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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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Jun 17, 2016 - 01:30pm PT
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I have an intimate knowledge of consciousness based on my experience as a conscious being.
you have an intimate knowledge of your experience, which you have learned to to name "consciousness." Beyond that you don't have any idea of what it is...
If you are saying that the machine cannot be conscious because it is not you, that would be a true statement. A problematic statement because all that are not you might not have the consciousness that you have intimate knowledge of, the others do not have that intimate knowledge.
I wonder how you come to conclude that I might be a conscious being. My intimate knowledge of consciousness is different from yours, probably in every detail, since my experience is different from yours in every detail. Yet somehow you generalize your experience and make your definition broad enough to admit that I am a conscious being, based on your experience. You have no way of knowing.
Your experience, while extensive, is still not very broad. And the limits of the application of your experience to consciousness, beyond your experience, is unknown (as you describe it as an experiential knowledge).
You might have "a theory" on how your experiential knowledge can be generalized, it would be interesting to hear what that is, and pertinent to our discussion. You must have such "a theory" since you cannot experience what I, or anyone else experiences, those experiences are not accessible to you.
In the same way, your theory would explain why machines can not have consciousness.
The distinction between you and not-you is relatively easy to make. It is the different categories of "not-you" that I find problematic. In practice, you would seem not to have a way of distinguishing among the many kinds of "not-you."
Maybe you don't, and that would be interesting to hear.
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paul roehl
Boulder climber
california
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Jun 17, 2016 - 02:41pm PT
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you have an intimate knowledge of your experience, which you have learned to to name "consciousness." Beyond that you don't have any idea of what it is...
This statement is nonsensical. Whatever you call the experience of being as a human, that is the notion of awareness coupled with sensory perception, is irrelevant to the experience. To say beyond that experience you don't have any idea of what it is is like saying beyond knowing you don't know.
Every conscious human being has an intimate relationship with consciousness and that consciousness communicates with other consciousness in a network allowing comparison and those comparisons yield a realization of similarity rather than difference. The notion that each individual is remarkably different than other individuals does not stand up to the evidence. Cultural norms across the world are remarkably parallel and there is no explanation for this outside of our basic similarities. Consider the ubiquitous nature of the idea of God.
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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Jun 17, 2016 - 02:59pm PT
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you like to generalize, but the "ubiquitous" description of God is a relatively recent occurrence, and the experience of humans 100,000 years ago, or 1 million years ago was quite different from yours, you have no way of making the leap that it's all the same.
To say beyond that experience you don't have any idea of what it is is like saying beyond knowing you don't know.
but how do you know? that's the point of the discussion here and my criticism of your position that you "know" what consciousness is, you just can't explain it... There is a way of knowing in science, it is the prediction of the outcome of observations. You "know" when you can predict.
Now the quality of your predictions are governed by the quality of your observations, and vice-versa, which leads us to ever more precise, and accurate quantification. But that is a detail.
To say you "know" because of your "experience" what consciousness is and is not is fine, but you have only stated that, you haven't explained what it is about your experience that leads to any of your knowledge.
And it is entirely possible, as MikeL has pointed out many times, that your perception of "consciousness" is not the same thing as consciousness, itself. Indeed, your perception may be of something that isn't there, the perception is compelling, but isn't "the territory."
From your lack of detail you build up a case that machines cannot have consciousness in any manner. Then when confronted with the possibility that you might encounter a machine with consciousness, you say you are "tricked" into that conclusion.
But you've constructed the argument in a circular manner, you axiom is that only humans can have consciousness. It is an assumption you've made.
As an assumption, it might be reasonable, it might not. Exploring that assumption it is natural to ask how one knows that other humans are conscious, and you provide the example that we compare our experiences and generalize, coming to the conclusion that it is likely we all possess a similar type of consciousness.
I haven't any quibbles with that, but it is an "objective" exercise in which we describe our "subjective" experiences. We will find things that are general, and things that aren't.
