On Consciousness

[Dancing David]

...and if the machine spoofs it?

How do you know that anything has a subjective experience?

 

[Mr. Scott]

How do you know that anything has a subjective experience?

Exactly! I'm beginning to wonder if it's cultural rather than innate.

 

[PixyMisa]

The same way we judge all subjective experience
-assume it exists
-ask them

Take it apart and look at the patterns of processing. (Though people tend to object when you do this.)

 

[dlorde]

How do you know that anything has a subjective experience?

You could always ask it, "Are you faking consciousness just to fool us?"

 

[Mr. Scott]

You could always ask it, "Are you faking consciousness just to fool us?"

If its consciousness was like ours, it would deny, to its last electron, that it was faking it

 

[Dancing David]

Which is the point,we can only judge by behavior, there is an error when people just assert 'but I know I am conscious', which is not true, they observe behaviors they label as conscious.

 

[annnnoid]

Sorry Poor Mary Raised in the Black and White Room, how naive.

I wonder how I can understand things I have never experienced, through reading, like deep sea diving?

Naïve? Naïve? Naïve? Who the hell is ‘poor Mary’ and why are you sorry and what has this black and white room got to do with anything?

But on to the naivete. Reading. I could provide billions of words to describe just how far beyond ridiculous this argument is…but one will suffice: Picasso.

…meaning…of course…just how many words would you have to digest before you could claim to have achieved even a fraction of the subjective experience of Picasso? Same applies to every, single, human, being, who, has, ever, lived (to one degree or another).

…which is entirely the point.

If you continue to doubt this…I suggest you read a thousand books about Mount Everest and the stories of those who have climbed it. Then go and climb it yourself. Then read a book explaining why words are invariably utterly inadequate in conveying the totality of subjective experience. A writer (ironically) by the name of Ursula K. LeGuin put it best: Words are only approximations of meaning.

Meaning. Now there’s an interesting word.

Just a note to all you drooling conscious-machine fanatics who’ve forgotten that poll I included a while back from a recent AI conference. Close to half the participants polled doubted that machine consciousness could ever be achieved. Note the word ‘ever’. Perhaps they know something you don’t.

Know. Another interesting word.

And since we’re on the subject…what actually is 2+2 Pixy? Interesting to note…that neither you nor anyone in the entire history of the human race has yet managed a coherent answer that doesn’t depend entirely on faith. Trivial and inconvenient.

 

[Mr. Scott]

I could provide billions of words to describe just how far beyond ridiculous this argument is…but one will suffice: Picasso.

I call proof by assertion^WP fallacy.

Tell me about how you can be so certain you can understand what a machine's subjective experience could or could not be.

 

[Dancing David]

Because, if you had thought about it, the thought might have helped you realize that your claim is wrong. Consciousness is based on impressions that cannot be reduced to information, facts, data. You cannot really explain what it feels like to see to someone who is not familiar with the concept in the first place. He wouldn't grasp what it really feels like.

So here is my response to Verlagekasper

So where does this consciousness exist outside of neurons interacting with each other?

You have yet to show that consciousness is not the product of neurons interacting. Show me consciousness absent a brain.

Sorry Poor Mary Raised in the Black and White Room, how naive.

I wonder how I can understand things I have never experienced, through reading, like deep sea diving?

and then there is this response, which I will galdly address, however perhaps annnoid can explain to me how it relates to my post and the post of Verlagekasper

Naïve? Naïve? Naïve? Who the hell is ‘poor Mary’ and why are you sorry and what has this black and white room got to do with anything?

poor mary raised in the black and white room who studies color perception.

I am saying and asking, what is the essence of subjective experience, that means it is ineffable to study.

But on to the naivete. Reading. I could provide billions of words to describe just how far beyond ridiculous this argument is…but one will suffice: Picasso.

…meaning…of course…just how many words would you have to digest before you could claim to have achieved even a fraction of the subjective experience of Picasso? Same applies to every, single, human, being, who, has, ever, lived (to one degree or another).

What the ferd are you talking about and how was it related to what I said?

…which is entirely the point.

If you continue to doubt this…I suggest you read a thousand books about Mount Everest and the stories of those who have climbed it. Then go and climb it yourself. Then read a book explaining why words are invariably utterly inadequate in conveying the totality of subjective experience. A writer (ironically) by the name of Ursula K. LeGuin put it best: Words are only approximations of meaning.

Nice spiritual term there "totality of subjective experience", how are you sure the individual has an understanding of their own "totality of subjective experience"?

Please answer.

Meaning. Now there’s an interesting word.

Just a note to all you drooling conscious-machine fanatics who’ve forgotten that poll I included a while back from a recent AI conference. Close to half the participants polled doubted that machine consciousness could ever be achieved. Note the word ‘ever’. Perhaps they know something you don’t.

Know. Another interesting word.

