RE: [agi] What are qualia...

[Ben Goertzel]

 

Philip,

 

You should read this edited volume

 

http://cognet.mit.edu/library/books/view?isbn=0262133709

 

it's a damn good one, and I think it will enrich your perspective on these topics.  Not that any of the authors have solved all the problems of consciousness, but a lot of them are very smart and have thought about the topic very hard and come up interesting ideas.

 

Among other things, some papers there describe research proving that FOCUSED ATTENTION can occur in humans WITHOUT consciousness.

 

So, while there's a close relationship between consciousness and attention, it's not an identity by any means...

 

-- Ben

 

 

A abstract and TOC of the book are as follows:

 

****

 

Neural Correlates of Consciousness

Thomas Metzinger

This book brings together an international group of neuroscientists and philosophers who are investigating how the content of subjective experience is correlated with events in the brain. The fundamental methodological problem in consciousness research is the subjectivity of the target phenomenon--the fact that conscious experience, under standard conditions, is always tied to an individual, first-person perspective. The core empirical question is whether and how physical states of the human nervous system can be mapped onto the content of conscious experience. The search for the neural correlates of consciousness (NCC) has become a highly active field of investigation in recent years. Methods such as single-cell recording in monkeys and brain imaging and electrophysiology in humans, applied to such phenomena as blindsight, implicit/explicit cognition, and binocular rivalry, have generated a wealth of data. The same period has seen the development of a number of theories about NCC location. This volume brings together the leading experimentalists and theoreticians in the field. Topics include foundational and evolutionary issues, global integration, vision, consciousness and the NMDA receptor complex, neuroimaging, implicit processes, intentionality and phenomenal volition, schizophrenia, social cognition, and the phenomenal self.

Table of Contents   Preface 1   Introduction: Consciousness Research at the End of the Twentieth Century I   Foundational Issues and Conceptual Problems 2   What Is a Neural Correlate of Consciousness? by David J. Chalmers 3   The Perennial Problem of the Reductive Explainability of Phenomenal Consciousness: C. D. Broad on the Explanatory Gap by Ansgar Beckermann 4   Prospects for a Scientific Research Program on Consciousness by Antti Revonsuo 5   The Evolution and Ontogeny of Consciousness by Gerhard Roth II   Candidates for the NCC I: Representational Dynamics 6   The Unconscious Homunculus by Francis Crick and Christof Koch 7   A Neurobiology for Consciousness by Antonio R. Damasio 8   Phenomenal Awareness and Consciousness from a Neurobiological Perspective by Wolf Singer 9   Reentry and the Dynamic Core: Neural Correlates of Conscious Experience by Gerald M. Edelman and Giulio Tononi III   Candidates for the NCC II: Vision 10   Visual Perception Without Awareness: Priming Responses by Color by Thomas Schmidt 11   Face Representation Without Conscious Processing by Beena Khurana 12   Space in the Brain: Different Neural Substrates for Allocentric and Egocentric Frames of Reference by Melvyn A. Goodale and Kelly J. Murphy 13   Conscious Registration of Continuous and Discrete Visual Events by Romi Nijhawan and Beena Khurana 14   Imaging Conscious Vision by Dominic ffytche 15   Binocular Rivalry and Human Visual Awareness by Erik D. Lumer IV   Candidates for the NCC III: Consciousness, Anesthesia, and the NMDA Receptor Complex 16   NMDA Receptor-Mediated Computational Processes and Phenomenal Consciousness by Hans Flohr 17   How to Understand the N in NCC by Valerie Gray Hardcastle 18   The Role of NMDA Receptors in Consciousness: What We Learn from Anesthetic Mechanisms? by Nicholas P. Franks and William R. Lieb 19   NMDA Receptor-Mediated Consciousness: A Theoretical Framework for Understanding the Effects of Anesthesia on Cognition? by Jackie Andrade V   Toward the Neural Correlates of Selfhood, Agency, and Social Cognition 20   The Subjectivity of Subjective Experience: A Representationist Analysis of the First-Person Perspective by Thomas Metzinger 21   Awareness of Agency: Three Levels of Analysis by Joëlle Proust 22   The Acting Subject: Toward the Neural Basis of Social Cognition by Vittorio Gallese   Contributors   Index

 

 

-----Original Message-----
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]On Behalf Of Philip Sutton
Sent: Saturday, January 22, 2005 11:30 AM
To: agi@v2.listbox.com
Subject: RE: [agi] What are qualia...

Hi Ben,

I just read Chalmers article and yours.

You concluded your article with:

> In artificial intelligence terms, the present theory suggests that if

> an AI program is constructed so that its dynamics give rise to a

> constant stream of patterns that are novel and significant (measured

> relative to the system itself), then this program will report

> experiences of awareness and consciousness somewhat similar to those

> that humans report.

This is a useful statement because it testable at some stage when AI exists that can hold complex conversations.

By the way, would it be true that a "novel and significant" pattern is one that by definition trigger the AI's attention system?  If so then that is a commmon point in both our speculations.

I think I've nearly exhausted the value of my speculations for the moment.  My intuition is that qualia are going to be different in intelligences that do *not* have long evolutionary histories of being social, compared to those that do have such histories (a species could be currently non-social, but if it has evolved from antecendents that have gone through a social phase then my guess is that it would experieice qualia more like social species ie. the capacity for experiencing qualia is like to be retained to some degree). 

My guess is that there will be structured processes discovered in brains that account for the subjective experience of qualia - and that qualia will not be experienced without some appropriate system for qualia generation ie. pattern recognition by an AI will not be enough by itself to give rise to the experience of qualia.  But this intuition is so speculative and so poorly based on my part that it probably doesn't warrant comment from others! :)  So I might leave it there and just wait to see what people come up with in the future.

Cheers, Philip

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