Re: Which philosopher or neuro/AI scientist has the best theory of consciousness?

['Brent Meeker' via Everything List]

On 6/19/2021 4:12 PM, Stathis Papaioannou wrote:


/> For example, wee could rule out many theories and narrow
down on those that accept "organizational invariance" as
Chalmers defines it. This is the principle that if one entity
is consciousness, and another entity is organizationally and
functionally equivalent, preserving all the parts and
relationships among its parts, then that second entity must be
equivalently conscious to the first./


Personally I think that principle sounds pretty reasonable, but I
can't prove it's true and never will be able to.


Chalmers presents a proof of this in the form of a reductio ad absurdum.


But that's not very helpful since it leaves open that many other systems 
that are not functionally and organizationally equivalent may also be 
conscious.  Computers are not functionally and organizationally 
equivalent to people.  In fact I can't think of anything that is.


Brent

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Re: Which philosopher or neuro/AI scientist has the best theory of consciousness?

['Brent Meeker' via Everything List]

On 6/19/2021 3:20 PM, John Clark wrote:
On Sat, Jun 19, 2021 at 5:57 PM 'Brent Meeker' via Everything List 
> wrote:


> /What I think is missing in the JKC's idea that intelligence
is//interesting and understandable but consciousness isn't, is
that he//leaves out values.  Intelligence is define in terms of
achieving goals. /[...] /the//part we commonly call 'wisdom' when
it works out) is how conflictingvalues are resolved./


But there is nothing unique in the human ability to do that, computers 
do that sort of thing all the time. Often there are two values that 
affect the rate of a process, one increases the rate and the other 
decreases it, the relationship between the two can be quite complex so 
it's not at all obvious which will predominate and what the 
ultima fate of the process will be, but a computer can calculate it.


I didn't say it was something only a human does.  I just pointed out 
that it is more (or less) than just intelligence.  It's like consulting 
an oracle.  The oracle may be very intelligent and able to tell you how 
to accomplish anything, but be of no help at all in making a decision if 
you don't know what value to place on outcomes.  Certain values are 
built in by evolution, values related to reproducing mostly.  There's 
nothing "intelligent" about having them, but intelligence has no 
function without values.


Brent

John K Clark    See what's on my new list at Extropolis 



kdf


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Re: Which philosopher or neuro/AI scientist has the best theory of consciousness?

['Brent Meeker' via Everything List]

On 6/19/2021 12:48 PM, John Clark wrote:
I know Darwinian Evolution produced me and I know for a fact that I am 
conscious, but Natural Selection can't see consciousness any better 
than we can directly see consciousness in other people,


This depends on how we define consciousness.  If it means imagining and 
using simulations in which you represent yourself in order to plan your 
actions then maybe natural selection can "see" it.  People who can't or 
don't plan by imagining themselves in various prospective scenarios and 
who don't have a theory of mind regarding other people are probably less 
successful at reproducing.


Brent

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Re: Which philosopher or neuro/AI scientist has the best theory of consciousness?

['Brent Meeker' via Everything List]

On 6/19/2021 12:48 PM, John Clark wrote:


Of my own free will, I consciously decide to go to a restaurant.
/Why? /
Because I want to.
/Why ? /
Because I want to eat.
/Why?/
Because I'm hungry?
/Why ?/
Because lack of food triggered nerve impulses  in my stomach , my 
braininterpreted these signals as pain, I can only stand so much 
before I try to

stop it.
/Why?/
Because I don't like pain.
/Why? /
Because that's the way my brain is constructed.
/Why?/
Because my body  and the hardware of my brain were made from the 
informationin my genetic code  (lets see, 6 billion base pairs 2 bits 
per base pair
8 bits per byte that comes out to about 1.5 gig, )  the programming of 
my brain came from theenvironment, add a little quantum randomness 
perhaps and of my own free willI consciously decide to go to a restaurant.


And if my ancestors had not evolved this programming they would have 
died of starvation and I wouldn't exist.


Brent

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Re: Which philosopher or neuro/AI scientist has the best theory of consciousness?

[Stathis Papaioannou]

On Sun, 20 Jun 2021 at 05:48, John Clark  wrote:

> On Sat, Jun 19, 2021 at 11:36 AM Jason Resch  wrote:
>
> >> I'm enormously impressed with Deepmind and I'm an optimist regarding
>>> AI, but I'm not quite that optimistic.
>>>
>>
>> *>Are you familiar with their Agent 57? -- a single algorithm that
>> mastered all 57 Atari games at a super human level, with no outside
>> direction, no specification of the rules, and whose only input was the "TV
>> screen" of the game.*
>>
>
> As I've said, that is very impressive, but even more impressive would be
> winning a Nobel prize, or even just being able to diagnose that the problem
> with your old car is a broken fan belt, and be able to remove the bad
> belt and install a good one, but we're not quite there yet.
>
> *> Also, because of chaos, predicting the future to any degree of accuracy
>> requires exponentially more information about the system for each finite
>> amount of additional time to simulate, and this does not even factor in
>> quantum uncertainty,*
>>
>
> And yet many times humans can make predictions that turn out to be better
> than random guessing, and a computer should be able to do at least as good,
> and I'm certain they will eventually.
>
> >  Being unable to predict the future isn't a good definition of the
>> singularity, because we already can't.
>>
>
> Not true, often we can make very good predictions, but that will be
> impossible during the singularity
>
>  > *We are getting very close to that point. *
>>
>
> Maybe, but even if the singularity won't happen for 1000 years 999 years
> from now it will still seem like a long way off because more progress will
> be made in that last year than the previous 999 combined. It's in the
> nature of exponential growth and that's why predictions are virtually
> impossible during that time, the tiniest uncertainty in initial condition
> gets magnified into a huge difference in final outcome.
>
> *> There may be valid logical arguments that disprove the consistency of
>> zombies. For example, can something "know without knowing?" It seems not.*
>>
>
> Even if that's true I don't see how that would help me figure out if
> you're a zombie or not.
>
>
>> > So how does a zombie "know" where to place it's hand to catch a ball,
>> if it doesn't "knowing" what it sees?
>>
>
> If catching a ball is your criteria for consciousness then computers are 
> already
> conscious, and you don't even need a supercomputer, you can make one in
> your own home for a few hundred dollars and some spare parts. Well maybe
> so, I always maintained that consciousness is easy but intelligence is
> hard.
>
> Moving hoop won't let you miss
> 
>
> *> For example, wee could rule out many theories and narrow down on those
>> that accept "organizational invariance" as Chalmers defines it. This is the
>> principle that if one entity is consciousness, and another entity is
>> organizationally and functionally equivalent, preserving all the parts and
>> relationships among its parts, then that second entity must be equivalently
>> conscious to the first.*
>>
>
> Personally I think that principle sounds pretty reasonable, but I can't
> prove it's true and never will be able to.
>

