On Consciousness

[Belz...]

Sophistry?

Piggy, let's say we remove colour from the equation ? Let's imagine an alternate scenario human with a brain that doesn't produce what you would call qualia.

So the light of wavelength X hits the retina, and a signal is sent to the brain, which interprets the signal to mean that light of type X has been detected.

How, exactly, do you expect the mind of that hypothetical human to perceive light ? He can't really see a text message saying "Light X detected", right ? Because that's also qualia. He can't see colour, sense smell, or hear sounds. He just receives raw information. How do you think this person would experience light of wavelength X ? If you're so sure that the "red" part is an extra step or component, then what would you expect to happen without it ?

Now apply this to a very complex machine. One far superior to anything we have today, and with the exact same capacity as a human. Its camera detects light of wavelength X and transmits a signal to the CPU. How do you expect the CPU to "experience" this, and how is it different than our hypothetical human or, in fact, actual real-life humans ?

And if someone could be bothered to quote this to Piggy, who has me on ignore, apparently, I would be grateful.

 

[Fudbucker]

Consciousness is not the output of symbolic computation. Consciousness is symbolic computation.

This has been explained several thousand times. Do try to keep up.

You need to explain it better. "Is" is giving you some trouble.

Are you saying consciousness is a kind of symbolic computation? (e.g., a horse is a kind of four legged mammal).

Are you saying consciousness is symbolic computation? (e.g., a triangle is a three sided figure whose angles always total 180 degrees).

The two claims are very different, so even if you've explained it a thousand times, you haven't explained it well yet.

 

[Mr. Scott]

But you're wrong about how you can know that my brain is performing red.

I think that was some little straw man who's wrong about that, not me.

 

[Piggy]

Because that's the wavelength of light impinging on the baby's photoreceptors. Assuming the baby's not colorblind, it activates a unique pattern of neurons that's highly overlapping but still distinguishable from that produced by other wavelengths, and is quickly moving to specialize. It doesn't mean anything to the baby, not yet, but it's still there.

First of all, I'm not asking you why it produces some different response from other wavelengths. I'm asking you why it produces the specific response that it does. Rather than any other specific response of conscious experience, or a response involving no conscious experience.

Different question. One which you're still dodging.

And to say that red means nothing to the baby the first time she sees it is simply something you've made up out of thin air because it supports your view.

I see no reason to believe that the baby does not have an experience of red, just like I do, the very first time she sees something which would also appear red to me.

According to your self-serving ad-hoc theory, if I only saw one yellow object in my entire life, it would not appear yellow to me.

I'm left wondering at what point the yellow would emerge as I went on to see more and more yellow things? And how it would emerge, and why?

And if your theory were right, then whenever I saw a new color paint that I'd never seen before, it would appear as… I dunno, maybe gray, maybe an empty space? But that never happens.

 

[Piggy]

We only know you see redness because you're telling us you see redness. The output of the brain is the report to the world that redness was seen. The redness in your brain is seen only by your brain, so there's no valid way to think of it as an output.

But you're wrong about how you can know that my brain is performing red. It's not just because I report it -- I can rig up a machine to report "I see red" when it hears C#, for example -- but rather because human beings with similar brains all report it.

Big difference there.

I think that was some little straw man who's wrong about that, not me.

A scarecrow must have hijacked your account.

 

[Piggy]

Consider the trichomatic vision paper I linked to earlier. They were working with adult monkeys. If a particular color's vision depended on existing infrastructure or even a critical period in development, it shouldn't have worked.

And why do you conclude that?

 

[tsig]

I'm sorry, but "data" is (a) an abstraction, and (b) something which requires an observer and an observed. If all humans were wiped out this afternoon, there would no longer be any "data" in the world.

The brain is a physical object, so let's please discuss it in those terms.

In any case, the point is that when you're talking about stuff that exists out there in the world, whether it's a needle or a beam of light, it makes absolutely no sense to say that somehow a brain's response to contact with that thing is a quality of the thing.

Pain is (sometimes, not always) an animal's nervous system's response to contact with a needle.

Color is (sometimes, not always) an animal's nervous system's response to contact with light.

There's no significant difference between the two in that regard.

Also, we've seen that different brains produce different colors in response to the exact same type of light. Therefore, it is impossible for anyone to actually identify which color we should claim to be a property of which wavelength.

Color is not a property of light QED.

Color is not "out there" in the world to be perceived or registered. It is produced entirely by the brain.

And currently, no theory exists to explain the observable fact that our brains respond to various types of light with various colors, rather than some other phenomenological response, or none at all.

There is no theory to explain why light from the sky doesn't result in the brain producing red, or the scent of lemons, or the sound of static.

And you can't say, "Well, that's easy, our brains don't produce the scent of lemons because that's olfactory", because we don't know why that is the olfactory response because there is no "scent of lemons" in the lemons, just as there's no pain in the needle and no color in the light.

