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Consciousness is not computation

joe-antognini.github.io

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Re: Consciousness is not computation

#581

Post by tgflynn »

bccdee wrote: post #562
tgflynn wrote: post #483

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Talking about computation and consciousness is a sideshow, this is anti-materialism by the back door. Nothing more. I get the impression that philosophers of mind are slowly coming around to the conclusion that the existence of qualia alone refutes materialism (by which I mean the view that consciousness is produced by physical processes) . This post does assume that qualia exist so if you are taking the former pos…

I'm not at all convinced qualia exist. I think any intelligence would necessarily feel as if it was experiencing qualia. Let me start by making a distinction: When you take a bite of an apple, you experience a variety of flavours: It's sweet, tart, and has a distinct apple aroma as well. Let's hone in on the last of those. If you took apart an apple under a microscope and examined its flavour compounds, you could fin…

I think what you say here is at least mostly true. But all it shows is that you can never prove that an entity apart from yourself is conscious. In other words it shows that solipsism cannot be logically refuted. But that is something that has been known for hundreds if not thousands of years.

But what if I ask YOU right now: "Are YOU experiencing something instead of nothing. Is YOU'RE current experience different from what it would be if YOU were under general anesthesia."

If you're answer to these questions is yes then YOU are experiencing qualia. Of course your answer proves nothing to me or any other third party. But it should prove something to YOU.

Re: Consciousness is not computation

#582

Post by Freebytes »

denton-scratch wrote: post #459
TheOtherHobbes wrote: post #257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The argument seems to be that beyond a certain level of complexity you'll somehow automatically get consciousness. Clearly it's unlikely this is a hard cut off. Adding one more byte of RAM, expanding the CPU from 64 to 128-bit words, or adding another dimension to a neural network isn't going to do it. But if consciousness emergent, how do you measure the amount of consciousness? Because the experience is subjective,…

> how do you measure the amount of consciousness? You seem to have assumed that consciousness is a measurable "stuff". My way of seeing it is that consciousness is either present or absent. Thoughts, beliefs and concepts are like ripples on the surface of consciousness, but are not themselves consciousness. So you can have consciousness without thoughts.

There are differing levels of consciousness. Even in a human, we are from time to time, more or less conscious and therefore exhibit sentience based on varying states. This is not simply communication either. As you progress through the evolutionary chain, you see more and more self-awareness and inner thought. This is not binary in terms of whether it exists but is instead based on the level which can differ between organisms and probably also differs among organisms of the same species.

Re: Consciousness is not computation

#583

Post by cannabis_sam »

These kinds of analyses frustrate me to no end, because there’s an implicit metaphysical assumption that consciousness is somehow independent of our interaction with the world.

Now, I don’t necessarily believe that we will be able to reconstruct what took the universe, physics, chemistry and evolution literally billions of years.

However, I have yet to encounter an argument against the wider understanding of computation as systems with inputs resulting in outputs affected by mutable states, which then corresponds to what plants, animals and humans are on a fundamental level.

To me it seems like the burden of proof is on the people who claim that consciousness is somehow metaphysically independent from the physical matter that makes up a human, animal, plant or computer. I guess we currently draw certain lines between these four things, especially between humans and the other three. But I guess I struggle to identify that difference as something metaphysical.

Although I don’t feel like I know enough to claim that this is anything more than a superficial idea…

Re: Consciousness is not computation

#584

Post by tgflynn »

simonh wrote: post #567
tgflynn wrote: post #557

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Why do you assume that verbal signals can induce any possible change in symbolic state in a brain? OK let's backup. What would it mean to say that "qualia are reducible to a symbolic representation" if they cannot be expressed by language ? It seems to me that language includes all possible symbolic representations. Can you give an example of a symbolic representation that is not expressible by language ?

I suspect, just a theory, that qualia are the result of a process that occurs in the brain. So they're not a static symbolic state, they're a feature of the evolution of a dynamic process. We are aware of our own thoughts through processing a mental model of ourselves, this mental model of ourselves includes introspection on our experiences, while we are having those experiences. That's qualia. A static symbolic stat…

> I suspect, just a theory, that qualia are the result of a process that occurs in the brain.

Well, that's just materialism.

Do you or do you not accept that it is possible for a materialist to hold the view that qualia are not produced solely by computation but that some non-abstract physical process is required ?

Because that is the position that the OP is taking and your original comment appeared to dispute it.

Re: Consciousness is not computation

#585

Post by jerednel »

A lot of people quick to try to reduce consciousness to what we can observe about brain functions.

While this explains what happens in the brain as things happen it doesn’t explain why it is like something to be you which is the core of the hard problem of consciousness.

The thought experiment of a philosophical zombie that has all of the same cause-effect reactions to externalities as myself seems to require that it isn’t pure information processing giving rise to consciousness.

I quite like the idea of certain panpsychism arguments that consciousness is itself a thing existing on a continuum inherent across the universe. At a certain point, “what it’s like” to be a certain thing becomes difficult to demarcate. And from the moment of the Big Bang the particles necessary for the construction of conscious beings expanded outward in one giant entanglement. The particles that make us up are the same as everything else in existence however it feels like something to be a person, a deer, possibly a plant, etc.

Re: Consciousness is not computation

#586

Post by ddingus »

feet wrote: post #550
ddingus wrote: post #529

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This discussion lead me to an idea: When we simulate a brain, the brain is unreal, not running on the hardware at all. It's represented by something else running on the hardware. If we made brain like hardware of sufficient complexity so that it could differentiate "itself" from everything else, that closed loop may invoke consciousness. It would be running on the hardware directly. This, to me, is the one thing cons…

>When we simulate a brain, the brain is unreal, not running on the hardware at all. It's represented by something else running on the hardware. I think this is an important thing to consider. A simulated brain does not interact with the rest of the world in the same way that a non simulated brain does. In order to have that we would need to ensure that the simulation has all the right inputs and output. Similar to si…

I suspect it matters more than we may realize.

