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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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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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Jun 17, 2016 - 08:54pm PT
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I'm not trying to prove anything, but the argument I'm making has to do with the nature of "Mind" or consciousness, etc, etc... as we perceive it. And Largo's opening shot that a scientific understanding of mind is not possible.
The larger picture of my point, which both Paul and Largo are quiet about now, is that we use all sorts of objective methods to establish that other people have minds, consciousness, etc... and we are actually taught how to interpret many of our perceptions about other people.
It wasn't so long ago that different populations that were isolated from each other were not sure that the others were real people... it's an interesting prospect relevant to our discussion. In those cases, some of those tribes might conclude that the others did not have a "mind," their criteria for deciding so did not match the behavior of the others.
The idea of consciousness is both a perceptual issue and a social one. This points to the possibility that what we identify as "consciousness" or "mind" might very well be one of those perceptual simplification of what is going on, a utilitarian model of how "we work" but not actually what is really going on... so that at least admits the possibility that given a scientific theory (which is predictive) that we could apply that theory to technology, and that technology might successfully meet our criteria for what has "consciousness" or "mind."
If you don't like that, you could refine your criteria... but what Largo and Paul are saying is that it doesn't matter what the criteria are or how closely matched our technological application of the theory is... it is simply not consciousness.
I find it a strange objection.
Given their position, it is no wonder that they demure to provide their criteria... actually that would be a more positive interpretation, they actually have never thought about it beyond assuming all humans have consciousness. End of story.
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MH2
Boulder climber
Andy Cairns
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Jun 17, 2016 - 08:58pm PT
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A metaphor is not in and of itself an object in nature but rather a construct of the mind, a comparison of sorts. Of course this depends on the definition of terms such as object and nature, but in the standard sense a metaphor is not a literall object.
If a metaphor is not in and of itself an object in nature, is there some other milieu it resides in or emerges from?
What if we are not talking in the standard sense but asking what a thing IS?
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MikeL
Social climber
Southern Arizona
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Jun 18, 2016 - 12:54pm PT
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Ed: . . . 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, " . . . .
Astronauts have come back to earth with this idea about the earth itself.
How can one objectify ever-changing / -morphing, unrepeating sensation? What makes one think that THIS display right in front of him or her is NOT alive, conscious, “being?”
Jan: . . . 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 . . . .
The most apparent reason is that the puzzle is interesting to folks, that it’s what they do or are as beings, and that it tends to confer some sense of achievement to work on tough problems and solve them.
Ed: . . . the argument I'm making has to do with the nature of "Mind" or consciousness, etc, etc... as we perceive it.
This is a perfect place to start.
Can that be done without concepts, abstractions, or models, constructs? To do so, I guess we’d have to start with what a perception is, perhaps before content, before things are focused upon.
What is perception? We don’t have to abstract it. We could just describe sensation’s “suchness,” it’s quality, it’s texture. Does sensation require that first “things” exist that in turn “generate” sensations? If you listen to PSP, he’s saying that he visits a place where there are no things in his awareness—where there is only broad, unfocused experience of nothing at all in particular. Raw perception. Pristine awareness. “Things” are simply unlabelled patterns registered without meaning or categorization. THERE!! There is “mind.” What IS THAT?
THAT is not a that. THAT not a what. THAT is not a thing.
What is that which is unsubstantial, not-concrete, unlabelled, with infinite fuzziness that is the base medium of all “things” that provides the basis for sensation? Rocks? Space? Light? Consciousness? Being? (See “rigpa” or “alaya.”)
Here we are trying to describe and define something that apparently is ON all the time (from what we can tell in our own lives), and something that is right in front of us. That something appears to be being. We're told it’s not what one thinks. You can see why many have referred to it as THE Cosmic Joke: “gate gate pāragate pārasaṃgate bodhi svāhā.” (In English: “gone gone, gone beyond, gone altogether beyond. . . ”)
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jgill
Boulder climber
The high prairie of southern Colorado
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Jun 18, 2016 - 01:39pm PT
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What is that which is unsubstantial, not-concrete, unlabelled, with infinite fuzziness that is the base medium of all “things” that provides the basis for sensation? (MikeL)
Periodically I return to the possibility that, although we can easily use language and words to investigate "brain", it may not be possible to "talk" about "mind." When we do all sorts of vague descriptions come into play, like "being" , "suchness" , "empty awareness", and so on. As MikeL points out, definitions cannot be pined down and everything is inexact, unclear, ambiguous, fuzzy and blurred. We can speak of sensations and feelings, but beyond that there is a void.
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WBraun
climber
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Jun 18, 2016 - 02:06pm PT
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but beyond that there is a void.
No .... life is never void.
It is always full of variegatedness.
Void is the mental speculators realm due to poor fund of knowledge .....
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MikeL
Social climber
Southern Arizona
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Jun 18, 2016 - 05:56pm PT
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Uhm, I think what Jgill might mean is that there is a void of things to say, of things that can be said.
(Jgill?)
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jgill
Boulder climber
The high prairie of southern Colorado
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Jun 18, 2016 - 06:08pm PT
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^^^
Yep
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Largo
Sport climber
The Big Wide Open Face
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Topic Author's Reply - Jun 18, 2016 - 06:38pm PT
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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.
