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What is a mathematical structure of conscious experience?

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Re: What is a mathematical structure of conscious experience?

#121

Post by naasking »

Syntonicles wrote: post #54
conrod_ wrote: post #13

Is 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"

A prominent figure in the space is David Chalmers, who made it his life's work to characterize and explore theories of consciousness. He's a philosopher in New York (originally Australia) He coined "The Hard Problem" and "The Meta Problem". You should get an overview in his books. They're a bit dated but it's not like there's been substantial progress. There's a recent book called "Conscious: A Brief Guide to the Fun…

To counter Chalmers, read Dennett and "Consciousness Explained", which is the basis of Graziano's work. Good to see another fan! I posted his latest review paper earlier in this thread.

Re: What is a mathematical structure of conscious experience?

#122

Post by naasking »

dvt wrote: post #24
kilgnad wrote: post #5

>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…

> And no one seriously reduces consciousness to probabilistic pattern recognition.

All eliminative materialists disagree. To them, consciousness is mechanistic in some way, so why not stochastic pattern matching which can be made Turing complete quite easily. For instance: https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2116933119

> It doesn't represent any experience. ChatGPT doesn't "experience" things as conscious things do.

You don't know that because we don't have a mechanistic understanding of "experience".

Re: What is a mathematical structure of conscious experience?

#123

Post by FrustratedMonky »

theobromananda wrote: post #110
FrustratedMonky wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a common view, but it is based on humans thinking they are special. “My own thoughts are so amazing”, “my own subjective reality is so real to me”, thus surely this is unexplainable. When really, humans give themselves (their own thoughts) way too much credit and most are barely aware of their own thoughts, barely self-aware at all. It is easy to say something is ‘un-explainable’ and thus ‘must be in some oth…

What you are referring to is the soft problem of consciousness, the contents of consciousness. You are probably right that the contents of human consciousness, or qualia, can be approximated by our understanding and technology to a very high degree given enough time. However, OP was referring to the hard problem of consciousness. The hard problem of consciousness is unsolvable IMHO by science, as it is entirely subje…

I think people have confused the matter by splitting into soft/hard.

There is only 1 consciousness. Soft is describing how it can be done physically, how to build it, or explain it, and hard is what it is like to experience it from the inside.

By creating the hard problem, it really just says "we can't know anything about any internal state". All "internal subject states" are self reported, and a machine can just as well self report enough to mimic a human. So at that point, we can't prove that the machine doesn't have a 'subjective' internal state.

By this line of reasoning, we can't prove that any humans are conscious either. Any lines of logic that try to prove the hard problem, would either both prove that the machine and human are both conscious, or prove that neither are conscious.

Re: What is a mathematical structure of conscious experience?

#124

Post by naasking »

prmph wrote: post #106
plutonorm wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While some people believe that consciousness cannot be reduced to probabilistic pattern recognition, I strongly disagree. In my view, the AIXI model is an excellent model of intelligence, as it can mathematically define a notion of Pareto optimal behavior across all possible environments. This model relies on compression at its core, specifically the minimum description length principle. Moreover, large language mode…

Your viewpoint is one I consistently have to push against. Computation is not necessarily experience. I can't emphasize enough how fundamental understanding this is. It seems some just can't grasp this concept. Would you say a program that echoes to the screen the responses of a hidden human is intelligent? Viewed as a black box, it would certainly seem so. But does it have any internal experience and understanding o…

> This example also shows that the perceived sophistication of the input-output transformation is immaterial

No, it doesn't show that, it merely asserts it. Consciousness could be a logical property of some perceptual algorithm, like ordered outputs is a property of a sorting algorithm.

> But, there is no essential reason why that should lead to an experience of pain, rather than a sensation similar to color, which generally does not produce pain.

Sure there is, because it's approaching the point of causing damage. Pain happens when sensory precepts approach acceptable tolerance. Pain is like clipping in an audio stream.

Re: What is a mathematical structure of conscious experience?

#125

Post by mxkopy »

crazygringo wrote: post #111
mxkopy wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I suggest you look into Roger Scruton's interpretation of Wittgenstein's private language argument. I think it might go something like this: You want an explanation for the sensation of the color red? Alright, I'll try, as long as you help me out: what exactly is the sensation of the color red? I need to have a good grasp on what we're talking about here. Can you describe it? It's okay, take your time. FIN

If you're trying to suggest qualia don't exist or don't have anything to do with consciousness, then sure you'll find some people who agree. But it's not a mainstream position. And of course the entire point is that qualia are ineffable. That's part of the definition . It's the feature, not a bug. But if you want to deny that you have conscious sensation then go ahead. ;)

At some point I figured that "everything has qualia" and "qualia doesn't exist", when taken to their logical conclusions, are actually identical beliefs. Though I suspect I'll need quite a lot more crack cocaine to figure out how.

Re: What is a mathematical structure of conscious experience?

#127

Post by inphovore »

Valgrim wrote: post #116
inphovore wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I didn’t really mean to question the phrase hypothesis, rather that “lacking proof is not proof of lacking”, and why not lay out more form of curious extrapolation if that is after all, why we are here.

Your original claim is that consciousness is a quantum phenomenon. A) We can't even define consciousness, let alone describe it's physical nature. B) Even if it depends on quantum mechanics, it doesn't make it magic or unique to biology. C) It's an extraordinary claim, so back it up, man. I don't care about curious extrapolation, except in science fiction.

A) I just DID!

I DEFINE CONSCIOUSNESS AS THE INFLECTION UPON THE SUBSTRATE OF EXISTENTIAL BEING!

B) I say all life has some smidgen of this magic. It is non-classical and will not emerge out of complexity. All humans do not have “an equal amount”. Next argument may be of capacity.

The universe is the medium, consciousness the inflection, life the technology which animates.

C) voices in our heads. I know, I know, you don’t want to believe that either. Pay attention, check back in ten years. Hear them? Doubt we’re being screwed with? That old “master mind theory” from a hundred years ago touched upon this before our taboo of speaking of these voices dismissed them as crazy. Snail telegraph? There are clues throughout history.

We’re entangled, and it’s more of a hassle than a gift.

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