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Consciousness is not computation

joe-antognini.github.io

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Re: Consciousness is not computation

#611

Post by i_like_apis »

denton-scratch wrote: post #516
i_like_apis wrote: post #16

The author's "triviality argument" doesn't hold up: > 1. To say that a physical system is a computer requires an external observer to map the physical states of that system onto the abstract states of a Turing machine. > 2. Consciousness does not require an external observer to exist. > 3. Therefore, consciousness cannot be reduced to computation. A physical system may be a computer regardless of whether it is verifi…

I think you may have missed the point (of course, it could be me that missed the point :-) The argument was that for a physical system to be a computer, an element of intent or interpretation is needed; otherwise it's just a bunch of stuff doing what stuff does naturally. Perhaps the (horribly flawed) iron bar example is making the point that whether some configuration of magnetic dipoles is a computer depends on you…

You're just re-stating (1). I understood (1) fine and addressed it directly.

Observation isn't required for Turing machines to exist. A computer is still a computer even if it has no user or doesn't compute anything deemed useful.

i.e., Whether something is a computer or not doesn't depend on interpretation or observation. (Directly saying 1 is wrong)

Re: Consciousness is not computation

#612

Post by __MatrixMan__ »

yreg wrote: post #353
__MatrixMan__ wrote: post #143

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…

I don't get this either. I used to think about these experiments and my conclusions are completely opposite. Any physical medium that runs the right program would be conscious. And the right program is probably a very broad category. >It already seems implausible to me that a vast desert of rocks being manipulated into various patterns is conscious. What exactly is conscious here? What happens if I accidentally kick…

When I ask "why bother evolve consciousness, versus being just an instinctive reacter to stimuli?" It usually seems to come down to decision making. There's something about having an experience that helps with certain kinds of problem solving.

So if the evolved consciousness is going to actually be useful, it needs to be able to do something that typical instinct-driven computing can't. What might that be?

Maybe it circumvents the error-correcting mechanisms that you might otherwise expect to exist: Open the door to a small bit of environmental noise, and attempt to make meaning from it. If the meaning survives enough feedback iterations after you shut the door, you've just had an idea. This, I imagine, is how creativity works.

So what I'm saying is that most rock-moves would be error-corrected and inconsequential, but if you move the right rock you're tipping the scales between whether today feels like a eggs day or an oatmeal day--the kind of decision that doesn't make sense as the output of an algorithm.

Re: Consciousness is not computation

#613

Post by michaelmrose »

denton-scratch wrote: post #605
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)

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, a…

Other than in your body where do you suppose you exist?

Re: Consciousness is not computation

#614

Post by jedharris »

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…

The term "illusion" here is confusing -- see most of the comments.

Consider a rainbow. It looks like a colored thing in the sky. If it is complete enough it seems to come down to earth at specific points. We even talk about "the end of the rainbow". We definitely see it, we have a real physical and also subjective experience of seeing a rainbow. We can even photograph it.

HOWEVER, there is no "thing in the sky". There are no "places it comes down to earth". The particular experience we have of seeing a rainbow is specific to the point where we are standing, the angle of the sun, the rain in the air, etc. none of which are part of our idea of a "thing in the sky".

So is a rainbow an illusion? It is certainly real in that we see and can photograph it. But also it is not at all the kind of THING that it seems.

Consciousness is also real. We can experience conscious periods, remember them, and with advancing imaging tech someday we can photograph them in the brain.

On the other hand the underlying reality of our conscious experiences isn't very much like our experience. Also, conscious experiences can be observed in meditation and other altered states in ways that make them seem very much like illusions.

So is consciousness an illusion? Yes and no, in the same way as a rainbow is and is not an illusion.

Re: Consciousness is not computation

#615

Post by feet »

hsn915 wrote: post #234
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…

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 adder circuit doesn't have other circuits that allow the whole to understand what its parts are doing

Our brain does

Re: Consciousness is not computation

#616

Post by scoofy »

>My consciousness is of my entire self. It is not of half of myself, nor is it some superposition of you and me.

I know this post is from 18 hours ago, but I'm actually quite skeptical of this statement. My most pressing question about consciousness is actually the limited nature of the self. My consciousness does not extend fully into sleep, it does not extend in to making my heart muscle contract. It seems to elude me when i cannot remember something. It seems my consciousness is not, in fact, stable, ad varies through time.

Re: Consciousness is not computation

#617

Post by quonn »

3pt14159 wrote: post #488
otikik wrote: post #472

Pick three rocks and make a line with them. Does the line “exist”? Well, yes, in a way. But also very much no, only the rocks exist (let’s ignore the fact that the three imaginary rocks that you have pictured in your mind while reading the previous phrase also don’t exist). Qualia, and consciousness, exist in the same way that line exists but also doesn’t. The universe will happily give non-conclusive answers like th…

A lot of conversations around the term consciousness mix up a couple of things. First, there is the term consciousness which is a word given to something that humans observe. It encapsulates an idea, and we know[0] that it's a shared experience because the term arose in other languages as well. The concept of consciousness may be not limited to humans, for example an alien race may have also discovered this concept a…

> Real AI wouldn't pass a consciousness test without demonstrating real reasoning about a completely novel situation.

That would test for intelligence, not consciousness.

Re: Consciousness is not computation

#618

Post by skohan »

denton-scratch wrote: post #601
skohan wrote: post #542

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 plausib…

Well I suppose we can believe whatever we want, but as our understanding of neuroscience increases, it seems as if the trend is that there is less and less unknown space for that substrate to exist in over time.

Re: Consciousness is not computation

#619

Post by simonh »

tgflynn wrote: post #607
simonh wrote: post #594

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Ok, so a computer with a water sprinkler attachment. Sorry, I'm not trying to be flippant, the point is any such system would be more than just a CPU, it would need interfaces with the outside world. It could have whatever peripheral systems you like. It could have quantum computational elements, even ones correlating to ones in the brain. I've just no idea what non-computational elements it might have that couldn't be substituted by computational ones or just peripheral components.

Re: Consciousness is not computation

#620

Post by V-2 »

doliveira wrote: post #506
V-2 wrote: post #405

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"The idea that you cannot make tea from water alone requires accepting on faith that brewing tea is magic." No, not necessarily. It just means that water/computation is not the only ingredient you need.

And what is this other ingredient if it's not something physical?

It could well be something physical, but going beyond mere computationality.

If I knew what it was, I'd be waiting for my Nobel prize now :)

It's kind of as Newton's physics was missing the secret ingredient of special relativity. It was still physical, not magical, but not discovered yet.

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