The Hard Problem of Gravity

[PixyMisa]

I wonder what would happen to 'computation' in a scenario when the last human in the universe observing a computer doing the 'computing' dies, but the computer keeps working. Does computation now disappear? Why wouldn't that which is referred to as 'computation' continue?

Apparently, the answer is, "Because!"

 

[Belz...]

I find it more interesting that I'm certain people I've talked to would fail the Turing test at times. From this perspective I find it hard to understand the perspective that machines can't do these things when I can almost see the cogs whirring to spit out the prepackaged cultural responses to the mundane trivia of the day. The sort of exhaulted communication that we see as elevating our species to some great heights is not common place - most of it is done unthinkingly and automatically, regurgitating and repacking other's thoughts. (And yes I include myself in all these things).

Nicely put, Cyborg. I agree.

 

[Belz...]

How special human consciouness is isn't the question; the goal is to define consciousness scientifically. All organisms may or may not have conscious capacities. But, juding from human expamples atleast, we know that simply being alive is not suffieicent to produce conscious experience -- humans and other animals actually have states inwhich they aren't conscious.

Not conscious in the way we usually are. That's a very important distinction.

 

[Belz...]

Well, yes and no. All we actually perceive are 'qualia'. The goal is to scientifically define what the experience of qualia actually consists of.

So "qualia" are "qualitative experience" are "subjective experience" are "qualia".

How do we know they exist, again ?

Utility has nothing to do with the actuality of qualia. Finding out exactly what qualia are, objectively, will have much practical utility however.

Actually, finding out if they exist is the first useful step.

 

[westprog]

"Nobody has been able to produce the number 29865268282093850285829820672073265 by adding 1 at a time, so how is it possible to make such an extravagant claim?"

lol.

You might want to look up mathematical induction sometime.

Could you show me the figures? If you can prove that a novel can be written computationally, using mathematical induction, I'm sure that you can justify the claim. Just saying "mathematical induction" doesn't really cut it.

 

[westprog]

That's nice. Now, suppose we cal "subjective experience" "private behaviour", as Mercutio suggests. Does that make it seem less mysterious ?

No. Because we've no physical theory of "private behaviour".

 

[westprog]

From Wiki:


I wonder what would happen to 'computation' in a scenario when the last human in the universe observing a computer doing the 'computing' dies, but the computer keeps working. Does computation now disappear? Why wouldn't that which is referred to as 'computation' continue?

Because without anyone to understand the computation, how can it mean anything in particular?

A computer runs a program to add two numbers. Can we in any sense say that it is actually adding two numbers in the absence of someone to give it that interpretation?

A boulder runs down a hill and ends up resting next to another boulder. A person observing this might interpret it as 1+1 = 2. Is computation taking place? He might be ignoring another boulder ten yards away. There might be a couple of other smaller rocks that he's ignoring. Are all the computations with different results taking place at the same time?

We can interpret almost anything as computation. Does that mean that something is going on independently of our interpretation?

 

[westprog]

Interesting, hunger. You'd think that, since we can "experience the sensation of 'I'm hungry' " from such a young age, we'd be better at acting on our hunger. Babies will eat when they are agitated, when they are bored, when they are anxious (I am using the labels that the mothers put on their babies' actions), as well as when they are hungry. They will cry for multiple reasons as well. How is it you say they recognize this sensation, when so much of your conclusion is based on your own inference about their behavior? (When you get to assign motives to someone else, it is much easier to think they are acting for the reasons you suspect.)

No one has greater access to our introspective hunger than we do; if anyone knows how hungry we are without looking at our public behavior, it is us. And yet, who has not loaded up a buffet plate, eaten their fill, looked at the pile of food remaining and said (or thought) "I guess I wasn't as hungry as I thought I was"? Who has not gone back for seconds, thirds, etc. (my record is seven complete meals) and said (or thought) "Wow, I was hungrier than I thought I was!"? Note here, even when judging our own hunger, we defer to our actual observable behavior (how much we ate) as the real measure of our hunger.

My son no longer feels hunger. He is diabetic, and his eating is not something that depends on his feeling hunger. It is dependent on his blood sugar and insulin levels. If he needs to eat, he needs to eat, no matter what he feels. If he's hungry, but doesn't have his insulin, he can't eat. And so the private behavior of feeling hungry ceased to be a good predictor of eating (as it is for those of us who get hungry in a place where food is readily available).

