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The Computational Theory of Mind (2015)

plato.stanford.edu

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Re: The Computational Theory of Mind (2015)

#71

Post by marcosdumay »

yters wrote: post #48
tcgv wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

True random number generation can't be done by a deterministic computer, and it appears that human brains can, although not conclusive yet, and the precise mechanism is unclear: - https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15922090

Turing machines don't have to be deterministic. You can have non deterministic Turing machines, and probabilistic Turing machines.

Turing machines, without qualifiers, usually means deterministic ones. Extending it for probabilistic is quite ok, but non deterministic ones are a completely different beast.

Re: The Computational Theory of Mind (2015)

#72

Post by antonvs »

TuringTest wrote: post #24
antonvs wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> So far we don't know of any such thing That's not entirely correct. We don't know that a Turing machine can have conscious experience. There's no substantiated "in principle" explanation for that.

Yes, but we don't know how to check that an entity has a conscious experience, so we can not falsify that a Turing machine has one, either. That's the whole reason for the Turing Test, btw.

Yes, we can't falsify that a Turing machine has conscious experience, but we have no reason or explanation to suggest that it does have one.

To come back to the original claim:

> Simple: Find something that the brain does that could not, in principle, be emulated by a Turing machine or equivalent. So far we don't know of any such thing

We may not "know" of such a thing with certainty, but we have a strong candidate in consciousness.

There are two possibilities here:

One is that Turing machines are conscious (and we're monsters for what we do with them), in which case we still have an unexplained panpsychic phenomenon which we would need new science to understand.

The other is that Turing machines are not conscious, in which case there's an unexplained phenomenon in how an object like the brain can give rise to consciousness. In that case, the question of whether a Turing machine could in principle emulate consciousness depends on what the cause of consciousness is. It's certainly possible, and doesn't even seem particularly unlikely, that we find that Turing machines cannot do this, and that something other than "computation" is needed.

Re: The Computational Theory of Mind (2015)

#73

Post by antonvs »

naasking wrote: post #62
yters wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is an illusion without consciousness?

> What is an illusion without consciousness? A perception that, divorced from all other facts, entails a false conclusion. So your perception of conscious subjectivity could indeed be an illusion.

"Your perception of conscious subjectivity" implies consciousness.

Put another way, how would you program a computer to have a perception of conscious subjectivity, as opposed to just blindly and unconsciously executing its instructions?

Re: The Computational Theory of Mind (2015)

#74

Post by pistachiopro »

antonvs wrote: post #65
Zigurd wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You may have the illusion of a "conscious experience" that is in fact a story told to yourself about how a thing you call "you" is in charge of your thoughts.

That doesn't really work. What is "yourself" in that statement, other than a conscious entity? How would you write a computer program that "tells that story to itself," such that it actually has an experience of the world, as opposed to just being a machine executing a program without any conscious awareness? Edit: also, whether we're in charge of our thoughts is a separate question from whether we possess consciousn…

I've never heard a complete and convincing explanation for what "yourself" could be, but meditating on the extreme unintuitiveness of self-reference and recursion (a la Douglas Hofstadter's I am a Strange Loop) increases my expectation that a computational explanation is coming, eventually.

Re: The Computational Theory of Mind (2015)

#75

Post by jblwps »

proc0 wrote: post #9
joe_the_user wrote: post #2

It seems like basic materialism to claim that the brain could be simulated by a large enough Turing machine. But that claim would not necessarily imply that a Turing machine is a useful model for brain. A Turing machine isn't necessarily even used as the working model of a computer though it conceivably could be. Edit: My comment is basically asking what saying "the mind is a Turing machine" really means. It seems li…

I'm still reading through the paper/article, but a Turing machine would be the substrate in this case, not the model. I think the question is whether we can model the brain's way of computing in a Turing machine, and then it will follow we can also model the brain. Turing machines are a model of computation, and if the brain's computational model is Turing complete, it will follow that we can simulate a brain inside…

> if the brain's computational model is Turing complete, it will follow that we can simulate a brain inside a Turing machine

I don't believe this is correct. If the brain's model/the brain itself is Turing-complete, that doesn't mean a Turing machine can simulate; it means that the brain's model can simulate any Turing machine qua Turing machine. This does not imply the reverse, that any Turing machine can simulate it.

