Stathis Papaioannou wrote: > > > Brent meeker writes: > > >>>>>>I could make a robot that, having suitable thermocouples, would quickly >>>>>>withdraw it's >>>>>>hand from a fire; but not be conscious of it. Even if I provide the >>>>>>robot with >>>>>>"feelings", i.e. judgements about good/bad/pain/pleasure I'm not sure it >>>>>>would be >>>>>>conscious. But if I provide it with "attention" and memory, so that it >>>>>>noted the >>>>>>painful event as important and necessary to remember because of it's >>>>>>strong negative >>>>>>affect; then I think it would be conscious. >>>>> >>>>> >>>>>It's interesting that people actually withdraw their hand from the fire >>>>>*before* they experience >>>>>the pain. The withdrawl is a reflex, presumably evolved in organisms with >>>>>the most primitive >>>>>central nervour systems, while the pain seems to be there as an >>>>>afterthought to teach us a >>>>>lesson so we won't do it again. Thus, from consideration of evolutionary >>>>>utility consciousness >>>>>does indeed seem to be a side-effect of memory and learning. >>>> >>>>Even more curious, volitional action also occurs before one is aware of it. >>>>Are you >>>>familiar with the experiments of Benjamin Libet and Grey Walter? >>> >>> >>>These experiments showed that in apparently voluntarily initiated motion, >>>motor cortex activity >>>actually preceded the subject's awareness of his intention by a substantial >>>fraction of a second. >>>In other words, we act first, then "decide" to act. These studies did not >>>examine pre-planned >>>action (presumably that would be far more technically difficult) but it is >>>easy to imagine the analogous >>>situation whereby the action is unconsciously "planned" before we become >>>aware of our decision. In >>>other words, free will is just a feeling which occurs after the fact. This >>>is consistent with the logical >>>impossibility of something that is neither random nor determined, which is >>>what I feel my free will to be. >>> >>> >>> >>>>>I also think that this is an argument against zombies. If it were possible >>>>>for an organism to >>>>>behave just like a conscious being, but actually be unconscious, then why >>>>>would consciousness >>>>>have evolved? >>>> >>>>An interesting point - but hard to give any answer before pinning down what >>>>we mean >>>>by consciousness. For example Bruno, Julian Jaynes, and Daniel Dennett >>>>have >>>>explanations; but they explain somewhat different consciousnesses, or at >>>>least >>>>different aspects. >>> >>> >>>Consciousness is the hardest thing to explain but the easiest thing to >>>understand, if it's your own >>>consciousness at issue. I think we can go a long way discussing it assuming >>>that we do know what >>>we are talking about even though we can't explain it. The question I ask is, >>>why did people evolve >>>with this consciousness thing, whatever it is? The answer must be, I think, >>>that it is a necessary >>>side-effect of the sort of neural complexity that underpins our behaviour. >>>If it were not, and it >>>were possible that beings could behave exactly like humans and not be >>>conscious, then it would >>>have been wasteful of nature to have provided us with consciousness. >> >>This is not necessarily so. First, evolution is constrained by what goes >>before. >>Its engineering solutions often seem rube-goldberg, e.g. backward retina in >>mammals. > > > Sure, but vision itself would not have evolved unnecessarily. > > >> Second, there is selection against some evolved feature only to the extent >> it has a >>(net) cost. For example, Jaynes explanation of consciousness conforms to >>these two >>criteria. I think that any species that evolves intelligence comparable to >>ours will >>be conscious for reasons somewhat like Jaynes theory. They will be social >>and this >>combined with intelligence will make language a good evolutionary move. Once >>they >>have language, remembering what has happened, in order to communicate and >>plan, in >>symbolic terms will be a easy and natural evolvement. Whether that leads to >>hearing >>your own narrative in your head, as Jaynes supposes, is questionable; but it >>would be >>consistent with evolution. It takes advantage of existing structure and >>functions to >>realize a useful new function. > > > Agreed. So consciousness is either there for a reason or it's a necessary > side-effect of the sort > of brains we have and the way we have evolved. It's still theoretically > possible that if the latter > is the case, we might have been unconscious if we had evolved completely > different kinds of > brains, but similar behaviour - although I think it unlikely. > > >>>This does not necessarily >>>mean that computers can be conscious: maybe if we had evolved with >>>electronic circuits in our >>>heads rather than neurons consciousness would not have been a necessary >>>side-effect. >> >>But my point is that this may come down to what we would mean by a computer >>being >>conscious. Bruno has an answer in terms of what the computer can prove. >>Jaynes (and >>probably John McCarthy) would say a computer is conscious if it creates a >>narrative >>of its experience which it can access as memory. > > > Maybe this is a copout, but I just don't think it is even logically possible > to explain what consciousness > *is* unless you have it.
Not being *logically* possible means entailing a contradiction - I doubt that. But anyway you do have it and you think I do because of the way we interact. So if you interacted the same way with a computer and you further found out that the computer was a neural network that had learned through interaction with people over a period of years, you'd probably infer that the computer was conscious - at least you wouldn't be sure it wasn't. >It's like the problem of explaining vision to a blind man: he might be the >world's > greatest scientific expert on it but still have zero idea of what it is like > to see - and that's even though > he shares most of the rest of his cognitive structure with other humans, and > can understand analogies > using other sensations. Knowing what sort of program a conscious computer > would have to run to be > conscious, what the purpose of consciousness is, and so on, does not help me > to understand what the > computer would be experiencing, except by analogy with what I myself > experience. But that's true of everything. Suppose we knew a lot more about brains and we created an intelligent computer using brain-like functional architecture and it acted like a conscious human being, then I'd say we understood its consciousness better than we understand quantum field theory or global economics. Brent Meeker > > Stathis Papaioannou --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
