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The Abstraction Fallacy: Why AI Can Simulate but Not Instantiate Consciousness

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Re: The Abstraction Fallacy: Why AI Can Simulate but Not Instantiate Consciousness

#21

Post by LeCompteSftware »

in-silico wrote: post #12

From my observations, there are generally four camps in the machine consciousness discussion: 1. People who haven't really thought about it, and assume they're conscious because they talk like a human. 2. People who haven't really thought about it, and assume they can't be conscious because humans are obviously somehow special. This appears to be the largest group, and is linked to our religiously rooted culture in w…

As someone who places themselves in #4, at some point the people in #3 need to accept a bit of scientific humility. The reason we are "biological naturalists" is that we can point to hundreds of thousands of conscious species on planet Earth which are not humans, and whose consciousness clearly has nothing to do with an ability to say "Forsooth, I am a conscious thinking being." AI folks have been ignoring this since Alan Turing! And it's not a coincidence that humanity has yet to build a robot which is convincingly smarter than a cockroach.

If you grant that humans are conscious, then surely domestic cats are as well. It is simply irrational to talk about Claude's "consciousness" without actually engaging with this: cats, humans, pigeons, fish, etc etc all share some common features we associate with consciousness (I don't mean sensory awareness, I mean the fuzzy cognitive concept). Claude really does not. In fact Claude doesn't even have much in common with uncontacted hunter-gatherers! Claude imitates the solipsism of formally educated human philosophers.

It is uncharitable and curmudgeonly but totally scientific to dismiss people in camp #3 as unserious and not worth engaging with: they ignore scientific criticism and don't provide any themselves, it's just a mishmash of sci-fi-adjacent philosophy. There's nothing "functional" about ignoring animals and there's nothing scientific about waving your hands and saying "computationalism." That's certainly how I feel. I know this isn't a very nice comment. But I am so sick of AI folks thinking they can ignore animals and still have an honest conversation about machine consciousness. It's just sci-fi ghost stories.

Re: The Abstraction Fallacy: Why AI Can Simulate but Not Instantiate Consciousness

#22

Post by joquarky »

in-silico wrote: post #17
Kim_Bruning wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Take a look at Daniel Dennett, for starters! If you're looking for one of the genuine angles on this: Consciousness is horrendously under-defined, to the point some people go something like "you know, at this point I figure we'd be better off not having this word at all. " Some days that's me, with a headache.

So it's more of a semantic argument than an actual rejection of the idea that you experience qualia/sentience/something?

What exactly is the "you" in your sentence?

Re: The Abstraction Fallacy: Why AI Can Simulate but Not Instantiate Consciousness

#23

Post by joquarky »

in-silico wrote: post #12

From my observations, there are generally four camps in the machine consciousness discussion: 1. People who haven't really thought about it, and assume they're conscious because they talk like a human. 2. People who haven't really thought about it, and assume they can't be conscious because humans are obviously somehow special. This appears to be the largest group, and is linked to our religiously rooted culture in w…

Yep, #2 feels like geocentrism all over again.

Re: The Abstraction Fallacy: Why AI Can Simulate but Not Instantiate Consciousness

#24

Post by joquarky »

diablozzq wrote: post #4

Consciousness is a property of humans biology - and quite clearly not a requisite to intelligence. I say clearly as at some point we reach proof by construction. As in, we already built intelligence because the system already completes tasks that require intelligence. We are so far into what would have been science fiction five years ago and the goal posts have moved so far. For anyone who disagrees, I challenge you…

I only disagree with your first sentence:

> Consciousness is a property of humans biology

You're assuming consciousness is a product of biology rather than attracted to biology.

Re: The Abstraction Fallacy: Why AI Can Simulate but Not Instantiate Consciousness

#25

Post by Kim_Bruning »

in-silico wrote: post #17
Kim_Bruning wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Take a look at Daniel Dennett, for starters! If you're looking for one of the genuine angles on this: Consciousness is horrendously under-defined, to the point some people go something like "you know, at this point I figure we'd be better off not having this word at all. " Some days that's me, with a headache.

So it's more of a semantic argument than an actual rejection of the idea that you experience qualia/sentience/something?

You'd have to define those terms operationally first, somehow, before I could give you an honest reply. Most people can't -and those who do disagree- which suggests something structural.

[It can be done. But it'll be dirty]

Re: The Abstraction Fallacy: Why AI Can Simulate but Not Instantiate Consciousness

#26

Post by reverius42 »

in-silico wrote: post #17
Kim_Bruning wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Take a look at Daniel Dennett, for starters! If you're looking for one of the genuine angles on this: Consciousness is horrendously under-defined, to the point some people go something like "you know, at this point I figure we'd be better off not having this word at all. " Some days that's me, with a headache.

