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We Are Beast Machines

nautil.us

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Re: We Are Beast Machines

#81

Post by eli_gottlieb »

adriand wrote: post #26
nickelpro wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly, you have a handwave. A vague idea that when a system becomes "complex" enough it suddenly becomes conscious. There's no mechanism, no rigor, no cause and effect. With the browser you can chase down every bit through the hardware, down to the quantum tunneling effect dictating what's happening in the silicon and come up with a concrete explanation based in physical laws. With the browser example, at no level…

One obvious difference between computers and humans is that only one of them is an animal. So far as we can tell, consciousness only arises in animals. This sounds like a truism, but I wonder if using phrases like “complex system“ masks it: both humans and computers are complex systems, and only one of them is conscious, and therefore what could possibly be the difference? Well, the list of differences between the tw…

>To sum this up: consciousness, in this view, is not an emergent property of complex systems. Rather it is a fundamental property of animals.

Or at the very least, it's a fundamental property of the particular kinds of physical systems that animals happen to be, and without understand what that is, we have no hope of replicating consciousness in any non-animal.

This makes sense to me, because consciousness seems to be a question related to brains, which are part of animals, so a really great way to confuse yourself would be to abstract the entire question of consciousness away from the life sciences and then wonder why you're so confused.

Re: We Are Beast Machines

#82

Post by PKop »

nickelpro wrote: post #18
tim333 wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd go with a variation on 2: 2a) I am not like a block of steel, but I know why ("evolution") In the same way that a camera takes pictures while a block of steel doesn't because someone designed it that way, we are conscious because evolution designed us that way. Conscious people survive better than those knocked unconscious.

But then you are like a block of steel, you are deterministically governed by the laws of physics. Any block of matter arranged just so is conscious in that framing, which differs from the religious framing.

>you are deterministically governed by the laws of physics

Yes.

Re: We Are Beast Machines

#83

Post by callesgg »

nickelpro wrote: post #6
joeberon wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So far the only answer I've seen people give to the question is "what problem? There's no problem". Basically, there are many people who don't (or also have convinced themselves that they don't) perceive an incongruity between their personal subjective experience and the idea that consciousness is just an emergent phenomena of a physical system. I haven't found a good way to explain it, I just know that there's somet…

I don't understand how someone can not understand the problem. You and I have conscious experience, we have a meaningful sensation of qualia. A billet of 4140 steel does not, or so we assume. Both are governed by physical laws of the universe, so there must be some distinction beyond these physical laws that differentiate them. In this framing, there are typically four camps, three of them line up with your camps: 1)…

7) I am a model of a primate created/executed by the actual brain of the primate that the model is modeling. Ie, the primate is not like a block of steel cause it is modeling its own existence, while the block of steel is not modeling it’s own existence.

Re: We Are Beast Machines

#84

Post by PKop »

chmsky00 wrote: post #61
nickelpro wrote: post #3

Nothing in this essay addresses the single most prominent question of contemporary philosophy of mind, which is the hard problem of consciousness. It only addresses the soft problems, which everyone agrees are solvable "merely" with enough time, funding, and initiative. Nothing about the "beast machine" addresses how qualitative experience arises from physical phenomena, or as Chalmers puts it, "Why are we not philos…

The hard problem will be solved in time. My reasoning is that the people that defined it did so in a time when our science was less developed, so of course the problem seemed much harder. Information theory makes even the hard problem a matter of understanding interaction fields of physics, with the chemistry of biology. Relativity and sensory network effects explain relative experience elegantly enough. A lot of the…

>a matter of understanding

There is also the possibility that our cognitive limits will prevent us from creating artificial intelligence and consciousness, even if it is materially possible.

Re: We Are Beast Machines

#85

Post by k__ »

adriand wrote: post #26
nickelpro wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly, you have a handwave. A vague idea that when a system becomes "complex" enough it suddenly becomes conscious. There's no mechanism, no rigor, no cause and effect. With the browser you can chase down every bit through the hardware, down to the quantum tunneling effect dictating what's happening in the silicon and come up with a concrete explanation based in physical laws. With the browser example, at no level…

One obvious difference between computers and humans is that only one of them is an animal. So far as we can tell, consciousness only arises in animals. This sounds like a truism, but I wonder if using phrases like “complex system“ masks it: both humans and computers are complex systems, and only one of them is conscious, and therefore what could possibly be the difference? Well, the list of differences between the tw…

But maybe a computer isn't a complex system.

Most, if not all, animals are much more complex than computers.

Re: We Are Beast Machines

#86

Post by joeberon »

NoGravitas wrote: post #58
nickelpro wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't understand how someone can not understand the problem. You and I have conscious experience, we have a meaningful sensation of qualia. A billet of 4140 steel does not, or so we assume. Both are governed by physical laws of the universe, so there must be some distinction beyond these physical laws that differentiate them. In this framing, there are typically four camps, three of them line up with your camps: 1)…

I agree about the best parties. But what about the idea that consciousness exists on a continuum — that everything that processes information has a scope of consciousness that corresponds to the complexity of what it processes? A block of steel doesn't really process any information, but a thermostat does, and so does a paramecium. I'm happy to grant qualia to a paramecium, even if I don't think those qualia are very…

This is personally my feeling of it too. I think the boundaries between us are illusory, and that it is all continuous and fuzzy. So a universal consciousness is no issue for me, one that is neither singular nor separate.

