Colin,
May I suggest if you want clarity you dispense with eccentric philosophical
terms like p-consciousness (phenomenal consciousness?) The phantom limb case
you bring up is interesting but first I have to understand what you're talking
about. Would you mind sticking to simple, basic (and scientific) words like
sensation/emotion/ consciousness and restate your position?
Colin/Mike Tintner wrote:
Colin:YES....Brains don't have their own sensors or self-represent with a
perceptual field. So what? That's got nothing whatever to do with the matter at
hand. CUT cortex and you can kill off "what it is like" percepts out there in
the body (although in confusing ways). Touch appropriate exposed cortex with a
non-invasive probe and you can create percepts apparently, but not actually,
elsewhere in the body.
Cut off your sensors and your body -remove the body from the brain - and
you also don't have any form of consciousness or sensation - contrary to the
brain-in-a-vat delusion. However if you remove the brain entirely - from an
evolutionary perspective - you still have consciousness. Living organisms
clearly had and have intelligence *before* the brain was evolved - *before*
intelligence was centralised in one area of the body. Intelligence was clearly
at first *distributed* through a proto-nervous system throughout the body.
Watch a sea anemone wait and then grab, and then devour a fish that approaches
it and you will be convinced of that. The anemone does not have a brain only a
nervous system.
You are trying to locate consciousness in one area of the body rather than
in the brain-body as a whole. It's clearly wrong. You - your self - and your
consciousness - are a whole body affair. Understanding this is vital not only
for understanding consciousness but also general intelligence and creativity,
as I have dealt with elsewhere
I'm talking about human P-consciousness[1] specifically. I'm not talking
about its role in intelligence or the P-consciousness or otherwise in any other
context like an invertebrate. I just want to make sure everyone's on the same
physiological page for human level AGI.
Yes, the normal circumstances are that P-consciousness arises in brain-body
as a whole. But pathological circumstances are very telling. Phantom limb is
where you could have, say, have a perceptual arm 'out there' in space in a
really agonising contorted way, but there's no actual arm. Male>Female sex
changes can produce phantom penises etc. .... this is P-consciousness of body
without body part.
The fact that P-consciousness occurs in any particular embodiment
circumstance or intellectual capacity does not alter the empirical fact of the
localisation of the origin of the sensations in humans to the cranial CNS of
the human. Very specific localised cranial (not spinal) central nervous system
(CNS) neurons go to a great deal of trouble to construct the P-conscious
scenes. The peripheral nervous system (PNS) and the spinal CNS are 100%
sensationless, including all cranial peripherals. That's the main outcome.
If there is anyone out there that thinks that merely hooking up a sensor to a
computer intrinsically creates a percept or a sensation - that is fundamentally
erroneous. That includes a camera chip or any other peripheral. I have actually
met a senior AI worker with that delusion installed in his mental kit. He
didn't like being told about the atomic level reality.
I'd like to dispel all such delusion in this place so that neurally inspired
AGI gets discussed accurately, even if your intent is to "explain
P-consciousness away"... know exactly what you are explaining away and exactly
where it is.
cheers,
Colin Hales
[1] Block, N. (1995), 'On a Confusion About a Function of Consciousness'.
Behavioral and Brain Sciences 18(2):pp. 227-247.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
agi | Archives | Modify Your Subscription
-------------------------------------------
agi
Archives: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/303/=now
RSS Feed: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/303/
Modify Your Subscription:
https://www.listbox.com/member/?member_id=8660244&id_secret=120640061-aded06
Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