As a daycare provider, I watched kids who thought they were sick, but were just hungry, or thought they were just hungry, but were sick.

Our feelings are more difficult to learn than, say, our colors. We just don't tend to remember learning them, since our parents and others have worked on those words much earlier than colors. But we still experience misattribution of emotions as adults. And boy do we experience it as kids, and as babies. We've just forgotten.

Yes, the sensation of hunger has an unreliable connection with the need to eat food. Indeed, we need to learn that the sensation has a connection with food. But the sensation is there, before anything else happens.

Of course, we can't ask a three month baby about its sensations. We have to infer them. But we know what hunger feels like to us.

The child who doesn't feel hunger might still behave as if he did. And he is able to communicate the absence of the sensation.

 

[Nick227]

Show me a program that produces experience, and I'll look at the code. Since no such program has been produced, we can but surmise.

It's not up to me to guess just how you will get experience into the code. It's your project. Forgive me if I remain unconvinced that it's going to happen.

The question I would ask is whether experience exists at all without inner dialogue. We are aware of stuff happening and the brain is partially conditioned to respond as though subject-object relationships necessarily exist but for me only with inner dialogue is the whole notion of experience constructed.

Without inner dialogue there is effectively no experience. We learn to behave as though experience exists but if you look more closely it's evident that it actually does not do so in the terms in which we usually understand it. Nothing is happening to anyone until inner dialogue constructs this as so.

When I understood this for me the HPC was weakened big time.

Nick

 

[Ichneumonwasp]

A small point, perhaps, but do you mean to say that we learn our actual feelings?

I shouldn't chime in for Merc, but in a very real sense, yes, we learn our feelings. Ask yourself exactly what a feeling is, examine the details; and I think you will find that this must be the case. We must distinguish between perceptions, emotions, cognitions, and feelings. Feelings seem automatic because they occur unconsciously and then may be examined consciously -- they are a big part of what we call 'consciousness'. What they amount to are orientations to the world or 'action tendencies' for want of better terms. They depend on quite a bit of cortical processing; and the means by which that cortical processing takes place depends critically on learning.

As a clue to some of this, I think it is worthwhile for everyone to review how the nervous system develops and what learning *is*. We start with orders of magnitude more neurons than we end up with; time and experience pares away most of the neurons destined for the garbage bin. Learning then consists in further paring of neurons not being used and intensive arborization of synapses in neurons that are being used.

While we do not begin as blank slates, since our brains have a set gross structure, we are incredibly malleable -- the actual connections, strengths of connections, number of connections changes all the time. As you read these words connections in your brain are changing.

For me feelings are autonomous states that happen in reaction to stimuli. We learn to label them as having certain qualities and we learn to associate them with certain triggers, but we don't learn to have them. One might also say that the developing sense of self facilitates the arising of certain feelings, as it learns to percieve the world in terms of subject-object relationships, but again this is not learning to have feelings. It also learns to repress certain feelings and develop avoiding behaviours.

Nick

Feelings become automatic once learned. Most of the learning is implicit (unconscious), but it is the primary means by which feelings (as opposed to emotions and perceptions) are even possible - since feelings consist of cognitive processing of emotional information.

A huge part of the problem that I see is that we bandy these words about -- experience, feeling -- as though we all know what they mean. Sure, we have a vague sense and know how we use them, but that vague sense is a problem since it gives us the 'feeling' that we have a handle on the situation when we don't. What drove people nuts about Socrates was his constant harping about 'what do you mean by x?' -- because it became obvious that they didn't really know. I don't know what these words mean deeply. That is why I ask for the definitions. I know that all words have many meanings, so I'm not trying to trap anyone.

I would say, though, that if we examine what we mean by 'feeling' we'll be forced to conclude that we must learn it (not completely since feelings are based in emotion). It turns out that we learn perception as well, though there is much that is already in place (in fact there has to be or perception wouldn't be possible); but emotion seems to be fairly hard wired.

