On 21 Aug 2014, at 01:45, meekerdb wrote:
On 8/20/2014 2:20 PM, John Mikes wrote:
Brent: why should "spiders" (etc.) be 'not conscious'?
I think they are, in a way. But if I were pitching the idea of
uploading someone's mother into a virtual reality and warranting
that said virtual mother would be conscious, I don't think I'd
mention that the concept of "conscious" was elastic enough to
include spiders.
BTW what is your take on "conscious"? I have no idea myself,
because I consider "everything" an 'observer' that tackles info
about anything - and
the brainfunction(?) invoked by many for conscious processes lacks
the connection in our present scintific catasters (measurements?)
to topical contents (distinctions).
When I have to speak about 'consciousness' I have a different
meaning in mind from 'being conscious' (an elusive term).
Ccness means in my vocabulary the 'response to relations'. A process.
I tried to distinguish that, which I called "awarness" from "self-
awarness". Maybe I should lay out my idea of these levels of
consciousness, not claiming they have some metaphysical
significance, just terminology:
awareness: JM's response to relations. This is very low level, like
my thermostat is aware of the temperature because it has a specific
response to it in service of a goal.
self-awareness: Having an interior mental model in which self is
represented alongside other 3p elements of the model, i.e. my koi
know where they are in the pond.
consciousness: Creating a narrative account of events for memory and
calling up those memories in developing "responses to relations".
self-consciousness: Reflective awareness of consciousness, i.e.
attributing thought and intention to the 3p model of one's self.
Dunno if those are useful, but they seem to me to be a kind of
hierarchy of consciousness that is more descriptive and finer than
Bruno's "any universal Turing machine".
Are you kidding me or what?
We have the raw consciousness for *all* universal machine, yes, then
we nhave self-consciousness for the Löbian machines, which are much
more than universal machine, then we have the 8 internal views, and
all the refinement between belief, knowledge, observation, feeling,
all being themselves nuanced by the G and G* separation, and all this
in a testable (and tested ) way, thanks to the observation part.
Then the differences which remain are the difference between the
particular "[]" (PA, ZF, you, me, ...).
The difference between consciousness and awareness is a bit 1004 in
this thread.
Bruno
Brent
John M
On Wed, Aug 20, 2014 at 3:39 PM, meekerdb <[email protected]>
wrote:
On 8/20/2014 11:20 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
On 19 Aug 2014, at 21:49, John Mikes wrote:
Stathis:
you wrote Aug.19:
"What we know is that the brain can generate consciousness. The
brain is not a digital computer running a program, but if it can
be simulated by one, and if the simulation is conscious, and if
the program can be "run" in Platonia rather than on a physical
computer, then every possible brain's consciousness will
necessarily be instantiated. I'm not sure whether self-
referential computations on their own are conscious - that would
seem a further assumption on top of the three mentioned in the
previous sentence - even though it does seem more elegant than
simulating klunky brains.
Let's skip the question of defining Ccness (maybe broader than
BEING ccous) and let me ask HOW do you know that the brain can
generate 'it'? Do you have a brain that never had 'it' and
followed a process BY it(!) generating Ccness?
Those experiments in which computer etc. (NOT some 'brain'-
input) 're-started' the process were all carried out on (live?)
"brains" previously capable of doing it (whatever).
I agree that "The brain is not a digital computer running a
program,...".
Are ALL details of the so called "brain"(function?) mapped and
correlated? Are all facets of 'brain' even knowable? we think we
know some. Then newer items are detected (or thought so) and
included smoothly into the previous setup.
IMO we are far from being able to 'simulating' a human brain in
its entirety.
And we will never know if we can do that, but indeed here we can't
know much. yet some people will accept, in
the future, such artificial brains, and the rest is a question of
rights. The question will never be does it work, some people will
have the religion that it works, and that it is handy to explore
the Solar System at the speed of light.
The only real question is "do you accept that your daughter or son
marries a partner who get an artificial kidney, heart and brain".
We cannot know, but we can make bet. Also, we don't know any laws
in nature which is not computable, so your attitude is more a
speculation on some unknown things to prevent testing a possible,
and plausible from the 3p evidences, facts.
We cannot know our level of substitution.
Something like this is possible. The first immortal person, in the
technological relative sense (pursuing the Samsara), will be
copied only at a rough incomplete description of her cortex. Then
it will take her 5224 years to recover some stable sense-full
life, recover smell and genuine vision, and it will take her
another millenium to overcome the amnesia.
We will never know, John.
If true, we can't know it.
But people will bet on level, and that's what we always do. Then
we can make the bet precise and deduce consequences, and ask for
consistency of the set of beliefs.
Plausibly the mobile will get in the ear and in the yes and then
in the peripheral nervous systems, the cerebral stem up to the
cortex, if we made a lapse on the next millennia.
Many humans will refuse, and it is their right, but others will
make the jump. At their risk and peril.
I think long before that people will be "uploaded" to computers
where they will live on (as much as they can afford) in virtual
realities. This will be paid for by their children and relatives
who wish to keep them "alive" so they can converse and reminisce
with them. I think it could be done now, although crudely. One
could assure clients that the well known logician, Bruno Marchal,
has shown that the "uploaded" person is conscious. No need to
mention that by his measure spiders are also conscious. :-)
Greg Egan envisioned such a future in "Permutation City". I once
wrote a one-act play on that theme, which sadly I have not gotten
performed.
Brent
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