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We Are Beast Machines

nautil.us

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Re: We Are Beast Machines

#111

Post by eli_gottlieb »

GonzaloRizzo wrote: post #109
eli_gottlieb wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Blocks of steel don't have nervous systems of any kind, let alone complex brains. Hell, they aren't even alive at all: they lack the underlying physiology for a nervous system to sense and control in the first place. Seems like a bit of a hint for why we're conscious and they're not.

Why are you so sure about consciousness emerging from the brain?

I didn't say "from the brain". I also didn't say "emerging". I mentioned the nervous system as a whole, and physiology (eg: internal bodily control systems) to boot.

Re: We Are Beast Machines

#112

Post by n4r9 »

adriand wrote: post #39
n4r9 wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If we take a human and replace one of their neurons with a silicon chip that exactly replicates its electrical activity, is the human any less "conscious"? Presumably their conscious experience is the same (if not why not?) If the human is still conscious, what if we continue one by one to replace all the neurons with silicon chips in the same way? Where does this thought experiment fail?

My house is made of bricks. I can confidently remove one of the bricks and replace it with a Kleenex box. The house is still standing, it’s perfectly liveable and no one can tell the difference. Now what happens when I replace all the bricks with Kleenex boxes?

At some point, the structure will collapse or blow over. When that happens depends on the order in which you work, and the weather conditions, but the outcome is at least well-defined and conceptually graspable.

Re: We Are Beast Machines

#113

Post by mabub24 »

Al-Khwarizmi wrote: post #80
mabub24 wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a very fruitful line in philosophy of mind and language that addresses the colour qualia question: anti-cartesianism and anti-skepticism. Wittgenstein's arguments on seeing-as is the best example of this line. He argues, quite convincingly I think, that a lot of the kind of skepticism, of a cartesian sort, implicit in the colour qualia question arises out of conceptual confusions in language. The goal isn't…

I don't understand the point: we could both be seeing a red car (which is objectively red, in the sense that it has a wavelength of 625–740 nm) but we could be perceiving it radically differently (for example, maybe my perception of red is exactly like your perception of blue) and language would never help us find out. In my world, that car, stop signs, fire extinguishers or chili peppers would look like the clear sk…

> There is no way to find out that our perception is different.

Wittgenstein's point is more that there is no way in which a distinction of that kind could even be intelligible in the way that you have presented it. What is intelligible is our public behavior, namely our language use, so to find out if what you perceive is different you can ask someone if you're looking at the same thing, if it has the same characteristics, etc.

He would point to the fact that we don't have radical uncertainty in our day to day life and perception. The philosophical question is a question of sense and nonsense around the concept rather than a metaphysical question about an "inside" vs. an "outside".

I would really recommend reading Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations if you are interested in these kinds of questions, it's incredibly influential in philosophy precisely because of the way it approaches "age-old" problems in ways that lead to clarity and very interesting results.

Re: We Are Beast Machines

#114

Post by mabub24 »

Dudeman112 wrote: post #75
mabub24 wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a very fruitful line in philosophy of mind and language that addresses the colour qualia question: anti-cartesianism and anti-skepticism. Wittgenstein's arguments on seeing-as is the best example of this line. He argues, quite convincingly I think, that a lot of the kind of skepticism, of a cartesian sort, implicit in the colour qualia question arises out of conceptual confusions in language. The goal isn't…

>the colour qualia question essentially dissolves away as irrelevant And yet, I still wanna know. The question is IMO as valid as "if I poke you with this pen, do you feel it different enough than what I feel if I poked myself?" If we go through the exercise of breaking down the physiology, neurology and linguistic, I still wanna know if they feel it any different and how different.

> The question is IMO as valid as "if I poke you with this pen, do you feel it different enough than what I feel if I poked myself?"

Funnily enough, Wittgenstein also famously looked at pain as well [0] in the context of his famous private language argument, and he comes to the same conclusions as he does about perception and language.

It should be noted that Wittgenstein's central point is about the intelligibility of color, or perception, or pain, or a private language. He is not denying the existence of pain, or of what could be considered "first person priority", as a sensation. But he's commenting on the logical necessity of a public intelligibility for it. For him that intelligibility comes about through behavior or public criterions, that is, what we might call pain-behavior wrapped up in a public form of life.

> I still wanna know if they feel it any different and how different.

Wittgenstein's whole point, really, is that you can get an answer by asking them because, after all, you're speaking the same public language. That is also why pain, as it is intelligible, has a history.

[0]: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/private-language/

Re: We Are Beast Machines

#115

Post by lostmsu »

lovecg wrote: post #108
joeberon wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A vast majority of people who believe that consciousness is an emergent property would also say that a sufficiently advanced computer is exactly as conscious as you or I. At least when I believed that human consciousness was an emergent property I believed that an advanced robot would be totally conscious.

In the original Chinese Room thought experiment it’s a human inside performing all the calculations by hand. To be consistent you would also believe that this room with a human in it has its own consciousness as a whole, correct? This just seems too weird to me.

