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Consciousness is not computation

joe-antognini.github.io

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Re: Consciousness is not computation

#761

Post by wrzuteczka »

injidup wrote: post #410
wrzuteczka wrote: post #292

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not word salad, this is the logical conclusion of the Church-Turing thesis. If you think it's false, you should present some arguments against it.

And now you are adding johurt dressing to the salad. Computers are just fancy ways to locally reduce entropy. They do not exist outside the laws of the universe. Computation is not something special. It's happens! Everything is "computation". To say then that consciousness is not computation suggests there are speciaö physical laws of the universe not accessible to observation or measurement but somehow explainable b…

It seems to me that calling facts you don't like a "salad" or "yoghurt" is a mental equivalent of covering your ears.

Re: Consciousness is not computation

#762

Post by anothernewdude »

denton-scratch wrote: post #736
anothernewdude wrote: post #657

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's what you have to base everything else on. It comes prior to everything else. Free Will is on the same level as the Cogito. Everything else comes after. I think, therefore I am. What is part of identity? Free will. If not free will, then there is no identity, no "I". Axiomatic means unquestionable. The meaning of axiom as a premise for an argument came later.

> Axiomatic means unquestionable. Not really; I challenge you to find a dictionary that says the two terms are synonymous. Originally an axiom was a proposition that was "self-evident". But there's a long history of people questioning "self-evident" propositions, happily for us. There seems to be a colloquial usage of "axiom" to mean a proposition that someone doesn't want us to question. I deprecate that usage. For…

Oxford:

axiomatic /ˌaksɪəˈmatɪk/

adjective: axiomatic

    self-evident or unquestionable.
And you've devolved here into semantics. The point is that for you to even think about the subject, you must have free will. If you are not deciding to think about it, then you are not thinking about it.

Re: Consciousness is not computation

#763

Post by russdill »

zarmin wrote: post #755
russdill wrote: post #752

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Well, I'm arguing it's the other way around. But to address what I think is the spirit of your question: if reality is only mind, if consciousness is truly fundamental, then why can't you read my thoughts? Why do we feel like individuals? Why do we have obviously separate private conscious inner lives? No, this is not the spirit of my question at all. I feel like the spirit of my question is completely being missed…

I'm sorry, I am not trying to frustrate you or avoid your questions. I'm enjoying this conversation. I will try to work with you. > From this it follows that I can create a computer model of a human brain, complete with all the cells, proteins, neurons, etc, and that human brain will be capable of any action (eg, the signals sent by neurons out of the brain) a real human brain is. There would be no way to discern bet…

Ok, so you have a simulated brain, and a real brain. Both are to an external observer, functioning identically. For something to have any effect on the real brain, it would also need to have an effect on the simulated brain. Otherwise the simulated brain would deviate from the real brain and an external observer would be able to identify which is which.

Therefore by your definition of internal experience, internal experience has no effect on our behavior.

Re: Consciousness is not computation

#764

Post by zarmin »

russdill wrote: post #763
zarmin wrote: post #755

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm sorry, I am not trying to frustrate you or avoid your questions. I'm enjoying this conversation. I will try to work with you. > From this it follows that I can create a computer model of a human brain, complete with all the cells, proteins, neurons, etc, and that human brain will be capable of any action (eg, the signals sent by neurons out of the brain) a real human brain is. There would be no way to discern bet…

Ok, so you have a simulated brain, and a real brain. Both are to an external observer, functioning identically . For something to have any effect on the real brain, it would also need to have an effect on the simulated brain. Otherwise the simulated brain would deviate from the real brain and an external observer would be able to identify which is which. Therefore by your definition of internal experience, internal e…

> For something to have any effect on the real brain, it would also need to have an effect on the simulated brain.

It would just need to _look like_ it has an effect on the simulated brain, right? If you ask me a question and I pause, say "hmm", and put my hand to my chin, can you know that I am actually thinking and formulating a response? If the entirety of your observations are external, of course you can't. There is no way to tell if my response is a random choice from an array of preset answers, or a group of concepts activating each other.

That's because brain activity is part of what our inner, first-person experience looks like from a second-person perspective (ie, an external observer). Tears are not sadness, they are what sadness looks like, they are an external description of an internal state. Sadness can only be experienced by the person experiencing it. Tears are a description of sadness. But can't tears be faked?

So when we see the same neuronal activity in both brains, we have no way of knowing whether inner experience actually gave rise to the activity, or it just looks like it did.

Re: Consciousness is not computation

#765

Post by russdill »

zarmin wrote: post #764
russdill wrote: post #763

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ok, so you have a simulated brain, and a real brain. Both are to an external observer, functioning identically . For something to have any effect on the real brain, it would also need to have an effect on the simulated brain. Otherwise the simulated brain would deviate from the real brain and an external observer would be able to identify which is which. Therefore by your definition of internal experience, internal e…

> For something to have any effect on the real brain, it would also need to have an effect on the simulated brain. It would just need to _look like_ it has an effect on the simulated brain, right? If you ask me a question and I pause, say "hmm", and put my hand to my chin, can you know that I am actually thinking and formulating a response? If the entirety of your observations are external, of course you can't. There…

If a human being with inner experiences behaves identically to one without inner experiences in what way can inner experiences be said to give rise to our behavior? You're saying our behavior is not effected by our inner experience. I don't see how any other conclusion can be reached other than our inner experience in no way gives rise to our behavior.

Re: Consciousness is not computation

#766

Post by V-2 »

skohan wrote: post #504
V-2 wrote: post #447

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There's just too much evidence: for instance, changing the physiology of the brain through drugs or trauma has predictable changes on consciousness You can demonstrate that humans react (and quite predictably) to weather - when it rains, they take their umbrellas out, when there's a hurricane, they seek for shelter, and so on. It's not evidence that human behaviour is an emergent property of weather and nothing els…

You're right that there's no proof that consciousness can be explained by biological function alone. But my belief is that the preponderance of the evidence makes it the most likely explanation by far. > You can demonstrate that humans react (and quite predictably) to weather - when it rains, they take their umbrellas out, when there's a hurricane, they seek for shelter, and so on. It's not evidence that human behavi…

> So if you are talking about "feeling" in the sense of emotion, we actually have a very detailed understanding of how that system works.

I'm talking about consciousness, not emotions. About the sense of self. Understanding how emotions manifest as a chemical process doesn't have much to do with it. It doesn't solve the consciousness issue, doesn't explain how this "observer process" that is self-aware (and capable of registering: "oh, I'm experiencing such and such emotion now") comes to be.

Re: Consciousness is not computation

#767

Post by V-2 »

doliveira wrote: post #709
V-2 wrote: post #694

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Only in the same sense as dark matter or string theory are "basically magic". It is naive to assume we've already discovered all properties of matter and energy and are now only refining our understanding of those.

Yes, astrology could also work due to a fifth force of nature. After all, it would be naive to just dismiss it based on our current understanding of Physics.

It's not a good analogy. Astrology is an explanation of a problem that doesn't exist in the first place.
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