However, if you continue this line of reasoning, you would expect that communicating with any entity you might find commonality in experience. An alien, for instance, be it extraterrestrial or even terrestrial, you pet dog, a dolphin, etc... to the extent that we communicate we come to some understanding of the consciousness that might exist.
Now continue even further, to machines... why not?
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High Fructose Corn Spirit
Gym climber
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Jun 17, 2016 - 03:16pm PT
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those comparisons yield a realization of similarity rather than difference.
You haven't been reading the Trump and Hillary threads?
Cultural norms across the world are remarkably parallel
Really?
Consider the ubiquitous nature of the idea of God.
:)
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High Fructose Corn Spirit
Gym climber
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Jun 17, 2016 - 03:23pm PT
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Ed, have you found the time to read The Selfish Gene yet?
Beta: There's plenty of it.
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BASE104
Social climber
An Oil Field
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Jun 17, 2016 - 03:36pm PT
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MH2: Have you been following the new method of Genomic Editing called CRISPR, or CRISPER/Cas9?
It has greatly improved the process of genomic editing: they don't call it genetic engineering anymore. The chemistry is really difficult, and I've had to dredge up old organic chemistry memories to understand it. To put it bluntly, genomic editing now takes one day. The technological breakthrough, CRISPR/cas is incredible. They have talked about bringing back the Neanderthal and the Wooly Mammoth. Long extinct species that we have full sequenced genomes for. Mammoths are always melting out of cut banks of Siberian or N American Arctic permafrost. You can buy Mammoth hair on Ebay. Simpler things, like taking a snip of human DNA and putting it into bacterial DNA now takes a day.
It took forever to edit the insulin producing gene into the bacteria E. Coli. Previously, insulin was obtained from animals. Now almost all of it comes from biosynthesis. Today, that problem could be solved nigh overnight.
I've been reading about it for the last few days, trying to dredge up old organic chemistry long forgotten, so that I can understand it. To put it bluntly, genomic editing is now a fairly easy task. It came from a great idea that two scientists had been discussing, following curiosity. The upside is almost limitless. Curing HIV, Alzheimer's, you name it. Perhaps even cancer.
It has led, of course, to ethics discussions, called bioethics. Should they make the malaria carrying the mosquito extinct? It is now possible.
You know that it will eventually be used on human embryos. The film Gattica shows a really good picture of what a genetic upper class might do to a genetic lower class.
I later found it on Wiki, but even the Wiki page is pretty intense. MH2 should be able to make more sense of it than I could:
[url="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CRISPR"]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CRISPR[/url]
A more general page on genomic editing is here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genome_editing
How does this affect the notion of mind? If intelligence shows any genetic factor, or if brain morphology can be enhanced, it will eventually be done. You can't put the genie back into the bottle once it is out. Even if Americans outlaw it, it will be legal somewhere, and someone is already considering it.
This is one of the most exciting advances of this time, and it will only march forward. Already there are companies which sell the nucleases needed for specific gene alterations. The company which owns the patent on this process will probably end up being big.
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High Fructose Corn Spirit
Gym climber
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Jun 17, 2016 - 03:42pm PT
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Even though your writing in places is sloppy, it shows the right direction and attitude. So +1.
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MikeL
Social climber
Southern Arizona
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Jun 17, 2016 - 04:11pm PT
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"Mind, this universal concept, this most significant of words, being no single entity, manifests as the gamut of pleasure and pain in samsara and nirvana. There are as many beliefs about it as there are approaches to buddhahood. It has innumerable synonyms."
"In the vernacular it is 'I'; some Hindus call it the 'Self'; the sravaka disciples say 'selfless individual'; the followers of Mind-only call it simply 'mind'; some call it 'perfect insight'; some call it 'buddha-nature'; some call it 'magnificent stance;' some call it the 'Middle Way'; some call it the 'Cosmic Seed'; some call it the 'reality-continuum'; some call it the 'universal ground'; some call it 'ordinary consciousness.' Since the synonyms of mind, the labels we apply to it, are countless, know it for what it really is. Know it experientially as the here and now. Compose yourself in the natural state of your mind’s nature."
