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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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Gnome Ofthe Diabase
climber
Out Of Bed
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Jun 19, 2016 - 07:02am PT
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0 no, not this imbecile again!
I will not sit down and shut up
I will call MikeL a phuk tho,
I'm not on your band width or even in your wheel house though with drugs they say I could be
That and a cup of coffee won't get you jack!
But knowing what I do of
Jack I want you mikes
PHooker to take that back
Gill is lord and master, not care if not climbing any more he was 20 years out front!
And you ? And me for a fact
But you take it back!
Mr Gills thick skinn not withstanding though I'm sure it will stand to
Any of
Your
Puny insults!
And for what is Mind!
I can tell you ' cause I have kept all mine
Mined many, for what they have to offer~
The Alpha Me. . .
Schizophrenia is my bed fellow,
But
I rise above it
Blind or
No?
I go
CLIMBING!
Con shush ness, what a mess I ate the brown but loved the purple Haze
The going to India,
Led to pain,
Garcia died in 95,
I went with family to
Hawaii wher ther idz oudder phlays up thinking!
Happy Father's Day to drinkers of the cool aid
I think some of you need to
Get laid. , . ,
Sorry that it's come to that
MikeL take it .
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MikeL
Social climber
Southern Arizona
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Jun 19, 2016 - 08:49am PT
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Thoughts from the mathematician and physicist, Blaise Pascal.
All of humanity’s problems stem from man’s inability to sit quietly in a room alone.
This is what I was referring to when I wrote SDASU.
Small minds are concerned with the extraordinary, great minds with the ordinary.
There is nothing more everyday ordinary AND extraordinary than consciousness.
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Jan
Mountain climber
Colorado & Nepal
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Jun 19, 2016 - 09:03am PT
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jstan for the win!
Meanwhile Gnome, it seems to me that jgill does a perfectly good job of defending himself, and really doesn't need any help with that.
Believe it or not, we are all friends here.
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MH2
Boulder climber
Andy Cairns
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Jun 19, 2016 - 10:46am PT
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“I will start,” said the conjurer, ”by explaining the physics of the world you live in.”
“Everything you have experienced and are experiencing, from your first glimpse of the Elite café to the metal of that spoon in your fingers, the taste of the soup in your mouth, is made of one thing.”
“Atoms,” said Lanark.
“No. Print. Some worlds are made of atoms but yours is made of tiny marks* marching in neat lines, like armies of insects, across pages and pages of white paper. I say these lines are marching, but that is a metaphor. They are perfectly still. They are lifeless. How can they reproduce the movement and noises of the battle of Borodino, the white whale ramming the ship, the fallen angels on the flaming lake?”
“By being read,” said Lanark impatiently.
“Exactly. Your survival as a character and mine as an author depend on us seducing a living soul into our printed world and trapping it here long enough for us to steal the imaginative energy which gives us life. To cast a spell over this stranger I am doing abominable things. I am prostituting my most sacred memories into the commonest possible words and sentences. When I need more striking sentences or ideas I steal them from other writers, usually twisting them to blend with my own. Worst of all I am using the great world given at birth - the world of atoms - as a ragbag of shapes and colours to make this second-hand entertainment look more amusing.”
* This is a false antithesis. Printed paper has an atomic structure like anything else. “Words” would have been a better term than “print,” being less definably concrete.
From Lanark
by Alasdair Gray
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jogill
climber
Colorado
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Jun 19, 2016 - 11:21am PT
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Thanks, Gnome, but MikeL and I enjoy the bantering on the thread, and I don't get bent out of shape (well, usually!). The same for Largo - he's a big boy and can give as well as take. Guess it would be pretty boring if we all agreed on everything (especially if that "everything" included glimpsing reality in empty awareness!)
;>)
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MikeL
Social climber
Southern Arizona
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Jun 19, 2016 - 11:26am PT
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Jgill: . . . especially if that "everything" included glimpsing reality in empty awareness!
(My god. You said that perfectly. You may not agree with this, but I think you ARE understanding what’s being pointed at . . . not that it’s not all that important.)
;->
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MH2
Boulder climber
Andy Cairns
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Jun 19, 2016 - 06:06pm PT
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I like it when the thread passes through a down-homey patch. Mom would have said it differently than MikeL, but the sentiment sounds the same.
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