On Consciousness

[tensordyne]

I think it's clear that some people will never accept the conclusions of science no matter what happens in the future in that field. If we have conscious computers in 16 years, they will not believe it. If we understand precisely how consciousness works, they won't accept it, because they have a predetermined conclusion, an emotional attachment to it, and a need to see it as "special", somehow.

BS. I know your 'some people' is I. If you figure out how consciousness works in humans, i.e. the physical basis, not the mentally deficient idea of a computational basis, and that is put in a device, then I will gladly accept it is conscious. I just hope it is not writhing in pain having to listen to the silly arguments presented on this forum is all.

 

[tensordyne]

See, this is especially ironic after you called Pixy's dismissal of Zeuzzz' nonsense "unscientific". Skepticism puts everything under the microscope, even "common sense" or "self-evident" ideas. And studying experience has led to things we never considered before, such as decisions being taken by our brain before we're aware of them, split personalities in people with severed corpus callosum, etc. If we just took it for granted, we wouldn't know half as much about consciousness as we know now. That's, if we followed your approach to it. And you still think we're the ones beign unscientific ?

I said take the existence of experience of sensation for granted (as a given). I never, ever, ever, said take the phenomena associated with such for granted. For the phenomena the best method for results thus far is the scientific method.

You, and your fellow adherents of the computational model, do not have the correct interpretation of science. To explain why, I could tell a story about some alternate reality and how ... but to understand the story and its import to our own reality requires imagination and insight, something sorely lacking, IMHO, in the computer club here.

You know what, I am just going to give you guys a name instead of the longer phrase. Not as if I am breaking forum rules and I need a short word to cut down on typing. Lets say comps vs. bios (or phys).

 

[tensordyne]

Or storms. Just because consciousness arises from computation doesn't mean all computation leads to consciousness.

Than shouldn't the comp model say which ones do and which ones do not? Possibly why?

Plus, that is the most annoying aspect of talking to comp's, they do not even have a conception of experience of sensation (consciousness). So you comps can talk about consciousness all day but you are not going to be talking about what I am talking about. Maybe that is why I should just leave the forum. Get across the main points and then go.

Oh well, gives me something to do!

 

[Jeff Corey]

Or psychs. (reference to post #2043)

 

[tensordyne]

I think #3 is sufficient.

I am a little uncomfortable with the picture in post #1 (below) because it suggests the quale for the apple's color is one-directional (how do we know we the quale is there?)

So, since all measurable brain activity is literally data processing, dualist arguments must go this way:

1) Apple produces image, decoded in the brain by data processing, ultimately producing, somehow, the red quale, the physics of which we can only guess.

2) The red quale is, somehow, detected by the brain, converted back to data processing, and reported to the world by voice or keyboard.

I've not heard dualists discuss #2.

My problem is that I firmly believe the brain evolved from the brain of barely conscious (most likely unconscious) wormy creatures, so we also need to answer:

1) How and when qualia evolved in a data processing machine.
2) How it helped creatures survive (or how qualia helped spread the genes that are responsible for the machinery of qualia AND its detection)

Since the brain's continuing production (and detection) of qualia must consume energy, dualists need to discuss the evolution of qualia, and its reproductive advantage over mere data processing.

PS: I've tried to learn as much as I can about the dualist POV from David Chalmers' videos, and he always has that smug smile that gives me an internal subjective experience like having my eyeballs pierced by 12 inch stainless steel spikes. It's kind of a mechanical grin, suggesting artifice. Dennett's spirit is warm and cuddly. (Oh, the irony!)

[qimg]http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/imagehosting/67364f8ca50f6f542.jpg[/qimg]

Interesting you find him cuddly. I find in him a kind of confused grandfather feel who is trying to show you a magic trick that he ends up performing on himself. The smirk on Chalmers' face to me is the kind of smirk you have when you hear a devilishly hard question you do not have the answer to.

I am not a dualist myself, not that I particularly care. I am an Empiricist, so the dualist type models, the monist type models, whatever type model, they are all just models.

It is strange this question of epiphenomena. Since I have not written about it before on this thread perhaps now is a good time. Cause and effect are one of those difficult to establish questions. It is clear when a cog on a wheel goes into another cog on a different wheel, and starts to turn, that there is a cause and effect relationship for the other wheel turning.

Not so clear is how the apple image (P. Churchland uses the clever euphemism for such things calling them 'mental states') could possibly cause anything. The image and being able to talk about it are one to one, so at least that can be used to investigate the same, which is an important point.

