On Consciousness

[Dancing David]

Not so, computing is not a physical aspect of the universe, it is a computational aspect of the universe.

That is sophistry of the first order and semantic waffling, computation is a set of behaviors, not some silly Kantian meta-notion.

 

[Dancing David]

but consciousness is not about behavior.

You keep saying that so please, exactly what is consciousness?

 

[Dancing David]

As far as simulation goes in terms of the context, yes, all simulation is computational. Consciousness is not information, it is what it is like to be something. Consciousness is seeing red, feeling soft feathers, etc. If you do not get that I can not help you.

Ah the Vague Problem of Consciousness.

 

[Dancing David]

And how is that not physical ?

Because they say so....

I am sure it is the sort of 'fast' is not a physical state sort of sillyness.

 

[Pulvinar]

As far as simulation goes in terms of the context, yes, all simulation is computational. Consciousness is not information, it is what it is like to be something. Consciousness is seeing red, feeling soft feathers, etc. If you do not get that I can not help you.

But there's more to computation than simulation. No need to limit computational consciousness to that.

If "what it is like" wasn't informing you (a brain) about what it is like, you wouldn't know what it is like. I don't see how it can escape being information. Another relevant piece is that at some time in the past you were informed (in some manner) to label "what it is like" with the word "consciousness". So why couldn't a computer --an information processor-- be likewise informed?

 

[Mr. Scott]

Perhaps consciousness is a physical aspect of the universe?

It is a physical aspect of the Universe - an emergent property of suitably organised computer systems.

Everything in the universe is a property or aspect of the universe, which is a useless truism.

Consciousness is a possibility of the universe. Consciousness might never have evolved in this universe. A few billion years ago, the possibility of conscious entities emerging could not have been predicted

Still, there's no evidence consciousness exists outside the brains that evolved here.

Whether or not a machine has achieved consciousness depends on how we define the word. We won't know when a machine achieves human-style consciousness, until it asks us what gives red it's redness, assures us that no simulation of itself could create fine art, and debates sphexishly about it.

 

[tensordyne]

I hope you are not going to resort to qualia and I am very hopeful it is something else.

The fact that certain people do not like the concept of qualia is interesting. From Wikipedia (for those less in the know?):

Qualia ( /ˈkwɑːliə/ or /ˈkweɪliə/), singular "quale" (Latin pronunciation: [ˈkwaːle]), from a Latin word meaning for "what sort" or "what kind," is a term used in philosophy to refer to subjective conscious experiences as 'raw feels'.

The sum of your qualia at any given moment IS your consciousness. The Hard-AI and Dennett et. al rejection of qualia is most bizarre. It is basically like they wish to get rid of the inconvenient fact that consciousness is hard to study because it IS about qualia and we have not cracked that nut yet in terms of how to study it.

So instead the Hard-AI proponents make it all about mind abstractions that we do know how to agree on. Sorry, but consciousness IS about qualia. Oh yeah, and if you fell for Dennett's arguments in for instance "Consciousness Explained", there is a paper by Ton Dirksen that shows how Dennett engages in the same kind of pseudo-scientific word play that Freud engaged in, plus some.

Oh well, sorry to disappoint Dancing David, it really is all about qualia. The question is, how do we study that while making as few assumptions as possible and keeping with the scientific mindset.

 

[tensordyne]

Everything in the universe is a property or aspect of the universe, which is a useless truism.

The white noise from your TV is not computational. It is physical and yet there is no way to use it by itself to perform computations.

The concepts involved in Mathematics, are they physical? I separate the study of abstract things from the study of concrete things. It also makes sense, as far as I can tell, that concrete things can have properties that abstract things can not have (and conversly I suppose).

Consciousness is a possibility of the universe. Consciousness might never have evolved in this universe. A few billion years ago, the possibility of conscious entities emerging could not have been predicted

There are lots of things it is hard to predict ab initio. Not sure though whether consciousness gets evolved to or merely is. I leave such questions mostly alone.

Still, there's no evidence consciousness exists outside the brains that evolved here.

If we can agree what consciousness is about, yeah, the above seems plausible then perhaps.

