On Consciousness

[quarky]

Are there people like me?

As per becoming hateful, its not my norm, that's for sure.

"Complaining that it won't feed the hungry is missing the point of what really matters."

Evidently, I have no idea what really matters.

Machines are our slaves?
Possibly got that backwards.

What would i rather be mesmerized by?
Nature. Beauty. Color. Music.

Creating better jobs?
Are you serious?

The most sophisticated technology on Earth has created endless, really really crappy jobs.
Perhaps you need to get out more often?

I recoil, frankly, at the manifest destiny aspect of technology, regardless of what it represents. I'm not a bit anti-science. I'm quite educated, even.
Crappy, pointless science, yes. I'm opposed.

There's always some new weapon that's going to make war obsolete, for instance.
meanwhile, my country and its scientists are still busy making more land mines to spread all over the planet.

What's it all about?

Arrogance of science.
Science that shoves itself down people's throats, for the aggrandizement of the few.
Pointless, crappy science, of the sort, that frankly, can't wrestle itself out of a paper bag, yet is very proud of itself.

Science that can't recognize when it is utterly failing.
Science that is so far up business's butt, that it can't see the light of day.
Elitism. Myopia. Denial of history and reality.

I love science.
Too bad its mostly turned to crap.
science is about to cause our own demise.

Though, being unwilling to see that; to step back and say, "Gee, maybe things aren't going so well; maybe we should take a good hard look at the reality of the human condition today, and reassess the value of many so called scientific advancements.

The idea that AI robots will improve the quality of human life is hilarious.
But have at it. i simply object to the notion that all science is self-justified and good, when in fact, most of it today is hopelessly corrupt and flawed.

I object to the religion and the faith that seems to come with science. Science will save us. Science will get us to the stars. Science will end disease and aging.
Sure it will. and Jesus will save us too. What fantastical crapola. what stunning arrogance. What disregard for all other life.
I'm atheistic and scientific. I love the method. i hate the religion of science.

 

[Mr. Scott]

Are there people like me?

As per becoming hateful, its not my norm, that's for sure.

"Complaining that it won't feed the hungry is missing the point of what really matters."

Evidently, I have no idea what really matters.

Machines are our slaves?
Possibly got that backwards.

What would i rather be mesmerized by?
Nature. Beauty. Color. Music.

Creating better jobs?
Are you serious?

The most sophisticated technology on Earth has created endless, really really crappy jobs.
Perhaps you need to get out more often?

I recoil, frankly, at the manifest destiny aspect of technology, regardless of what it represents. I'm not a bit anti-science. I'm quite educated, even.
Crappy, pointless science, yes. I'm opposed.

There's always some new weapon that's going to make war obsolete, for instance.
meanwhile, my country and its scientists are still busy making more land mines to spread all over the planet.

What's it all about?

Arrogance of science.
Science that shoves itself down people's throats, for the aggrandizement of the few.
Pointless, crappy science, of the sort, that frankly, can't wrestle itself out of a paper bag, yet is very proud of itself.

Science that can't recognize when it is utterly failing.
Science that is so far up business's butt, that it can't see the light of day.
Elitism. Myopia. Denial of history and reality.

I love science.
Too bad its mostly turned to crap.
science is about to cause our own demise.

Though, being unwilling to see that; to step back and say, "Gee, maybe things aren't going so well; maybe we should take a good hard look at the reality of the human condition today, and reassess the value of many so called scientific advancements.

The idea that AI robots will improve the quality of human life is hilarious.
But have at it. i simply object to the notion that all science is self-justified and good, when in fact, most of it today is hopelessly corrupt and flawed.

I object to the religion and the faith that seems to come with science. Science will save us. Science will get us to the stars. Science will end disease and aging.
Sure it will. and Jesus will save us too. What fantastical crapola. what stunning arrogance. What disregard for all other life.
I'm atheistic and scientific. I love the method. i hate the religion of science.

What strange ideas. Let's try not to derail the conversation from consciousness, OK? If you want to discuss what you hate about "the religion of science" that would be a neat topic for its own thread. Start one! The people who might enjoy it will miss out if they don't want to bicker about what a Turing Machine is (reference not to you but to others re the "Explain Consciousness for the Layman" thread still flopping like a gasping fish on a sidewalk).

I noticed you didn't continue the discussion on sex robots, which you and leumas initiated. I'd like to play with that one.

