A Neuroscientist’s Theory of How Networks Become Conscious (2013) • Hacker News Board

Re: A Neuroscientist’s Theory of How Networks Become Conscious (2013)

#81

Post by xnull » Thu, Oct 30, 2014, 6:46 PM UTC

SapphireSun wrote: post #71

xnull wrote: post #4

Integrated Information Theory I think is a fad, and a bad one at that. One could think of integration of information as a necessary but not sufficient condition for consciousness a la Scott Aaronson [1] who applies more rigorous mathematical examples of integrated systems - in fact ones close to maximal possible integrated information - that very clearly are unlikely have any measure of consciousness (like expander g…

Not quite. I attended a talk by Dr. Koch at MIT. I didn't get all of it, but it seemed to me that his definition tries to figure out what's included or excluded in conscious systems and how conscious they are. It may or may not be right, but it at least it's working towards something with predictive value. The examples you gave are mostly abstract and not physical. If consciousness is a physical phenomenon, these alg…

The examples though _do_ have physical manifestations - everything that exists in the universe has a physical manifestation (by tautology). How is a feed forward circuit carrying information (to be integated) not a physical realization? It's not clear why neurons carrying potentials and mixing them count but not an FPGA (no longer an ALU simulation) doing cryptographic operations for a bitcoin mining rig. Furthermore as an FPGA more directly implements the information integration system than an ALU fetch-execute cycle, is it 'more conscious'? For me that sounds absurd.

Presume the Game of Life _did_ have a direct physical implementation, let's say neurons fire according to GOL rules. Would you then be forced to call it conscious or not? Wouldn't it depend on the cell configuration? An all blank cell configuration certainly isn't conscious but the system would have the same low IIT score as a manifestation running some UTM-equivalent setup.

Finally, what about physical systems that do highly integrate information? N-body problems exhibit highly integrated behavior manifest in the so-called butterfly effect. Why do the air molecules in a balloon not count as conscious? This physical example escapes the "America" criticism - every molecule applies a force on every other and due to n-body mechanics the system is highly integrated.

My worry, which I think is mostly corroborated, is that the definite clarity of the IIT definition will serve to obscure the fact that underlying definition has no real definite clarity or derivation.

Ultimately the IIT formula was imagined to capture some heuristic notions - but it was not derived. For this reason, added to those above, I am very skeptical.

Or maybe it's my CS background that makes me biased toward thinking that _how_ information is integrated matters purely more than some measure of how much mixing there is (e.g. by one of many versions [5 now?] of the IIT formula).

Re: A Neuroscientist’s Theory of How Networks Become Conscious (2013)

#82

Post by Confusion » Thu, Oct 30, 2014, 8:05 PM UTC

TheOtherHobbes wrote: post #51

Xcelerate wrote: post #5

> Why we should live in such a universe is a good question, but I don’t see how that can be answered now. His last point here is salient. Much like the various interpretations of quantum mechanics, any theories of consciousness are untestable. But my problem with "consciousness" is that it's not even a well-defined concept. Suppose I replace all occurrences of "consciousness" in that article with the word "qualgma".…

>I believe Koch is conflating two distinct concepts. I believe Koch is conflating many distinct concepts - as most of the consciousness research field seems to. How can you say anything useful until you define your terms? It seems to me humans have many different layers of experience: Visceral pain/pleasure Instinctive drives Emotional/limbic experiences Locational (physical mapping) Memory-based/learned Abstract/int…

  How can you say anything useful until you define your terms?

Can you say useful things about games, even though no clear definition of 'game' exists?

Can you say useful things about 'love', even though it is not well defined?

Clear definitions are not necessary to say useful things. Some rough boundaries around the term is usually enough.

Re: A Neuroscientist’s Theory of How Networks Become Conscious (2013)

#83

Post by Animats » Thu, Oct 30, 2014, 8:40 PM UTC

jcfrei wrote: post #74

Animats wrote: post #21

According to Koch, consciousness arises within any sufficiently complex, information-processing system. All animals, from humans on down to earthworms, are conscious; even the internet could be. That’s just the way the universe works. Clearly one can build a hugely complex system that performs some special-purpose function and isn't anywhere near "conscious". Consider a big supercomputer doing finite-element analysis…

> Consider a big supercomputer doing finite-element analysis. Or a big network of packet routers. There's another perspective here. We always argue from a very anthropocentric point of view and measure experience based on actions and reactions that a human would perform. Ie. asking questions, seeing something and saying something based on what we see, etc. The supercomputer you described can hardly be considered cons…

That line of philosophy goes back to the steam engine governor, which some people at the time considered intelligent. That concept didn't yield much value then, and it doesn't now. (Unlike Maxwell's 1868 paper "On Governors", which established the mathematical basis for stable feedback control, and is still the basis of basic control theory.)