The eye, ear and nose are different organs wired to different parts of the brain so they produce different sensations.

Your insistence that there is no real world out there and everything is produced in the brain in some arbitrary fashion puts you right in there with the Matrix believers.

 

[Mr. Scott]

Just as we have all kinds of evidence for gravity…but no idea how it occurs…we have all kinds of evidence for consciousness (us)…but no idea how it occurs.

There's no evidence consciousness is a physical force of any sort, like gravity, is there?

The evidence conscious phenomena are uncomputable is anecdotal, which is the worst kind of evidence.

“Scientists animated by the purpose of proving themselves purposeless constitute an interesting subject for study.”

Explain what you mean about what purposelessness has to do with some people who study consciousness.

Consciousness IS symbolic computation….and consciousness IS data processing… and consciousness IS information processing.

Consciousness seems to be…everything. We have an entire universe that is… consciousness (is there anything that isn’t information?). A universal consciousness!!!! How interesting. Pixy has become a theist!

We've covered this before. We're not saying consciousness and data processing are one and the same. We're saying that consciousness is a special kind of data processing and there are many other types of data processing that I don't think could properly be called consciousness.

So, annnnoid, why do you think a computer that simulated every nerve cell in a human brain, and their interconnections, could not be conscious? Would it not say, "good morning, how are you?" when awakened? Could it never ask why the sky was blue? Could it never spontaneously wonder about the nature of the blueness it was experiencing in its data processing?

 

[Fudbucker]

There's no evidence consciousness is a physical force of any sort, like gravity, is there?

The evidence conscious phenomena are uncomputable is anecdotal, which is the worst kind of evidence.



Explain what you mean about what purposelessness has to do with some people who study consciousness.



We've covered this before. We're not saying consciousness and data processing are one and the same. We're saying that consciousness is a special kind of data processing and there are many other types of data processing that I don't think could properly be called consciousness.

So, annnnoid, why do you think a computer that simulated every nerve cell in a human brain, and their interconnections, could not be conscious? Would it not say, "good morning, how are you?" when awakened? Could it never ask why the sky was blue? Could it never spontaneously wonder about the nature of the blueness it was experiencing in its data processing?

That's much appreciated. But are you sure you guys are all on the same page on that?

 

[steenkh]

I'm sorry, but "data" is (a) an abstraction, and (b) something which requires an observer and an observed. If all humans were wiped out this afternoon, there would no longer be any "data" in the world.

Nonsense, of course. DNA is data, and it exists in all biological life on Earth, so you would need to wipe out all other life too! Besides, humans are not the organisms with a brain, and even if it is not conscious, it still uses data.

In any case, the point is that when you're talking about stuff that exists out there in the world, whether it's a needle or a beam of light, it makes absolutely no sense to say that somehow a brain's response to contact with that thing is a quality of the thing.

What is the point of that straw man? You are not arguing against anything that I have said. A data structure in the mind is not the same as a quality of something physical.

Pain is (sometimes, not always) an animal's nervous system's response to contact with a needle.

Color is (sometimes, not always) an animal's nervous system's response to contact with light.

There's no significant difference between the two in that regard.

So why did you bring them up? As data structures the obvious differences would be the association with the two different nervous systems. You were the one who chose the two examples, but as you see, they are no problem whatsoever for a computer model, even though pain has no physical equivalent outside the body.

Also, we've seen that different brains produce different colors in response to the exact same type of light. Therefore, it is impossible for anyone to actually identify which color we should claim to be a property of which wavelength.

Color is not a property of light QED.

You are conflating the concepts of physical colours which certainly is a property of light, and our inner data structures. Not very QED.

Color is not "out there" in the world to be perceived or registered. It is produced entirely by the brain.

I think you should speak to physicists about that. The concepts of "wavelength" and "spectrum" should be of interest to you.

And currently, no theory exists to explain the observable fact that our brains respond to various types of light with various colors, rather than some other phenomenological response, or none at all.

This is complete philosophical silliness on a par with "why is there something rather than nothing"! Do you really think that asking why visual input result in data structures associated with vision rather than something else such as pain is clinching the argument for you that computers will never be able to emulate consciousness?

There is no theory to explain why light from the sky doesn't result in the brain producing red, or the scent of lemons, or the sound of static.

Perhaps you should rethink this argument. The data structures will obviously be connected with the input that created them, unless the brain is malfunctioning. I have already mentioned the possibility of a hard-wiring that would explain everything that could not explained by a learning process.

And you can't say, "Well, that's easy, our brains don't produce the scent of lemons because that's olfactory", because we don't know why that is the olfactory response because there is no "scent of lemons" in the lemons, just as there's no pain in the needle and no color in the light.

More silliness.

 

[Belz...]

