meekerdb wrote:
On 5/15/2015 11:14 PM, Bruce Kellett wrote:
meekerdb wrote:
On 5/15/2015 10:29 PM, Bruce Kellett wrote:
The AI that I envisage will probably be based on a learning program
of some sort, that will have to learn in much the same way as an
infant human learns. I doubt that we will ever be able to create an
AI that is essentially an intelligent adult human when it is first
turned on.
I agree with that, but once an AI is realized it will be possible to
copy it. And if it's digital it will be possible to implement it
using different hardware. If it's not digital, it will (in
principle) be able to implement it arbitrarily closely with a digital
device. And we will have the same question - what is that makes that
hardware device conscious? I don't see any plausible answer except
"Running the program it instantiates."
But that does not imply that consciousness is itself a computation.
I didn't draw that conclusion. That's the conclusion Bruno wants to
draw - or close to it (he talks about consciousness supervening on an
infinite number of computational threads).
There is not some subroutine in your AI the is labelled "this
subroutine computes consciousness". Consciousness is a function of the
whole functioning system, not of some particular feature.
Right. And the system includes the environment that the consciousness
refers to.
That is why I think identifying consciousness with computation is in
fact adding some additional magic to the machine.
I don't see that it's adding anything, magic or otherwise. As you say,
any process can regarded as a computation.
Consciousness arose in nature by a process of natural evolution.
Proto-consciousness gave some evolutionary advantage, so it grew and
developed.
Yes, it seems like a natural extension of modeling one's surroundings as
part of decision making, to add yourself into the model in order to
imagine yourself making different choices.
Nature did not at some point add the fact that it was a computation,
and then it suddenly become conscious. Consciousness is a computation
only in the trivial sense that any physical process can be regarded as
a computation, or mapping taking some input to some output. There is
not some special, magical class of computations that are unique to
consciousness. Consciousness is an evolved bulk property, not just one
specific feature of that bulk.
But computation is also not just one specific feature of a process, it's
a wholistic concept. So I disagree that there is not some special class
of programs that implement consciousness; specifically those that model
the device as part of it's own deicision processes.
The dovetailer does not implement consciousness in any particular
program. The way the dovetailer runs it does not run any single program
sequentially, it is always looping back to compute the next steps of all
preceding programs. So the computation that implements consciousness, if
that is what it is, is not a particular program -- it is found in a
sequence of states that arise by chance indefinitely often. My question
is "what is the magic that makes that set of computational steps
conscious, whereas all others are not conscious?" I don't think that
computationalism even begins to explain consciousness.
Whereas an evolutionary account does all that is necessary --
proto-consciousness develops over evolutionary time to become more
efficient, and eventually to develop a self image. As you say, the
proto-consciousness added itself to its model of the surroundings, and
with that became a lot more efficient at finding food and evading
predators. Language and an internal narrative added further layers of
efficiency and effectiveness.
I find such a naturalist account, which sees consciousness as a
whole-of-brain function, a lot more convincing than the computationalist
account -- which doesn't seem to me to even get off first base.
Bruce
--
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/d/optout.