"When at rest the mind is ordinary perception, naked and unadorned; when you gaze directly at it there is nothing to see but light; as total presence, it is brilliance and the relaxed vigilance of the awakened state; as nothing specific whatsoever, it is a secret fullness; it is the ultimacy of nondual radiance and emptiness."
"It is not eternal, for nothing whatsoever about it has been proved to exist. It is not a void, for there is brilliance and wakefulness. It is not unity, for multiplicity is self-evident in perception. It is not multiplicity for we know the one taste of unity. It is not an external function, for presence is intrinsic to immediate reality."
"In the immediate here and now we see the face of the Original Lord abiding in the heart center. Identify yourself with him, my spiritual sons. Whoever denies him, wanting more from somewhere else, is like the man who has found his elephant but continues to follow its tracks. He may comb the three dimensions of the microcosmic world systems for an eternity, but he will hot find so much as the name of Buddha other than the one in his heart."
(Song 6, The Flight of the Garuda, by Shakbar Lama Jatang Tsogdrug Rangdrol. Translated by Keith Dowman, The Flight of the Garuda (2014), pp. 71-72. Lama Rangdrol lived from 1781-1851.)
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paul roehl
Boulder climber
california
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Jun 17, 2016 - 04:23pm PT
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but how do you know? that's the point of the discussion here and my criticism of your position that you "know" what consciousness is, you just can't explain it... There is a way of knowing in science, it is the prediction of the outcome of observations. You "know" when you can predict.
The experience is the knowing. Experience can yield knowledge which is something science seems to have a problem with. When a patient goes to the dentist and declares great pain in a tooth the dentist doesn't say I can't be sure your really feeling pain, how do I know, your pain may be different than mine. The experience of consciousness is a kind of knowledge and we extrapolate from and communicate that knowledge to other human beings. Knowing is experiencing and that knowing is communicated in a variety of ways in human interaction.
What difference does it make when God appears in the conscious mind? It happened and it's everywhere and it declares similarity.
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Largo
Sport climber
The Big Wide Open Face
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Topic Author's Reply - Jun 17, 2016 - 04:30pm PT
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In a general way, Ed, I thinkyou are getting hung up or at least limiting your understanding by by insisting that consciousness is real only if you can demonstrate it to an external object or thing (another person), and I suspect that your demonstration would involve some manner of measurement. Otherwise, minus some form of externalized proof, what "thing" are we talking about?
All of this harks back to the Turing test and the presentation of data ("intelligence") as some kind of yardstick of consciousness itself, whereas consciosness and data processing are selfsame.
You might try and unpack this a little more.
For starters, there is a difference between the articles, stuff and content of consciousness, and the experiential aspect of BEING conscious of said content, knowing and experiencing a smell or thought or fill in the blank. Exploring consciousness as object-independent makes this a little more intelligible.
While most every aspect of your personal content is particular to you, Ed, consciousness has many universals that can be peer reviewed and wrangled down in ways distinct enough to frame is words most everyone can understand. So there are strictly personal and universal or constants at play here.
From my perspective, getting hung up on the content is another form of wrangling data, when the burning question is, "What is this consciousness ITSELF," not what am I conscious of. People routinely think and believe there is no difference, even to the mistaken extent that they insist that lest we are conscious of some thing, consciousness vanishes. Or in its extreme case, our relationship to objects creates consciousness. No object, no consciousness. Not so.
When you say, "How can you prove anyone else is conscious?" what criteria would satisfy your question? The physical demonstration of an object? Objectifying consciousness AS an object that we can look at as a third-person phenomenon. Other than looking at consciousness as a mind-independent thing, as science does with everything else, what other criteria would you except? And "whatever you have to offer" is obviously a non-answer.
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High Fructose Corn Spirit
Gym climber
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Jun 17, 2016 - 04:48pm PT
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what's perfectly clear is (a) Largo views consciousness (in partic, sentience) as an immaterial force - or at least as having a major component that is an immaterial force; and (b) there's no changing from this stance..