 

[Ichneumonwasp]

The question I would ask is whether experience exists at all without inner dialogue. We are aware of stuff happening and the brain is partially conditioned to respond as though subject-object relationships necessarily exist but for me only with inner dialogue is the whole notion of experience constructed.

Without inner dialogue there is effectively no experience. We learn to behave as though experience exists but if you look more closely it's evident that it actually does not do so in the terms in which we usually understand it. Nothing is happening to anyone until inner dialogue constructs this as so.

When I understood this for me the HPC was weakened big time.

Nick

A consequence of that would be that no being, other than a human, experiences.

I don't think that is correct.


ETA:

It would, in fact, mean that there is nothing that it is like to be a bat, bats being devoid of language and so incapable of internal dialogue.

 

[Mercutio]

As to the claim that all observable results of consciousness are computational - that's again just an assertion. Can a symphony be composed computationally?

Remember, it is not simply computation, but an evolutionary algorithm at work. Part of the problem here is that evolution has selected a particular set of functional behaviors which we label "conscious"; we are drawing a circle around that set, calling it the bull's-eye, and asking computers to hit it. That's now how natural selection did it in the first place, of course; there could have been any number of things that might have evolved which are the functional equivalent of our own conscious behavior--including, perhaps, the exact same computational processes that we are saying are not consciousness in computers (well, some of us are saying).

Our own conscious behavior, like any other behavior, is influenced by--selected by--our environment, both in the long term (genetics--what selects for characteristics, other than the environment?) and short term (reinforcers and punishers in our environment, including our social environment for verbal behavior). We have billions of years of an evolutionary algorithm behind one, and (depending on whether you specify verbal or merely social transmission of culture) tens of thousands to millions of years of an evolutionary algorithm behind the other. It is only on top of this that we have our individual life influences. Our consciousness (that is, our set of behaviors we label "conscious") literally builds on that of our peers, parents, and greater society. We, without thinking, copy, re-arrange, try out, keep or discard, the behaviors of others, and that is a selection process--another evolutionary algorithm, if you will--that never starts from ground zero, but starts with a fertile environment full of bits and pieces to copy.

Given that... "can a symphony be composed computationally?" Yes.

 

[westprog]

A consequence of that would be that no being, other than a human, experiences.

I don't think that is correct.


ETA:

It would, in fact, mean that there is nothing that it is like to be a bat, bats being devoid of language and so incapable of internal dialogue.

I don't think that an absence of language necessarily precludes an internal dialogue. Language is how we translate ideas from an internal to an external representation. An inability among bats to discuss their internal dialogues doesn't mean they don't have them. They just aren't in language terms.

Feynman on thinking

 

[Mercutio]

Yes, the sensation of hunger has an unreliable connection with the need to eat food. Indeed, we need to learn that the sensation has a connection with food. But the sensation is there, before anything else happens.

Of course, we can't ask a three month baby about its sensations. We have to infer them. But we know what hunger feels like to us.

The child who doesn't feel hunger might still behave as if he did. And he is able to communicate the absence of the sensation.

From what you say here, I cannot see that we are doing anything but inferring, unreliably, that X, Y, and Z behaviors of an infant are what we adults call "hunger". Of course, this is what we will teach the child to label as such, and what we as adults have forgotten learning.

An alternate view that still fits the evidence (although it does not fit with our cultural view) is that a certain amount of time without eating will elicit a number of behaviors, both public and private. The private behaviors, since one's parents (and others) cannot see them, are not contingently responded to as the public behaviors are. There is a clear connection between food deprivation and the public behaviors of hunger, and a less clear connection, dependent on strength of correlation, between the private behaviors of hunger and food deprivation (indeed, for my son, there is no connection). What defines "hunger", then? Clearly, the public behavior. The private behavior exists, but is not causal. Of the various sensory inputs from within and without our bodies, a fuzzy set of them are associated with hunger (and I would wager that this association depends greatly on culture--specifically, on the ready availability of food or lack thereof. I can't, however, really think of a good way to test this). We can't know that hunger "feels the same" from person to person--and again, I throw my son in as evidence that it does not--so to say that "the sensation is there before anything else happens" is a conclusion based solely on the inference of same.

 

[westprog]

Given that... "can a symphony be composed computationally?" Yes.