Re: We Are Beast Machines

#88

Post by ericmay »

> Brains are not for rational thinking, linguistic communication, or perceiving the world.

Isn't this false?

Brains are for whatever brains are for, and if brains are thinking rationally (2+2 = 4), communicating linguistically (I'm typing this using language), and perceiving the world using senses than they are for those things just as much or as little as they are for or not for anything else. I suppose you can say something along the lines of "brains are for continuing survival and propagation of genes" as they author did which is fine, but it would make more sense to state that and try to prove it... Because how do we know that thinking rationally isn't what evolutionary drive is? How do we know that brains are evolved for survival? Survival for what? Gut bacteria? The earth (keep reproducing to keep organic material churning)? How do we know that the emergence of language and propagating that isn't what brains are for?

I think it's hard to really say what brains are for or not for. That's a deceptively difficult question and probably shouldn't casually throw out "brains are not for X".

-edit-

I also wouldn't take it for granted that brains or anything is for anything.

I do think we are "philosophical zombies" as someone else put it, but it's not a distinction that matters because whether we are or are not doesn't change anything. It's like accepting that you don't have free will - it doesn't change anything. You still go to jail if you rob someone (the interesting question comes from the morality of this actually IMO).

Consciousness is probably an evolutionary adaptation for increased cooperation - to that end it's a shared delusion (language allows us to become "more" conscious), but a useful one.

I'd posit that certainly all mammals are conscious (if they're not, then I'm not sure you can argue that anything is conscious besides yourself which is fine if you hold that view) and likely all animals are conscious, just a matter of degree of genetic expression. Panpsychism is tempting but if we wanted to say that rocks are conscious than I think we could set aside still different "levels" of conscious expression and draw meaningful distinctions - it's not a hill one has to die on.

Most of our work on consciousness that I've observed has historical religious baggage (not insulting religion here) with humans being at the center and "special" but if you strip that away I think it's pretty easy to see that we're not. Many scientists that I've seen or observed kind of have the God problem - which is that they're wrestling with a question or dilemma and supposing God is involved or exists and so it must be dealt with. Similarly in the study of consciousness it seems that we're supposing that humans are conscious to some special degree and trying to fit science to explain that - which is a faulty premise from the start.

/rant :)

Re: We Are Beast Machines

#89

Post by adriand »

CuriouslyC wrote: post #49
adriand wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One obvious difference between computers and humans is that only one of them is an animal. So far as we can tell, consciousness only arises in animals. This sounds like a truism, but I wonder if using phrases like “complex system“ masks it: both humans and computers are complex systems, and only one of them is conscious, and therefore what could possibly be the difference? Well, the list of differences between the tw…

You think your computer isn't conscious? How do you know? Just because it's not demonstrating free will? How many layers of error correction are built into computers to stifle the "randomness" of electronic equipment? Do you think you could still exercise free will locked in a padded room and strapped to a bed with a straightjacket?

There's a difference between knowing, and knowing how you know. I know my computer is not conscious even if I'm not entirely certain how I know. I chalk this up to the fact that, as a conscious animal with millions of years of evolutionary history, it is both beneficial and entirely natural for me to be able to recognize conscious beings when I encounter them.

(It also helps that I know how to program computers and don't view that activity as bringing consciousness in the world. I have children, however, so it turns out that I am — with some help — also able to bring consciousness into the world. The former activity I am both able to do and fully understand, while the latter I am clearly able to do, but don't at all understand.)

I recognize this point of view isn't popular among a lot of technical folks. I get it, I was there once too, but I've come around to a new appreciation for our animal nature. This question — how do you know what is conscious? — is very similar to questions like, "how do you know that that dog is afraid?" The short answer to that question is, "because we are kin". Which is an explanation I find much more rich and satisfying than reductionism.

Re: We Are Beast Machines

#90

Post by adriand »

eli_gottlieb wrote: post #81
adriand wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One obvious difference between computers and humans is that only one of them is an animal. So far as we can tell, consciousness only arises in animals. This sounds like a truism, but I wonder if using phrases like “complex system“ masks it: both humans and computers are complex systems, and only one of them is conscious, and therefore what could possibly be the difference? Well, the list of differences between the tw…

>To sum this up: consciousness, in this view, is not an emergent property of complex systems. Rather it is a fundamental property of animals. Or at the very least, it's a fundamental property of the particular kinds of physical systems that animals happen to be, and without understand what that is, we have no hope of replicating consciousness in any non-animal. This makes sense to me, because consciousness seems to b…

> a really great way to confuse yourself would be to abstract the entire question of consciousness away from the life sciences and then wonder why you're so confused

Yes, exactly. Which is a direct challenge to transhumanism because it means that maybe it actually won't be possible to achieve immortality via brain upload, or build general AI (without first solving the life science "problem", i.e. building an artificial body), and so on.

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