First of all, I'm not asking you why it produces some different response from other wavelengths. I'm asking you why it produces the specific response that it does.

Isn't an event specific because it's different from other events ?

That's much appreciated. But are you sure you guys are all on the same page on that?

Yes.

 

[Mr. Scott]

That's much appreciated. But are you sure you guys are all on the same page on that?

I'm not sure, but also not sure if that matters. So what if I have a minor disagreement with another computationalist? I sometimes even devil's advocate for dualists. We're not at war. We're trying to settle on what's true, or what's likely. A unified front should be irrelevant. Reality doesn't care about slight difference of opinion in the ranks. This shouldn't be about ego. The mean spirited quips don't illuminate either side of the argument.

 

[steenkh]

Sophistry?

This isn't sophistry, it's a direct question about direct observation.

Hardly. It is an attempt to make the straightforward look impossibly mysterious by taking advantage of the double use of the colour names: as physical reality, and mental image.

And please, stop talking about the names we give things. That is 100% completely irrelevant to the question.

I do not think so. The names we give the things also reflect the concepts in our minds. We certainly know the colours before we know their names, but some colours are not given their own concepts before we learn their names. Take for instance the example of the colour-blind man who had the concept of colours in his mind that his eyes could not see.

We have 4 different brains, each one produces a different color response. And what they call those colors doesn't matter a whit.

Why is it that my brain produces blue and not green, and why is it that my friend with tritanopia's brain produces green and not yellow, and why is it that my friend who at the mushroom's brain produces yellow and not gray, and why is it that my dog's brain produces gray and not blue?

And I have given clear answers to all of these (except possibly the mushroom man): There is mapping between the physical input from the rods and cones, and the data structures in the brain. As you can see from the example of colour-blind people who do not realise that they are colour-blind, this mapping does not need to correspond exactly to what colours their eyes actually see, but corresponds more closely to the concepts of colours that they acquire from other people: the example that you claim is irrelevant. The mushroom man is malfunctioning and who knows how he mixes up his inputs and his data structures?

Finally, I do not understand why you introduce a dog, because it most likely has the data structures in its brain that corresponds to the input from its eyes: a two-colour world. Almost every other creature than mammals can se four colours, and will have most more sophisticated colour discernation than humans, although their data structures will not have the associations with the rich cultural meaning of colours that humans have (such as green means "good" and red means "bad").

I'm not asking you why we see different colors, full stop. I'm asking you why we see the specific colors that we see. Why does my brain not produce green, specifically?

Why indeed are you not hearing a bell ringing when your eye sees a colour? Or why are you not seeing blue when you taste a sandwich?

Or more to the point, why do you think these questions should pose a problem for a computer model of consciousness? Do you think that cameras could equally well store a .doc file instead of a .jpg when making a picture? A philosopher might find such questions very deep, but computers and brains are more practically minded.

 

[steenkh]

Piggy, let's say we remove colour from the equation ? Let's imagine an alternate scenario human with a brain that doesn't produce what you would call qualia.

So the light of wavelength X hits the retina, and a signal is sent to the brain, which interprets the signal to mean that light of type X has been detected.

How, exactly, do you expect the mind of that hypothetical human to perceive light ? He can't really see a text message saying "Light X detected", right ? Because that's also qualia. He can't see colour, sense smell, or hear sounds. He just receives raw information. How do you think this person would experience light of wavelength X ? If you're so sure that the "red" part is an extra step or component, then what would you expect to happen without it ?

Now apply this to a very complex machine. One far superior to anything we have today, and with the exact same capacity as a human. Its camera detects light of wavelength X and transmits a signal to the CPU. How do you expect the CPU to "experience" this, and how is it different than our hypothetical human or, in fact, actual real-life humans ?

And if someone could be bothered to quote this to Piggy, who has me on ignore, apparently, I would be grateful.

Here you are …

 

[Piggy]

Hardly. It is an attempt to make the straightforward look impossibly mysterious by taking advantage of the double use of the colour names: as physical reality, and mental image.

For the last time, steenkh, there is no such thing as a "physical reality" of color outside of what you're calling a "mental image".

The laws of physics don't allow it.

By the time an animal's brain generates the experience of color, the light which triggered it -- if it happens to have been triggered by light, which it doesn't have to be -- is a long way away.

There is NO WAY that the activity in the animal's brain can be part of some "physical reality" such as the now-distant light, which never had any contact with the parts of the brain responsible for the color anyway.

And as has been described more than once, the exact same "physical reality" can trigger more than one color response inside different brains, so your choice of which color to assign to the "physical reality" must be arbitrary.

You're simply dead wrong about this. Demonstrably, provably so.

And all of your further erroneous conclusions are based on this false foundation.

