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Is artificial consciousness achievable? Lessons from the human brain

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Re: Is artificial consciousness achievable? Lessons from the human brain

#351

Post by tomhoward »

jpt4 wrote: post #174
tomhoward wrote: post #11

I’m writing this comment so that people who want to know more about alternative theories of consciousness (to materialism/physicalism [1]) can know where to go to find well-argued positions on the topic. (To be clear, I’m not here to argue about the topic or try to persuade anyone of any position – that’s a waste of everyone’s time). I recommend seeking out discussions involving: - Federico Faggin: inventor of silico…

Any body of academic thought whose paradigmatic communication medium is video rather than text is prima facie suspect. Might you please link a written statement of the salient position(s) of any one of these gentlemen?

Hi there, my intention was to offer some names of people who have intelligent things to say about the topic.

I mentioned YouTube videos because there’s a large volume of their content there, with many of the videos featuring in-depth conversations and debates, which I’ve found can be a particularly good format for discussion of a topic of such gravity and complexity.

But between these three figures there are also many books, academic papers, blog posts, and written media interviews.

I’ve long found that this is a topic in which some people are going to be standoffish and resistant and that’s fine.

My hope is only to help people who are looking to learn about the topic to know who I’ve found worthwhile to learn from.

All the best!

Re: Is artificial consciousness achievable? Lessons from the human brain

#352

Post by davesque »

light_triad wrote: post #348

In many ways 'consciousness' is a human projection onto machines. The whole debate might be, in some sense, irrelevant. Here's 2 scenarios: - Your robot companion gets so good at mimicking a human, knows all your preferences and is able to have natural conversations, that over time you forget you are interacting with a robot and start to develop feelings for them. - A robot swarm interacts with the environment to fur…

This echoes my feelings on this whole debate. The question of consciousness matters much less than the question of how we decide to treat things that we view as being very much like us.

Re: Is artificial consciousness achievable? Lessons from the human brain

#354

Post by chess_buster »

h_tbob wrote: post #333

I sat in a philosophy class in high school. I went to a prep school, so it was a Ph.D. teaching. I adamantly explained that neurons firing is the same as a feeling of pain. But he kept telling me that my feeling of pain is distinct from the firing in my brain. It took me weeks to realize what he was saying. That a conscious feeling is a distinct thing. That I could be in "the matrix", and no brain is actually firing.…

Get low on blood sugar and perceive how your brain stops working and consciousness falls apart

Re: Is artificial consciousness achievable? Lessons from the human brain

#355

Post by parsadotsh »

XorNot wrote: post #140
kbrkbr wrote: post #128

I want to open a side thread about your definitions or descriptions of what "consciousness" is. I think that could be pretty interesting after reading all the comments, and I think there's a lot of knowledge hidden here that we could throw together. Some things that I understood, in my words: - consciousness is probably not reducible to smaller, non-conscious parts of which it is composed. You could maybe say it is i…

The fact a conscious mind loses capability when brain damage happens shows quite clearly that consciousness as a process is reducible to smaller non-conscious parts though. There's also an innate problem in assuming the human experience of say, "green" is consistent. What I actually see when I see the colour green only appears consistent with the physical behaviour of light. Whether any two people really see colours…

> The fact a conscious mind loses capability when brain damage happens shows quite clearly that consciousness as a process is reducible to smaller non-conscious parts though.

This does not follow.

Re: Is artificial consciousness achievable? Lessons from the human brain

#356

Post by RaftPeople »

tomrod wrote: post #289
dj_mc_merlin wrote: post #261

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Communication is about being understood. Not about crafting the perfect sentence. Even if you craft the perfect sentence, that will be the perfect sentence _for you_, and it might be completely lost on many people, some perhaps even more intelligent than you. The subtext of "Academic content is usually in text, not video" is "I don't trust this because it's in video, not text". Now if you say that is not clear, sure,…

> Communication is about being understood. This assertion is in error. Communication is about transmitting information. What happens to that information after the transmissions is beyond scope of communication. Don't get me wrong -- we have communication companies and classes named "business communication" and fields of inquiry titled "communication." Yet, the common trend to each of these is wrapping the transmissio…

> This assertion is in error. Communication is about transmitting information.