Whether or not a machine has achieved consciousness depends on how we define the word. We won't know when a machine achieves human-style consciousness, until it asks us what gives red it's redness, assures us that no simulation of itself could create fine art, and debates sphexishly about it.

Eh, I have no problem with the concept of a machine becoming conscious (in my sense of that word, in PixyMisa's sense we already have such things). Who knows...? I am just trying a way to figure out how to study consciousness (does it go without stating my version?) as per the Empirical Method. In that regard I say use the Principle of Uniformitarianism as one of your basic concepts.

 

[tensordyne]

That is sophistry of the first order and semantic waffling, computation is a set of behaviors, not some silly Kantian meta-notion.

Computation is about what Turing et. al came up with. I have a feeling you are aware of those results so I will leave it at that.

 

[tensordyne]

Ah the Vague Problem of Consciousness.

Yep, just like how Science used to be a vague problem until people came up with a method of study. Of course, some do not want to let Science go as far as it can by studying consciousness because of certain preconceived cultural habits. Oh well.

I also answered your other riposte above in the longer section.

 

[tensordyne]

Dancing David before said he was in the p-zombie crowd. Quick survey of what crowd you think you are in:

1) Human
2) P-zombie
3) Other

 

[tensordyne]

Dancing David before said he was in the p-zombie crowd. Quick survey of what crowd you think you are in:

1) Human
2) P-zombie
3) Other

1)

 

[tensordyne]

I just think, for epistemology reasons, we should figure out gravity in ourselves first...



epistemology matters, why?

Science and the Scientific Method is a certain form of epistemology. That is part of the importance of epistemology. As far as I can tell there is no currently generally agreed upon epistemology for the study of consciousness itself.

The difference between the study of gravity and consciousness (for the record, from here on out, when I use the word consciousness, I mean the version I explained about before) is that gravity can be observed without changing the "observing equipment" of anyone, while consciousness is about the observing equipment itself in terms of that dreaded word qualia.

Let me make this more concrete with two examples.

1. Gravity: We both watch an apple fall and make observations about it.

2. Consciousness: I open up your head and insert an electrical probe in your brain and ask you what you are seeing.

Do you see the difference? If not, I do not know what to say. You can only lead a horse to water and all.

 

[Dancing David]

Yep, just like how Science used to be a vague problem until people came up with a method of study. Of course, some do not want to let Science go as far as it can by studying consciousness because of certain preconceived cultural habits. Oh well.

I also answered your other riposte above in the longer section.

Except for one thing 'science' which is not capatalized usually already studies 'perceptions', like visual perceptions. So what makes a qualia , a poorly defined qword at best, different from a perception?

That is the $6.4 x 10^23 question.

let the mystic mumbo jumbo roll!



So you really can't define consciousness , can you?

'The sum of your imaginary fairy friends at any given moment IS your consciousness'



So how exactly is a qualia different from a perception?

 

[Dancing David]

Science and the Scientific Method is a certain form of epistemology. That is part of the importance of epistemology. As far as I can tell there is no currently generally agreed upon epistemology for the study of consciousness itself.

So you just dismiss all the neurobiology with a wave of the hand, or are you just unaware of it?

The difference between the study of gravity and consciousness (for the record, from here on out, when I use the word consciousness, I mean the version I explained about before) is that gravity can be observed without changing the "observing equipment" of anyone, while consciousness is about the observing equipment itself in terms of that dreaded word qualia.

Muumble mumble, more damn fairies...



What do the people who study neurobiology do, use alchemy?

Let me make this more concrete with two examples.

1. Gravity: We both watch an apple fall and make observations about it.

2. Consciousness: I open up your head and insert an electrical probe in your brain and ask you what you are seeing.

Do you see the difference? If not, I do not know what to say. You can only lead a horse to water and all.

So the question is not what is the difference but why it matters?

Do you think that a neural probe measuring neurons in the visual cortex of cats isn't objective?

Or is this some argument that isn't special pleading? I am open to this, I did not come to my current beliefs in less than twenty years.

How is putting a probe in a cat's brain, or a bird's brain different than a detector in the LHC?

 

[Dancing David]

Dancing David before said he was in the p-zombie crowd. Quick survey of what crowd you think you are in:

1) Human
2) P-zombie
3) Other

P-zombie and even worse the M-zombie.

