On Consciousness

[Beelzebuddy]

I apologize if I seem to be omnislashing. Your posts posits a number of questions and concepts have kinda need to be teased apart when replying.

I'm not sure what you mean by "the usual qualia ***." What's the usual, and why is it wrong?

Qualia is generally presented as straight dualism, but in computational neuroscience it usually ends up resembling a touchy-feely version of Pixy's SRIP, with a dash of dualistic special pleading. We understand a fair bit of how our emotions work - massive feedback loops, basically - but just labeling a random feedback loop in an artificial system with "emotion" gets pushback from the "real" qualists because you're just supplying feedback to the system, it's not really feeeling anything. The author is saying "that's enough, ffs lay off," without addressing that this is only a relatively minor part of what people call consciousness and if he wants to use that term there's plenty of further objections in wait for him.

We're talking about the internal subjective experience.

What experience are you talking about, exactly? Emotion? Attention? Episodic narrative? Neural function is not a discrete, unified thing.

Do you think a machine can be made to achieve that? Why, or why not?

Yes, because there's nothing special about each of the components that constitute what we consider consciousness. It's only together that we slap on a special label and declare the whole shebang mystical and unattainable.

We're also talking about capabilities our brains/minds have that some believe are impossible to mechanize. What's your position on that?

Which capabilities? Memory? Problem-solving? Getting all ********** up on goofballs and lying around in a daze, ranting about the consciousness of the universe and trying to conduct meaningful conversations with our washing machines?

Define your terms, Mr. Scott. If you have a specific definition of consciousness you'd like me to weigh in on, let's hear it. Neither "internal subjective experiences" nor "not a zombie" outlines the problem in a manner in which it can be approached.

 

[quarky]

The back ground field; the ecstatic state; the thought free origin; the holy spirit...

Machines might want to avoid getting into this stuff, if we still want to get some work out of them.

Once we agree to recognize their consciousness, we become slave masters.

Maybe I'm superstitious, but I've already freed all my thermostats.
I'd like to believe that they are enjoying their new found freedom, out back, in the woods.

 

[quarky]

Of course, they could be plotting against me.

I sure as hell would be.

 

[asydhouse]

This thread is fun! Thank you Mr. Scott

"Originally Posted by quarky
My guess is that certain plants took advantage of us. Much like they've exploited bees and wasps."

Can't agree with this more.

I think that art rather than syntax or language can explain this point more succinctly.

[qimg]http://sphotos-h.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ak-ash3/68421_252556708203150_1597873264_n.jpg[/qimg]

Hi Zeuzzzzz have to say I'm enjoying most of what you've been saying in the last ten pages (all I've read, I'm just off back to start at the beginning now)... enjoyed a lot more than your physics bashing threads.

But it's bad form to post someone's art without accreditation, you should really be cognisant of the fact you are cutting out the creator of the work you are disseminating.

I like this piece a lot, and it is a nice poetic description of the way the universe has splashed us out of it, to its own astonishment.... which astonishment can only be realised within our brains, each having the responsibility to realise himself.

So who's the flipping artist then, mate!

 

[Mr. Scott]

um, it [a machine] doesn't [have an internal subjective experience]?

In the context of the question, it was asserted that the brain is a machine, and that machine, if it is indeed a machine, has internal subjective experiences.

Why are you certain the brain is not a machine? Why are you certain a man-made machine could not have an internal subjective experience?

 

[Dancing David]

The default perceptual mental state has no agenda.It just is. Energy and bliss. No name. No face. No stairway.

[/lurk]
I don't think perceptual means what you think it means. There are plenty of biases in perception.
[lurk]

 

[dlorde]

... We know that consciousness continues largely unaffected across a wide range of operating conditions, as long as you don't cause damage to the brain itself.

It has also been known to continue after a large amount of brain damage.

 

[Mr. Scott]

What experience are you talking about, exactly? Emotion? Attention? Episodic narrative? Neural function is not a discrete, unified thing.

BTW, I'm devil-advocating. Be nice.

There are lots of hypotheses about what this is that seems so special about the mind that doesn't seem to make sense to picture happening in a machine. One is Penrose's "understanding," e.g., the chess position he presents that makes a chess playing machine flail in hopeless number-crunching, purportedly never "understanding" a position that nevertheless has a simple answer we can easily see (below). This involves both the process of understanding (sophisticated matching?) and the FEELING of understanding, or, the "AHA!" emotion.

