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What is it like to have a brain? Ways of looking at consciousness

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Re: What is it like to have a brain? Ways of looking at consciousness

#171

Post by zasdffaa »

namero999 wrote: post #155
zasdffaa wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Can you argument your desire for a quantifiable evidence without begging the question? Don't fall back to sophistry. Is there evidence? yes or no, if yes then show me. > There is research compatible with these claims. It's mentioned and linked in the link I've previously provided. I'm downloading the single video which mentions the word evidence. If there is any more evidence links, please show me them, especially…

It's not sophistry, it was a preemptive question anticipating your response, which in fact showed up: you asked what consciousness _is_. This is the sort of question Babbage would have replied to with his famous remark. "What is" is a philosophical, in fact metaphysical, question. You know what consciousness is. Just pinch yourself. To ask what something _is_ implies reduction. You want a description of experience in…

Asking where consciousness/qualia come from gets you saying "You know what consciousness is". So you don't answer.

> To ask what something _is_ implies reduction

Yes, but you learn something. What is wood? Partly it's lignin. What's that? Randomly polymerised phenol-like molecules. What's phenol? A benzene ring (unsaturated carbon ring) with an OH on it. What are C, O and H? Elements. What is (eg.) carbon? An atom composed of... etc.

You can't reduce consciousness/qualia in any way so you cop out.

The AI video #5 takes some interesting quantum stuff and extrapolates it with extreme dodginess and emotive language into some semi/pseudo-scientific conjectures. My guess is you haven't even watched the vids.

> I submit to you that AI succeeds, and the empirical adequacy of those claims is abundantly linked in the description of the material you are downloading

Nope.

I've had enough here.

Re: What is it like to have a brain? Ways of looking at consciousness

#172

Post by prng2021 »

jungturk wrote: post #129
prng2021 wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He believes that consciousness cannot be reduced to atomic level phenomena. That kind of discussion is only about his so-called easy problem. To him, there is something beyond that. I refer to that "something" as magic because I believe there isn't anything beyond matter/energy to describe all examples of emergence, including consciousness. Going to my original comment's example of removing atoms from a brain, the nu…

I agree with your two statements: > Essentially everything is an example of emergence and this is no different. > There's no magic behind it, just mystery because we don't understand it. But I still believe there's a hard problem (that is, its difficult to explain my sense of interiority using the dynamics and grammars of the substrates that surely give rise to the emergent behavior we call consciousness). By substra…

I could say that many unexplainable things have a hard problem. How is it that we can smell something and instantly our brain can recall very old memories where we noticed that smell? It seems impossible that atoms can communicate with each other so that the atoms that make up a smell can trigger other atoms in your brain to search for yet other atoms that "stored" a snapshot of a previous time and location (aka a memory). That's despite each individual atom of one memory being identical to the atoms of another memory. It's the number and arrangent of the collection of atoms for each memory that is different.

However, I wouldn't create some artificial distinction for people to debate over about an "easy problem" and "hard problem" to describe how memory works. Actually to Chalmers, this entire memory process is an easy problem that may be unknown but is "simply" some interaction of atoms. I doubt he would say there's anything hard about this problem. That's absurd to me.

Re: What is it like to have a brain? Ways of looking at consciousness

#173

Post by comfypotato »

grantcas wrote: post #169
notfed wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What scares me is that some leading AI researchers hold this view (that consciousness in general is nothing special) and it makes them come across as unempathetic, as if all conscious beings---meat or AI---are simply computers and in turn pain is just some kind of computation and therefore that it's silly to even discuss taking precautions to prevent any kind of AI suffering.

It's becoming clear that with all the brain and consciousness theories out there, the proof will be in the pudding. By this I mean, can any particular theory be used to create a human adult level conscious machine. My bet is on the late Gerald Edelman's Extended Theory of Neuronal Group Selection. The lead group in robotics based on this theory is the Neurorobotics Lab at UC at Irvine. Dr. Edelman distinguished betwe…

What separates this from the other “steps” towards understanding consciousness that the op article talks about?

