On 3/16/2015 12:33 AM, Telmo Menezes wrote:
On Sun, Mar 15, 2015 at 9:11 PM, meekerdb <[email protected]
<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:
On 3/15/2015 7:10 AM, Telmo Menezes wrote:
On Fri, Mar 13, 2015 at 7:00 PM, meekerdb <[email protected]
<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:
On 3/13/2015 10:26 AM, Telmo Menezes wrote:
or under anesthesia I'm not conscious
You can't prove that. That's an assumption.
That's logic chopping. There's a big gap between proven and assumed.
In fact
all of science works in that gap. It's called "knowledge" and it is
provided
by evidence, not logic and not assumption.
I agree, "prove" was a horrible choice of words.
What I meant to say is that you can't test for consciousness. You can test
for
things that you assume to be sufficient and necessary conditions for
consciousness,
but you can't test this assumption itself.
Carl Sagan talks about the "dragon in the garage". I feel that
consciousness is
unlike any other phenomena, because it is the "dragon in the garage" that
we *know*
is there.
Is that really so different from all the other things we know? I could be a
brain-in-a-vat, my impression I'm typing on a keyboard could be a
hallucination, are
there *really* other people, perhaps this is a dream, am I really just
imagining the
world and other people?
I think it is different, because all the scenarios you describe are irrelevant to most
scientific theories. Classical physics is an excellent model to predict observations in
the meso world where we live. I can use it to predict the path of of projectile, because
it describes regularities in the mechanics of our reality. It was conceived before any
modern knowledge of subatomic particles, relativity and so on. The substrate doesn't
matter, until you go to extreme cases. It's still good science, I think we can agree.
The same holds for all the scientific knowledge that then allows us to predict how our
world will behave, that allows us to build stuff that we desire and so on. It doesn't
matter if I'm a brain-in-a-vat or an inhabitant of the Matrix. We used empiricism to
discover regularities in whatever this environment is.
But consciousness is different. Consider Watson. Is it conscious? We have absolutely no
way of knowing, and our intuitions about neural activity, hormone levels, blood pressure
and so on do not help us there.
I agree those are weak evidence. But when we understand the brain better at the level of
information processing, we will have a model which can be compared to how Watson
"thinks". We will be able to compare AIs to brains in terms of how they implement
imagination, decision making, emotion, self-reference, memory, learning, etc. Will we
*know* whether they are conscious? No. But we won't find that an interesting question.
It will be like philosophizing about whether viruses are alive. Instead cognitive
engineers will discuss whether more or less randomness will improve the learning rate,
whether the love//hate module needs stabilizing, whether recursive levels of abstraction
should be allowed,...
For one reason or another we easily dismiss all these defeaters of
knowledge, but
when it comes to consciousness it's suddenly different and we get radical
agnosticism - even though consciousness is by definition knowledge (of
something).
With all other knowledge we know who the knower is. With consciousness, the model
becomes self-referential.
I know who the knower is when I know I'm conscious, just the same as I know who the knower
is when I know I type this sentence. Both are equally transparent - and equally
mysterious. Self-reference isn't a problem. Mars Rovers have self-reference. They know
where they are, what their temperature is, how charged their batteries are, when they can
next talk to Earth,... I think self-reference and self-awareness are used as mystifiers:
Only humans can see the truth of Godel sentences. But one can't see the truth of one's
own Godel sentence. I can be aware of myself, and I can be aware of being aware of
myself. But I just fooling myself with words if I think I can be aware of being aware of
being aware of myself.
Brent
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