Again, Ed, you have harked back to the Turing Test, and conflated data processing with consciousness. There is no way to externally prove to a third-party that you are conscious, be the subject a machine or Fruitcake. By proof I mean proof that would satisfy you - an external object that you can measure.
We can only be certain about our own consciousness, but I suspect that you even question even your own certainly per your own mind because you cannot wring your head and have consciousness dribble out onto the tabletop vouchsafing its physical, therefore real, existence.
But where to my thinking you lose your way is again, in your a*#umptions - this one being that if you could establish some physical metric that you felt betrayed the existence, so long as a rock or a machine or a lightning bolt met that criteria, said external object would perforce HAVE TO BE CONSCIOUS because the numbers say so.
If I did have the chance to actually question a so-called conscious machine, I would instruct it to switch off its data processing functions (or let them idle), and to spend a quiet hour being with the experience of being detached to tasking, and have "Hal" describe to me the experience of simply being - a pretty standard inquiry per the subjective adventures.
You said: The science perspective of this would be that to conclude that the machine was conscious, it had met all of your criteria for consciousness.
Ed, I asked you what criteria you considered 'proof," and am I to understand that your answer to this question would derive from data processing? It sure sounds that way.
The subjective adventures are not a search for third-person proof that consciousness exists, rather an inquiry into what first-person consciousness IS. No one to my knowledge (in contemplative exercises) directly studies another person's consciousness. We have to experiential access to your actual mind. It all comes from what you say and what you do, from external markers that imply another human beings consciousness. And even if a robot acted like it was conscious and fooled a great many people this wouldn't constitute physical proof of consciousness, which seems to be what you are after.
Ed said: 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.
Ed, nobody "knows" what consciousness IS in the way you are positing it, as a third-person object you can measure or prove by way of physical criteria, because consciousness does not exist in that fashion. You have a philosophical belief that reality is all physical. Fine. You are entirely correct is saying I don't know what consciousness IS as a third-person objective "thing" or function because there simply IS no such "thing."
And the idea that we can only know what consciousness IS though the interactive engagement with another entity is quite the opposite of first tier study of consciousness (as opposed to objective functioning/data processing), which in my tradition and many others is done eyes open and alone, in total silence, facing a wall. The second tier investigation involves interface with a teacher and that diad is oftentimes not verbal, quite the opposite of interpreting a stream of data per the Turing test. And none of that drill is to prove consciousness is this or that, but to simply deepen a subject's awareness and drive to keep looking.
I think your confusion per mind, in this regards, derives from your basic assumptions, that lacking external, third-person proof of consciousness, it does not exist, and that if you could somehow have a physical metric, that would in turn prove that a machine was just as conscious as Cocoa Joe, or whoever. Just note that your conception of mind is inexorably fused with data. Note also that data and consciousness are not selfsame. the color blue is not the same as being conscious of blue.
So my question to you is: if you closed your eyes and let the data stream fade to the background, what is left to measure? Note that you are still there, and that your presence is felt in a far keener way than when you were evaluating and attached to stuff, thoughts and so forth. So the one thing that is immediately clear is your own existence. But what is IN that baseline existence or being that jumps out to be measured, remembering that attachment to objects has been let go.
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MH2
Boulder climber
Andy Cairns
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Jun 18, 2016 - 06:56pm PT
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Too many words for a simple idea, Largo.
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jgill
Boulder climber
The high prairie of southern Colorado
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Jun 18, 2016 - 08:42pm PT
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If I did have the chance to actually question a so-called conscious machine, I would instruct it to switch off its data processing functions (or let them idle), and to spend a quiet hour being with the experience of being detached to tasking, and have "Hal" describe to me the experience of simply being - a pretty standard inquiry per the subjective adventures (JL)
Suppose for a moment that the machine actually is conscious. What would it say to you to convince you? And would the rest of us be able also to ascertain the validity of its conscious state? You seem to be asserting that only Zen meditators are capable of validating consciousness, and that through the medium of language and words - which are meaningless or poorly defined.
Maybe a mind meld would work.
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jstan
climber
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Jun 18, 2016 - 09:31pm PT
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We all accept as a given that, absent bad programming or a faulty MOSFET, a computer's results are always very close to those obtained by manual calculation.
What would you conclude if a computer/machine began feeding you bad data that seemed designed to mislead you? Would you not think, at least for a moment,
the machine was conscious?
That it had adopted the practice of deceit, a very common human characteristic?
This seems a substantial variation on the Turing test. Substantial because here there is quantitative data.
Participants on this thread are expending calories considering the possibility that computers could be conscious. If they consider this a real possibility then they should also be attempting to formulate an industrial strength program for early detection.
Numenta's development of CPU's mimicking actual processes in the brain, in order to yield Bayesian conclusions from "Big Data" may well push us to check those conclusions in some detail.
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MikeL
Social climber
Southern Arizona
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Jun 19, 2016 - 06:36am PT
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Jgill: . . . validating consciousness . . . .
You can't mean this. I think you mean "defining consciousness." To validate means, I believe, to verify the value or truth of something. Doing either for consciousness seems, well, . . . ludicrous and ridiculous? (Angels on a pin, anyone?) It’s a glitch in cognition. A useless endeavor. A waste of cycles and bandwidth. Purely academic.
Again, people are furiously investigating what is right in front of them.
SDASU (sit down and shut up).
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