It seems like you might possibly be leaving out the other 50% of communication (hint: it starts with an "r" and ends with "eceiving")

Re: Is artificial consciousness achievable? Lessons from the human brain

#357

Post by RaftPeople »

fngjdflmdflg wrote: post #268
Jevon23 wrote: post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Video is not the standard medium of communication in academic philosophy. I imagine the GP mentioned youtube because most people are more likely to watch a video than read a paper. Bernardo Kastrup has a bunch of essays/books up for free at his website https://www.bernardokastrup.com/p/papers.html?m=1

Or GP himself watches these videos. And I would push back on the claim that most posters here are more likely to watch a Youtube video than read an article.

I was thinking the same thing, I can't stand how slow video is, much easier to read text.

Re: Is artificial consciousness achievable? Lessons from the human brain

#358

Post by hhshhhhjjjd »

hypertele-Xii wrote: post #182
thriftwy wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What changes when they are known? I believr it affects yout consciousness, not the one being simulated. The latter does not have "I'm being actually simulated" input

"Actually simulated" is such an oxymoron. So which is it? Is the consciousness actual, simulated, or actually simulated? And does the resulting state of mind change the universe, or merely reveal its hidden structure? It's easy to get lost in these unsolvable paradoxes when you try reducing all of creation down to logic. Problem is, logic is not all of creation. Consciousness requires a soul. Otherwise you're confuse…

> Consciousness requires a soul

Now define a soul! /s

Re: Is artificial consciousness achievable? Lessons from the human brain

#359

Post by thethimble »

fngjdflmdflg wrote: post #282
thethimble wrote: post #255

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The framework of materialism posits that there’s a physical universe and consciousness is an emergent property of physical processes. This view is so prevalent in the western world it’s hard to imagine how it could be anything else. As an alternative, imagine that consciousness is primary. After all, any evidence that you have about the material world happens as an appearance within consciousness. (See “brain in a va…

>I’m suggesting that the model you choose is axiomatic - taken as given as opposed to inferred from evidence The brain is the seat of consciousness and the brain is material, therefore consciousness is emergent from material. My evidence that the brain is the seat of consciousness is that when my head hurts it impairs my thoughts, and that my eyes are connected to by brain. Stated a bit differently: All events must h…

> The brain is the seat of consciousness and the brain is material, therefore consciousness is emergent from material

This is true from the standpoint of materialism but not necessarily fundamentally true.

How do you know you have a brain? As you explore this question, you’ll realize that the knowledge that you have a brain only manifests as appearances within consciousness.

It’s not necessary true that these appearances are giving you a window into an objective material universe. Instead it might be possible that your consciousness is a product of a simulation where your entire subjectivity - including the observation that you have a brain - is a manifestation of another mechanism that is outside of observability.

The point is that we simply don’t know what’s at rock bottom - an objective universe, a simulation, or an alien’s dream. Therefore the “arrow” of causality might flow from consciousness towards material as opposed to the other way around.

Re: Is artificial consciousness achievable? Lessons from the human brain

#360

Post by Thiez »

h_tbob wrote: post #333

I sat in a philosophy class in high school. I went to a prep school, so it was a Ph.D. teaching. I adamantly explained that neurons firing is the same as a feeling of pain. But he kept telling me that my feeling of pain is distinct from the firing in my brain. It took me weeks to realize what he was saying. That a conscious feeling is a distinct thing. That I could be in "the matrix", and no brain is actually firing.…

I always think of this comic when people try to mix quantum mechanics and consciousness https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/the-talk-3 . You have to show an actual relation here, you can't just connect these two concepts on the basis that they're both complex.
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