Yes, because there's nothing special about each of the components that constitute what we consider consciousness. It's only together that we slap on a special label and declare the whole shebang mystical and unattainable.

I also call it sensation, but it's not about semantics. Let's use music as an example. Why does a major chord sound happy, and a minor chord sound sad? I could make a machine recognize which chord it's hearing, but how would I make it FEEL sadness or joy upon recognition?

Which capabilities? Memory? Problem-solving? Getting all ********** up on goofballs and lying around in a daze, ranting about the consciousness of the universe and trying to conduct meaningful conversations with our washing machines?

The anti-computationalists assert, basically, that whatever we can do, but computers can't yet do, is attributable to the noncomputational properties of the mind/brain. I know, it's very much like the god-of-the-gaps assertion, and hypotheses for the brain's seemingly magical properties include electromagnetic columns, carbon basis, quantum mechanics, dark matter, and on and on, hypotheses for which there isn't the tiniest shred of evidence.

Define your terms, Mr. Scott. If you have a specific definition of consciousness you'd like me to weigh in on, let's hear it. Neither "internal subjective experiences" nor "not a zombie" outlines the problem in a manner in which it can be approached.

The conversation is way past semantics, but maybe we can start with the first paragraph from wiki:

Consciousness is the quality or state of being aware of an external object or something within oneself. It has been defined as: subjectivity, awareness, sentience, the ability to experience or to feel, wakefulness, having a sense of selfhood, and the executive control system of the mind. Despite the difficulty in definition, many philosophers believe that there is a broadly shared underlying intuition about what consciousness is. As Max Velmans and Susan Schneider wrote in The Blackwell Companion to Consciousness: "Anything that we are aware of at a given moment forms part of our consciousness, making conscious experience at once the most familiar and most mysterious aspect of our lives."

Let's put it in practical terms. ATT has developed some very advanced telephone answering systems (others have too I'm sure). Many people apparently have conversations with them and never realize they are talking to a machine. The machines are zombies, with no feelings and no gut understanding of what they are doing, following rote instructions not unlike the Chinese Room^WP. They don't "understand" but merely recognize and match bits and access pre-programmed responses. All these machines can do when off script is to escalate the call to a human.

Why does a CAPTCHA^WP stump a machine but is usually easy for us? Because of uncomputable consciousness?

White to play and force a draw:

 

[dlorde]

He's more than gone downhill. He's dead. Has been for over a decade.

Wow, shows how out of touch I am, that I didn't know this 'well known' public speaker was dead (although I may have heard but forgotten).

You implied that psychedelic use would not be good for language yet I can supply an example of a person with a vocabulary and knowledge base far wider than most people here, was the point.

Not quite. Language is generally impaired when tripping, and you haven't show any evidence to support the claim that it provides a selective advantage to language development afterwards. Using McKenna's mediocre language skills to support that argument is absurd; not only is he not a particularly good exapmple, but a single lifetime has no relevance to evolutionary advantage.

Some of the most famous and successful authors in the English language have been serious alcoholics, but that doesn't support a claim that alcohol is behind their linguistic abilities, it simply demonstrates that linguistic ability isn't necessarily seriously impaired by alcoholism. Likewise, it isn't necessarily impaired by a history of ingesting psychedelics (although, as with alcohol, it depends on the individual and the extent of indulgence).

I can supply more. But I am not really sure what your argument about language is, which is why I warned of sample bias before I mentioned a specific person.

I was commenting on the illogicality of your claim about language. Warning of sample bias doesn't made that sample any better evidence for your claim. It's not evidence at all. That is my point.

 

[dlorde]

Which is half the reason I have brought this up, not to defend him in particular but to address Dlordes comments about language, creativity, music and syntax having no relationship to ancient psychedelic use. His life is a polar opposite case.

My comments only addressed language and intelligence.

Are you suggesting that a group people who have taken psychedelics will have better language skills than an otherwise comparable group who have not? If so, can you cite evidence for this ? (and no, naming individuals isn't evidence).

 

[dlorde]

Yet is still does not rival human consciousness very well, even if at some specialized mental challenging aspects I can.

Obviously there's a long way to go before that, but the scale in terms of neural elements is now achievable.

 

[quarky]

In the context of the question, it was asserted that the brain is a machine, and that machine, if it is indeed a machine, has internal subjective experiences.

