with "software" at all. But for all your incredible knowledge, you should know better than to say a thing is impossible because you don't know how to do it. You, sir, are an intellectual snob.

Hey, I have three science degrees, so I overtrump your software engineering experience. (See. I can be an intellectual snob too!)

And I think you are way out of your depth, tricky. There's plenty of people who understand this, like, for example, nescafe who responded to my initial post on this with:

Your point about not being able to extract a given memory from a neural network as easily as from a standard computer memory is well-taken.

Are you really that taken with yourself that you don't even recognize that this person is not arguing for impossibility? He says "it won't be as easy", which is precisely what I have been saying. He does not say it is impossible. You are hoist by your own petard.

He got it, you don't. I'm not going to reply to you anymore on this, Tricky. it is not a matter of opinion. It is a matter of fact - and you aren't in a position to tell me I am wrong. You are not a software engineer. I am.

It is you who don't get it. You cannot seem to understand that "difficult" and "impossible" have somewhat different meanings. So don't reply if you so choose. I will take your silence as concession of this point.

What software company do you work for, by the way?

 

[UndercoverElephant]

Do you take pompous pills in the morning, Geoff? Did Tricky say it was just as easy to extract information from a neural net as it is from a conventional database?

Are you suggesting that it is technologically impossible to extract information from a neural net without running it?

~~ Paul

YES!!!!!!!

The information encoded within a neural net is distributed over the entire network. It is impossible to decode it at all. All you can do is observe the behaviour of the network and infer from this behaviour what sort of data it has encoded. But it is quite impossible to say exactly how or where that information is within the network because it is represented holisitically. None of it means anything in isolation from its relationship with the rest of the network, so you cannot retrieve anything at all from it unless you "ask" the entire network at the same time!

 

[Arkan_Wolfshade]

The data stored in your brain is stored in the same way that the neural net stores the data in needs to distinguish between patterns. The data in your brain is not stored in a symbolic "language of thought" of the sort proposed by Fodor several decades ago. "LOT" theories are also dead in the water.

That doesn't change the fact that the primary function of a BNN, or ANN (SNN), is not storage of data, but filtering/recognizing/mining data that is processed by the network.

 

[UndercoverElephant]

I am quite sure that it cannot be done with any software that you are currently using. Perhaps not with "software" at all. But for all your incredible knowledge, you should know better than to say a thing is impossible because you don't know how to do it. You, sir, are an intellectual snob.

No, friend, I am merely a software engineer who knows how to do his job.

Hey, I have three science degrees, so I overtrump your software engineering experience. (See. I can be an intellectual snob too!)

If they aren't in software engineering, they don't matter.

What software company do you work for, by the way?

I don't anymore, because I stopped working when I went back to university. I used to work for CAE, who are the world leader in the manufacture of flight simulators. I worked for a UK subsidiary which specialised in ground-based simulators and my job included writing and maintaining the software which simulated the environment, including the behaviour of artificially intelligent opponents in the combat simulators.

http://www.cae.com/www2004/index.shtml

 

[UndercoverElephant]

That doesn't change the fact that the primary function of a BNN, or ANN (SNN), is not storage of data, but filtering/recognizing/mining data that is processed by the network.

Sure. The primary function of a brain could be argued to be the same thing. Our brains recognise patterns in the "input" (senses) and convert them into "output" (action).

 

[Belz...]

Because they aren't trying to retrieve partial information in that way. You can still use such a system to, say, recognise faces. You do not need to be able to extract parts of the information stored in the system to be able to use the system to do something useful.

What if I just want the left eye ?

Well, it has been explained by myself and several other people in this thread why that is a rather narrow-minded view.

Several others ?

That's your funeral, not mine. Personal experience counts, for me. That isn't "bias". If, say, an alien visits you then you have some pretty powerful personal evidence that aliens exist, even if you can't prove it to anyone else and most people think you must have been deluded or you're lying.

But it's still useless evidence, because you have no way of knowing if the experience is true, especially since alien visitations are usually accompanied by strong emotional response.