Of course with the modern accoutrements stripped away this is nothing more than the ghost in the machine belief. Move over Descartes, I'm here at this belay now.
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WBraun
climber
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Jun 17, 2016 - 05:01pm PT
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There's no such thing as "ghost in the machine".
This is made up by clueless brainwashed fools who are brainwashed by watching thousands of useless YouTube videos by the same clueless fools.
The living entity is not a ghost, all while the clueless fools have already put wrong numbers into their clueless equations producing their completely defective outcomes.
The living entity is full of life itself which animates the gross material forms.
The living entity pervades the material body in the form of consciousness.
In the human material body the living entity resides within the material heart as the soul.
Largo is correct and the clueless fruit YouTube zombie is never ever even there anywhere.
Life comes from life eternally .....
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High Fructose Corn Spirit
Gym climber
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Jun 17, 2016 - 05:16pm PT
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Life comes from life eternally ..... -Wb
Per usual, you talk out your ass.
Your last chemistry course was?
Your last biology course was?
Your last physics course was?
Time for honesty? Time for soul searching?
Otherwise are you NOT just another lost cause in this subject matter?
Truly, other than dmt, I can't think of a greater
impediment to the Cause.
We have to get to a place where pretending to knowledge is
no virtue.
There's no such thing as "ghost in the machine".
So at least you got that one right.
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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Jun 17, 2016 - 05:37pm PT
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I'm trying to explore this as practically as possible. I'm not asking for philosophical or scientific basis, I am asking you (Largo), how you come to the conclusion that I (or anyone else besides yourself) is conscious.
Paul has answered, and I think in the end for him it is just a belief. At that point, of course, the discussion is useless in terms of science. And I'd say that Paul is entitled to whatever he wants to believe, but believing doesn't make it so... many such convictions are demonstrably in conflict with what is known. Consciousness could be one of them too.
But Largo, you have avoided answering the question. And I believe it is because the answer leads to the sort of accommodation that you are unwilling to make, to wit, a machine could have consciousness at the same level as I do (to you) since you cannot but use a set of criteria to establish that I have consciousness... if a machine's behavior matches those criteria, you would conclude that it is conscious, something you will never do, and because, like Paul, it is beyond your belief.
That isn't very open minded (at least not in a scientific sense).
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paul roehl
Boulder climber
california
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Jun 17, 2016 - 06:18pm PT
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Paul has answered, and I think in the end for him it is just a belief. At that point, of course, the discussion is useless in terms of science. And I'd say that Paul is entitled to whatever he wants to believe, but believing doesn't make it so... many such convictions are demonstrably in conflict with what is known. Consciousness could be one of them too.
It's not simply a belief to recognize the intimate knowledge of conscious being that all humanity shares. It's not a belief to realize that that consciousness is shared through the ability to use language. It's not simply a belief to recognize that through that knowledge we recognize other conscious human beings and, in contrast, machines that lack that consciousness. Everybody recognizes when consciousness that once existed has departed. Experience is knowledge.
The question you're having trouble with is similar to the question what is red? Well it's a wavelength of a certain type, really? Is that what red is? What is mind? Well it's neurons and chemistry. Really? Is that what mind is? Ignoring experience leaves too much out of the equation.
Whether or not humanity, science can eventually construct a conscious mind, I don't know. Though I find it difficult to accept the computer model and some kind of infinite complexity in that regard a pathway to success.
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Largo
Sport climber
The Big Wide Open Face
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Topic Author's Reply - Jun 17, 2016 - 06:31pm PT
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I haven't avoided answering your question, Ed, because you have asked a question expecting a scientific answer, and as at least some of us have been going on and on about, measuring will get you nowhere in this regards.
Let me try and make that clear.
"Knowing," by materialists thinking, involves essentially slapping a slide ruler onto an external object or phenomenon, pulling a measurement, working up a theory and then getting down to predicting what that object/phenomenon will DO.