My personal favorite is the open worm project. The sentience (not really sentience) of the worm emerges from the arrangement of the neuron models in the physics engine. The muscle models are similarly connected, and the worm model swims as if alive. The human connectome project may be the closest relatable thing in a more intelligent sphere. The hcp is also laughably far away from the resolution required to equate it to the open worm project.

Your reply strikes me similarly to my personal fascination. Also, it’s similar to me in that there is no reason to select the Darwin automata as the most likely path towards artificial consciousness. Even the recent article you linked has the classic language of “it’s possible” and not “it’s reality”.

This circles back around to why I enjoyed the book review. I do believe what you portray as incorrect (that we don’t really know much about the fundamental element of consciousness), and the different perspectives tickle my brain. I’m open to changing my opinion if you can put these things into simple ideas and terms. If you can’t put them into simple terms, though, I rest my case that we’re no closer to real understanding than Descartes was.

Re: What is it like to have a brain? Ways of looking at consciousness

#174

Post by otikik »

nicoburns wrote: post #150
otikik wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I thought I covered that. Subjective perception is a mental process. There’s nothing there besides an intricate bunch of signals and processing. The signal that says “you Exist” is just hardwired to look Extremely Important to us, so we put it on different category than “you need to pee”, for example. It’s up there with “Intense pain”, and we feel it all the time while we are awake. What I am saying is that we are al…

The "hard problem" is how it is possible for anything to "look like" or "feel like" anything in the first place. Not only do we not know how to simulate that, we don't even know how to sense that it is taking place in anything other than our own minds.

But that’s the same kind of situation as figuring out how windows draws the solitaire on the screen.

Imagine that you lack all context about computers. You are intelligent, but grew up on a desert island. Then a boat arrives. You see a sailor taking pictures with their iPhone. You don’t even know what you are looking at. “What is a computer and how does a computer work” would take years to explain. The same goes with “how does a screen work”. Etc.

At the stage we are, asking “what is conscience” is like that hunter gatherer asking “how does the little box show my friend’s image inside”. The answer is going to be “let me give you some context first, you are missing too many pieces”.

We just need more pieces. But that doesn’t mean that it is hard. When you are missing lots of pieces, knowledge grows slowly, usually.

Re: What is it like to have a brain? Ways of looking at consciousness

#175

Post by smusamashah »

sweetbacon wrote: post #84
smusamashah wrote: post #76

If we had a system that can show us our thought process and we could explain every aspect of it, will we still call it being conscious? (took this question from Westworld where Maeve gets her hands on the tablet showing what she is thinking at that moment)

I feel like yes, or at least have a new name. Nature seems to love emergence at different levels, with little clear delineation beween, and very different rules in between (particles to elements, elements to chemistry, etc).

This question extends to the likes of GPT-3/SD etc which generate text and images based on statistics and probability of things they have learned with no 'understanding'. We can explain how and why they generate a particular piece.

You already agree and the point I was making is that we might be able to call GPT-15 conscious or at least won't be able to say that it's not.

Re: What is it like to have a brain? Ways of looking at consciousness

#176

Post by namero999 »

meroes wrote: post #163
namero999 wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Dennett's argument is that consciousness is an illusion. Where would such illusion take place? I'm genuinely convinced that Dennett is a troll.

I only don't think he's a troll because the non-illusion options seem just as wild to me. I think it's fair to say we've made almost zero progress on how sensations/experience physically work, and there's not much more room to look. For one critique of the progress toward a computational theory of mind, Tim Maudlin (philosopher of physics) says we are no closer today than thinking water and trough computation could g…

Total agreement on the fact that we are as clueless as it gets to explain emergence of experience. That's why I think that the only reasonable avenue forward is to try and take experience as a fundamental building block. We are going through our age's copernican revolution.

