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Consciousness is not computation

joe-antognini.github.io

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Re: Consciousness is not computation

#261

Post by tarsinge »

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.

Yes. Also that we don't know how to approach that scientifically (yet?) does not make that experience disappear.

Re: Consciousness is not computation

#262

Post by TheOtherHobbes »

tsimionescu wrote: post #247
hsn915 wrote: post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Computation does not have anything essential to it that makes it different from other "atoms jumping around" other than it produces outputs that we find interesting. There's no reason to expect an adder circuit to be aware that it's adding numbers. There's no reason to expect an implementation of AlphaGo to know that it's playing Go. This should be extendable without limitation. There's no reason to expect that a cer…

> Computation does not have anything essential to it that makes it different from other "atoms jumping around" other than it produces outputs that we find interesting. This is not true. Computing is a system where the physical hardware (the computer) is following rules that are explicitly encoded in itself - you can analyze the system and discover where and how the program it is following is encoded (as we did with D…

How do you know the rules of physics aren't encoded anywhere?

Clearly they have to be defined somewhere - or at least somehow - or they wouldn't be rules.

They may not defined anywhere we can access, never mind change. But that's a different problem.

Re: Consciousness is not computation

#263

Post by TheOtherHobbes »

thom wrote: post #235
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…

Bertrand Russell made this point about Descartes’ “cogito ergo sum”, stating it would more correctly be something like “there are thoughts”.

Which doesn't solve the problem, because it define what a "thought" is.

And besides - there are also emotions and physical sensations.

Re: Consciousness is not computation

#264

Post by xoac »

thom wrote: post #235
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…

Bertrand Russell made this point about Descartes’ “cogito ergo sum”, stating it would more correctly be something like “there are thoughts”.

But in this case Russell was completely wrong because he interprets Descartes' cogito as a syllogism whereas it is a performative statement. Descrates' is only establishing that it's self-evident for himself that he exists, and not to assert to anyone external that he or his thoughts exist.

Re: Consciousness is not computation

#265

Post by somenameforme »

GWBullshit wrote: post #225
somenameforme wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it has nothing to do with "specialness" but with proof. I can prove I am conscious, yet only to myself. I cannot prove I am conscious to you, and nothing you could do could prove you are conscious to me. In fact, it's entirely possible that our entire reality is little more than a simulation - and other entities may not even really exist, let alone be conscious. The entities one encounters in a dream each nig…

This is what I find confusing; people are more willing these days to accept the possibility that we may be in a simulation. Such a simulation is presumably large in scale (this assumes the "rest of the universe" as we perceive it is the way we perceive it and not just some artificial fish tank background in a part of the fish tank the fish will never have access to). Within such a massive simulation as this universe…

What people usually mean by consciousness relates to the issue of there being a seemingly pointless "inner you" watching all you do unfold. And while most associate that with intelligence, there's no real reason to believe that. A fly, bacteria, tree, or even a rock could potentially be conscious. Going the other direction it's also possible that the most brilliant human to live was not conscious.

The most relevant issue is that there's no necessity for this "you" to be inside of you. I would ostensibly still be me whether or not there was some entity here observing "me". And going full circle now, there's no reason for you to even really believe me when I say I have this "me" inside of me. After all, I could certainly make the exact same argument even without such an entity.

Re: Consciousness is not computation

#266

Post by TheOtherHobbes »

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.

Waking consciousness disappears.

But sleeping people are not even close to being unconscious.

They can dream, and they're aware enough to know they should probably wake up if they're prodded hard enough.

Conveniently this metaphor works at multiple levels.

Not even medically unconscious people are guaranteed to be completely non-sentient. Ask any anaesthetist.

Re: Consciousness is not computation

#268

Post by jamesrom »

tsimionescu wrote: post #95
3g4o53g4o5 wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

True. Quantum behavior is computing linear algebra ever since the Big Bang, and we came accross to discover this fact 15e9 years later.

That's not a good example, as it's very hard to call particles following the laws of physics "a computation" - what would be the computer in this case? What is the program? A much better example is the machinery inside every living cell that is interpreting the DNA or RNA to produce certain proteins - there, it's much clearer there is a computational process happening. Certain specific structures inside the nucleus a…

Have you verified if the particles in your CPU are following the laws of physics and doing computation as you read this?

Re: Consciousness is not computation

#269

Post by epgui »

IshKebab wrote: post #249
antognini wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

(Author here.) This is a false dichotomy. Saying that consciousness is not fundamentally a computational process does not mean that it then has to be magic. We could say the same thing about life. Life is not a computational phenomenon. But it is also not magic. It is, fundamentally, a particular kind of chemical process. Perhaps the same is true of consciousness, or maybe it is some other kind of physical process. I…

Biological life is not a computational phenomenon. There's no reason very advanced computers couldn't make simulated life. OpenWorm is an example. By the way I find it hilarious how confident you (and other philosophers) are about your conclusions despite them basically being thought experiments with zero evidence. Imagine if scientists did that! Actually I guess string theory is an example of that.

I would argue (and this is really just a semantic point) that it's more productive or instructive to think of biology as being literally a computational phenomenon. The substrate is different, the instruction sets are different, the rules are different... But ultimately it's just computing and iterating on a mind-bogglingly massive amount of information, on a time scale that is difficult for us to wrap our heads around.

Re: Consciousness is not computation

#270

Post by eru »

whittingtonaaon wrote: post #250
simonh wrote: post #205

I find this argument completely unconvincing. The mapping in a case like the iron bar is entirely ephemeral, pertaining only for an instant. For this argument to be valid you’d have to be able to persistently map the iron bar, or waterfall, to all ongoing transformations of states in the running program, using one single consistent mapping. Otherwise all you have is a snapshot of state, not an ongoing process. To ach…

The question is whether there was ever a good reason to suggest that mind is computational, and I think philosophy (i.e. Searle) have shown that there wasn’t. A brain CAN compute (albeit very slowly), but that’s the end of the similarities. The reason it’s not morally wrong, say, to recycle an old computer is that computers are not at all like human minds.

Alas, if you refer to Searle's Chinese Room, that hasn't shown anything, if you just bite the bullet and accept that the Room is conscious.
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