Brent Meeker: > > Colin Hales wrote: > > > > Stathis Papaioannou > > <snip> > > > >>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. 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. > >> > >>Stathis Papaioannou > >> > > > > > > Please consider the plight of the zombie scientist with a huge set of > > sensory feeds and similar set of effectors. All carry similar signal > > encoding and all, in themselves, bestow no experiential qualities on the > > zombie. > > > > Add a capacity to detect regularity in the sensory feeds. > > Add a scientific goal-seeking behaviour. > > > > Note that this zombie... > > a) has the internal life of a dreamless sleep > > b) has no concept or percept of body or periphery > > c) has no concept that it is embedded in a universe. > > > > I put it to you that science (the extraction of regularity) is the > science > > of zombie sensory fields, not the science of the natural world outside > the > > zombie scientist. No amount of creativity (except maybe random choices) > > would ever lead to any abstraction of the outside world that gave it the > > ability to handle novelty in the natural world outside the zombie > scientist. > > > > No matter how sophisticated the sensory feeds and any guesswork as to a > > model (abstraction) of the universe, the zombie would eventually find > > novelty invisible because the sensory feeds fail to depict the novelty > .ie. > > same sensory feeds for different behaviour of the natural world. > > > > Technology built by a zombie scientist would replicate zombie sensory > feeds, > > not deliver an independently operating novel chunk of hardware with a > > defined function(if the idea of function even has meaning in this > instance). > > > > The purpose of consciousness is, IMO, to endow the cognitive agent with > at > > least a repeatable (not accurate!) simile of the universe outside the > > cognitive agent so that novelty can be handled. Only then can the zombie > > scientist detect arbitrary levels of novelty and do open ended science > (or > > survive in the wild world of novel environmental circumstance). >
> Almost all organisms have become extinct. Handling *arbitrary* levels of > novelty is probably too much to ask of any species; and it's certainly > more than is necessary to survive for millenia. I am talking purely about scientific behaviour, not general behaviour. A creature with limited learning capacity and phenomenal scenes could quite happily live in an ecological niche until the niche changed. I am not asking any creature other than a scientist to be able to appreciate arbitrary levels of novelty. > > > > > In the absence of the functionality of phenomenal consciousness and with > > finite sensory feeds you cannot construct any world-model (abstraction) > in > > the form of an innate (a-priori) belief system that will deliver an > endless > > ability to discriminate novelty. In a very Godellian way eventually a > limit > > would be reach where the abstracted model could not make any prediction > that > > can be detected. > > So that's how we got string theory! > > >The zombie is, in a very real way, faced with 'truths' that > > exist but can't be accessed/perceived. As such its behaviour will be > > fundamentally fragile in the face of novelty (just like all computer > > programs are). > > How do you know we are so robust. Planck said, "A new idea prevails, not > by the > conversion of adherents, but by the retirement and demise of opponents." > In other > words only the young have the flexibility to adopt new ideas. Ironically > Planck > never really believed quantum mechanics was more than a calculational > trick. The robustness is probably in that science is actually, at the level of critical argument (like this, now), a super-organism. In retrospect I think QM will be regarded as a side effect of the desperate attempt to mathematically abtract appearances rather then deal with the structure that is behaving quantum-mechanically. After the event they'll all be going..."what were we thinking!".... it won't be wrong... just not useful in the sense that any of its considerations are not about underlying structure. > > > ----------------------------------- > > Just to make the zombie a little more real... consider the industrial > > control system computer. I have designed, installed hundreds and wired > up > > tens (hundreds?) of thousands of sensors and an unthinkable number of > > kilometers of cables. (NEVER again!) In all cases I put it to you that > the > > phenomenal content of sensory connections may, at best, be characterised > as > > whatever it is like to have electrons crash through wires, for that is > what > > is actually going on. As far as the internal life of the CPU is > concerned... > > whatever it is like to be an electrically noisy hot rock, regardless of > the > > program....although the character of the noise may alter with different > > programs! > > That's like say whatever it is like to be you, it is at best some waves of > chemical > potential. You don't *know* that the control system is not conscious - > unless you > know what structure or function makes a system conscious. > There is nothing there except wires and electrically noisy hot rocks, plastic and other materials = <stuff>. Whatever its consciousness is... it is the consciousness of the <stuff>. The function is an epiphenomenon at the scale of a human user that has nothing to do with the experiential qualities of being the computer. Colin Hales --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ 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 -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
