On 10 Aug 2012, at 18:36, meekerdb wrote:
On 8/10/2012 5:04 AM, Russell Standish wrote:
On Fri, Aug 10, 2012 at 12:10:43PM +0200, Bruno Marchal wrote:
On 10 Aug 2012, at 00:23, Russell Standish wrote:
It is plain to me that thoughts can be either conscious or
unconscious, and the conscious component is a strict minority of
the
total.
This is not obvious for me, and I have to say that it is a point
which is put in doubt by the salvia divinorum reports (including
mine). When you dissociate the brain in parts, perhaps many parts,
you realise that they might all be conscious. In fact the very idea
of non-consciousness might be a construct of consciousness, and be
realized by partial amnesia. I dunno. For the same reason I have
stopped to believe that we can be unconscious during sleep. I think
that we can only be amnesic-of-'previous-consciousness'.
With due respect to your salvia experiences, which I dare not follow,
I'm still more presuaded by the likes of Daniel Dennett, and his
"pandemonia" theory of the mind. In that idea, many subconscious
process, working disparately, solve different aspects of the problems
at hand, or provide different courses of action. The purpose of
consciousness is to select from among the course of action
presented by the pandemonium of subconscious processes - admittedly
consciousness per se may not be necessary for this role - any
unifying
(aka reductive) process may be sufficient.
But a course of action could be 'selected', i.e. acted upon, without
consciousness (in fact I often do so). I think what constitutes
consciousness is making up a narrative about what is 'selected'.
The evolutionary reason for making up this narrative is to enter it
into memory so it can be explained to others and to yourself when
you face a similar choice in the future. That the memory of these
past decisions took the form of a narrative derives from the fact
that we are a social species, as explained by Julian Jaynes. This
explains why the narrative is sometimes false, and when the part of
the brain creating the narrative doesn't have access to the part
deciding, as in some split brain experiments, the narrative is just
confabulated. I find Dennett's modular brain idea very plausible
and it's consistent with the idea that consciousness is the function
of a module that produces a narrative for memory.
OK. Not just a narrative though, but the meaning associated to it.
If were designing a robot which I intended to be conscious, that's
how I would design it: With a module whose function was to produce a
narrative of choices and their supporting reasons for a memory that
would be accessed in support of future decisions. This then
requires a certain coherence and consistency in robots decisions -
what we call 'character' in a person.
OK.
I don't think that would make the robot necessarily conscious
according to Bruno's critereon.
I think it would, if the system is universal it will potentially
represent itself, and the consciousness is the meaning attached to the
fixed point. In the worst case, it is trivially conscious.
But if it had to function as a social being, it would need a concept
of 'self' and the ability for self-reflective reasoning.
That is already self-consciousness, which ask for one more loop of
self-awareness. Like the K4 reasoners in Smullyan Forever Undecided,
or any Löbian machine (universal machine believe correctly that they
are universal). Robinson arithmetic is conscious (the person defined
by Robinson arithmetic, to be sure), and Peano Arithmetic is already
self-conscious (but still disconnected, without further memories). I
think currently, but I can change my mind on this later.
Then it would be conscious according to Bruno.
OK.
Bruno
Brent
The reason I like this, is that it echoes an essentially Darwinian
process of random variation that is selected upon. Dawinian evolution
is the key to any form of creative process.
Cheers
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