It sounds like you've said that we could never make consciousness machines, but if we did, we'd make sex robots, and that would be bad.

I don't mean to straw man you, but that's what I think your position distills to after I fill in the gaps. Have I got it right? What would be bad about conscious sex robots?

 

[!Kaggen]

We assume all of consciousness can be rationalized into a mathematical equation. Sure, that part which involves the past, our abstract thoughts. Our feelings are also part of our consciousness. Our feelings are not abstract they are the "here and now", our direct experience of the presence. Our will is also part of our consciousness. Our will is not abstract we see the results of it in the way we change the physical world into the future. Our feelings and our will are not the past by definition so we cannot abstract them mathematically. Consciousness without feeling and willing is not consciousness.

Even with thinking (abstracting the past) we are not necessarily conscious of our thoughts unless we have an active imagination.
Mechanically processing thoughts in a neat sequence has little to do with imagination. Imagination is when thinking becomes meaningful through a physical representation of the thought process. The free hand drawing of a circle requires imagination using the equation X 2 + Y 2=r2 to draw a circle doesn't. When a child learns to draw a circle freehand it becomes conscious of a circle through the experience. Knowing the equation of a circle does not mean one is conscious of a circle.

Imagination is the way through which we become conscious of thoughts, intuition is the way we become conscious of our feelings and inspiration the way we become conscious of our willing.

An algorithmic approach to consciousness is a contradiction as algorithms in their very nature do not require consciousness.

The trick of defining conscious as an algorithm is just that, a trick.
It will fool some in the same way technology fools children into believing Shrek is real. So I not surprised it is a popular amongst gaming programmers since they make there living by tricking children. And the holy grail would be the trick to get kids to believe in a conscious program. A good start is to get them to experience less and less of the world directly and more and more of it filtered through technology. This process is well under way with kids now interacting through social media with their peers and spending their free time "exploring the world" through video games.
The dumbing down process has began and soon the main trick will be convincing enough. As the behaviorist say, if it behaves like a duck it is a duck.

 

[!Kaggen]

Below are two examples of what human consciousness is capable of when conscious in thought, feeling and willing.




The ability to adapt to the unpredictable real world is clear to see and requires acute conscious awareness of thought, feeling and willing.
These particular examples are clearly inspirational and we see the future on humanity when we watch people willing the future consciously like this.

These abilities are what make humans unique.
Computers are only extensions of our thoughts(abstractions of the past) and without a conscious thought (imagination- thinking the future), conscious feeling (intuition-feeling the future) and conscious willing (inspiration- seeing the future) they will not be conscious.

 

[!Kaggen]

Are there people like me?

As per becoming hateful, its not my norm, that's for sure.

"Complaining that it won't feed the hungry is missing the point of what really matters."

Evidently, I have no idea what really matters.

Machines are our slaves?
Possibly got that backwards.

What would i rather be mesmerized by?
Nature. Beauty. Color. Music.

Creating better jobs?
Are you serious?

The most sophisticated technology on Earth has created endless, really really crappy jobs.
Perhaps you need to get out more often?

I recoil, frankly, at the manifest destiny aspect of technology, regardless of what it represents. I'm not a bit anti-science. I'm quite educated, even.
Crappy, pointless science, yes. I'm opposed.

There's always some new weapon that's going to make war obsolete, for instance.
meanwhile, my country and its scientists are still busy making more land mines to spread all over the planet.

What's it all about?

Arrogance of science.
Science that shoves itself down people's throats, for the aggrandizement of the few.
Pointless, crappy science, of the sort, that frankly, can't wrestle itself out of a paper bag, yet is very proud of itself.

Science that can't recognize when it is utterly failing.
Science that is so far up business's butt, that it can't see the light of day.
Elitism. Myopia. Denial of history and reality.

I love science.
Too bad its mostly turned to crap.
science is about to cause our own demise.

Though, being unwilling to see that; to step back and say, "Gee, maybe things aren't going so well; maybe we should take a good hard look at the reality of the human condition today, and reassess the value of many so called scientific advancements.

The idea that AI robots will improve the quality of human life is hilarious.
But have at it. i simply object to the notion that all science is self-justified and good, when in fact, most of it today is hopelessly corrupt and flawed.

I object to the religion and the faith that seems to come with science. Science will save us. Science will get us to the stars. Science will end disease and aging.
Sure it will. and Jesus will save us too. What fantastical crapola. what stunning arrogance. What disregard for all other life.
I'm atheistic and scientific. I love the method. i hate the religion of science.