So it's more of a semantic argument than an actual rejection of the idea that you experience qualia/sentience/something?

Dennett's whole thing is the rejection of qualia. See https://web.ics.purdue.edu/~drkelly/DennettQuiningQualia1988...

Re: The Abstraction Fallacy: Why AI Can Simulate but Not Instantiate Consciousness

#27

Post by reverius42 »

LeCompteSftware wrote: post #21
in-silico wrote: post #12

From my observations, there are generally four camps in the machine consciousness discussion: 1. People who haven't really thought about it, and assume they're conscious because they talk like a human. 2. People who haven't really thought about it, and assume they can't be conscious because humans are obviously somehow special. This appears to be the largest group, and is linked to our religiously rooted culture in w…

As someone who places themselves in #4, at some point the people in #3 need to accept a bit of scientific humility. The reason we are "biological naturalists" is that we can point to hundreds of thousands of conscious species on planet Earth which are not humans, and whose consciousness clearly has nothing to do with an ability to say "Forsooth, I am a conscious thinking being." AI folks have been ignoring this since…

What is the evidence that non-human animals have the "fuzzy cognitive concept" we call consciousness, but Claude "really does not"?

I personally have not been ignoring animal consciousness in how I think about the possibility of AI consciousness and I don't see how animals having consciousness means that AI can't.

Re: The Abstraction Fallacy: Why AI Can Simulate but Not Instantiate Consciousness

#28

Post by Kim_Bruning »

LeCompteSftware wrote: post #21
in-silico wrote: post #12

From my observations, there are generally four camps in the machine consciousness discussion: 1. People who haven't really thought about it, and assume they're conscious because they talk like a human. 2. People who haven't really thought about it, and assume they can't be conscious because humans are obviously somehow special. This appears to be the largest group, and is linked to our religiously rooted culture in w…

As someone who places themselves in #4, at some point the people in #3 need to accept a bit of scientific humility. The reason we are "biological naturalists" is that we can point to hundreds of thousands of conscious species on planet Earth which are not humans, and whose consciousness clearly has nothing to do with an ability to say "Forsooth, I am a conscious thinking being." AI folks have been ignoring this since…

Oh dear, just a short while after me saying I was confused by the term too.

Are you sure you're a ? [1] Which is to say, do you adhere to Searle's position about syntax not leading to semantics?

Or is it more like: You're scientifically inclined, and thus you accept Ethology[2] or Neuroscience[3] as being empirically rigorous studies of animal behavior and cognition respectively?

Incidentally, Alan Turing's 1950 imitation game paper was actually pretty Ethological if you look it up. He immediately replaces the question "can machines think" with a more practical operationalization: the famous imitation game.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biological_naturalism

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethology

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neuroscience

[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computing_Machinery_and_Intell...

Re: The Abstraction Fallacy: Why AI Can Simulate but Not Instantiate Consciousness

#29

Post by Kim_Bruning »

emp17344 wrote: post #20
yogthos wrote: post #3

The paper makes a huge assumption that only thermodynamic constitutions can produce consciousness. The assumptions seems completely unsubstantiated given that thermodynamics are just states and states are replicable. The whole Chinese Room idea is pure sophistry as well. Both Dennett and Hofstadter address it quite well in Consciousness Explained and I am a Strange Loop respectively.

You know that Dennett and Hofstadter aren’t the beginning and end of Philosophy of Mind, right? Calling Searle’s Room “complete sophistry” is hilariously misguided, considering the vast majority of academic philosophers consider it valid: https://survey2020.philpeople.org/survey/results/5002#

You'll need to unpack that survey for us a bit. There's a lot going on and the wording is very terse.

Re: The Abstraction Fallacy: Why AI Can Simulate but Not Instantiate Consciousness

#30

Post by Kim_Bruning »

Kim_Bruning wrote: post #28
LeCompteSftware wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone who places themselves in #4, at some point the people in #3 need to accept a bit of scientific humility. The reason we are "biological naturalists" is that we can point to hundreds of thousands of conscious species on planet Earth which are not humans, and whose consciousness clearly has nothing to do with an ability to say "Forsooth, I am a conscious thinking being." AI folks have been ignoring this since…

Oh dear, just a short while after me saying I was confused by the term too. Are you sure you're a ? [1] Which is to say, do you adhere to Searle's position about syntax not leading to semantics? Or is it more like: You're scientifically inclined, and thus you accept Ethology[2] or Neuroscience[3] as being empirically rigorous studies of animal behavior and cognition respectively? Incidentally, Alan Turing's 1950 imit…

(ps. A quick search gives me the impression arguably rejects much of biology's findings on animal cognition. My mail is in my user description if you'd like me to dig up the relevant literature for you.)
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