Freethought & Rationalism Archive

excreationist · 02-23-2002, 03:37 AM

Quote:

Originally posted by Jesse:
The "hard AI" position would tend to suggest that it's not the physical properties of our brains that makes us conscious, but just the causal structure they instantiate. Instantiate the same causal structure on a very different type of system--a computer, an abacus, an enormous network of billiard balls, whatever--and the system would have the same sort of consciousness.

Well it requires a huge amount of energy though... like a computer or our brains. If it is an abacus or a network of billiard balls, there would need to be a power source. If the billiard balls just rolled down hill and knocked other ones, this isn't good enough - my system talks about it learning and having memories - chain reactions of billiard balls could do logic, but I don't think they could store and modify memories which could be retrieved without the memory being disturbed.

Quote:

Obviously different types of causal structures might not experience human-like consciousness, but then most of us accept that animals have their own kind of consciousness, even if it's less "complex" than ours in some sense.

Note my definitions for intelligent systems in the fifth post on page 7. Though many people may say that many animals are conscious, my definitions are much more precise. (My definition of a conscious system is in its infancy though, but the definitions for aware and programmed/processing systems are complete as far as I know).
So though most people are very vague about what is and isn't conscious, I'm not really.

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But if you believe that consciousness is an "objective" property of certain systems (in the sense that it's not just a matter of outsiders' opinions, like 'cuteness'--I think I would still be conscious even if no one around me believed I was) then if you also believe that certain causal structures are entirely lacking in consciousness, then there'd have to be some sort of strict cutoff point between systems that are conscious and systems that are not. I suppose it's possible that such a strict cutoff exists, but it seems rather inelegant and strange. 1003 interacting neurons might be conscious while 1002 are not? A computation involving more than 156 steps leads to consciousness but a computation with fewer steps does not? I find it hard to believe that reality would be set up that way.

Basically for me it is about where there are fully functional motivational systems, memory, etc. Then a system could be said to be aware. As far as consciousness goes, I might use the kinds of definitions that psychologists use when talking about a human's cognitive development. For me, I don't really consider a kid to be properly conscious unless they start asking questions about everything, including death. But that's a pretty fuzzy line. For me, the distance between aware and not aware is fairly distinct, but the distinction between basical animal-type awareness (that babies have) and human-type consciousness (which is probably beyond apes) isn't very clear.
It isn't about one extra neuron - it is more about the person having more memories and using different styles of thinking - adults usually think in a different way to what babies do (they plan ahead, are better at anticipating things, etc).

And BTW, what do you think about my definitions for processing/programmed systems (animals that can't learn [or be trained] new and novel behaviours) and aware systems? I'm talking about dynamic systems made up of interacting systems. Not just "complexity".

IesusDomini:
Yeah, that's what I was talking about... I guess consciousness should be about the full self-aware machinery... and that was in my definition... ("Aware systems which utilize a meta-language to analyse themselves.")

excreationist · 02-23-2002, 03:43 AM

Quote:

Originally posted by Devilnaut:
The problem here I think is your conception of consciousness. I don't believe that it is something that suddenly pops into existence once a system becomes sufficiently complex. "Conscious" should be what we call a sufficiently complex system. It is not a separate property that matter strives to invoke, it is simply a label for a sufficiently complex system.

I don't think any old complexity is good enough to lead to consciousness... the weather is extremely complex, but it doesn't do the things which I said that aware systems require - like learn from its past and develop possibly mistaken *beliefs* about the results of its possible actions and weigh up the options. It is just blindly pushed around by heat and things.

Devilnaut · 02-23-2002, 08:32 AM

Quote:

Originally posted by excreationist:
I don't think any old complexity is good enough to lead to consciousness... the weather is extremely complex, but it doesn't do the things which I said that aware systems require - like learn from its past and develop possibly mistaken *beliefs* about the results of its possible actions and weigh up the options. It is just blindly pushed around by heat and things.

I didn't mean to suggest that this was a possibility. By "complex systems" i simply meant systems sufficiently complex to produce properties that we'd say fit our conceptions of consciousness.

excreationist · 02-24-2002, 10:35 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by Devilnaut:
I didn't mean to suggest that this was a possibility. By "complex systems" i simply meant systems sufficiently complex to produce properties that we'd say fit our conceptions of consciousness.

Well I'd say that the weather is at least as complex as a human brain... The human brain is only made up of about 100 billion separate units (neurons) that each can only interact with several thousand other neurons. There are also chemicals flowing around, which makes things more complex, but still, the weather is far more complex. The weather involves huge numbers of freely interacting gas molecules and dust particles. Also, there are chemical reactions going on in the case of lightning (I think it can split up nitrogen-based molecules up or something). There are also molecules recombining because of UV radiation in the atmosphere, etc, etc.

[ February 24, 2002: Message edited by: excreationist ]</p>

Devilnaut · 02-24-2002, 11:49 PM

Heheh.. apparently I'm still being misunderstood.

By sufficiently complex, I mean sufficient to produce whatever properties we normally associate with consciousness.

devilnaut

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02-24-2002, 11:49 PM	#185
Devilnaut Regular Member Join Date: Mar 2001 Location: Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada Posts: 374	Heheh.. apparently I'm still being misunderstood. By sufficiently complex, I mean sufficient to produce whatever properties we normally associate with consciousness. devilnaut

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