My car turns on its windshield wipers when it is wet.   Among the trillions of 
tokens of a LLM training would include texts on equation of state.  These are 
things that can be related.



From: Friam <[email protected]> On Behalf Of Russ Abbott
Sent: Thursday, July 11, 2024 9:56 AM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[email protected]>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Is consciousness a mystery? (used to be 
"mystery...deeper".T

 

I missed most of this (and related) threads but am surprised at where this 
seems to be going. I always associated consciousness with subjective experience 
and not necessarily with self awareness. The "hard problem of consciousness" is 
qualia, not self-awareness. No? An AI agent cannot understand language on 
anything other than a superficial basis because it has no idea what, for 
example "wet," means. Nevertheless, it will be quite good at stringing words 
together that say coherent things about wetness. An AI agent has no idea about 
anything. At the same time, an AI agent will be quite good at creating coherent 
statements about very many things. Just because an AI agent is able to create 
coherent statements does not mean that those statements reflect the agent's 
ideas--since it has no ideas.

 

-- Russ Abbott                                       
Professor Emeritus, Computer Science
California State University, Los Angeles

 

 

On Thu, Jul 11, 2024 at 9:30 AM Frank Wimberly <[email protected] 
<mailto:[email protected]> > wrote:

Glen,

 

This is a test to illustrate somethiing about Gmail to Nick.

 

On Tue, Jul 9, 2024 at 4:37 PM glen <[email protected] 
<mailto:[email protected]> > wrote:

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0003347215003085

 

On July 9, 2024 2:04:29 PM PDT, Prof David West <[email protected] 
<mailto:[email protected]> > wrote:

Maybe I should not be replying, as I do believe my dogs (and your cat if you 
have one) are conscious.

 

I have not experienced a Vulcan Mind-Meld with either of my dogs, so I cannot 
say with certainty they are conscious—I must infer it from observations:

1- interactions with other dogs would seem to indicate they "remember" past 
interactions and do not require the same butt-sniffing protocol with dogs they 
have met at the park frequently. Also they seem to remember who plays with who 
and who doesn't. "That ball is not mine, this one is."

2-they modify their behavior depending on the tenor, sharpness, and volume of 
barks, ear positions, tail wagging differences, by the other dogs; e.g., 
"that's enough."

3-They do not communicate to me in English, but seem to accept communication 
from me in that language—not trained responses to commands, but "listening to 
conversations" between myself and Mary and reacting to words (e.g., dog park) 
that are exchanged in those conversations. Mary and I are totally sedentary and 
speaking in conversational tone, so pretty sure there we are not sending 
'signals' akin to training words, training tone of voice.

4-they seem to remember trauma, (one of our dogs spent three days with dead 
owner before anyone knew the owner was deceased and will bite if anyone tries 
to forcefully remove him from my (current bonded owner) presence.

5-seek "psychological comfort" by crawling into my bed and sleeping on my 
shoulder when the thunderstorm comes.

 

All of these are grounded in anthropomorphism—long considered a deadly error by 
ethologists. (Some contemporary ethologists are exploring accepting and 
leveraging this "error" to extend our understanding of animal behavior.)

 

davew

 

 

 

 

On Tue, Jul 9, 2024, at 2:54 PM, Nicholas Thompson wrote:

While I find all the  ancillary considerations raised on the original thread 
extremely interesting,  I would like to reopen the discussion of Conscious as a 
Mystery and ask that those that join it stay close to the question of what 
consciousness is and how we know it when we see it.  Baby Steps.  

 

Where were we?   I think I was asking Jochen, and perhaps Peitr and anybody 
else who thought that animals were not conscious (i.e., not aware of their own 
awareness)  what basis they had in experience for thinking that..  One offering 
for such an experience is the absence of language in animals.  Because my cat 
cannot  describe his experience in words, he cannot be  conscious.  This 
requires the following syllogism:

 

Nothing that does not employ a language (or two?) is conscious.

Animals (with ;the possible exception of signing apes) do not employ languages.

Ergo, Animals are not conscious. 

 

But I was trying to find out the basis for the first premise.  How do we know 
that there are no non-linguistic beings that are not conscious.  I hope we 
could rule out the answer,"because they are non-linguistic",  both in its 
strictly  tautological or merely circular form. 

 

There is a closely related syllogism which we also need to explore:

 

All language using beings are conscious.

George Peter Tremblay IV is a language-using being.

George Peter Tremblay IV is conscious. 

 

Both are valid syllogisms.  But where do the premises come from.

 

Nick

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-- 

Frank Wimberly
140 Calle Ojo Feliz
Santa Fe, NM 87505
505 670-9918

 

Research:  https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Frank_Wimberly2

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