And since we’re on the subject…what actually is 2+2 Pixy? Interesting to note…that neither you nor anyone in the entire history of the human race has yet managed a coherent answer that doesn’t depend entirely on faith. Trivial and inconvenient.

 

[Mr. Scott]

Dennett is back!

Some quotes about consciousness:

The mind? A collection of computerlike information processes, which happen to take place in carbon-based rather than silicon-based hardware.

The self? Simply a “center of narrative gravity,” a convenient fiction that allows us to integrate various neuronal data streams.

The elusive subjective conscious experience — the redness of red, the painfulness of pain — that philosophers call qualia? Sheer illusion.

Human beings, Mr. Dennett said, quoting a favorite pop philosopher, Dilbert, are “moist robots.”

“I’m a robot, and you’re a robot, but that doesn’t make us any less dignified or wonderful or lovable or responsible for our actions,” he said. “Why does our dignity depend on our being scientifically inexplicable?”

Mr. Dennett also devotes a long section to a rebuttal of the famous Chinese Room thought experiment, developed by 30 years ago by the philosopher John Searle, another old antagonist, as a riposte to Mr. Dennett’s claim that computers could fully mimic consciousness.

Clinging to the idea that the mind is more than just the brain, Mr. Dennett said, is “profoundly naïve and anti-scientific.”

 

[PixyMisa]

Naïve? Naïve? Naïve? Who the hell is ‘poor Mary’ and why are you sorry and what has this black and white room got to do with anything?

But on to the naivete. Reading. I could provide billions of words to describe just how far beyond ridiculous this argument is…but one will suffice: Picasso.

…meaning…of course…just how many words would you have to digest before you could claim to have achieved even a fraction of the subjective experience of Picasso? Same applies to every, single, human, being, who, has, ever, lived (to one degree or another).

…which is entirely the point.

The point is that you are functionally innumerate?

And since we’re on the subject…what actually is 2+2 Pixy? Interesting to note…that neither you nor anyone in the entire history of the human race has yet managed a coherent answer that doesn’t depend entirely on faith. Trivial and inconvenient.

The point is that you are functionally innumerate!

 

[PixyMisa]

I call proof by assertion^WP fallacy.

His argument seems to be: It would cost millions of dollars to build San Francisco. Nobody has that kind of money. Therefore San Francisco doesn't exist.

Like you, I find this unpersuasive.

 

[PixyMisa]

Who the hell is ‘poor Mary’ and why are you sorry and what has this black and white room got to do with anything?

Mary of Frank Jackson's Mary's Room^WP argument.

On checking that page, I learned that Jackson has since rejected his own argument as flawed and now considers the mind to be entirely a function of the physical brain. Well, good for him.

 

[Belz...]

The point is that you are functionally innumerate?


The point is that you are functionally innumerate!

Yeah. The answer of 4 to 2+2 is taken on faith. I mean, just because it always gives 4 so far doesn't mean it always will, right ?

 

[Mr. Scott]

Mary of Frank Jackson's Mary's Room^WP argument.

On checking that page, I learned that Jackson has since rejected his own argument as flawed and now considers the mind to be entirely a function of the physical brain. Well, good for him.

The Mary's Room argument sounds like argument from ignorance to me. It sounds like the old "we don't know what produces epiphenomina/qualia so there must me some magic beanery in the brain that's above and beyond data processing machinery."

 

[Dancing David]

Yeah. The answer of 4 to 2+2 is taken on faith. I mean, just because it always gives 4 so far doesn't mean it always will, right ?

Actually it is not by faith but by definitions, although there is a proof that 1+1=2

 

[PixyMisa]

The Mary's Room argument sounds like argument from ignorance to me. It sounds like the old "we don't know what produces epiphenomina/qualia so there must me some magic beanery in the brain that's above and beyond data processing machinery."

Taken as a standalone argument, it's circular - there's a magic bean if Mary learns something new upon seeing red for the first time, but there's only something new for Mary to learn if there's a magic bean.

As I mentioned earlier, Jackson has since rejected his own argument and now finds it more valuable to examine why our intuitive notions of consciousness so differ from the scientific evidence.

 

[blobru]

Human beings, Mr. Dennett said, quoting a favorite pop philosopher, Dilbert, are “moist robots.”

I prefer Derbilt: "robots are 'dry humans'" -- tomayto, tomahto; likely.


("robot" the higher-level class, of course; 'androids' more apt)

 

[Fudbucker]

Which is the point,we can only judge by behavior, there is an error when people just assert 'but I know I am conscious', which is not true, they observe behaviors they label as conscious.

That is true. If you don't know you're conscious... I don't know what to tell ya.

 

[Fudbucker]

The Mary's Room argument sounds like argument from ignorance to me. It sounds like the old "we don't know what produces epiphenomina/qualia so there must me some magic beanery in the brain that's above and beyond data processing machinery."

That's not what I got from it. Do you think you can know what a thing like skydiving is just by reading about it? There is something about experience that needs to be... experienced to understand it.