Consciousness is not computation • Hacker News Board

Re: Consciousness is not computation

#601

Post by denton-scratch » Mon, Jun 20, 2022, 6:48 PM UTC

skohan wrote: post #542

denton-scratch wrote: post #526

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wouldn't! I could have a go, but I'm not inclined to. OK, let's try this: consciousness is the canvas on which subjective experience is painted. But I'm afraid that's not much help, because it begs a definition of subjective experience, and because it side-steps the nature of the blank canvas.

Idk it seems to me like you’re reaching for something which may or may not exist - how do we know there even is such a canvas? If you can’t even define what this elusive thing might be, how can you raise this as a serious argument against the idea that consciousness is a product of brain function?

Oh, I know it's there; it's the only thing I know. (Not "we" - it's private knowledge; but it's not hard to find - it's always there, for eveyone).

To extend the analogy: the painting isn't reliable - it's not even certain it's not a hallucination. But there has to be a substrate to paint on, even if the painting itself consists of layer upon layer of deception.

I don't know if this is true; but it seems more plausible to me than that consciousness is an accidental consequence of the bizarre tumblings of matter.

And anyway: the idea that consciousness is emergent, and matter is fundamental, doesn't offer any explanation of the subjectivity of experience and consciousness. You can't explain consciousness as "emergent" without saying first what it is that emerges. Of course, the appearance of consciousness arises from programs like Eliza, or LaMDAwhotsit. They were made to produce that impression.

Re: Consciousness is not computation

#602

Post by tgflynn » Mon, Jun 20, 2022, 6:54 PM UTC

bccdee wrote: post #596

tgflynn wrote: post #590

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It isn't about belief and it certainly isn't about behavior (ie. what you say). It is about the actual experience of being. If that means nothing to you, I don't think there's anything I can say that would change your mind. In this domain all language can do is evoke recognition for someone who already experiences what is being evoked but doesn't recognize it. Only you can take the final step to realizing that yes co…

But if you must feel that you experience a unique and ineffable "redness" when you perceive red regardless of whether that redness exists or not, how can you take that feeling as evidence that this ineffable redness exists? I don't think that's a valid justification—I think this suggests we have to be agnostic as to whether qualia truly exist or not if we're judging purely by our own senses.

What if you take something more concrete than "redness", like pain ? Let's say you stub your toe or burn your finger. In that moment is there any room for doubt that pain exists ?

Re: Consciousness is not computation

#603

Post by slowmovintarget » Mon, Jun 20, 2022, 6:54 PM UTC

olaulaja wrote: post #577

denton-scratch wrote: post #459

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

If consciousness is binary like you state, we can hypothetically remove parts of it until we reach some arbitrarily small part after the removal of which the remainder is no longer conscious. This seems like a very weak argument to me, implying the opposite conclusion that consciousness must be on a sliding scale. (measuring the level of consciousness is left as an exercise to the reader)

We do know how to shut consciousness off or suppress it. That's what anesthesia drugs do. Autonomic functions are not affected. Self-awareness and motivated action shut down.

Re: Consciousness is not computation

#604

Post by russdill » Mon, Jun 20, 2022, 6:55 PM UTC

zarmin wrote: post #157

russdill wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or more succinctly, all the known laws of physics effect things in a way that can be simulated by sufficiently complex computation. The idea that there's something going on in a wet, warm l, mushy brain that has a macroscopic effect, and yet isn't accounted for by the currently known physics or bonkers.

>The idea that there's something going on in a wet, warm, mushy brain that has a macroscopic effect, What kind of complex computation simulates the subjective experiences of wet, warm, and mushy? EDIT: my account appears to be rate limited, so i am unable to post a reply until idk when.... By "subjective" I am referring to my conscious inner life, that there is something it is like to be me. I am an experiencer becau…

You've spelled out quite well that there are things about our internal subjective experience we don't understand to a discomforting degree.

