On 3/8/2015 11:05 PM, Stathis Papaioannou wrote:
On Monday, March 9, 2015, meekerdb <[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:On 3/8/2015 9:37 PM, Stathis Papaioannou wrote:On Monday, March 9, 2015, meekerdb <[email protected]> wrote: On 3/8/2015 3:34 PM, Stathis Papaioannou wrote:On Monday, March 9, 2015, meekerdb <[email protected]> wrote: On 3/8/2015 1:26 AM, Stathis Papaioannou wrote: On 8 March 2015 at 09:33, meekerdb <[email protected]> wrote: I like Graziano's theory of consciousness. http://aeon.co/magazine/philosophy/how-consciousness-works/ I have generally been inclined to agree with JKC that natural selection can't act on consciousness, only on intelligence; so consciousness is either a necessary byproduct of intelligence or it's a spandrel. But under Graziano's theory it's a way of augmenting or improving intelligence within constraints of limited computational resources. So it would be subject to natural selection. It also shows how to make intelligence machines without consciousness (albeit less efficient ones). Graziano equates consciousness with a model of the brain's state of attention, but why couldn't this be done by an unconscious machine? Because doing it makes the machine conscious. It might, but as presented it's begging he question.It proposes an architecture for computation that would realize consciousness. It's something that, in principle at least, could be constructed and one couldinteract with it and determine whether it seemed as conscious as you or I. What would you consider a non-question begging theory?A proof that that kind of architecture necessarily realises consciousness.What kind of proof? Science doesn't provide proof - except maybe in the legal sense of "beyond reasonable doubt" which my proposed test does provide. Mathematical proof depends on some axioms which one hypothetically assumes for purposes of the argument. Mathematical inference ensures that the conclusions are implicit in the axioms - so any axioms that prove something about consciousness necessarily include the conclusion and so beg the question.Well, I think the argument I have presented before (due to Chalmers) proves that if consciousness is due to activity in the brain, making a substitution that preserves brain function will necessarily also preserve consciousness. If not, then the idea of consciousness becomes absurd.
OK, but Graziano is taking it a step further and trying to identify exactly which activity in the brain.
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