Re: A Neuroscientist’s Theory of How Networks Become Conscious (2013)

#84

Post by [deleted] » Thu, Oct 30, 2014, 9:38 PM UTC

brittonrt wrote: post #33

This brings me to an interesting thought experiment I struggle with: Most likely most people here would agree that if you make an exact copy of a person's brain, whilst leaving the original intact, it would be a new person, identical but divergent from the original. A new thread of consciousness by such definition. But then, what if you destroy the original at the moment of copy? It would appear to the same. But then…

[deleted]

Re: A Neuroscientist’s Theory of How Networks Become Conscious (2013)

#85

Post by SapphireSun » Thu, Oct 30, 2014, 10:22 PM UTC

xnull wrote: post #81

SapphireSun wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not quite. I attended a talk by Dr. Koch at MIT. I didn't get all of it, but it seemed to me that his definition tries to figure out what's included or excluded in conscious systems and how conscious they are. It may or may not be right, but it at least it's working towards something with predictive value. The examples you gave are mostly abstract and not physical. If consciousness is a physical phenomenon, these alg…

The examples though _do_ have physical manifestations - everything that exists in the universe has a physical manifestation (by tautology). How is a feed forward circuit carrying information (to be integated) not a physical realization? It's not clear why neurons carrying potentials and mixing them count but not an FPGA (no longer an ALU simulation) doing cryptographic operations for a bitcoin mining rig. Furthermore…

So I'm not exactly sure how an FPGA is wired, so I won't comment on that. However, I feel, but cannot prove that the GOL neurons might have some kind of internal experience.

Your air example is a good one, however, the kind of interactions they have depend on temperature. Also, the information a air molecules transmit has little explicit encoding other than a few attributes, so I imagine that it wouldn't feel like much to be air. Feedback loops are probably frequently formed and broken, so I'm not sure what to make of that.

I think the IIT formula is interesting. I'm not sure if it's right (it probably isn't and will need modifications at least. Dr. Koch talked about this version of it being invariant across time, which sounded off to me). I'm planning on learning more about it though because it sounds like might have at least part of the answer and it might be on the path to finding something more experimentally amenable which is more than I can say of most theories I hear about.

I'm also attracted to the physicality requirements of IIT because it's clear to me that abstract computation alone is not enough to reify physical phenomena. For instance, mathematics often returns imaginary solutions to physical problems. Some math represents reality, but not all of it. It's important to stick close to physical processes in physics.

I haven't yet heard that there were five versions of the formula, but that doesn't surprise me. It's actively under development and it hasn't hit the point where we can conduct experiments to narrow it down. As far as I'm concerned, it's an interesting idea at this point, and I hope I can take away some useful tools from it.

Re: A Neuroscientist’s Theory of How Networks Become Conscious (2013)

#86

Post by amelius » Fri, Oct 31, 2014, 12:17 AM UTC

Taek wrote: post #25

When we think of consciousness, we normally associate with the brain. But according to the complexity theory, shouldn't there also be consciousness in most of our organs? The liver is a massive network of cells that are in at least a moderate amount of communication, and yet I am not aware of its consciousness. But perhaps it is conscious, just at a level that's inaccessible to my brain, which is a nearly distinct st…

The problem I have with this is representation. One's brain cells are a certain representation (in other words implementation). Would the same consciousness be present with another representation (e.g., computers on the internet)? How about if we chose a completely different (nonsensical) representation, for example, at time instance t0 the brain is represented by grains of sand, then at t1, the brain is represented by e.g. the trees in a forest, then at t2, etc. My point is that you could ascribe consciousness to just about anything. Also, if the representation of brain cells produces a consciousness, would the (dual) representation of "NO brain cells" also produce a consciousness, and would they thus both exist at the same time or would they collapse into one consciousness?

Re: A Neuroscientist’s Theory of How Networks Become Conscious (2013)

#87

Post by amelius » Fri, Oct 31, 2014, 12:30 AM UTC

Xcelerate wrote: post #5

> Why we should live in such a universe is a good question, but I don’t see how that can be answered now. His last point here is salient. Much like the various interpretations of quantum mechanics, any theories of consciousness are untestable. But my problem with "consciousness" is that it's not even a well-defined concept. Suppose I replace all occurrences of "consciousness" in that article with the word "qualgma".…

I believe the problem is not that we can't define the "experience of existence", because this phenomenon could exist entirely independently of our physical (scientific) reality. The problem is that there is an interaction between the experience of "I am aware" and the physical reality, for otherwise, we would not be discussing this topic here!

Re: A Neuroscientist’s Theory of How Networks Become Conscious (2013)

#88

Post by brittonrt » Fri, Oct 31, 2014, 1:25 AM UTC

dghf wrote: post #69

brittonrt wrote: post #33

This brings me to an interesting thought experiment I struggle with: Most likely most people here would agree that if you make an exact copy of a person's brain, whilst leaving the original intact, it would be a new person, identical but divergent from the original. A new thread of consciousness by such definition. But then, what if you destroy the original at the moment of copy? It would appear to the same. But then…

You seem to be assuming the actual existence of a "thread of consciousness" or a "conscious strain", when it could be an illusion. When you wake up after a dreamless sleep, are you the same person, the same conscious entity, as went to bed the night before? Or is that entity now "dead", and "you" are a new entity that has just inherited its memories (most of which it in turn inherited from its predecessors)? How coul…

Excellent points, and actually in line with my line of question as well: I think my assumption of a thread of consciousness was a semantic mis-communication, as bringing that idea into question was indeed where my questions were leading.

Re: A Neuroscientist’s Theory of How Networks Become Conscious (2013)

#89

Post by grumio » Sun, Nov 02, 2014, 7:22 AM UTC

brittonrt wrote: post #33

This brings me to an interesting thought experiment I struggle with: Most likely most people here would agree that if you make an exact copy of a person's brain, whilst leaving the original intact, it would be a new person, identical but divergent from the original. A new thread of consciousness by such definition. But then, what if you destroy the original at the moment of copy? It would appear to the same. But then…

Several philosophers have attended to those very thought experiments. I recently read some of Locke's "Essay Concerning Human Understanding" (Book 2), and he has some interesting thoughts on person-hood and persistence of consciousness in chapter 27.