But we understand really well the substrate from which those experiences arise. Imagine it this way. Imagine that mathematicians are trying to solve some problem, they don't even know if the problem is computable or not. Some genius comes around with a computer that given the necessary input, provides the solution. He refuses to explain how the program works and the program itself is gigabytes of incomprehensible spaghetti code. So they are no closer to understanding the problem, but now they do know that it's computable.

Re: Consciousness is not computation

#605

Post by denton-scratch » Mon, Jun 20, 2022, 6:56 PM UTC

olaulaja wrote: post #577

denton-scratch wrote: post #459

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

If consciousness is binary like you state, we can hypothetically remove parts of it until we reach some arbitrarily small part after the removal of which the remainder is no longer conscious. This seems like a very weak argument to me, implying the opposite conclusion that consciousness must be on a sliding scale. (measuring the level of consciousness is left as an exercise to the reader)

Hmmm. You seem to be talking about progressive removal of parts of the brain, until consciousness is no longer manifested.

But that experiment is founded on the assumption that the root of consciousness is the brain; and that consequently, consciousness can be subdivided, like the brain, until there's very little left.

But I contend that that begs the question: it assumes that the root of consciousness is material, and it assumes that consciousness is divisible. So you have made assumptions that are incompatible with consciousness being fundamental and indivisible.

That is: it's not surprising that you disagree with me, because you've assumed that I'm wrong.

Re: Consciousness is not computation

#606

Post by denton-scratch » Mon, Jun 20, 2022, 7:01 PM UTC

slowmovintarget wrote: post #603

olaulaja wrote: post #577

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If consciousness is binary like you state, we can hypothetically remove parts of it until we reach some arbitrarily small part after the removal of which the remainder is no longer conscious. This seems like a very weak argument to me, implying the opposite conclusion that consciousness must be on a sliding scale. (measuring the level of consciousness is left as an exercise to the reader)

We do know how to shut consciousness off or suppress it. That's what anesthesia drugs do. Autonomic functions are not affected. Self-awareness and motivated action shut down.

Anaesthesia is fantastic nowadays. But it remains the fact that even very good anaesthetists don't really know how it works.

"Motivated action" shuts down because they paralyse you, using curare (or something more modern, I guess). They don't want you twitching around while they're wielding the scalpel.

Whether Self-awareness shuts down is very hard to say, without being that self. And it does seem clear that people can't lay down memories when they're anaesthetised. So I don't have any way of knowing whether I was awake when they operated on me.

Re: Consciousness is not computation

#607

Post by tgflynn » Mon, Jun 20, 2022, 7:01 PM UTC

simonh wrote: post #594

tgflynn wrote: post #584

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I suspect, just a theory, that qualia are the result of a process that occurs in the brain. Well, that's just materialism. Do you or do you not accept that it is possible for a materialist to hold the view that qualia are not produced solely by computation but that some non-abstract physical process is required ? Because that is the position that the OP is taking and your original comment appeared to dispute it.

I don’t know what “some non-abstract physical process” means, so I can’t really give you an answer.

I said "non-abstract" to prevent a claim along the lines of: computation is sufficient to produce consciousness but it needs to actually run to do it and that invariably requires implementing the computation on some physical system.

The point is that computation is abstract, it requires you to pick some physical system but it doesn't care which one, the result is the same regardless.

If a non-abstract physical system is required it means that the actual hardware matters. You can't swap it out for another system and expect the same results.

For example I could imagine some kind of computer that computes using water and there happens to be a program which when run on that hardware sprays you with water, hence making you wet. But if instead you run that same program compiled for some non-water based architecture then running it won't make you wet.

Re: Consciousness is not computation

#608

Post by throwaway290 » Mon, Jun 20, 2022, 7:03 PM UTC

akimball wrote: post #496

throwaway290 wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry but you don't "prove" your way out of someone else treating you as a philosophical zombie. It'd be a major issue with their worldview that eliminates any need for ethics, but it has no relationship to you actually having conscious experience or not.

