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Consciousness is not computation

joe-antognini.github.io

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Re: Consciousness is not computation

#141

Post by tsimionescu »

IIAOPSW wrote: post #64
tsimionescu wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Starting from these as axioms, what can we construct? Nothing, unless there is also a physical world which actually exists independent of any of the participants' will.

This text is in the physical world. This statement exists on your screen independent of my will. It may exist in the first place because of my will, but its continued existence before you right now is independent of me. We have a shared reality in the form of this very text based medium.

Sure, the physical world exists independent of our will and communication, so this text (and all the electric fields that traveled between our machines over vast distances) exist regardless of our will or communication.

But I am only convinced of this fact because I have experienced it independently from any other agent. I know for sure I exist in some sense, I believe very strongly that the physical world exists, and I believe to a lesser degree that other agents have similar experiences to mine.

In other words, I am more certain of the fact that your comment exists than I am of the fact that your subjective experience exists. If I found out the comment I am responding to was in fact GPT-3 output, I would be much less shocked than if I found out my own senses or memory deceived me.

So, the physical world is a much more believable explanation than a world of conscious discussion; and exploring the physical world in the aspects we ourselves can observe about it alone is a much more convincing argument than trying to discuss it with other conscious agents.

It's much easier to convince someone else that I can pass through walls than it is for me to actually pass through a wall.

Re: Consciousness is not computation

#142

Post by thaumasiotes »

n8cpdx wrote: post #3

I think people start with the premise that consciousness is a specific “thing”, that it is unique and special to humans (and maybe dogs because we like them but definitely not spiders and flies because we don’t) and then try to work backwards to define it in some ways that keeps it special. I don’t think consciousness is so specific, and I think people aren’t clear about how they think about it as something separate…

> I think people start with the premise that consciousness is a specific “thing”, that it is unique and special to humans (and maybe dogs because we like them but definitely not spiders and flies because we don’t)

I think you're right that a lot of people would like to believe this, and that attempts to do so can't work because the idea is incoherent.

> My personal experience is that consciousness, like free will, is a useful illusion.

I would answer this another way, though. I would say that, for example, Amazon is conscious, and its consciousness is Jeff Bezos. The relationship between Jeff Bezos and Amazon is precisely identical to the relationship between your "consciousness" and you. But that relationship is not an illusion; it does exist.

Re: Consciousness is not computation

#143

Post by __MatrixMan__ »

Why is reduction-to-panpsychism sufficient to banish consciousness as computation?

Maybe every brick has consciousness, what matters to humans is whether it's a consciousness that we can communicate with. We don't care about consciousnesses with orthogonal arrows of time, or consciousnesses with nothing to say or no way to say it in our universe. We're after a compatible kind of consciousness.

It seems to me that the requirement that consciousness itself be a physical phenomenon is too strong. It's just that in order for us to notice, it must have physical I/O.

Re: Consciousness is not computation

#144

Post by tsimionescu »

IIAOPSW wrote: post #71
tsimionescu wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Starting from these as axioms, what can we construct? Nothing, unless there is also a physical world which actually exists independent of any of the participants' will.

Also, from a system of things that only exists with respect to participants will, we can hack it into a system of things with objective physical existence by presupposing a fictitious all-knowing never-lying arbitrator who will is physical law. In other words, we can invent god as a useful linguistic fiction to rig into being the aspects of my system you've criticized as impossible to construct.

Well, that's a sixth axiom to your system - now you've added a consciousness that has vastly more power than all the others.

My point was that we can't find out anything about the phsycial world by just discussing it. We each have to experience it ourselves using our own senses. We can of course later discuss to devise new ways of understanding what the world is and how it works, but even then, we need to put any theories we come up with to the test to check if they actually hold up.

Re: Consciousness is not computation

#145

Post by charliea0 »

The triviality argument seems to be an informal proof by contradiction.

   (1) Suppose there exists a program `conciousness.exe` whose computation is conscious. 

   (2) A block of iron is not conscious. 

   (3) There exists a (presumably time-dependent) function which maps the microscopic states of the block of iron to the states of the computation of `conciousness.exe.`

   (4) This mapping makes the block of iron is conscious.

   (5) Statement (4) is a contradiction with (1). Therefore there is no program whose computation is conscious.
I think the flaw is clearly in (4). The existence of a function decoding the state transitions of iron into `conciousness.exe` does not imply that the iron is conscious. No definition of what makes an object conscious was provided to justify such a claim.