> This just seems too weird to me.

I don't think that something feeling weird justifies violation of Occam's Razor of the same scale as making up souls, gods, etc.

Re: We Are Beast Machines

#116

Post by mach1ne »

joeberon wrote: post #21
bondarchuk wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you are going to demand a precise, non-handwavey answer to the hard problem, then you must first give the hard problem in a precise, non-handwavey way, or at the very least prove in a precise, non-handwavey way that there even is such a thing as the hard problem. As far as I've seen nobody has really done this, it's always just "what breathes fire into the equations?" "what is it like to be a bat?" "I just feel it…

That's the problem and exactly why I say I don't think it can't be explained via a vague feeling. I've never seen someone who says there is a hard problem of consciousness adequately explain to someone why there isn't. The poster is now making what seem more like appeals to emotion throughout the thread now: "are you saying that sufficiently complicated blocks of matter are conscious?" and the like. This is what alwa…

The so-called "hard problem of consciousness" may be a problem through which one may find a suitable definition for their own humanity, but it absolutely is not a scientific problem.

If one wishes to gain concrete data, one needs to define the problem before defining the answer. Any current "problems" relating to consciousness are explainable without needing a consciousness component. I have not encountered a single problem which couldn't be explained by pure cognitive computation.

Consciousness becomes a problem suitable for scientific endeavor the moment someone can actually define the problem.

Re: We Are Beast Machines

#117

Post by lostmsu »

Al-Khwarizmi wrote: post #79
FactolSarin wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't see why two people experiencing red differently causes a problem for consciousness. Can't we both be conscious even with very different qualia?

Of course we can be all conscious but with different qualia. But the thing is that if consciousness was merely a physical phenomenon, we should be able to determine qualia purely by looking at the physical system, just as we determine any other property. However, we could be in a situation where we have understood our behaviors down to particle level, and I would still have no idea how you perceive colors.

> However, we could be in a situation where we have understood our behaviors down to particle level, and I would still have no idea how you perceive colors.

I do not see how this is possible. If you can perfectly simulate me you can perfectly simulate any response I will give to any question about how I experience red. Moreover you will have better idea than I do because you could also simulate how my experiences of red will change with time as I gain more experience from seeing red or anything else really.

Re: We Are Beast Machines

#118

Post by lovecg »

lostmsu wrote: post #115
lovecg wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the original Chinese Room thought experiment it’s a human inside performing all the calculations by hand. To be consistent you would also believe that this room with a human in it has its own consciousness as a whole, correct? This just seems too weird to me.

> This just seems too weird to me. I don't think that something feeling weird justifies violation of Occam's Razor of the same scale as making up souls, gods, etc.

Absolutely, no argument there. It seems the answer will be weird whatever it is.

Re: We Are Beast Machines

#119

Post by nickelpro »

mach1ne wrote: post #116
joeberon wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's the problem and exactly why I say I don't think it can't be explained via a vague feeling. I've never seen someone who says there is a hard problem of consciousness adequately explain to someone why there isn't. The poster is now making what seem more like appeals to emotion throughout the thread now: "are you saying that sufficiently complicated blocks of matter are conscious?" and the like. This is what alwa…

The so-called "hard problem of consciousness" may be a problem through which one may find a suitable definition for their own humanity, but it absolutely is not a scientific problem. If one wishes to gain concrete data, one needs to define the problem before defining the answer. Any current "problems" relating to consciousness are explainable without needing a consciousness component. I have not encountered a single…

Yes, just like the various interpretations of quantum mechanics, it's not a scientific question because it doesn't allow for any testable hypothesis. Science is bound by the scientific method, questions of philosophy exist outside these bounds. Is math invented or discovered? Does the wave function collapse upon observation, or do observers exist in superposition? Is my "red" the same as your "red"?

Even if we could have exact answers to these questions, they wouldn't allow use to make predictions, and so they are not science. I think it's reasonable to say that means they aren't "useful", we can't go to space or build skyscrapers with these answers, but I think it equally makes them the more interesting questions. Our usual tools at rational inquiry fail to penetrate these sorts of questions.

Re: We Are Beast Machines

#120

Post by lostmsu »

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…

I think you are the one doing hand-waving to pretty trivial resolutions of p-zombie problem.

Specifically, that the way I'd define sentience, "qualia", and experience as certain replies to certain stimulae. Namely, sentience as ability (skill level) to play any game like Starcraft, experience as ability to reproduce previously received inputs, and qualia as the set of answers to all possible questions to describe a particular input.

Given these definitions, the construct of Chinese room (which is supposed to be a p-zombie) has all 3.

So unless you can either provide better definitions (without violating Occam's Razor and Popper's criteria) of the 3 concepts, which Chinese room would not satisfy, or give another way to construct a p-zombie, which would not have one of them, but still feel otherwise indistinguishable from "a person", the problem's solution is staring at you right there.

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