 

[Piggy]

Nonsense, of course. DNA is data, and it exists in all biological life on Earth, so you would need to wipe out all other life too! Besides, humans are not the organisms with a brain, and even if it is not conscious, it still uses data.

DNA can be described as data, but that's not the same thing as it being data. DNA is physical stuff. Everything it does can be described in terms of physics, with no recourse to "data". Talking in terms of "data" simply makes it easier to talk about.

Information is not stuff, it is an abstraction, a measurement.

So again, you're basing conclusion on a faulty foundation.

 

[Belz...]

For the last time, steenkh, there is no such thing as a "physical reality" of color outside of what you're calling a "mental image".

The laws of physics don't allow it.

Wavelength doesn't exist ?

There is NO WAY that the activity in the animal's brain can be part of some "physical reality"

I seriously think you should've worded that differently.

DNA can be described as data, but that's not the same thing as it being data.

Actually, yes, it is the same thing. The label is a description of what the physical object is. And in this case, it's information that can be decoded and used to perform operations, which is the most basic definition of data.

 

[Beelzebuddy]

Well, that was quick, at least.

Are we agreed that this "something new" is the generation of a phenomenology, which it was not doing before?

And are we also agreed that this production of phenomenology is what we call consciousness, and that it is the object of the study of how the brain performs consciousness?

Not the way you're using those terms, no.

First of all, I'm not asking you why it produces some different response from other wavelengths. I'm asking you why it produces the specific response that it does. Rather than any other specific response of conscious experience, or a response involving no conscious experience.

The hilited statements are the same. Colors which an individual can discern from others produce specific responses unique to that individual, which cannot be mapped to any other individual. How do we know that my red is your red? Because they both ultimately map onto the same range of wavelengths at the photoreceptor, and therefore represent roughly equivalent concepts downstream. That's really the final point at which the comparison makes sense.

And why do you conclude that?

Because the alternative would imply the monkeys had specialized neural infrastructure already in place just in case they happened to be injected with a tailored virus that mutated the opsins of a fraction of their cones into responding to a different wavelength. That seems somewhat less likely than the hypothesis that the existing infrastructure is plastic enough to code for a novel population, something we already know most of the brain is capable of.

 

[Piggy]

There is no theory to explain why light from the sky doesn't result in the brain producing red, or the scent of lemons, or the sound of static.

Perhaps you should rethink this argument. The data structures will obviously be connected with the input that created them, unless the brain is malfunctioning. I have already mentioned the possibility of a hard-wiring that would explain everything that could not explained by a learning process.

What you fail to take into account is the obvious fact that it's possible to "re-wire" an animal brain so that, for example, it "sees" sound waves and "hears" light waves. This has been done in ferrets, for example.

You seem to think that if humans do this to a brain, it would be some sort of "distortion" of a natural dispensation of things.

But the fact that we respond to light in our eyes with colors and air in our ears with sounds is just a quirk of evolutionary history.

Evolution could just as easily have made our brains to hear light, see the air in our ears, feel nauseated when too close to heat, or feel burning sensations in response to potential poisons in our noses or mouths.

The fact that our brains produce the phenomenology that they do is entirely accidental and arbitrary. Colors are not, in fact, a quality of light, and sounds are not, in fact, a quality of the way air bounces around.

Which leaves the question which you refuse not only to answer but even to properly consider… when you look at a stoplight, why does it appear to you that the red light is on the bottom and the green light is on top, rather than the other way around?

It's not enough to point out that the brain responds differently to different wavelengths of light. For our purposes that's trivial and has nothing to do with consciousness except as a precursor.

It's not just that you're not answering the question. But your blind adherence to an informationalist point of view is preventing you from even understanding the question -- a question which should be quite simple to understand.

 

[Piggy]

The hilited statements are the same. Colors which an individual can discern from others produce specific responses unique to that individual, which cannot be mapped to any other individual. How do we know that my red is your red? Because they both ultimately map onto the same range of wavelengths at the photoreceptor, and therefore represent roughly equivalent concepts downstream. That's really the final point at which the comparison makes sense.

No, simply referencing an ability to distinguish between wavelengths does not explain why the brain does what it does later, when it produces specific colors.

You're still not answering the question. And like steenkh, you cling to an informationalist perspective which prevents you from even understanding what's being asked. Instead, you veer off and answer something entirely different.

I am not asking you "if my red is your red". That's not even the question.

I'm asking you why it is that when you look at a stoplight, your brain sees green on top and red on the bottom rather than the other way around?

That has nothing to do with the fact that mine does the same, or with what names we use for these colors.

You seem to believe that when the various wavelengths of light are discerned by the eye, the colors which your conscious mind will eventually see are somehow predestined.

But they're not.

They are arbitrary results of evolution.

And nobody knows why it is that they are associated with the wavelengths with which they happen to be associated, and not the other way around.

That's the "hard problem" of consciousness.