I have no 'mind' either just the appearance of a mind.

I thank Mercutio for that!

 

[tensordyne]

Except for one thing 'science' which is not capatalized usually already studies 'perceptions', like visual perceptions. So what makes a qualia , a poorly defined qword at best, different from a perception?

Science as it is mostly practiced (sans the occasional neurosurgeon poking around someones head and asking questions of said person) is about phenomena we can all agree about at the same time. If you poke someones head they very well could be seeing, hearing, tasting, etc. things no one else is, or do you doubt that?

Sorry about the caps. I will make sure and use lower case from here on out.

Plus, why is it poorly defined? Raw feels people use every day to describe all sort of things, "this is red", "that is blue", etc. Are those descriptions vague or filled with faerie dust. Come on.

So you really can't define consciousness , can you?

I already did.

'The sum of your imaginary fairy friends at any given moment IS your consciousness'

More rhetorical nonsense. Address the ideas or slink of into a corner. This word play is boring, pointless and wrong.

So how exactly is a qualia different from a perception?

As far as I can tell, there is no difference in the concepts except that qualia are perceptions given in a form with as little interpretation added as possible.

"That is a Jumbo Jet", not qualia.

"That has a red color, whatever it is that is in the upper left hand of my vision", qualia.

Hope that helps.

 

[tensordyne]

So you just dismiss all the neurobiology with a wave of the hand, or are you just unaware of it?

What do the people who study neurobiology do, use alchemy?

On the contrary, I am very much in favor of what neurobiologists study and how they do it (as well as Scientists in general, I think the philosophers are mostly useless though). In general, I only have a problem with PixyMisa types who say they have something that is conscious and so on.

So the question is not what is the difference but why it matters?

Do you think that a neural probe measuring neurons in the visual cortex of cats isn't objective?

Or is this some argument that isn't special pleading? I am open to this, I did not come to my current beliefs in less than twenty years.

How is putting a probe in a cat's brain, or a bird's brain different than a detector in the LHC?

A cat can not tell you what color it is seeing, a human can. That is a practical matter as well as also being one of perception. If you put the probe in and you read off the result from the probe itself, there is no difference between the LHC and the examples you gave. That is science as it is most often practiced (the only kind p-zombies seem to be able to understand).

Putting a probe in a fellow human who can tell you something about what the probe causes in terms of perception on that person is different, for what I consider should be obvious reasons. We all see the results of a probe that reads voltage, the only one who 'sees' the results of the probe that is there to elicit some perceptual reaction is the person being probed.

Or is that faerie dust?

 

[rocketdodger]

Comparative neuroanatomy begs to differ. Emotion is a limbic thing, while attention is a thalamocortical process. Which came first?

It isn't that simple.

I can ask you whether certain CPU instructions "precede" operating systems, and argue that since the CPU came about first in computing history of course instructions must precede the OS, but in fact the CPU is so intrinsically linked with the OS at this point that many instructions can genuinely be said to require an OS in the first place.

In the case of emotion vs. attention, I challenge you to find an animal that solidly demonstrates emotion without also demonstrating attention. Furthermore I challenge you to specify a human emotion that cannot also be said to require attention. If a mind is not capable of attention, what would an emotion even be?

Every formal description of emotion that I have ever seen reduces to some sort of mechanism to alter attention. That strongly suggests that without attention, emotion doesn't even make sense. It's like saying that love can exist without the ability to recognize other humans. Huh?

In fact, I won't even hold you to existing research. How about you just provide a definition of "emotion," and we will see what would be necessary for a system to satisfy that definition.

Also in the sense of the neurobiological basis of self-awareness.

Do you have any theories as to what that basis is?

I thought so. So ... what evidence do you have to support your statement here?

 

[tensordyne]

P-zombie and even worse the M-zombie.

I have no 'mind' either just the appearance of a mind.

I thank Mercutio for that!

Thanks for doing the survey (of two, so far!). Point of inquiry, M in M-zombie is Mental? Never heard of that one before. Is there any literature for the less informed about that subject you might want anyone to read?

I will only admit to being an R-Zombie fan.