It is something like how quantum effects work when we measure them. A conscious capable entity has the closed loop needed to have the capacity to [something] "self."

(Yeah, there is a word missing and it is missing because I lack understanding.)

Sensory deprivation seems to really impact us as well! Maybe that closed loop is always needed, like oxygen is for our bodies. We may endure a brief excursion "all inside the box", but a longer time leads to madness, damage.

However it works, the fact is we have a robust and high fidelity perception of ourselves and the world and we feed on all like food and water. It is very suggestive, and I find thoughts along these lines compelling and difficult to reason about. We are missing something basic. Of that I am sure.

Re: Consciousness is not computation

#587

Post by HarHarVeryFunny »

madeofmeat wrote: post #87
n8cpdx wrote: post #3

I think people start with the premise that consciousness is a specific “thing”, that it is unique and special to humans (and maybe dogs because we like them but definitely not spiders and flies because we don’t) and then try to work backwards to define it in some ways that keeps it special. I don’t think consciousness is so specific, and I think people aren’t clear about how they think about it as something separate…

"Consciousness is an illusion" I take the word "illusion" to mean, some type of experience which misleads one about reality. And "consciousness" to mean, the experience of having experiences. So I parse this claim as something like, "People both do not have conscious experiences, and also do continuously have a particular type of conscious experience: a misleading experience which leads them to believe they have cons…

> Consciousness is an illusion

It's just like the related "Free will is an illusion".

With "illusion" just referring to something that appears to be one thing, when it is in fact something else.

In the case of free will - we all feel as if we have it, that our future actions are under "our" control, but if we assume or brains and muscles are subject to the laws of physics then this can't be correct. We're just a meat machine. We can watch the decision making in progress and easily believe that some mysterious actor "me" is the one doing it, but in reality the meat machine is doing everything, including the self-observation, and the sense of self is just as illusory/misleading as the sense of free will.

Consciousness, rather closely connected to sense of self, can be described as illusory since it makes us feel that "being" or "experiencing" are something fundamental, some aspect of being "alive" that is distinct from the computational machinery of our brain that is otherwise doing all the perception, cognition, emoting, etc. But, again, the meat machine argument tells us this must be wrong, so it's reasonable to call consciousness an illusion - not what it seems to be, even if there is some real self-observational computation behind it ... it does exist, but it's not magic.

A useful thought experiment for anyone who believes that a sufficiently brain-like machine wouldn't experience qualia - e.g. the feeling of seeing something - is to try to pinpoint exactly what aspect of the feeling the machine would be missing? The expansive sense of color/vision as a spatial quality perhaps? The grass-like freshness of new leaves on a tree blowing in the breeze, perhaps? ...

Re: Consciousness is not computation

#588

Post by bccdee »

tgflynn wrote: post #581
bccdee wrote: post #562

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not at all convinced qualia exist. I think any intelligence would necessarily feel as if it was experiencing qualia. Let me start by making a distinction: When you take a bite of an apple, you experience a variety of flavours: It's sweet, tart, and has a distinct apple aroma as well. Let's hone in on the last of those. If you took apart an apple under a microscope and examined its flavour compounds, you could fin…

I think what you say here is at least mostly true. But all it shows is that you can never prove that an entity apart from yourself is conscious. In other words it shows that solipsism cannot be logically refuted. But that is something that has been known for hundreds if not thousands of years. But what if I ask YOU right now: "Are YOU experiencing something instead of nothing. Is YOU'RE current experience different f…

Should it? If I can't help but believe that I am experiencing actual qualia regardless of whether I am or not, then the fact that I believe I am experiencing qualia doesn't prove anything.

Re: Consciousness is not computation

#589

Post by Seb-C »

criddell wrote: post #544
whittingtonaaon wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Consciousness can end temporarily, perhaps permanently. This in no way suggests that it’s an illusion. The claim that consciousness is an illusion has always seemed like nonsense to me; for, if consciousness is an illusion, who experiences that illusion? Answer: the conscious mind.

> Answer: the conscious mind. It's a controversial idea, but depending on the state of the brain, there may be more than one consciousness. Maybe "you" are actually a committee.

I like the opposite idea, that maybe we are all the same consciousness, projected in bodies that have different subjective experiences and memories.

Re: Consciousness is not computation

#590

Post by tgflynn »

bccdee wrote: post #588
tgflynn wrote: post #581

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think what you say here is at least mostly true. But all it shows is that you can never prove that an entity apart from yourself is conscious. In other words it shows that solipsism cannot be logically refuted. But that is something that has been known for hundreds if not thousands of years. But what if I ask YOU right now: "Are YOU experiencing something instead of nothing. Is YOU'RE current experience different f…

Should it? If I can't help but believe that I am experiencing actual qualia regardless of whether I am or not, then the fact that I believe I am experiencing qualia doesn't prove anything.

It isn't about belief and it certainly isn't about behavior (ie. what you say).

It is about the actual experience of being.

If that means nothing to you, I don't think there's anything I can say that would change your mind. In this domain all language can do is evoke recognition for someone who already experiences what is being evoked but doesn't recognize it. Only you can take the final step to realizing that yes consciousness does exist, no matter how much sophistry some philosophers will engage in to try to deny it.

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