Yeah, I have no answer. The quale definitely seem to exist and the ability to talk about the quale exists, but how on earth the quale could possible effectuate anything is a mystery to me. Experience of sensation does seem to be non-causative, but then we can talk about it, so perhaps it must be. Or perhaps, as is the most likely case, when a new theory of mind comes around it will show how to better think about these issues and raise it's own.

 

[tensordyne]

Or psychs. (reference to post #2043)

Please, do tell. What are the general outlines of the psych position. So far we have (in alphabetical order):

1. Bio (possibly also known as neuro)
2. Comp
3. Phys
4. Psych
5. Spirit

Any others I missed?

 

[tensordyne]

This is what I'm talking about -- it isn't just the position of the people here, it is the accepted position of the field of neuroscience. There is no qualitative difference between what piggy calls "comp.lit" and "neurobio."

Then why did piggy bring up that a very modern book on cognitive neuroscience has a whole chapter devoted to dispelling the ideas of the Hard-AI crowd?

If you want to reject that a few hundred transistors can be conscious, that is fine. That has nothing to do with the "computational model." The computational model is simply that any definition of consciousness based on reality ( regardless of what exactly your definition happens to be ) will be computational in nature.

That goes to his other point he brought up. Computation in nature is ubiquitous. Saying something is computational does not provide any new insight since everything is computational when looked at properly. Plus, computation really is of a different kind than what experience of sensation is.

Computation is about math and abstraction, experience of sensation is about what it feels like to be something. Those are very different categories.

What piggy is trying to do is use the fact that most neuroscience researchers don't explicitly say "yes, a gigantic system of buckets and pulleys and ropes that is turing equivalent could be conscious if it was running an unimaginably complex algorithm" as somehow evidence that they don't actually support that position. Well, that is just rhetoric from piggy -- if a person doesn't say "I don't support X" and they never say anything that is inconsistent with X, you can't just claim willy-nilly that they don't support X.

The only reason we are even talking about turing machines is because people like piggy come in and say "you realize that the computational model, if taken to its full logical conclusion, implies that a system of buckets and ropes and pulleys could be conscious, don't you?"

Yeah... and when someone points out that pulleys and cogs will do, that should be it for the Hard-AI position, done, finito, end of the story. There are humans, we are conscious because we experience sensation. There are no sensors on rope and pulleys. Rope and pulleys do not follow the same physics as we do (well, let me put that better, the physics that applies to us is different in many ways then the physics applying to us). The structure that the rope and pulleys gets put in to determines whether it is computing or not, not any property of the rope and pulleys itself (such as mass, charge...). There are lots of properties that if changed in a humans will cause unconsciousness. They are different.

The above applies the same to modern computers.

Yeah, and modern physics tells us that we are all just a bunch of particles. So what? I don't let the fact that in reality I'm just a huge swarm of particles somehow poison every other thought I have with nihilistic negativity, neither should anyone let the fact that all research suggests consciousness stems from computation somehow devalue consciousness.

All research does not say consciousness comes from computation. The researchers themselves (as per the litany of quotes given by piggy earlier) do not have any solid ideas on that front. So just try and not be nihilistic about not knowing what causes consciousness, because you probably do not.

Why? What about remembering what it is like to experience red?

The words were not remembering, it was experience of experience... Remembering the previous experience of something is a new experience. When I recall driving a car, it is not the same as the experience of driving a car. You can think about thinking because thinking is abstract, and thus, insensible in part. Experience itself is not abstract at all, hence, it can not be abstracted in the recursive manner that thinking can.

Perception of red I take to mean sensors take in light in the red wavelengths. If someone hooks up your brain in a certain way then your experience of the red light may be a certain taste, like sweetness.

Experience of red is just that, what it is like to experience red. There is no further level beyond that of experiencing perception.

Yeah but there is definitely a difference. When I focus on a red object and admire how red it is, I am fully aware of my experiencing red. When I drive by a red car on the way home and I don't even pay attention to it, I am not aware of that experience, and I would say since I am not aware of the experience I am not actually even having the experience.

Your notion of redness doesn't seem to account for such cases.

I do not need to account for it since the relevant concepts are already out there. We are in agreement that focusing on red and just having red somewhere in your visual field are definitely different in a way. The first difference is that when one focuses on something visually, the object of focus, as far as I know, goes in the center of the field. There are probably other differences for which I am not aware of at the moment.

Interesting questions do seem to be associated with this though.

It is "hard" because there is a qualitative difference in your experience of the red frowny face between when you are just typing a response and when you actually look down and see that it is a red frowny face.