This post make perfect sense to me and the ideas are not strange at all.
They are ideas from a realist who has had his hands dirty.

 

[!Kaggen]

Quarky, why is it that people like you become so hateful when engaged in discussions like this? Really, I'm asking you to look inside your heart and try to understand why, on topics like this, you resort to these emotional excesses. Leumas also reacted this way -- blistering rage at the suggestion that machines could be conscious. What's this all about? I really want to understand.

May I suggest you read

"The Abstract Wild" by Jack Turner

A quote from one of the essays: The Abstract Wild: A Rant

"It is now often said (ever since Wendell Berry stated it so clearly and forcefully) that our ecological crisis is a crisis of character, not a political or social crisis. This said, we falter, for it remains unclear what, exactly, is the crisis of modern character and, since character is partly determined by culture, what, exactly, is the crisis of modern culture. The question is important for anyone who loves the natural world, but the answer will not be found in the writings of Thoreau, or Muir, or ecologists -deep or otherwise.

Whether we focus on homogeneity or character, I believe that anger is a clue. Anger, anguish, and anxiety are all related to the Latin angere(perhaps clearest in the German angst) and they retain the cognate senses of distress, suffering, affliction, vexation, grief, and oppression. The initial sense, interestingly, is one of constriction-narrow,tight,strangled, a choking - as in angina, a constriction in the heart that cuts off the vital life force of blood. Something like that is happening to us now - the cutting off of life force."

 

[quarky]

What strange ideas. Let's try not to derail the conversation from consciousness, OK? If you want to discuss what you hate about "the religion of science" that would be a neat topic for its own thread. Start one! The people who might enjoy it will miss out if they don't want to bicker about what a Turing Machine is (reference not to you but to others re the "Explain Consciousness for the Layman" thread still flopping like a gasping fish on a sidewalk).

I noticed you didn't continue the discussion on sex robots, which you and leumas initiated. I'd like to play with that one.

It sounds like you've said that we could never make consciousness machines, but if we did, we'd make sex robots, and that would be bad.

I don't mean to straw man you, but that's what I think your position distills to after I fill in the gaps. Have I got it right? What would be bad about conscious sex robots?

It is a bit of a derail, but, honestly, i was trying to answer your question to me.

 

[quarky]

It is a bit of a derail, but, honestly, i was trying to answer your question to me.

Btw, Mr. Scott, you might have me a tad wrong. Alan Turing is a hero to me.
A very brief perusal of my history here should convince you that I'm no prude.
i'm not opposed to conscious sex robots, nor do I think its particularly impossible. Mostly, I think its a bit silly, but perhaps only because I've always been able to get a fleshier date.

I should think that intimacy might be devalued through employment of such technological breakthroughs. That may be the crux of my dismay. Some science seems to have no purpose at all, or even a cynical purpose. Some of it, of course, is fantastic. Its this evaluation that I sense has significance.

I like the smell of real roses. The cgi type don't do it for me. People may need a relationship with organic life forms. i certainly do. Studying them; observing them; its science. I'd rather play chess with you than big blue.

 

[!Kaggen]

A great video on what it means to be conscious of the future that is inevitable

http://vimeo.com/40974456

Computationalists want immortality by defining consciousness as the predictable past.
Consciousness means living for the only certain future, mortality, by battling the uncertain future daily.

"The mind fights the last war, the body the next" Nassim Taleb

 

[Zeuzzz]

a) consciousness > brain = woohoo
b) brain > consciousness = neuroscience

consciousness = undetectable or measurable scientifically, unless paradigm a) is assumed false and paradigm b) is adopted is the form of brain > consciousness synonymity.

Still, in both, consciousness = undetectable or measurable scientifically. So we can not say anything about it yet with any real authority.

The > in this relationship has no provable directional preference, even though its always assumed to be unidirectional for current models to work within the framework they have been created. Change the direction to consciousness > brain and most models will still work.

Example:

What if we send a periodic EM pulse through someone brain disrupting their conscious thought processes and speech?

a) You interfered with their consciousness being processed by the brain by effecting real world testable neurochemcial data, thus the brain interpreted the conscious messages incorrectly.

b) You interfered with their consciousness by interfering with the brain, thus the brain produced the changes in their consciousness.

^ the provable difference anyone?

