On Consciousness

[Mr. Scott]

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

Yes, the consciousness conversation spans science, religion, philosophy, and skepticism. This thread is here to make science the hub of the discussion.

You are welcome to start your own thread in the religion and philosophy section on consciousness. The bias here is the biology, physics, and data processing sciences of consciousness, but moderate, brief derails come with the territory.

 

[PixyMisa]

Yes, the consciousness conversation spans science, religion, philosophy, and skepticism. This thread is here to make science the hub of the discussion.

True, though of course, the philosophy part is mostly nonsense, and the religious part is entirely nonsense. As with any other topic...

You are welcome to start your own thread in the religion and philosophy section on consciousness. The bias here is the biology, physics, and data processing sciences of consciousness

In other words, reality. I'm not sure that's what I'd call a "bias", though.

 

[Steve001]

Hardly bias because there's no convincing evidence consciousness is produced anywhere else beside in the brain.

 

[Roboramma]

Hardly bias because there's no convincing evidence consciousness is produced anywhere else beside in the brain.

Except all the evidence that the laws of physics hold, that the brain is a physical organ, and that consciousness is informational at heart

 

[PixyMisa]

Except all the evidence that the laws of physics hold, that the brain is a physical organ, and that consciousness is informational at heart

I don't think Steve001 was saying that consciousness can only arise in biological brains.

 

[asydhouse]

ZEUZZZ

PLEASE PROVIDE ACCREDITATION TO ARTWORKS WHEN YOU POST THEM

WHO IS THE ARTIST THAT PRODUCED THE PICTURE YOU POSTED A FEW PAGES AGO?

I only shout since you ignored the request for that information when I posted it two or three pages ago.

It was bad to not give the artist's name.... downright rude to ignore my request!

 

[Zeuzzz]

All right keep your socks on.

I found it here, there is no more information it was just titled "origin".

 

[Beelzebuddy]

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

Stop being so good at it, then.

This involves both the process of understanding (sophisticated matching?) and the FEELING of understanding, or, the "AHA!" emotion.

Actually, this feel we can explain. Certain dopaminergic (DA) neurons in your basal ganglia code for reward. When the reward is unexpected, they fire at the time of reward, in conjunction with the silencing of cholinergic (Ach) neurons, which seem to be novelty detectors. When the reward is expected, not only are the Ach neurons unaffected (since it isn't novel any more), but the DA firing happens earlier, coincident with the moment that the decision is reached rather than the reward itself.

The obvious hypothesis, in layman's terms, is that it's the feeling you get when a problem is solved and the path is clear.

It might also help explain why applying certain dopamine agonists sometimes makes you, like, feel you understand the world, man. Like the whole world.

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?&

*: Because our happy songs use major chords and our sad ones use minor. I don't think it's a universal thing.

&: Tie it into whatever feedback you're using for reward. That's all we do, after all.

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.

Have you never had a tech support call where the drone on the other end was mentally incapable of conceiving of any solution other than restarting until it fixed the problem? Or one which followed such a narrow script that any deviation from it betrayed their complete ignorance of the workings of any technology more complicated than Facebook's ui? Are we to assume these people are not conscious, either?

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

Well it can't just be a classic pattern recognition problem, so yeah, it's gotta be uncomputable consciousness, that's the only possible alternative.

 

[quarky]

You hard-nosed 'realists' must be a lot of fun describing the nature of your love for your spouse. It's bio-chemical, sure.
But it helps to pretend.
Pretending is one of the subtler aspects of consciousness.

Is that what my computer has been doing when I submit a post, yet I'm told I must wait 48 seconds, even though I hadn't posted in 5 minutes?
If I fall for it, I get a double post.

Does my lap-top play with me, so that I can learn to be skeptical?

Will it eventually be illegal to shoot your computer?
Or, at least unethical?

 

[Helen]

ZEUZZZ

PLEASE PROVIDE ACCREDITATION TO ARTWORKS WHEN YOU POST THEM

WHO IS THE ARTIST THAT PRODUCED THE PICTURE YOU POSTED A FEW PAGES AGO?

I only shout since you ignored the request for that information when I posted it two or three pages ago.

It was bad to not give the artist's name.... downright rude to ignore my request!

I think it's Michal Trpak.

 

[Mr. Scott]

Stop being so good at it, then.

Flattered, for sure! I'm good at it because I used to be quite a dualist, and now do lots and lots of arguing with dualists so my theory of mind, as applied to them, is quite refined. I certainly won't stop being good at it because, if the data processing hypothesis of consciousness is correct, it will withstand any intensity of skepticism.

BTW I forgot one purported capability of non-mechanical brains: creativity.

So we have:

- Feelings and qualia.
- "Understanding" beyond rote pattern matching
- Creativity.

...and the hypotheses for why we can do those things but machines can't include:

- Carbon base (Massimo Pigliucci^WP)
- Quantum mechanics (Roger Penrose^WP)
- Electromagnetic columns (Johnjoe McFadden^WP)
- Dark matter
- Immaterial soul or spirit

Creativity is, really, trivial, though glorified to the extreme by the non-computation crowd. Evolution by mutation and natural selection, an unconscious "machine" if you will, produced all life on Earth, including conscious composers who produced masterpieces.

Have you never had a tech support call where the drone on the other end was mentally incapable of conceiving of any solution other than restarting until it fixed the problem?

Sure, because people can execute the Chinese Room^WP on the job. Add to that the drudgery of such jobs encourages functioning on unconscious auto-pilot. Call center people might be consciously thinking of the hottie in the adjacent cubicle while answering your call in a robotic haze. These factors nullify your point it would seem.