The illusionism argument is ridiculous because an illusion is still experienced (the very fact we are talking about it is proof), so at best it is circular reasoning. Probably it's woo-enough to be taken seriously by some :)

Re: What is it like to have a brain? Ways of looking at consciousness

#177

Post by namero999 »

PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #158
namero999 wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not sophistry, it was a preemptive question anticipating your response, which in fact showed up: you asked what consciousness _is_. This is the sort of question Babbage would have replied to with his famous remark. "What is" is a philosophical, in fact metaphysical, question. You know what consciousness is. Just pinch yourself. To ask what something _is_ implies reduction. You want a description of experience in…

> To ask what something _is_ implies reduction. You want a description of experience in terms of something else. So you are begging the question, having already concluded that it's not fundamental. This is not true. When people have asked "what is gravity" and they determine that its a fundamental, non-decomposable force within the universe, they are not disappointed. That's still an answer. "Consciousness is a funda…

I actually think we are in agreement here. My stance is that it is fundamental and doesn't need to/can't be reduced, therefore explained in terms of something else. If the question is simply meant in a descriptive way, then the answer "consciousness is all there is" is perfectly fine.

Re: What is it like to have a brain? Ways of looking at consciousness

#178

Post by namero999 »

zasdffaa wrote: post #171
namero999 wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not sophistry, it was a preemptive question anticipating your response, which in fact showed up: you asked what consciousness _is_. This is the sort of question Babbage would have replied to with his famous remark. "What is" is a philosophical, in fact metaphysical, question. You know what consciousness is. Just pinch yourself. To ask what something _is_ implies reduction. You want a description of experience in…

Asking where consciousness/qualia come from gets you saying "You know what consciousness is". So you don't answer. > To ask what something _is_ implies reduction Yes, but you learn something. What is wood? Partly it's lignin. What's that? Randomly polymerised phenol-like molecules. What's phenol? A benzene ring (unsaturated carbon ring) with an OH on it. What are C, O and H? Elements. What is (eg.) carbon? An atom co…

> Yes, but you learn something. What is wood? Partly it's lignin. What's that? Randomly polymerised phenol-like molecules. What's phenol? A benzene ring (unsaturated carbon ring) with an OH on it. What are C, O and H? Elements. What is (eg.) carbon? An atom composed of... etc.

Do you notice that this is infinite regress? At a certain point you must accept a non-reducible fundamental. If you don't, then it's infinite regress and you have explained effectively nothing. Materialism accepts the quantum foam as primitive. Idealism consciousness. But it's the same epistemic step, accepting a primitive, and derive the rest from it.

Also, if you think that the references are pseudo-science, bring that up with the paper authors. AI simply offers an alternative interpretation, but those are studies coming out of mainstream science circles.

Re: What is it like to have a brain? Ways of looking at consciousness

#179

Post by gbro3n »

layer8 wrote: post #25
gbro3n wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What I rarely see / hear articulated well enough, and am not even sure that I can, are questions around why _I_ have consciousness. I understand the reasons why a body might develop meta cognition, and how it's advantageous for a being to be aware of it's thoughts. But none of this explains why my body is attached to _this_ consciousness and not another. 'Experience' is the key term I feel when the phenomenal aspect…

If you accept that certain bodies have metacognition, then this arguably predicts that each body’s metacognition will perceive itself (the metacognition) and the body as two separate but connected entities. That is, your own perception that “you” are separate from your body would be predicted by the theory. That is, this perception would be predicted by the theory. But it is a mere perception, because the metacogniti…

I also understand this theory, but why is my perception mine, and not that of some other physical being. Why do I experience it. I know what many will answer and I can look at other beings and understand why that being might develop metacognition and see it's self as conscious, but I will never understand why I should inhabit/own/experience a consciousness from my own internal view point.

Re: What is it like to have a brain? Ways of looking at consciousness

#180

Post by TaupeRanger »

namero999 wrote: post #153
jamiek88 wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why of course not?

What makes you think that a simulation of a process is the process itself? If you were to simulate on silicon kidney function down to sub-particle precision, would you expect your computer to pee on your desk? So why would you expect consciousness to be present in a simulation of brain activity or brain complexity? Can you point to _any_ instance of presumed consciousness in a non-biological complex?

Yes, you would expect the kidney to produce its expected outputs to an entity within" the simulation. Of course it wouldn't produce the same things outside the simulation.
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