Ierrellus

Taffy,

In order for a machine to exhibit human "consciousness", it would have to be constructed using reference from homology, not from analogy. The homology of human consciousness remains a topic of wild speculation.

Ierrellus
PAX

Mr. Sammi

Humans are almost consciously unaware of their low level processors. This in fact does not mean that the human is unconsciously not-blind to its parts.

Again you fellas (no women) are being selective in your connotations. You are all basing your replies on the assumption that the only things that perform acts of consciousness are conscious. You ignore completely the supporting staff of consciousness.

Again I will quote from nature. We are blind to how the eyes see, we are not conscious of the mechanisms of sight, we are not conscious of the means of sight. However this does not imply that the mechanism of sight is blind to what it is doing, or what it is seeing, BUT, it can report conditions of itself, conditions of its network, conditions of its topology...

Suddenly your eyes hurt, start to fail, but, you were never conscious of the cause, how can this be?

Sammi Na Boodie (I am b ack)

snatchbalance

Tron,

Either you are evading the question, or you just don't understand the question.

Here, let me make it plain, the brain and body are part and parcel of an organism. Now, if you create, somehow, a human style brain and put it in a human body, you may have created human intelligence.

If you create a machine of electronic components, that becomes, one way or another, self aware, you may have created some type of machine intelligence.

Will the machine have feeligs comparable to the human?

I really don't know why I bother.

Do you have even a incling about the structure and function of the autonomic nervouse system? Will your machine breath? Will it know the feeling of asphixiation?

The unconscious, so let's see, you'll provide the capacity for emotional trauma and let your machine develope phobias. This is part a survival mechanism that predates brains of any sort. Do you think it depends mathematical algorithims?


Talk about a laugh. Why not go and actually think about your position before posting nonsesne.

Why is it not clear to you that human style consciousness requires a human style body?(Just like bat style consciousness requires a bat style body, no?)

SB

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snatchbalance

Sammi,

This is the point that I've been trying to get Tron to ackowledge. He's too caught up in trying to promote his own agenda.

I would add that the sensations involved are specific to a biological organism. If they can be reproduced, or even approximated, by a different type of "machine", well that would be a pretty difficult proposition to support.

SB

Taffy Lewis

tronvillain:

John Searle says some things relevant to your claim about computation. In his book The Rediscovery of the Mind, Searle has a discussion of computation in which he points out how the concept implies 'multiple realizability'. He says "To find out if an object is really a digital computer, it turns out that we do not actually have to look for 0's and 1's, etc.; rather we just have to look for something that we could treat as or count as or that could be used to function as 0's or 1's. Furthermore, to make the matter more puzzling, it turns out that this machine could be made out of just about anything."

Searle thinks that multiple realizability implies universal realizability. He says:

He goes on to say that the definition of computation could be tightened up and that might allow one to avoid the consequences he mentioned above. He says, "I think the main reason that the proponents do not see that multiple or universal realizability is a problem is that they do not see it as a consequence of a much deeper point, namely that "syntax" is not the name of a physical feature, like mass or gravity."

He goes on to say:

And later he says:

All of this is from Chapter 9 of his book.

Taffy Lewis

excreationist,

But the question is, what are the necessary conditions for having beliefs, desires, and intentional actions.

Synaesthesia

snatchbalance,
As a matter of fact, this is the basic conception behind doctrine of vitalism. You are assuming that one aspect of our organization that is responsible for our intelligence is the fact that we are made of material characteristic of self-replicating organisms on earth.

You have not justified this assumption, you have merely put forward as a matter of fact that there is something (what it is you don't say) about biology that permits consciousness, something that other sorts of organization cannot emulate.


Hey Taffy, thanks for bringing up this point!:
This is at first glance a very confounding consideration for functionalism, and is a very popular method of attacking reductionism. Yet Searl has (not uncharacteristically, see Chinese room) failed to discuss the very areas most vital to his argument, the very sorts of considerations at it's conceptual heart.

When he asserts that we could find a pattern of molecules structurally isomorphic to a computer program in a wall, I cannot help but wonder how the wall manages recursive feedback and functional quirks of a computer program. How exactly would we go about finding this isomorphism?