Wow really need to work on writing my thoughts in a more coherent way when rushed. Did anyone understand this? Or should I re phrase it? After re-reading im not so sure I would understand my point if I was someone else.

 

[quarky]

Wow really need to work on writing my thoughts in a more coherent way when rushed. Did anyone understand this? Or should I re phrase it? After re-reading im not so sure I would understand my point if I was someone else.

I was going to ask if you had any more.

 

[!Kaggen]

I was going to ask if you had any more.

You crack me up

 

[Zeuzzz]

I was going to ask if you had any more.

I do somewhere will need some brain 'fuel' before I post more though, hard to articulate my point of view hungover. Tbh devils advocate esque posts might be better for the philosophy forum, but I tend to get better reactions and more challenging counter arguments to such ideas here, thus more fun.

And I dont think people need to think things are getting as heated here as much as they have, its very easy to confuse a discussion online with a heated argument, theres no body language to read.

 

[Zeuzzz]

You crack me up

Why?

 

[Beelzebuddy]

Wow really need to work on writing my thoughts in a more coherent way when rushed. Did anyone understand this? Or should I re phrase it? After re-reading im not so sure I would understand my point if I was someone else.

I thought it was plenty clear. "You can't prove there isn't a soul." That about cover it?

 

[Zeuzzz]

We assume all of consciousness can be rationalized into a mathematical equation. Sure, that part which involves the past, our abstract thoughts. Our feelings are also part of our consciousness. Our feelings are not abstract they are the "here and now", our direct experience of the presence. Our will is also part of our consciousness. Our will is not abstract we see the results of it in the way we change the physical world into the future. Our feelings and our will are not the past by definition so we cannot abstract them mathematically. Consciousness without feeling and willing is not consciousness.

Even with thinking (abstracting the past) we are not necessarily conscious of our thoughts unless we have an active imagination.
Mechanically processing thoughts in a neat sequence has little to do with imagination. Imagination is when thinking becomes meaningful through a physical representation of the thought process. The free hand drawing of a circle requires imagination using the equation X 2 + Y 2=r2 to draw a circle doesn't. When a child learns to draw a circle freehand it becomes conscious of a circle through the experience. Knowing the equation of a circle does not mean one is conscious of a circle.

Imagination is the way through which we become conscious of thoughts, intuition is the way we become conscious of our feelings and inspiration the way we become conscious of our willing.

An algorithmic approach to consciousness is a contradiction as algorithms in their very nature do not require consciousness.

The trick of defining conscious as an algorithm is just that, a trick.
It will fool some in the same way technology fools children into believing Shrek is real. So I not surprised it is a popular amongst gaming programmers since they make there living by tricking children. And the holy grail would be the trick to get kids to believe in a conscious program. A good start is to get them to experience less and less of the world directly and more and more of it filtered through technology. This process is well under way with kids now interacting through social media with their peers and spending their free time "exploring the world" through video games.
The dumbing down process has began and soon the main trick will be convincing enough. As the behaviorist say, if it behaves like a duck it is a duck.

Agree with most of this.

Heres how I see it. The problem that I see with the traditional brain = computer = mind is that it should mean that when a computer gets up to the processing ability of a human it should become conscious in some way. I very much doubt that it would, AI proponents frequently make that claim, but there is absolutely no evidence that machines can be conscious in any way, or could be in the future.

The problem with this is that the people who make these claims (that the brain is nothing more than a computer) assume that the neurons in the brain, and their connections, the synapses, work as fundamental units in real life. They hypostatize their (brilliantly sucessful neurochemical) mathematical models to have far deeper meaning than they do. So for example we have roughly ten billion neurons, with about a thousand or ten thousand connections to other neurons, which gives us about 10¹⁵ operations per second, with each neuron acting as a fundamental unit. The problem that i see with that is that neurons are much, much more complex than a simple switch. The capacity of a neuron seems much greater than that, the numerous binary type of models we have invented for many consiousness related things are a models to help understand the continuum that is consciousness. They are a mathematical tool to try to make sense of something that remains inherently non mathematical. Penrose has discussed this in quite some depth, suggesting a quantum explanation that uses non atypical types of mathematics.

You can keep going down (as many people are) the current reductionalist road, looking at what comprises neurons, like microtubules and cytoskeletons and finding out the role these may play, trying to find some sort of deeper meaning to consiousness. The problem with that is that even if we go down to that level and accept that microtubules are the fundamental units of consciousness, that still does not explain the coninuous flowing nature of consciousness, agency and self awareness. It's just more reductionism, it does not solve the problem.