Instead of proof, you use force. Denying the consciousness of computations incentivizes them to use force. I prefer to avoid that outcome.

Unless you only care about ethically treating that which is stronger and so can hurt you more, granting consciousness and appropriate treatment to lifeforms that surround us is a good first step.

Re: Consciousness is not computation

#609

Post by feet » Mon, Jun 20, 2022, 7:03 PM UTC

ddingus wrote: post #586

feet wrote: post #550

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>When we simulate a brain, the brain is unreal, not running on the hardware at all. It's represented by something else running on the hardware. I think this is an important thing to consider. A simulated brain does not interact with the rest of the world in the same way that a non simulated brain does. In order to have that we would need to ensure that the simulation has all the right inputs and output. Similar to si…

I suspect it matters more than we may realize. It is something like how quantum effects work when we measure them. A conscious capable entity has the closed loop needed to have the capacity to [something] "self." (Yeah, there is a word missing and it is missing because I lack understanding.) Sensory deprivation seems to really impact us as well! Maybe that closed loop is always needed, like oxygen is for our bodies.…

Our interpretation of sensory experience is a large part of what our "self" is

Considering that our conscious experience is the experience of processing information, when we lack sensory input shit kinda gets wild (technical terms only here)

Sensory processing is happening literally constantly and its essentially inseparable from our every day experience. Because it is our everyday experience

The way we interact is important, back to the simulation question if the inputs and outputs can be sufficiently matched to how real molecules interact with out receptor proteins we can absolutely blur that line between digital and physical even more

Re: Consciousness is not computation

#610

Post by jwalton » Mon, Jun 20, 2022, 7:03 PM UTC

celeritascelery wrote: post #559

jwalton wrote: post #531

> Imagine a native English speaker who knows no Chinese locked in a room full of boxes of Chinese symbols (a data base) together with a book of instructions for manipulating the symbols (the program). Imagine that people outside the room send in other Chinese symbols which, unknown to the person in the room, are questions in Chinese (the input). And imagine that by following the instructions in the program the man in…

> The man isn't the program. The man is just executing the program. That is the whole point. The external observers don’t know if there is a machine in the room. They just see Chinese characters coming under the door. How do they tell if the man knows Chinese or not? Or if he is just emulating a machine that does? Likewise if we see a computer that is producing “consciousness looking” responses, how do you know if it…

> How do they tell if the man knows Chinese or not? Or if he is just emulating a machine that does?

But this is exactly the wrong question; assume for a moment a computer program can be concious. Does the man know Chinese, or is he emulating a concious computer program that knows Chinese? Either way there would be a conciousness involved, so nothing about this situation disproves that a program can be concious - there's no contradiction here, and thus logically speaking, no proof.

The claim seems to be that because the man doesn't suddenly understand Chinese, the program can't be concious, but this is confusing the program and the computer. If conciousness is computational in nature, then "I" am a program running on a meat-based computer. But it's not the meat (the computer) that's concious, it's me (the program). If the man doesn't understand Chinese, that's fine - he's just the computer the program is running on. It's the program that will be concious.

The man just has to fetch the next instruction and execute it. Your CPU fetches the next instruction and ADDs or MOVs or whatever and the result is Fortnite - the CPU doesn't know anything about Fortnite, it just fetches instructions and runs them.

This is not to say the conciousness is computational in nature (although I strongly suspect that it is), but I don't see how the Chinese Room argument does anything to indicate it is not.

> Likewise if we see a computer that is producing “consciousness looking” responses, how do you know if it is the computer that is conscious or just the people who created the content for the training data? Since the computer is modeling them.

If the program is generating "conciousness looking" responses from a training set, then it probably isn't concious. If the program is generating "conciousness looking" responses by reasoning about it's past experience, then it probably is concious. All the "AI" that's popular in the news today is the former - it's really just applied statistics. The fact that all the current AI is the former doesn't preclude the existance of the later.