If you want to say that you are simultaneously "experiencing" all the colors on your screen, then what is your term for what happens when you actually become aware of one of those colors by focusing on that pixel and saying to yourself "ah, that is red?"

You have already answered your own questions. The explicit answer to the last question is 'focus'. In both cases though there is consciousness of a red frowny face happening (unless it is obscured, distorted or partially outside the visual field, in which case you would have consciousness of some other kind).

 

[tensordyne]

WTF???

One might be forgiven for thinking you're spending too much time with Punshhh...

Just answer the question if you can please, or answer why specifically you finding it boggling.

 

[tensordyne]

Did you really mean 'infinite in magnitude'? Could you explain what you mean by that?

I have to agree, an infinite in magnitude EM field does not make sense in the context of what was being discussed.

|B| = \infty,
|E| = \infty.

I doubt that is what you meant Zeuzzz, but that is what the words mean in common parlance.

 

[Jeff Corey]

Please, do tell. What are the general outlines of the psych position. So far we have (in alphabetical order):

1. Bio (possibly also known as neuro)
2. Comp
3. Phys
4. Psych
5. Spirit

Any others I missed?

I should have said "behavioral psychologist". While he aknowledged that thinking, consciousness and perception existed in people, Skinner believed that these private events had no explanatory value and felt that empiricist should study publcally observable behavior. This allows the reliability of the measurement of the events to be assessed.

 

[Roboramma]

I should have said "behavioral psychologist". While he aknowledged that thinking, consciousness and perception existed in people, Skinner believed that these private events had no explanatory value and felt that empiricist should study publcally observable behavior. This allows the reliability of the measurement of the events to be assessed.

Is that changing, though, with modern neurobiology?

 

[Belz...]

BS. I know your 'some people' is I.

Are you a mind reader ? I guess you're not. Who the some people is remains to be seen. It's a prediction. I hope you're not part of it.

If you figure out how consciousness works in humans, i.e. the physical basis, not the mentally deficient idea of a computational basis, and that is put in a device, then I will gladly accept it is conscious.

The problem is, however, what will be your standard for determining if it's conscious or not ? If you conclude in advance that it is not, for instance, or if you decide on an impossible level of evidence, then you will never be satisfied, and that was my point.

You, and your fellow adherents of the computational model, do not have the correct interpretation of science. To explain why, I could tell a story about some alternate reality and how ... but to understand the story and its import to our own reality requires imagination and insight, something sorely lacking, IMHO, in the computer club here.

And again you speak in unscientific terms, all the while wearing the trappings of science. First, if you could tell a story, you would do so. You don't, therefore you can't. Second, your appeal to emotion and "insight" rather than evidence and reason is noted.

I also note that you didn't actually address what I wrote. Or rather, you write as though I didn't write what I wrote. I've already told you that science has uncovered things we never would have imagined specifically because A) imagination only works on previous experience and B) science simply doesn't work like imagination.

Than shouldn't the comp model say which ones do and which ones do not?

Oh, absolutely. I agree. But the basic idea is as simple as Pixy's "SRIP".

comp's

Stop that. My brain doesn't parse it, and keeps seeing "computer". I'm also tempted to give you a nasty label just to give you a taste of your own medecine.

 

[Jeff Corey]

Is that changing, though, with modern neurobiology?

No. If events can be reliably measured, they are empirical data.

 

[Mr. Scott]

Interesting you find him [Dennett] cuddly. I find in him a kind of confused grandfather feel who is trying to show you a magic trick that he ends up performing on himself. The smirk on Chalmers' face to me is the kind of smirk you have when you hear a devilishly hard question you do not have the answer to.

Chalmer's smirk seems independent of what he's talking about. Dennett doesn't appear confused. You just disagree with him. FWIW you can see Dennett's civility break down in his debate with Robert Wright (clip at bottom).

Yeah, I have no answer. The quale definitely seem to exist and the ability to talk about the quale exists, but how on earth the quale could possible effectuate anything is a mystery to me. Experience of sensation does seem to be non-causative, but then we can talk about it, so perhaps it must be. Or perhaps, as is the most likely case, when a new theory of mind comes around it will show how to better think about these issues and raise it's own.

That's why some people, like Dennett, have come to the conclusion that the parts of consciousness that seem to be uncomputable are an illusion. Remember it's only INSIDE the data processing in the brain where it SEEMS to be doing more than data processing.

