On 12 Aug 2012, at 00:57, meekerdb wrote:
On 8/11/2012 9:09 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
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,
That is a point of your ideas which frequently brings me up short.
Perhaps it is because of your assumption of "everythingness", but I
see a distinction between what my robot will be and do, per my
design, and what it can *potentially* do. As I understand the
defintion of "universal" it is in terms of what a machine can
potentially do - given the right program when we're referring to
computers. But if it is not given all possible programs it will not
realize all potentialities. Yet you often interject, as above, as
though all potentialities are necessarily realized?
Well, they are realized, in the same sense that the distribution of
the primes exist independently of us. But this is used to derive
pohysics, and is not relevant for the intelligence and consciousness
of universal system, which is an "here and now" physical sensation.
And this is not merely a metaphysical question. John McCarthy has
pointed out that it would be unethical to create robots with certain
levels of consciousness in certain circumstances, e.g. it would
certainly be wrong to have programmed Curiosity with the potential
to feel lonely.
I agree with McCarthy, but Curiosity, as far as I know, has no
capability to represent itself enough to feel lonely. His
consciousness is still in the disconnected in Platonia. His soul has
not yet felt on Earth, well on Mars :)
Bruno
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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