Now we have said that this mode will never betray "mind" not because there is no such phenomenon, but because CONSCIOUSNESS IS NOT AN EXTERNAL OBJECT. It is internal. Saying they are the same "things" is simply explaining the issue away.
But in fact all of this is just talk based on the philosophical belief that all of reality is external and physical. Though I have said repeatedly that looking at consciousness by only reviewing tasking (what some thing does) is short sighted, let's indulge that notion, because in human life, what we "know" is almost always born out in what we actually DO. And in this regards we bet our life on knowing the other person is conscious every time we let someone else belay us, or drive on the freeway, based on what the belayer or the other car is doing.
We humans have a remarkable sense - part innate and part learned - per judging the condition of another person's consciousness. When someone is not quite "there," we can tell from physical markers, movements, attention, energy, and so forth. Those lacking this software are rare and their condition is known as autism, of one form or another.
Now you can say that we might know the other person is conscious, but we can't PROVE it.
Again, what criteria would satisfy you per this "proof." My sense of it is the only criteria a physicalist would accept would be if somehow we could transmute an internal phenomenon into an external one, export it, and get started with that yardstick. But your consciouness cannot be exported as a stand alone external object.
The problem is not with consciousness, but in your insistence that lest external physical proof is offered up, no real proof exists. What's more you can explain away consciousness as being an illusion and that it is really someone's brain who is driving and belaying.
There are many ways of dodging consciousness on its own terms - but nothing else actually works. There's simply no data to draw from the methods you are used to using in this regards, but going with another method of inquiry is out owing to some wonky streak of stubbornness - or so it seems to me.
Any meta function can be explained away using the above straw man logic. For example, A man is married to a woman and says that there is no such thing as a relationship. There is physical proof of coexisting but above and beyond the relationship a trees have in a forest, or two bottles of beer have in a cooler, there is nothing more because there is no external object that proves a relationship is anything but a hallucination.
So I return to my question: What criteria would you except, save for physical proof, that consciousness exists in you, me, or anyone else?
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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Jun 17, 2016 - 07:08pm PT
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I think that Paul had a good answer, basically, he has a conversation and establishes his judgment based on that conversation.
You too...
but where you both go off the rails is the idea that if a machine were capable of engaging you to the point you concluded that it was conscious, you'd consider it a "trick" because, somehow, you know the machine cannot be conscious.
The science perspective of this would be that to conclude that the machine was conscious, it had met all of your criteria for consciousness.
My point is that you don't know what consciousness is, or what has consciousness, without engaging in the interaction where the entity you are engaging meets some criteria, in your experience.
What are those criteria?
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Jan
Mountain climber
Colorado & Nepal
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Jun 17, 2016 - 07:23pm PT
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What I find contradictory is the insistence that consciousness is a function of the brain therefore of life and biology and millions of years of evolution and yet a machine could supposedly be built in the not too distant future that would have the same properties as million of years of evolution in a living body?
Or is this just a rhetorical device to try to prove to Largo that mind is a function of the brain of living beings, of evolution ? Is Ed trying to prove that the only way it could be non material and universal is if it could be implanted in something other than what it has been so far ?
I remember the Dalai Lama was asked if consciousness could be reincarnated into a robot or computer and he answered that theoretically he supposed it could but why would anyone want to do that when a living body was so much superior with so many more possibilities.
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jgill
Boulder climber
The high prairie of southern Colorado
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Jun 17, 2016 - 08:41pm PT
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Or is this just a rhetorical device to try to prove to Largo that mind is a function of the brain of living beings, of evolution ? Is Ed trying to prove that the only way it could be non material and universal is if it could be implanted in something other than what it has been so far ?
The room grows quiet. The tension is palpable . . .
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MH2
Boulder climber
Andy Cairns
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Jun 17, 2016 - 08:45pm PT
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CONSCIOUSNESS IS NOT AN EXTERNAL OBJECT. It is internal.
Internal to what? What is it inside of?
I do not require a slide rule or measuring stick to be involved in your answer. Please answer in your own terms.
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