Why take personal evidence OVER evidence ?

I didn't say that. I said they were tightly-bound.

No. You said there was NOTHING that didn't correlate. I'd call that complete.

What does "arises" means? You've just invented another term for the meaningless "is" you still haven't explained.

It's the third-person form of the verb TO BE.

[/QUOTE]We have "is", "causes", "arises from" and any number of other materialist fictions. None of them means anything. The only two words which correctly describe the relationship are "correlates with" and "supervenes on". [/QUOTE]

Well, now I don't knwo what you're talking about. How are those words more meaningful ?

They are non-issues only for people wearing "materialists blinkers".

They are issues for people wearing "idealist slippers". Whatever.

 

[hammegk]

I cannot "prove" anything.

You are correct.

I can only satisfy the criteria by which you judge consciousness or "thinking". If you'll give me a list of what you believe those criteria are, then I'll see if I can satisfy them to your satisfaction.

See answer above. You should have stopped while you were ahead.

Does a computer think? Depends on what you mean by "think".

I'd say your computer has as much compatabalistic free-will concerning its' "thoughts" as does any other machine. You apparently have faith you are a machine, so that includes you.

Do you consider your meaningless "thoughts" an epiphenomena? Or do you have some other explanation as to why it's irrelevant "noise" generated after-the-fact by the "meat machine" that is you.

 

[Belz...]

You being the person who best understands your own worldview -- or lack thereof -- will be the one who can aid you in that quest.

WOW! Hammy believes we CAN'T prove other people wrong.

Secondly, why would anyone here but you care about you being right, or wrong?

That's the funniest thing I've ever seen you type, Hammegk. Basically, you're saying that any form of debate is pointless.

 

[hammegk]

We are discussing philosophy, and my comments pertain to this thread. What are you doing here, if you don't understand that?

 

[nescafe]

And I think you are way out of your depth, tricky. There's plenty of people who understand this, like, for example, nescafe who responded to my initial post on this with:

Your point about not being able to extract a given memory from a neural network as easily as from a standard computer memory is well-taken.

Hold on there, cowboy. I do not agree with you at all that it is impossible, perhaps you missed post 528. Impossible with out current understanding of how neural networks work, sure. Impossible for all time -- I rather doubt it.

 

[Belz...]

The only way to extract information from a neural net is to ask it questions.

Funny, the only way I get retrieve information from any database, is by making a query.

It's like this: There is more than one way of looking at the world, but there are two main ways. One of them is the first-person, phenomenological perspective of the mind. The other is the third-person, objective perspective of materialistic science. You, and your tribe, only appear to be capable of viewing the world one way - the second way. This is imposed upon you because of an idealogical commitment to things like science, atheism and materialism.

It is not "imposed" upon me by anything. It's the only way I can have ANY degree of certainty about anything. Taking the "first way" to its logical conclusion leads to sophistry and solipi...something.

 

[hammegk]

Taking the "first way" to its logical conclusion leads to sophistry and solipi...something.

Perhaps, for some.

Tell me, how do you disprove to your satisfaction solipsism? It is irrelevant as a useful position, we agree.

 

[nescafe]

How do we acquire the framework for understanding and interpreting the data?

Prior experience, some of it genetic.

Where do the concepts come from?

Assisted and unassisted learning. Luckily for us, our local environment has all sorts of regularities to exploit.

How do we acquire those concepts in the first place?

Same answer.

What do we start from when we are infants?

A gigantic, fiendishly complex neural network that has already been wired together in such a way that it can learn from the sensory input it receives and affect its local envorinment through various output devices. This can also count as prior experience, albiet experience that has been encoded genetically.

 

[UndercoverElephant]

Funny, the only way I get retrieve information from any database, is by making a query.

So you can't just read the disk sector then?

 

[UndercoverElephant]

What if I just want the left eye ?

If the network has been trained to recognise whole faces, then you're stuffed. And I'm bored of responding to your posts, so from now on I'll just respond to anything you post that is actually worth responding to.