Post of mine from ages back, which gives my old views on the matter, don't agree with this all anymore:

I dont think that there ever was a deterministic stage, I think that consciousness has always been here, down at the deepest vacuum level (unified field level) and the deterministic processes are just what the consciousness percieves.

Looking at the relationship between consciousness and material reality, you have to consider whether the material world can be derived from a conscious reality, or even whether consciousness itself could be the fundamental building blocks of the material universe.

It all comes down to what consciousness is. If your a very materialistic scientist you'll say its just a bunch of neurons acting like a computer. But its impossible to explain how a mass of neurons can ultimately become aware of itself, why computers with similar capabilities dont have conscious attributes, etc.

You need to evaluate reality and what makes something real to us via our senses. If you kick a rock and hurt your toe it feels real, you might hear sounds, bump into people, etc. Experiences are also very consistant, if you see a car driving down a street it just doesn't disappear it keeps going, so there is a consistancy with time. And you also have a cross comparison, I can ask you what you see and you can ask me what I see. Thing is that all of these criteria come back to how real it feels to us, as when I cross reference with you you are part of my reality too. So if I hear someone out there agreeing with my consious observation it still has to do with what I am perceiving, just in this case how I perceive them; whether or not what I percieve is real or not is not scientifically provable. Yet we do this every minute of every day.

Imagine mechanistic sun system with planets and no inhabitants. The system is completely deterministic mechanically. But what if a passing group of conscious entities came along and inhabited a planet and moved the orbit of some? This has gone from being a mechanical deterministic system to a non determinsitic system by simply adding in consiousness and free will.

 

[Zeuzzz]

I thought it was plenty clear. "You can't prove there isn't a soul." That about cover it?

No, you can't disprove that consiousness creates the brain, rather than the brain creates consiousness.

I have no idea what a soul is.

 

[rocketdodger]

a) consciousness > brain = woohoo
b) brain > consciousness = neuroscience

consciousness = undetectable or measurable scientifically, unless paradigm a) is assumed false and paradigm b) is adopted is the form of brain > consciousness synonymity.

Still, in both, consciousness = undetectable or measurable scientifically. So we can not say anything about it yet with any real authority.

The > in this relationship has no provable directional preference, even though its always assumed to be unidirectional for current models to work within the framework they have been created. Change the direction to consciousness > brain and most models will still work.

Example:

What if we send a periodic EM pulse through someone brain disrupting their conscious thought processes and speech?

a) You interfered with their consciousness being processed by the brain by effecting real world testable neurochemcial data, thus the brain interpreted the conscious messages incorrectly.

b) You interfered with their consciousness by interfering with the brain, thus the brain produced the changes in their consciousness.

^ the provable difference anyone?

Yeah your right, there is no provable difference.

But the same goes for a normal bicycle wheel, and one that "rolls" due to invisible pink elephants along the rim grabbing the ground with their trunks and pulling.

The pink elephant one is pretty cool, and some people might even try to push for it to be in science textbooks in schools, but you don't really *need* it because a normal bicycle wheel rolls just fine according to the known laws of physics.

Same goes for consciousness.

 

[rocketdodger]

Heres how I see it. The problem that I see with the traditional brain = computer = mind is that it should mean that when a computer gets up to the processing ability of a human it should become conscious in some way. I very much doubt that it would, AI proponents frequently make that claim, but there is absolutely no evidence that machines can be conscious in any way, or could be in the future.

What you don't take into consideration is that you know nothing about 1) computing, 2) the brain, 3) advances in A.I.

If that *is* taken into consideration, it becomes clear that you are wrong.

In particular, there has been an amazing amount of progress when it comes to neural network models demonstrating fundamentally conscious behaviors in the last 10 years.

 

[Zeuzzz]

What you don't take into consideration is that you know nothing about 1) computing, 2) the brain, 3) advances in A.I.

If that *is* taken into consideration, it becomes clear that you are wrong.

In particular, there has been an amazing amount of progress when it comes to neural network models demonstrating fundamentally conscious behaviors in the last 10 years.

Heard about this before, got a link? Conscious behaviours in what sense?

What you don't take into consideration is that you know nothing about 1) computing, 2) the brain, 3) advances in A.I.

To say I know nothing is wrong. The veractity of what I know is another question entirely.