On 26 Nov 2014, at 00:56, meekerdb wrote:
On 11/25/2014 2:00 PM, LizR wrote:
On 26 November 2014 at 04:38, John Clark <[email protected]>
wrote:
On Tue, Nov 25, 2014 meekerdb <[email protected]> wrote:
> I don't think John's post implied that "conscious" was another
word for "intelligence". I think his position is that a being
could be conscious without being intelligent (which would be
consistent with "aware of one's self and surroundings"), but not
vice versa.
Exactly.
Ah, well that is a matter of opinion. It would mean that all the
tests so far devised for intelligence that have been passed by
computers, including some versions of the Turing test, may not in
fact detect intelligence after all, if those machines aren't
actually conscious, which they may well not be.
Intelligent behavior is observable, so it doesn't make sense to say
maybe it isn't really intelligence because there's a missing but
unobservable property "consciousness". Since the consciousness is
unobservable the more sensible assumption would be that the machines
are conscious.
However, I don't agree with John that intelligence is necessarily
accompanied by human-like consciousness. His argument is based on
evolution, i.e. that if intelligence could exist without
consciousness then it would evolved that way. But evolution can be
driven by historical accident. So I think his argument only shows
that intelligence as it developed in humans is necessarily
accompanied by human-like consciousness that includes an inner
narrtive. Julian Jaynes has a theory about how this happened. But
I think there can be different kinds of consciousness; so I think
that there could be intelligence which is not associated with human-
like inner narrative for example. John recognizes that the human
brain has multiple modules which may compete in deciding actions.
Watson, which has a certain intelligence, probably doesn't have this
kind of modular competition and so would have a different kind of
consciousness.
The use of some chemical pertubation in the brain can illustrate, in
fact can lead to the making of an experience which illustrates how
consciousness can be different from the usual mundane type of
consciousness, with inner narratives. To bad this is not well seen in
pour culture. There are non toxic means though, and not known for
leading to any problem, except some metaphysical shock for people with
strong religious prejudices.
This seems to me to be redefining intelligence (and perhaps
consciousness). Personally, I think machines can behave in an
intelligent manner without being conscious - or at least in a
manner than most people not used to computers would consider
intelligent (e.g. performing huge mathematical calculations very
fast would be considered intelligent by most people before the
advent of computers, as would winning the world chess championship).
I agree, except to qualify that as without being conscious the way
people are with an inner narrative. I think any intelligent being
must have a world-model which includes itself.
I agree. Note that it is already the case for RA. But only PA can be
aware of having it, and reason non trivially about it, and distinguish
the first and third person aspect of the self.
But this is getting very semantic-quibbly. If you guys want to
redefine intelligence as being something that only conscious beings
have, then fine, as long as you make it clear that's what you're
doing I have no objection. We'll find another word for what
machines (and unconscious parts of the brain) can do that merely
looks intelligent.
> I don't think "being conscious" is a simple unitary attribute. I
think there are different kinds of "being conscious"
Yes and I have rock solid, I would even go so far as to call it
perfect, evidence that the above is true; but unfortunately that
evidence is available only to me. You may have a corresponding
sort of evidence, I strongly suspect that you do, but I don't know
it for a fact.
This is also a matter of opinion. Some would say that one is either
conscious or not, although what one is conscious of
can vary a lot.
Yes, that's Bruno's idea. But he supports it by taking a very weak
definition of consciousness so that it is essentially just awareness
of self as distinct from environment.
I take even weaker definition, like just awareness, even in the case
the self is not distinguish from the environmement. I can imagine
babies, and simple animals are like that. Distinguishing the self from
the environment needs the Löbianity, and note that this can lead to
some artificial separation from the environment, which might be more
part of us than we think, and this should please you Brent, as you
insist often on the importance of the environment for consciousness.
Bruno
Brent
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