Looking at it closely, we see that we have a composer using computational techniques.

Of course, every symphony can be represented entirely digitally. The total number of possible symphonies already exist in potentia. It's simply a matter of choosing the subset in which we are interested.

 

[Darat]

,..snip..., a fuzzy set of them are associated with hunger (and I would wager that this association depends greatly on culture--specifically, on the ready availability of food or lack thereof. I can't, however, really think of a good way to test this). ...snip....

We can get a glimpse of this by looking at people with "eating disorders". For example anorectics often state that they do not feel hungry and that is why they are not eating yet their bodies are "starving"

 

[Ichneumonwasp]

I don't think that an absence of language necessarily precludes an internal dialogue. Language is how we translate ideas from an internal to an external representation. An inability among bats to discuss their internal dialogues doesn't mean they don't have them. They just aren't in language terms.

Feynman on thinking

That's not internal dialogue but connectionism. We all know that consciousness and experience cannot happen without making connections between neural systems.

That our brains may work on the basis of a more basic mentalese is, again, not controversial in most quarters; but I have a hard time using the word dialogue there, since dialogue implies language use.

Experience must involve perception and feeling at a bare minimum. We have parallel systems for each, and they must converge at some point. The fact that there are parallel systems at play is not internal dialogue, not in any sense that I have heard it used.

ETA:

Just so that we are clear, the issue that Nick raised is that all experience depends on internal dialogue. Not that thinking occurs through various means including visual processing, visual association, etc. That Feynman realized that not all thinking depends on language was good for him, but psychologists could have told him that long before he realized it.

The issue here is that I disagree with the statement that all experiencing requires internal dialogue.

 

[westprog]

We can't know that hunger "feels the same" from person to person--and again, I throw my son in as evidence that it does not--so to say that "the sensation is there before anything else happens" is a conclusion based solely on the inference of same.

We don't even know for sure that hunger feels the same for us on different occasions - simply that the memory of hunger seems to be the same.

However, it's the simple fact of the sensation of hunger that I find both interesting and inexplicable - even though Belz doesn't actually accept that it exists. The fact that your son is aware that it is a sensation that he no longer has means that it is a sensation that actually exists.

 

[Mercutio]

A small point, perhaps, but do you mean to say that we learn our actual feelings? For me feelings are autonomous states that happen in reaction to stimuli. We learn to label them as having certain qualities and we learn to associate them with certain triggers, but we don't learn to have them. One might also say that the developing sense of self facilitates the arising of certain feelings, as it learns to percieve the world in terms of subject-object relationships, but again this is not learning to have feelings. It also learns to repress certain feelings and develop avoiding behaviours.

Nick

Well, yes, actually. Let's take an analogy to vision for a bit. We are bombarded with visual stimuli, and (as infants) have to learn to use this information. Take separating figures from background, for instance. Until we learn that this part of a visual image is different from the parts that are right next to it (and we have evolved mechanisms to help us with this, even within the retina itself, let alone within brain structures), we cannot be said to "see a cat". (Think of camouflage--of course you have the stimuli bombarding your retina, but do you "see" the animal? Only when you have successfully separated figure from ground.) This is clearly learned, over time and experience. We still have troubles with camouflaged items, but no longer have much trouble separating the cat from the couch.

We have lots of stimuli from within our bodies bombarding various sensors, from glucose sensors to CO2 sensors to sensors indicating stomach distention, to damaged nerve endings indicating tissue damage... We do have a bombardment of such stimuli, but like vision, it is undifferentiated. We need to learn that this set of signals reliably predicts this circumstance... and we need to learn it from people who do not have access to that set of signals. Are the signals from food deprivation present? Under the right circumstances, yes. Are they distinguishable? No. In the same sense that we "don't see" the camouflaged rabbit right there in front of us, we don't feel the hunger--that is, the stimuli are there, but they are meaningless because we have not learned to separate figure from ground.

So, I see your point, and agree that the stimuli are there, but until we can reliably identify a feeling, it does not, in any meaningful sense, exist.

 

[Mercutio]

The fact that your son is aware that it is a sensation that he no longer has means that it is a sensation that actually exists.

Illusions exist, but not as the things we perhaps thought they were. "A sensation that actually exists" may give too much credit.