Re: The Computational Theory of Mind (2015)

#76

Post by claudiawerner »

yters wrote: post #49
claudiawerner wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's worth noting that the theory that a falsifiable hypothesis constitutes scientific investigation (as proposed by Popper) isn't really the gold standard of the philosophy of science any more - especially since Popper's formulation is known to be pretty shoddy.

That sounds like a recipe for making up stuff and calling it 'science'.

Not at all, just that the pure theory of falsificationism as specified by Popper both excludes valid science, and includes pseudoscience (for instance, astrology is falsifiable). Thus, falsifiablity is not both necessary and sufficient[0].

[0] https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/pseudo-science/

Re: The Computational Theory of Mind (2015)

#77

Post by taneq »

claudiawerner wrote: post #76
yters wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That sounds like a recipe for making up stuff and calling it 'science'.

Not at all, just that the pure theory of falsificationism as specified by Popper both excludes valid science, and includes pseudoscience (for instance, astrology is falsifiable). Thus, falsifiablity is not both necessary and sufficient[0]. [0] https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/pseudo-science/

The core tenet of science is testing of hypotheses. Any hypothesis that's not falsifiable is by definition not scientifically testable.

Astrology itself is not scientific but, if you use a version of it that's falsifiable, you absolutely can do a valid scientific study on it by making astrological predictions and then testing to see whether they come true. I think it's pretty widely agreed that we've already done this and the (valid scientific) result was negative.

Re: The Computational Theory of Mind (2015)

#78

Post by taneq »

tcgv wrote: post #36
taneq wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Simple: Find something that the brain does that could not, in principle, be emulated by a Turing machine or equivalent. So far we don't know of any such thing (since quantum mechanics is computable and everything including the brain is ultimately quantum mechanics).

True random number generation can't be done by a deterministic computer, and it appears that human brains can, although not conclusive yet, and the precise mechanism is unclear: - https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15922090

I thought humans were pretty widely considered to be terrible random number generators. We tend to produce sequences that are too uniform, not streaky enough, and contain patterns.

The first related article linked from your link was "Humans cannot consciously generate random numbers sequences: Polemic study." (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17888582)

Re: The Computational Theory of Mind (2015)

#79

Post by claudiawerner »

taneq wrote: post #77
claudiawerner wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not at all, just that the pure theory of falsificationism as specified by Popper both excludes valid science, and includes pseudoscience (for instance, astrology is falsifiable). Thus, falsifiablity is not both necessary and sufficient[0]. [0] https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/pseudo-science/

The core tenet of science is testing of hypotheses. Any hypothesis that's not falsifiable is by definition not scientifically testable. Astrology itself is not scientific but, if you use a version of it that's falsifiable, you absolutely can do a valid scientific study on it by making astrological predictions and then testing to see whether they come true. I think it's pretty widely agreed that we've already done thi…

>Any hypothesis that's not falsifiable is by definition not scientifically testable.

This is beside the point. The point of contention is whether or not falsifiability is what makes science what it is, or should be. Genuine science (such as exploratory papers) very often does not start by specifying a falsifiable hypothesis. Bad science, such as astrology, does often propose falsifiable hypotheses. Therefore, astrology can be falsifiable. Therefore, according to Popperian demarcation, astrology counts as science, or it's scientific (useful to remember that Popper counted Darwinian evolution as non-science).

Falsifiability isn't enough for something to be science; it's not necessary and sufficient - because otherwise astrology is science, and exploratory research, popular in many scientific fields, isn't science. The fact that astrology's claims have been falsified does not discount it as science, since a great number of genuine scientific papers also successfully falsify their hypotheses - finding a null result is an example of falsifying a hypothesis.

Re: The Computational Theory of Mind (2015)

#80

Post by antonvs »

pistachiopro wrote: post #74
antonvs wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That doesn't really work. What is "yourself" in that statement, other than a conscious entity? How would you write a computer program that "tells that story to itself," such that it actually has an experience of the world, as opposed to just being a machine executing a program without any conscious awareness? Edit: also, whether we're in charge of our thoughts is a separate question from whether we possess consciousn…

I've never heard a complete and convincing explanation for what "yourself" could be, but meditating on the extreme unintuitiveness of self-reference and recursion (a la Douglas Hofstadter's I am a Strange Loop ) increases my expectation that a computational explanation is coming, eventually.

I think that's pretty wishful thinking. It's not like we don't have a lot of experience with self-reference and recursion in computational systems. In fact this site is named after that. I don't think the Y combinator is conscious.
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