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Consciousness is not computation

joe-antognini.github.io

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Re: Consciousness is not computation

#451

Post by intrasight »

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…

> that it is unique and special to humans

I agree that this is a poor premise. The Turing Test is obviously racist. I am sure that my dog and cat are conscious. And I believe there are forms of consciousness in the universe that are as different from us as we are from an amoeba. Consider a large star or even the Sun. It has very complex oscillatory modes that we don't understand. Fifteen years ago my then young daughter and I had a philosophical conversation about stars as potentially conscious entities.

Re: Consciousness is not computation

#452

Post by strogonoff »

hhjinks wrote: post #431
strogonoff wrote: post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The act of saying “consciousness doesn’t have any effect on the material universe” denies the premise of what’s being said. Behold, your consciousness has just had direct effect on material universe (just as deciding to obtain the device on which it was typed, and before that someone’s idea to make that device, had). I remember myself being unshakeably of the same opinion: consciousness is obviously something of no r…

That depends on your perspective. I could argue that the consciousness merely attributes these actions to itself. The consciousness could be a passive observer, tricking itself into believing it is the cause behind the actions of the meat computer it observeres. Then again, that argument doesn't sit well with the evolution argument. If we assume consciousness is a fitness advantage, then it must have some effect on t…

Yes, a consciousness solely for the purposes of post-rationalisation seems quite redundant and to me raises more questions that it solves.

I don’t subscribe to physicalism since it strikes me as clumsy and inelegant. A consciousness arguing for physicalism is denying the existence of the only thing it has direct access to and granting objective reality to something it may have well conjured up.

Re: Consciousness is not computation

#454

Post by feet »

simiones wrote: post #429
feet wrote: post #394

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also, we can definitely simulate rain? Not sure where that weird claim comes from

The point is that a simulation of rain (in a weather simulation) is not rain itself (e.g. you can't smell the rain after a weather simulation simulates some rain, obviously). This is actually similar to the observation that "the map is not the territory". On the other hand, this is a red herring - computation can produce actual rain, with the right input/output systems.

It's a digital representation, theoretically if we simulate all facets of weather and all facets of consciousness, the simulated consciousness could experience all facets of rain

We are not digital, to simulate it for our conscious experience we can simulate weather in a closed biodome type of structure where we control the water cycles

Re: Consciousness is not computation

#455

Post by simonh »

hsn915 wrote: post #365
vbezhenar wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you know that? Lamda AI claims itself as conscious being. How can you distinguish between two entities which can communicate? Do you discriminate on meat factor?

> Do you discriminate on meat factor? Yes.

So does Searle actually. He thinks there is something special about biological systems. In fact I think he basically considers himself a materialist, but I think that's part of where he gets tangled up in his own arguments.

Re: Consciousness is not computation

#457

Post by neosat »

One core issue that the author struggles with (like almost all of these theories) is a crisp definition of consciousness, that allows you to create a falsifiable hypothesis of what is "*not* consciousness". Till you cannot crisply define consciousness crisply, you cannot create a scientific falsifiable hypothesis to test it, and hence all you are debating and persuading around is philosophy or semantics.

Re: Consciousness is not computation

#458

Post by feet »

FeepingCreature wrote: post #401
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…

A simulation of weather can absolutely produce a simulation of rain. Then the only question is, is consciousness like data or like matter? As opposed to matter, data can easily traverse levels of simulation.

Consciousness is an emergent property that comes from a complex system, if we can simulate all of the mechanisms then the emergent property will follow. I don't know if its "data" but rather consciousness is the experience of processing data from the perspective of the entity doing the processing. We have the ability to communicate our internal experience which is why humans only attribute conscious awareness to other humans, which is honestly kinda dumb

Re: Consciousness is not computation

#459

Post by denton-scratch »

TheOtherHobbes wrote: post #257
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…

The argument seems to be that beyond a certain level of complexity you'll somehow automatically get consciousness. Clearly it's unlikely this is a hard cut off. Adding one more byte of RAM, expanding the CPU from 64 to 128-bit words, or adding another dimension to a neural network isn't going to do it. But if consciousness emergent, how do you measure the amount of consciousness? Because the experience is subjective,…

> how do you measure the amount of consciousness?

You seem to have assumed that consciousness is a measurable "stuff".

My way of seeing it is that consciousness is either present or absent. Thoughts, beliefs and concepts are like ripples on the surface of consciousness, but are not themselves consciousness. So you can have consciousness without thoughts.

Re: Consciousness is not computation

#460

Post by GoblinSlayer »

aneil wrote: post #312
eru wrote: post #270

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

But the argument shows it's absurd to think the room is conscious. What if the person in the room takes a coffee break or goes on vacation? What connects the next computational step they do to the previous one and the next... which then somehow gives rise to a fragment of qualia. That seems like an impossibly complex and unlikely scientific theory.

It's just usual neurodegenerative disease. Happens all the time.
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