Earlier quoted context omitted.
A big lookup table.
A lookup table with compression. Intelligence is a form of compression.
Compression is necessary for intelligence but not sufficient.
What is a mathematical structure of conscious experience?
31–40 of 179 posts
Re: What is a mathematical structure of conscious experience?
#32Is there a book or resource that describes the state of the art in our knowledge and understanding about the nature of consciousness (Not cognition) and provides a survey of the popular and promising theories? Readable by someone who isn't in the field(s). Maybe even a good popsci book on the topic that is the neuroscience's equivalent of "Universe in a nutshell"
Depending on what exactly you mean by “the nature of consciousness”, it’s fundamentally impossible to answer.
The fact that we think we can observe and comprehend a mechanism doing the observation does not preclude things we cannot see. You might be able to pan a cctv camera and get some insight about the camera itself if you find a reflection, but you can’t pan it over to the linux driver. It is not a given that all of the observer exists within the observable universe.
Re: What is a mathematical structure of conscious experience?
#33I'm surprised that in all this hype Gödel Escher Bach hasn't seen a proportional comeback. Hofstadter outlines with some formality a very plausible kind of structure of consciousness, namely the "strange loop": a system of symbols or rule-patterns that contains a distinct but isomorphic (or approaching) description of itself.
I've always thought consciousness is basically just feedback (like with microphones). Sensing yourself sensing yourself etc.
That's self-awareness. But it doesn't explain qualia like the sensation of the color red.
Re: What is a mathematical structure of conscious experience?
#34Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Is chatGPT a mathematical model of consciousness? Unless we reduce models of consciousness to purely stochastic processes, this is trivially false. And no one seriously reduces consciousness to probabilistic pattern recognition. > We know it doesn't represent the whole experience... It doesn't represent any experience. ChatGPT doesn't "experience" things as conscious things do. It's not even comparable to the exper…
>Unless we reduce models of consciousness to purely stochastic processes, this is trivially false. And no one seriously reduces consciousness to probabilistic pattern recognition. Most things in this universe have mathematical models that can describe it. We have models for virtually everything. Thus it is reasonable to say such a model also exists for consciousness. To say what you said definitively without even kno…
> Again you don't know what you're talking about.
I think that's a bit uncharitable. You're acting like people haven't been grappling with these problems for thousands of years. Searle, for example, makes a pretty good argument why symbol-processing systems will never produce consciousness (you'd have to prove that the Chinese room is conscious, etc.).
It's clear, for example, that a toaster doesn't have any conscious experiences, but a dog does. To say that "nobody fully understands" the human brain is throwing out the baby with the bathwater. ChatGPT is not conscious any more than my (very complex) Swiss wristwatch is.
Re: What is a mathematical structure of conscious experience?
#35>In defining what it means for a mathematical structure to be of conscious experience, our proposal does not answer the question of what this mathematical structure is. Nothing is answered in this article. We simply don't know. This article is up here because nobody is sure whether or not chatGPT is in any way representative of an aspect of our conscious experience. Is chatGPT a mathematical model of consciousness? W…
> Is chatGPT a mathematical model of consciousness? Unless we reduce models of consciousness to purely stochastic processes, this is trivially false. And no one seriously reduces consciousness to probabilistic pattern recognition. > We know it doesn't represent the whole experience... It doesn't represent any experience. ChatGPT doesn't "experience" things as conscious things do. It's not even comparable to the exper…
Consciousness apparently arose from evolution, which is a funny process of optimization under stochastic conditions. (There's also a good amount of pattern recognition involved.)
Why is it that optimizing for survival can lead to consciousness, but not predictive coding? Nothing here is trivial.
Re: What is a mathematical structure of conscious experience?
#36Is there a book or resource that describes the state of the art in our knowledge and understanding about the nature of consciousness (Not cognition) and provides a survey of the popular and promising theories? Readable by someone who isn't in the field(s). Maybe even a good popsci book on the topic that is the neuroscience's equivalent of "Universe in a nutshell"
Consciousness: An Introduction by Susan Blackmore is exactly what you're looking for. Make sure you get the latest edition.
https://www.amazon.com/Consciousness-Emily-Troscianko-Susan-...