I'd still like a definitive answer to the question posed by David Chalmers^WP: "why does the feeling which accompanies awareness of sensory information exist at all?"

 

[quarky]

Is it fair to say that a feature of consciousness is the ability to pretend that we aren't machines?

Do machines have a birth date?
It would be fun to do their horoscopes.

I wonder if a good machine would play along, and act all Leo, and stuff?

 

[blobru]

Is it fair to say that a feature of consciousness is the ability to pretend that we aren't machines?

That's the Turing Test (or a corollary: in testing a machine's ability to be us, we're also testing our ability to not be them).

Do machines have a birth date?
It would be fun to do their horoscopes.

I wonder if a good machine would play along, and act all Leo, and stuff?

A machine with the irrationality to believe in horoscopes, or even just to play along with others who believe in them, would be getting very close to human (for better and/or worse; still to be determined, though, what role irrationality plays in "consciousness", if any).

 

[quarky]

Irrational behavior, I would think, would be the hall mark of difference between machine and man.

Consciousness has always been irrational.

It's only human, as they say.

It doesn't have to make sense.

In fact, it has to not make sense.

Let us all recall the first time we fell in love.

(Don't worry; I do not rest my case. I don't even know what my case is. I guess I'm mostly mechanical and predictable, and I sure don't want to start acting all weird just to make a point I don't necessarily agree with.)

damitohell

I was doing real good, and then i ended a sentence in a dang preposition-thingy.


so, never mind.

 

[quarky]

Yes, the consciousness conversation spans science, religion, philosophy, and skepticism. This thread is here to make science the hub of the discussion.

You are welcome to start your own thread in the religion and philosophy section on consciousness. The bias here is the biology, physics, and data processing sciences of consciousness, but moderate, brief derails come with the territory.

Yeah, I get what I'm welcome to do.

You are welcome to learn something, if you like, from some one with a radically different, yet equally relevant mind-set.

 

[Mr. Scott]

Yeah, I get what I'm welcome to do.

You are welcome to learn something, if you like, from some one with a radically different, yet equally relevant mind-set.

I'm definitely learning stuff, but your recent posts have been fluffy.

Articulate the best case for your "radically different mind-set" right here, if you will.

 

[quarky]

Are you sure you wouldn't rather have the fluffy?

 

[Zeuzzz]

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

This thread never stops amusing me. I might go back and count the number of ignored points I simply let go and list them in a big super post soon. Or I might just stop posting until consciousness is in a more harmonious state here.

 

[Steve001]

Except all the evidence that the laws of physics hold, that the brain is a physical organ, and that consciousness is informational at heart

I don't think Steve001 was saying that consciousness can only arise in biological brains.

Quite right PixyMisa. Complicated Machines of the future may acquire self awareness.
Many people talk of consciousness existing external to the brain and the brain behaves like a radio receiver an filter they say. They cite OBEs and NDEs as convincing evidence. I do not find such arguments mildly persuasive let alone convincing.

 

[Socrates]

So we have:

- Feelings and qualia.
- "Understanding" beyond rote pattern matching
- Creativity.

...and the hypotheses for why we can do those things but machines can't include:

- Carbon base (Massimo Pigliucci^WP)
- Quantum mechanics (Roger Penrose^WP)
- Electromagnetic columns (Johnjoe McFadden^WP)
- Dark matter
- Immaterial soul or spirit

Creativity is, really, trivial, though glorified to the extreme by the non-computation crowd. Evolution by mutation and natural selection, an unconscious "machine" if you will, produced all life on Earth, including conscious composers who produced masterpieces.

I'd still like a definitive answer to the question posed by David Chalmers^WP: "why does the feeling which accompanies awareness of sensory information exist at all?"

It is exactly the awareness of this feeling that gives you the illusion of creativity, the right to doubt Please forgive my "intrusion". i must admit I havent really read the entire thread and discussion. Please forgive my poor english, my inability to describe exactly my chain of thought (I only learned english watching SouthPark and The Office US so..)
So how can someone "feel" the creativity flow? How can someone be aware of it when say smoking pot or shooting Special K... I can describe both but I can never literally describe the exact "awareness", my very own qualia lets say..
But for the sake of discussion I can say that what its left out of it, the feeling is a forsaken doubt. A philipdick kindof psychosis that can lead you to doubt everything and "create" your own explanation (Valis, Et or what have you)*
But for someone with a higher IQ (Nash) it is apprehensive, acceptable, how to say..)
My very own experience lead me closer to agnosticism and deep depression for a very long time. When shooting K I felt no doubt, I felt the illusion of knowing everything and being one with the entire Cosmos. But later, when I came back to my senses and my own awareness, the only feeling i had was doubt. I realized that the very own doubt of your experiences and apprehensive data iS being, is consciousness, is a constant battle inside your brain. I embraced my doubt and never let it ware off. I too felt that a vast active living being is trying to communicate and maybe control my thoughts but I let it go easily. I embraced my doubt. I can say that creativity is doubt. But without a doubt about it? No. I can never say anything for sure. All I can do is to describe my very own feeling of this. How? with rhythm, drums music and poetry. Between Carnap and Heidegger I embrace both. I can understand both. But i can never pick sides. Doubt. That's all there is. Data that are constantly under control. Doubt can be creativity, emotion, rhythm, music poetry or what have you.. but still, there is another self, the remembering self (Kahnemann) the one that can give me back my very own qualitative awareness, my reality, my steady ease with perceiving information. This is why I can never literally reject the "idea" without feeling doubt about it. This is that lead Diderot furious and I get it, its tough to discuss with a creationist, its boring as hell Well, I said too much and I feel doubt if i should post this. Again, forgive my post. I really enjoy your discussion here and I learn alot from you guys. Many thanks