On 30 September 2013 11:36, Pierz <[email protected]> wrote: > If I might just butt in (said the barman)... > > It seems to me that Craig's insistence that "nothing is Turing emulable, > only the measurements are" expresses a different ontological assumption from > the one that computationalists take for granted. It's evident that if we > make a flight simulator, we will never leave the ground, regardless of the > verisimilitude of the simulation. So why would a simulated consciousness be > expected to actually be conscious? Because of different ontological > assumptions about matter and consciousness. Science has given up on the > notion of consciousness as having "being" the same way that matter is > assumed to. Because consciousness has no place in an objective description > of the world (i.e., one which is defined purely in terms of the measurable), > contemporary scientific thinking reduces consciousness to those apparent > behavioural outputs of consciousness which *can* be measured. This is > functionalism. Because we can't measure the presence or absence of > awareness, functionalism gives up on the attempt and presents the functional > outputs as the only things that are "really real". Hence we get the Turing > test. If we can't tell the difference, the simulator is no longer a > simulator: it *is* the thing simulated. This conclusion is shored up by the > apparently water-tight argument that the brain is made of atoms and > molecules which are Turing emulable (even if it would take the lifetime of > the universe to simulate the behaviour of a protein in a complex cellular > environment, but oh well, we can ignore quantum effects because it's too hot > in there anyway and just fast forward to the neuronal level, right?). It's > also supported by the objectifying mental habit of people conditioned > through years of scientific training. It becomes so natural to step into the > god-level third person perspective that the elision of private experience > starts seems like a small matter, and a step that one has no choice but to > make. > > Of course, the alternative does present problems of its own! Craig > frequently seems to slip into a kind of naturalism that would have it that > brains possess soft, non-mechanical sense because they are soft and > non-mechanical seeming. They can't be machines because they don't have > cables and transistors. "Wetware" can't possibly be hardware. A lot of his > arguments seem to be along those lines — the refusal to accept abstractions > which others accept, as telmo aptly puts it. He claims to "solve the hard > problem of consciousness" but the solution involves manoeuvres like "putting > the whole universe into the explanatory gap" between objective and > subjective: hardly illuminating! I get irritated by neologisms like PIP > (whatever that stands for now - was "multi-sense realism' not obscure > enough?), which to me seem to be about trying to add substance to vague and > poetic intuitions about reality by attaching big, intellectual-sounding > labels to them. > > However the same grain of sand that seems to get in Craig's eye does get in > mine too. It's conceivable that some future incarnation of "cleverbot" > (cleverbot.com, in case you don't know it) could reach a point of passing a > Turing test through a combination of a vast repertoire of recorded > conversation and some clever linguistic parsing to do a better job of > keeping track of a semantic thread to the conversation (where the program > currently falls down). But in this case, what goes in inside the machine > seems to make all the difference, though the functionalists are committed to > rejecting that position. Cleverly simulated conversation just doesn't seem > to be real conversation if what is going on behind the scenes is just a > bunch of rules for pulling lines out of a database. It's Craig's clever > garbage lids. We can make a doll that screams and recoils from damaging > inputs and learns to avoid them, but the functional outputs of pain are not > the experience of pain. Imagine a being neurologically incapable of pain. > Like "Mary", the hypothetical woman who lives her life seeing the world > through a black and white monitor and cannot imagine colour qualia until she > is released, such an entity could not begin to comprehend the meaning of > screams of pain - beyond possibly recognising a self-protective function. > The elision of qualia from functional theories of mind has potentially very > serious ethical consequences - for only a subject with access to those > qualia truly understand them. Understanding the human condition as it really > is involves inhabiting human qualia. Otherwise you end up with Dr Mengele — > humans as objects. > > I've read Dennett's arguments against the "qualophiles" and I find them > singularly unconvincing - though to say why is another long post. Dennett > says we only "seem" to have qualia, but what can "seem" possibly mean in the > absence of qualia? An illusion of a quality is an oxymoron, for the quality > *is* only the way it seems. The comp assumption that computations have > qualia hidden inside them is not much of an answer either in my view. Why > not grant the qualia equal ontological status to the computations > themselves, if they are part and parcel? And if they cannot be known except > from the inside, and if the computation's result can't be known in advance, > why not say that the "logic" of the qualitiative experience is reflected in > the mathematics as much as the other way round? > > Well enough. I don't have the answer. All I'm prepared to say is we are > still confronted by mystery. "PIP" seems to me to be more impressionistic > than theoretical. Comp still seems to struggle with qualia and zombies. I > suspect we still await the unifying perspective.
Have you read this paper by David Chalmers? http://consc.net/papers/qualia.html It assumes for the sake of argument that it is possible to make a device that replicates the externally observable behaviour of a brain component, but lacking qualia, and then shows that this leads to absurdity. -- Stathis Papaioannou -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