She has another book called Conversations on Consciousness that's basically transcribed interviews with prominent figures that's also worth checking out.
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/254499.Conversations_on_...
Re: What is a mathematical structure of conscious experience?
#37Is there a book or resource that describes the state of the art in our knowledge and understanding about the nature of consciousness (Not cognition) and provides a survey of the popular and promising theories? Readable by someone who isn't in the field(s). Maybe even a good popsci book on the topic that is the neuroscience's equivalent of "Universe in a nutshell"
For the "Universe in a nutshell" version overview of neuroscience, I'll plug my own book Journey of the Mind: How Thinking Emerged from Chaos (more on that below) Anil Seth's Being You is a recent one that does a good job of summarizing the most popular theories in consciousness. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/53036979-being-you The Routledge Handbook of Consciousness ( https://www.amazon.com/Routledge-Handbook-…
Thanks for the reply! I have to say, I am quite giddy. When I posted this question, I wasn't expecting to get a reply from an author and researcher on this very topic.
I am a software engineer by profession, but this is a topic that has been on the back of my mind for many years. Even when I read popsci books about the universe and the big bang and so on, i felt spiritually unsatisfied because they often do not address this elephant in the room - consciousness. A theory of everything that explains the laws of universe will be imo incomplete if it doesn't also explain, at the fundamental level, the laws of the universe that exists behind our eyes. It really deserves more attention and awareness among geeks and the general public.
Re: What is a mathematical structure of conscious experience?
#38Is there a book or resource that describes the state of the art in our knowledge and understanding about the nature of consciousness (Not cognition) and provides a survey of the popular and promising theories? Readable by someone who isn't in the field(s). Maybe even a good popsci book on the topic that is the neuroscience's equivalent of "Universe in a nutshell"
Depending on what exactly you mean by “the nature of consciousness”, it’s fundamentally impossible to answer. The fact that we think we can observe and comprehend a mechanism doing the observation does not preclude things we cannot see. You might be able to pan a cctv camera and get some insight about the camera itself if you find a reflection, but you can’t pan it over to the linux driver. It is not a given that all…
This school of thought strikes me as fundamentally opposed to the whole idea of the scientific method. We try to find out about these black boxes through repeated observation, theorizing, and testing.
It seems short sighted to suggest we can’t find out things about consciousness in a similar way.
Re: What is a mathematical structure of conscious experience?
#39Is there a book or resource that describes the state of the art in our knowledge and understanding about the nature of consciousness (Not cognition) and provides a survey of the popular and promising theories? Readable by someone who isn't in the field(s). Maybe even a good popsci book on the topic that is the neuroscience's equivalent of "Universe in a nutshell"
You're asking the wrong question by excluding cognition and using a very ill-defined word ("consciousness"). "Consciousness" is not a thing. It's a collection of things, many of which are what we usually refer to as "cognition".
People who like to talk about consciousness have a problem keeping the goalposts in place (and trying to exclude cognition from consciousness, presumably because "cognition" doesn't sound mysterious enough, is a great example of this sort of moving of goalposts).
The truth is consciousness is an emergent phenomenon, and it can only be understood as such. Of course we have a lot more to learn, but we understand the fundamentals of neuroscience and biochemistry, and we know how our conscious experiences emerge from those. A neuroanatomy textbook (eg.: Blumenfeld) is probably the best place to start. There is unfortunately no single "thing" called "consciousness" that we will ever be able to point to.
Re: What is a mathematical structure of conscious experience?
#40Is there a book or resource that describes the state of the art in our knowledge and understanding about the nature of consciousness (Not cognition) and provides a survey of the popular and promising theories? Readable by someone who isn't in the field(s). Maybe even a good popsci book on the topic that is the neuroscience's equivalent of "Universe in a nutshell"
IMO. Intentionally seeking flawed understanding isn't a good way to live. I'd recommend just taking your time and reading progressively harder works.
I don't know why you're being downvoted, this is the best attitude to adopt if your goal is learning.