There isn't a trace of evidence for the uncomputability of consciousness when you look at the brain from outside of the internal experience. I can claim all I want that I saw an egg jump between a magician's hands when it physically didn't -- it's an illusion of my brain's data processing. Likewise, I can claim all I want that I see a special kind of redness in my mind, but can't prove that it's not an illusion of my brain's data processing, like the egg I thought I saw jump (analogy from Nova Science Now "How does the brain work?"). I know it's emotionally deflating to accept that your brain might be tricking you, but that doesn't mean your brain is not tricking you.

I assume you've read Dennett's book "Consciousness Explained" and/or carefully viewed his talk "The Magic of Consciousness" and thoroughly understand his hypothesis.

Here's the clip where Dennett discusses epiphenomenalism with Wright and loses his cool. Some of the YouTube comments on this clip are priceless:

5:39 Is Robert [Wright] trying to imply that Dan doesn't UNDERSTAND what he's trying to suggest? I'd say Dennett rather DOES understand what you're trying to say you DICK but you're so in love with yourself that you won't ACCEPT the fact that he DISAGREES with you.
(I think I just threw up in my mouth a little)

 

[tsig]

OK, tell me how you show that the way I experience red is the same as the way you do using what you think science is about.

Have you ever taken a test for color blindness?

 

[tsig]

Then why did piggy bring up that a very modern book on cognitive neuroscience has a whole chapter devoted to dispelling the ideas of the Hard-AI crowd?



That goes to his other point he brought up. Computation in nature is ubiquitous. Saying something is computational does not provide any new insight since everything is computational when looked at properly. Plus, computation really is of a different kind than what experience of sensation is.

Computation is about math and abstraction, experience of sensation is about what it feels like to be something. Those are very different categories.



Yeah... and when someone points out that pulleys and cogs will do, that should be it for the Hard-AI position, done, finito, end of the story. There are humans, we are conscious because we experience sensation. There are no sensors on rope and pulleys. Rope and pulleys do not follow the same physics as we do (well, let me put that better, the physics that applies to us is different in many ways then the physics applying to us). The structure that the rope and pulleys gets put in to determines whether it is computing or not, not any property of the rope and pulleys itself (such as mass, charge...). There are lots of properties that if changed in a humans will cause unconsciousness. They are different.

The above applies the same to modern computers.



All research does not say consciousness comes from computation. The researchers themselves (as per the litany of quotes given by piggy earlier) do not have any solid ideas on that front. So just try and not be nihilistic about not knowing what causes consciousness, because you probably do not.



The words were not remembering, it was experience of experience... Remembering the previous experience of something is a new experience. When I recall driving a car, it is not the same as the experience of driving a car. You can think about thinking because thinking is abstract, and thus, insensible in part. Experience itself is not abstract at all, hence, it can not be abstracted in the recursive manner that thinking can.

Perception of red I take to mean sensors take in light in the red wavelengths. If someone hooks up your brain in a certain way then your experience of the red light may be a certain taste, like sweetness.

Experience of red is just that, what it is like to experience red. There is no further level beyond that of experiencing perception.



I do not need to account for it since the relevant concepts are already out there. We are in agreement that focusing on red and just having red somewhere in your visual field are definitely different in a way. The first difference is that when one focuses on something visually, the object of focus, as far as I know, goes in the center of the field. There are probably other differences for which I am not aware of at the moment.

Interesting questions do seem to be associated with this though.



You have already answered your own questions. The explicit answer to the last question is 'focus'. In both cases though there is consciousness of a red frowny face happening (unless it is obscured, distorted or partially outside the visual field, in which case you would have consciousness of some other kind).

You seem to be seeing red.

 

[Jeff Corey]

Have you ever taken a test for color blindness?

I've given tests for color blindness. What is your point?

 

[PixyMisa]

Than shouldn't the comp model say which ones do and which ones do not? Possibly why?

It does and has, dozens of times. Try to pay attention.

Plus, that is the most annoying aspect of talking to comp's, they do not even have a conception of experience of sensation (consciousness).

You're just plain lying now. And engaging in equivocation and ad hominem attacks at the same time. Tish.

 

[PixyMisa]

I have to agree, an infinite in magnitude EM field does not make sense in the context of what was being discussed.

|B| = \infty,
|E| = \infty.

I doubt that is what you meant Zeuzzz, but that is what the words mean in common parlance.

Bear in mind that Zeuzzz is convinced there is a largest integer, so when he says "infinite", he could actually mean... Pretty much anything, or nothing at all.

 

[tsig]

OK, tell me how you show that the way I experience red is the same as the way you do using what you think science is about.

I've given tests for color blindness. What is your point?

Since we can test for color blindness we have a scientific way to determine what red is perceived as by humans.