Why are you certain the brain is not a machine? Why are you certain a man-made machine could not have an internal subjective experience?

Hoo-boy.

If you're picking up any certainty from me, you must be on weird drugs.

I am your resident bumbling buffoon, occasionally compelled to report on subjective experiences, with so little gusto that I drop over dead backwards to point out the subjectivity of my spewage.

It was I that begged for the whole debate to go to R&P.

Essentially, in the name of fairness, if someone gets to claim that a thermostat is conscious, I get to claim that there's a background field of consciousness.

Sure, I hope I'm right.

I'm the uncaring bastard that set my thermostats free last night.
I have doubts about my hunches, much like Mr. Bean.

I don't long to be the inevitable victim of the next Stephen King novel.

Some of those liberated thermostats had poky parts and toxic ingredients.

The tragedy in all this is that I love thermostats.
Not "that" kind of love.
I hope I can be understood, here in this science forum.

 

[Zeuzzz]

It has also been known to continue after a large amount of brain damage.

Brain damage is kind of subjective in some regards. You can look at peoples brain and deduce they are severely handicapped yet they could be fine in real life.

People have been born with 90% of the brain volume missing sometimes. Their mind works round it. I started a thread a while ago where someone with an IQ of 120 that was mid aged had just 10% of the normal brain volume due to abnormal swelling and water in his skull, with his brain pushed into the very corners of the cranium. I've forgotten the name of the condition.

 

[quarky]

Do zombies ever eat their own brains?

 

[Zeuzzz]

Are you suggesting that a group people who have taken psychedelics will have better language skills than an otherwise comparable group who have not? If so, can you cite evidence for this ? (and no, naming individuals isn't evidence).

Creativity is drastically increased by people who have taken a psychedelic, or people that have taken enough to access that perspective at will. Language is an ongoing semi organic and creative process by it's very nature. The more open mindedness and creative the designers of the language are the faster and better the evolution of language.

Language is not really logical at all. Sure, there are deductive patterns and themes, but no laws.

 

[steenkh]

Language is an ongoing semi organic and creative process by it's very nature. The more open mindedness and creative the designers of the language are the faster and better the evolution of language.

Language is not really logical at all. Sure, there are deductive patterns and themes, but no laws.

As a former student of linguistics and phonetics, I can only say that you must be completely ignorant of the field - or on drugs - to say that.

Besides, I have no idea what you mean by the "evolution" of a language. Sure, languages evolve, but they do not evolve from something worse to something better. You would be on much firmer ground if you talked about the evolution of cultures, because cultures are the reason why some languages do not import new words or concepts.

 

[Zeuzzz]

Drugs is an awful word anyway. Either evil addictive drugs people illegally enjoy, or life saving medication health systems are based on.

I am quite specific about which illegal drugs I think are creative and clinically useful, contrary to consensus political opinion, mainly advocating the ones that have actually been proved to be.

And I agree language is more cultural in it's evolution. Multi cultured or non culturally blinded people will generally have a better vocabulary and exhibit a more creative use of words, depending on their genetic luck and effort put into learning to small extents too.

 

[dlorde]

... I started a thread a while ago where someone with an IQ of 120 that was mid aged had just 10% of the normal brain volume due to abnormal swelling and water in his skull, with his brain pushed into the very corners of the cranium. I've forgotten the name of the condition.

Hydrocephalus. Without treatment it has around 60% mortality. Children with hydrocephalus that survive a year generally have fairly normal lives, but very few are as severe as the case you mention.

 

[dlorde]

Creativity is drastically increased by people who have taken a psychedelic, or people that have taken enough to access that perspective at will. Language is an ongoing semi organic and creative process by it's very nature. The more open mindedness and creative the designers of the language are the faster and better the evolution of language.

Language is not really logical at all. Sure, there are deductive patterns and themes, but no laws.

You quoted but forgot to answer the question:

Are you suggesting that a group people who have taken psychedelics will have better language skills than an otherwise comparable group who have not? If so, can you cite evidence for this ? (and no, naming individuals isn't evidence).

Or perhaps you'll admit that your assertion that 'altered states of consciousness would have provided a tremendous advantage in terms of natural selection in the evolution of ... language' is unsubstantiated and without merit.

 

[dlorde]

As a former student of linguistics and phonetics, I can only say that you must be completely ignorant of the field - or on drugs - to say that.

As a student of human biology, I can say that it appears characteristic of his knowledge of biology too.