251–260 of 280 posts
http://themindi.blogspot.com/2007/02/chapter-23-unfortunate-...
The whole book "The Mind's I" is a fascinating collection of stories and essays dealing with this topic.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Would one not just infer the universe is conscious? There is no boundary problem then, just one of degree. Seems silly, but everything has a point of view and whatever level of complexity it has determines what consciousness it presents. A rock has very little complexity. It literally is just an expression. What has happened to it equals what it is. When something has enough complexity to be aware of the boundary bet…
> When something has enough complexity to be aware of the boundary between "it" and everything else, then we have a being of some kind. Exactly. This agency idea is appealing because it seems to unify a number of other ideas: from evolution (survival), autopioesis, active inference and Bayesianism. Without sounding too much of a crackpot, I hope we’ll be able to import subjective experience as a necessary component i…
I personally hope they are not as subjective as we see today. Perhaps there are reasons why, say red, appears as it does.
A ruleset there would, to me at least, be profound. While it may remain impossible to directly convey thoughts, impressions, we may well end up with far better language to work with and see commonalities we do not today.
Re: agency
A thing aware it is a thing, may be the root of real AI too.
I have long thought these disjointed, brain in a jar essentially, experiments lack that. No body, no closed loop with themselves, no sense of being = no agency.
We may also find intelligence is rooted in an interest, need to exist, or just be an expression.
By that, I mean what I did above. A rock is essentially what has happened. Information in matter form, a record.
Agency, is meta. Beings see expressions, the world, and due to their nature, being sufficiently complex, have an interest, themselves, their kind, apart from the world and it's undulating history.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think stating that there's a "hard problem of consciousness," which is not explained by self-awareness, is begging the question. We just kind of assume that there's something inherently special about qualia, raise them on a pedestal, and claim that they are unique to humans. Why assume that 'what it's like to experience the colour red' isn't just the experience of being aware that you're experiencing a red visual i…
> I think stating that there's a "hard problem of consciousness," which is not explained by self-awareness, is begging the question. We just kind of assume that there's something inherently special about qualia, raise them on a pedestal, and claim that they are unique to humans. Merely asserting the existence of self-awareness or describing how self-awareness arises doesn't address any of the questions raised by qual…
It seems self-evident to me that there are only a few options:
- Human brains aren't conscious (which we humans tend to dispute)
- Human brains are conscious and have experiences as an inherent byproduct of accepting and processing sensory input which includes input on their own internal states (ie. there is no 'hard problem')
- Human brains are conscious through some other, as-yet-undescribed mechanism which operates in parallel with the systems described in the last option (a 'strange loop' separate from the 'mundane loop' of our normal feedback system)
- Human brains aren't inherently conscious and consciousness is imbued into them via some supernatural phenomenon (which feels like abdication to me - 'a wizard did it' is never a satisfying answer.)
I'm only an armchair philosopher so I'm well aware there may be some widely accepted conclusions on this stuff that I've just missed so far.
The neural network of nematode worms has been modelled in software, and a robotic avatar has been built for this "mind". It behaves very much like a real nematode worm. Real nematode worms appear to be conscious to an extent, in so far as they forage for food and mates, and retreat from danger or threats. I don't think we would argue that nematodes have the same level of consciousness as we do. If the mechanical mode…
That's a big 'If'. You really have to arrive at something working to even ponder upon that question. Right now you are at:
if (false) {
is_conscious();
}Earlier quoted context omitted.
> We will probably soon build the electronic computer which will, from the perspective of the humans communicating with him, indeed behave "as a conscious person": soon we won't need you to write the answer you wrote, the computer will be able to make even better one. This is wrong. We are absolutely nowhere near anything even remotely resembling this.
No. We already have a complete nematode implemented as a computer program. We already have a realistic simulation of the living creature. Twenty years ago the current output of Google Translate was a pure science fiction, compared to what it was possible then. Today it already often translates better than a lot of humans knowing both languages. Had anyone seen the output of Google Translate of today some 20 years ago…
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2013/11/the-man...
Basically the machine isn't exactly thinking. It simulates a model of thinking.
There lies the biggest difference.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Curious: why do you say pansychism is absurd? Red colour is something which has sort of become a canonical example of subjective experience. Nothing special about it - could have been blue :)
Because it's just obvious that consciousness and subjective experience are not properties of matter, they are properties of very particular arrangements of matter. A CPU is made of the same stuff as beach sand, but a CPU can compute and beach sand can't. Or take your laptop (or your brain) and hit is with a sledge hammer. All of the atoms that were there before this procedure are still there after. Do you really want…
Without the ability to communicate, consciousness means nothing at all. Then of course communicate how? Hand signals, hand writing or voice are equally mystical forms of communication given that these are waves(light and sound). That's already Telepathy category. We just don't feel it as magical because every one can do it.
I'd imagine for a humanoid species without ears or even a idea that something like sound wave would exist, talking would be synonymous with Telepathy.
Panpsychism is exciting. But there are two problems in it. One is the combination problem: what sort of collection of atoms are conscious and what are not. If you propose then that only agents or complex systems are conscious, you are faced with the second problem: the boundary condition. What do you call an agent, and why? I’m ultimately hopeful that subjective experience will come to be seen as something fundamenta…
Would one not just infer the universe is conscious? There is no boundary problem then, just one of degree. Seems silly, but everything has a point of view and whatever level of complexity it has determines what consciousness it presents. A rock has very little complexity. It literally is just an expression. What has happened to it equals what it is. When something has enough complexity to be aware of the boundary bet…
Not necessarily. Humans learn anything through inputs of sight, sound, feeling and smell. Different conscious bodies could have different ways of learning about things around them, and hence a totally different model of reality around them.
They can't tell us anything about their consciousness for the same reasons why we can't talk to stones.
The neural network of nematode worms has been modelled in software, and a robotic avatar has been built for this "mind". It behaves very much like a real nematode worm. Real nematode worms appear to be conscious to an extent, in so far as they forage for food and mates, and retreat from danger or threats. I don't think we would argue that nematodes have the same level of consciousness as we do. If the mechanical mode…
If the mechanical model also does this, it it conscious too?Earlier quoted context omitted.
Exactly. The sand on the beach and a CPU are made of the same stuff too, but arguing that therefore beach sand can compute is obviously absurd. The consciousness of all matter is just as obviously absurd.
But beach sand DOES compute, once treated and arranged in a certain way. The ability to compute is present in all matter. The ability for consciousness is present in all matter in the same way. Perhaps these abilities are one and the same.
> The ability to compute is present in all matter.
No, it isn't. If you think it is, tell me how to build a computer out of a single hydrogen atom.