I would say that a decoding function which maps states of the block of iron to states of `conciousness.exe` is conscious if executed (by Alice, by a computer, or in any other way). In the same way, a decoding function which mapped the states of the block of iron to states of a sieve of Eratosthenes is a prime number finder.

Re: Consciousness is not computation

#146

Post by ofou »

“Conscious realism makes a bold claim: consciousness, not spacetime and its objects, is fundamental reality and is properly described as a network of conscious agents.31 To earn its keep, conscious realism must do serious work ahead. It must ground a theory of quantum gravity, explain the emergence of our spacetime interface and its objects, explain the appearance of Darwinian evolution within that interface, and explain the evolutionary emergence of human psychology.”

― Donald D. Hoffman, The Case Against Reality: Why Evolution Hid the Truth from Our Eyes

Re: Consciousness is not computation

#147

Post by jfoster »

somenameforme wrote: post #140
stormbrew wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That I am having a subjective experience is undeniable. If you wanted to go about proving (even to yourself) that you are not, say, an extremely advanced ML algorithm running on a system that provided synthetic inputs in the form of your senses, how would you go about it? Further, how would you go about proving to someone who doubted your subjective experience was real if they doubted it? Say, if they believed they…

He left two words off: "That I am having a subjective experience is undeniable [to myself]." You cannot prove, even to yourself, that you are not a brain in a vat. All you can prove is that you are experiencing something. And what little that is cannot even be proven to anybody else - no matter what you do. Consciousness is quite a personal affair.

Neuralink is going to be so interesting if it can allow two brains to communicate more directly than words.

Re: Consciousness is not computation

#148

Post by nanomonkey »

3g4o53g4o5 wrote: post #86
colordrops wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems to go even deeper. Not even that "I" am having a subjective experience is undeniable, but only that there is a subjective experience at all. When deconstructing sensory and thought phenomena, it can be found that any particular trait that points to "I" is actually ephemeral, and not a permanent fixture of the experiencer. For instance, the sense that there is a face and eyes that is being looked out through…

Sorry but you always forgot that when you sleep your consciousness disappeared. Please take account for this fact. When all sensory shut down, really you feel nothing and of cos think nothing.

My consciousness doesn't seem to disappear when I fall asleep, only my awareness of my bodies sensations. I often go to sleep reading, and the thoughts I'm having about the book I'm reading will continue for quite some time, even after my eyes close. I know this because I often startle myself awake by dropping my book. I also have similar experiences as I wake up, my consciousness slowly starts to incorporate my sensations of reality with the thought process that is continuously going in my head.

Re: Consciousness is not computation

#149

Post by kleene_op »

doctor_eval wrote: post #54
n8cpdx wrote: post #3

I think people start with the premise that consciousness is a specific “thing”, that it is unique and special to humans (and maybe dogs because we like them but definitely not spiders and flies because we don’t) and then try to work backwards to define it in some ways that keeps it special. I don’t think consciousness is so specific, and I think people aren’t clear about how they think about it as something separate…

> Generating text for hours without an anchor to the real world is not a productive method of generating insight about that world. Yet people see to be claiming that LaMDA does just this, and is therefore not conscious. Seems like a journalist is conscious if they do it, but it can’t possible be consciousness if LaMDA does it. I’m yet to see a convincing argument about why LaMDA isn’t conscious other than “it’s just…

> Yet people see to be claiming that LaMDA does just this, and is therefore not conscious.

Plot twist: that article was written by LaMDA.

Re: Consciousness is not computation

#150

Post by epgui »

manx wrote: post #56
tshaddox wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree with any sort of “justified belief” epistemology, so of course I disagree with you completely. If knowledge were “justified true belief” or anything like that, then it would indeed be the case that any knowledge would require either an infinite chain of justifications or a privileged self-justified fact that cannot be examined or criticized using reason. If, on the other hand, the pursuit of knowledge cons…

Isn't what you describe an Axiom? ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Axiom )

I’m sorry to barge in on the conversation, but I also had the same thought.

However, I believe there is nothing axiomatic about the existence of consciousness: not only is consciousness not “one localized thing” but “a collection of delocalized features”, but there is nothing trivial about it, and I doubt very much that everyone in the room would agree on a single definition of it without getting into semantic quabbles.

Axioms tend to be much simpler.

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