Searl doesn't clarify what he means in the quote at question. The devil, in this case, is most certainly in the details.

Let us imagine we are something very near gods. We pick out a few trillion air molecules to emulate a brain. Since their movement is quite chaotic, we need to invoke our super-intelligence and come up with a fantastically complicated procedure to translate the movement of these molecules into sensible, coherent cognition. Now here is the devil: the procedure by which we interpret the air molecules as a brain will itself be far, more complex than the system of air (or the wall), indeed, FAR more complex than the brain itself!

Now I wonder, at this point, how much of this computation is really a function of our vastly convoluted interpretive mechanism, and how much of it is the chaotic movement of air molecules, or the slow oscillation of our wall?

How much of Michelangelo David is marble, how much of it is the work of Michelangelo?


------

Searl's conception of computation being relative to an observer is not without merit. We can treat natural events as decision algorithms, for example flipping a coin. However, he places undue stress upon the observer being conscious, a well evolved observer. Functional proccessing occurred for billions of years in functional nervous or chamical systems in small animals and cells before we observers ever came onto the scene.

Regards,
Synaesthesia

snatchbalance

syneathasia,

Nope, never said anything like that. I said that consciousness, as we presently know it, is obviously an emergent property of certain arrangments of biological material.

Can other types of matter acheive consciousness; I guess so, but no one has seen it yet.

Will it's nature be different than biological consciousness, think the answer has to be yes.

I guess that I could go on to say that the sensations of biological creaturs will differ from the sensations experienced by non biological creatures. Further, I would say that whatever "feelings" or sensations that may be experienced by non-biological creatures, would be unrecognisable, as such, to biological creatures. Why? Because feelings are inseperable from changes in physiological states.

SB

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tronvillain

snatchbalance, permit me to quote myself:
Now, on to your last post:
Exactly which question are you talking about?

If I take your human style brain and put it in an artificial body which merely mimics a human body (responding to and creating appropriate neural and hormonal messages), will you still be human? Yes. If it's done well enough, you won't even notice. If I take your human style brain and put it in a machine that simply simulates a human body, will you still be human? Yes. Again, if it's done well enough (extremely difficult to do), you won't even notice.

Now, what if we start in on your brain? If we gradually replace each neuron in your brain with machines that simply mimic the operation of organic neurons, down to their responses and production of neurotransmitters, will you still be human? Yes. If it's done well enough, you won't even notice. If we then do away with hormones and neurotransmitters, with each artificial neuron transmitting to a computer which then simulates their action and feeds the result to the other artificial neurons will you still be human? Yes. Again, if it's done well enough, you won't even notice. Now, if we gradually replace each artifical neuron with a computer simulation, will you still be human? Yes. Yes again, if it's done well enough, you won't even notice.

So, what do we get if we put these two scenarios together? We get you living entirely within a machine, and you didn't even notice. Exactly how are the brain and the body part and parcel of an organism now?

True, but that does not preclude it being similar or identical to human intelligence.

Maybe - it all depends on how it is built. If the architecture of its intelligence is comparable to that of a human, then yes.

I don't know. Perhaps you haven't really thought it through.

Yes, I do have an inkling about the structure and function of the autonomic nervous system. Does the question have a point? As for breathing and knowing the feeling of asphixiation, it is not clear that either are necessary for human style consciousness, but either could theoretically be simulated for an appropriately constructed artificial intelligence to be created. They are, after all, simply patterns of neural impulses sent to the brain.

As I mentioned before, it is quite likely that it is impossible to create consciousness without an unconscious, whatever its style. It depends on patterns of neural activity in the brain, which could in itself be reproduced, or perhaps replaced given a more complete understanding. Oh, and the unconscious does not "predate brains of any sort", at least not in any sense that I am familiar with the term.

I see you have taken to talking to yourself. I have no problem with that, but I would prefer you not do it in posts addressed to me.

It is clear to me that human style consciousness requires a human style mind architecture. What is not clear to me is that a human style mind architecture requires a human style body.

tronvillain

Taffy Lewis, I never claimed that the brain was a digital computer, which makes most of your post pointless. Everything that the brain does could be done by a digital computer, but the brain itself is not a digitical computer.