Chalmers presents a proof of this in the form of a reductio ad absurdum.

>> I know I can suffer, can you?
>>
>>
>> *>I can tell you that I can.*
>>
>
> So now I know you could generate the ASCII sequence "*I can tell you that
> I can*", but that doesn't answer my question, can you suffer? I don't
> even know if you and I mean the same thing by the word "suffer".
>
>
>> *> You could verify via functional brain scans that I wasn't
>> preprogrammed like an Eliza bot to say I can. You could trace the neural
>> firings in my brain to uncover the origin of my belief that I can suffer,
>> and I could do the same for you.*
>>
>
> No I cannot. Theoretically I could trace the neural firings in your brain
> and figure out how they stimulated the muscles in your hand to type out "*I
> can tell you that I can*"  but that's all I can do. I can't see suffering
> or unhappiness on an MRI scan, although I may be able to trace the nerve
> impulses that stimulate your tear glands to become more active.
>
> *> Could a zombie write a book like Chalmers's "The Consciousness Mind"?*
>>
>
> I don't think so because it takes intelligence to write a book and my
> axiom is that consciousness is the inevitable byproduct of intelligence. I
> can give reasons why I think the axiom is reasonable and probably true
> but it falls short of a proof, that's why it's an axiom.
>
>
>>
>> *> Some have proposed writing philosophical texts on the philosophy of
>> mind as a kind of super-Turing test for establishing consciousness.*
>>
>
> I think you could do much better than that because it only takes a minimal
> amount of intelligence to dream up a new consciousness theory, they're a
> dime a dozen, any one of them is as good, or as bad, as another. 

Re: Which philosopher or neuro/AI scientist has the best theory of consciousness?

[John Clark]

On Sat, Jun 19, 2021 at 5:57 PM 'Brent Meeker' via Everything List <
everything-list@googlegroups.com> wrote:

> *What I think is missing in the JKC's idea that intelligence is* *interesting
> and understandable but consciousness isn't, is that he* *leaves out
> values.  Intelligence is define in terms of achieving goals. *[...] *the* 
> *part
> we commonly call 'wisdom' when it works out) is how conflictingvalues are
> resolved.*


But there is nothing unique in the human ability to do that, computers do
that sort of thing all the time. Often there are two values that affect the
rate of a process, one increases the rate and the other decreases it, the
relationship between the two can be quite complex so it's not at all
obvious which will predominate and what the ultima fate of the process will
be, but a computer can calculate it.
John K ClarkSee what's on my new list at  Extropolis


kdf

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Re: Which philosopher or neuro/AI scientist has the best theory of consciousness?

['Brent Meeker' via Everything List]

On 6/19/2021 8:54 AM, Jason Resch wrote:
On Sat, Jun 19, 2021, 6:17 AM smitra > wrote:


Information is the key.  Conscious agents are defined by precisely
that
information that specifies the content of their consciousness. 



While I think this is true, I don't know of a consciousness theory 
that is explicit in terms of how information informs a system to 
create a conscious system. Bits sitting on a still hard drive platter 
are not associated with consciousness, are they? Facts sitting idly in 
one's long term memory are not the content of anyone's consciousness, 
are they?


For information to carry meaning, I think requires some system to be 
informed by that information.


It also requires values and the potential for action.  Information has 
to be about something, something that makes a difference to the 
conscious organism.


Brent

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Re: Which philosopher or neuro/AI scientist has the best theory of consciousness?

['Brent Meeker' via Everything List]

On 6/19/2021 8:35 AM, Jason Resch wrote:
You appear to operate according to a "mysterian" view of 
consciousness, which is that we cannot ever know. Several philosophers 
of mind have expressed this, such as Thomas Nagel I believe.


I have some sympathy with this view, but I ask "cannot know what?". What 
is you think there is to know?  If you could look at a brain and from 
that predict how the person with that brain would behave...isn't that 
the same as what we know about gravity and elementary particles.  We 
don't know the ding und sich, but so what?


What I think is missing in the JKC's idea that intelligence is 
interesting and understandable but consciousness isn't, is that he 
leaves out values.  Intelligence is define in terms of achieving goals.  
It's instrumental.  But there's another dimension to thought and 
behavior (not necessarily conscious) which provides the 
motivation/goals/values for intelligence and part of intelligence (the 
part we commonly call 'wisdom' when it works out) is how conflicting 
values are resolved.


Brent
Reason is, and ought only to be the slave of the passions, and can never 
pretend to any other office than to serve and obey them.

    --- David Hume

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Re: Which philosopher or neuro/AI scientist has the best theory of consciousness?

['Brent Meeker' via Everything List]

Sorry.  I thought Poincare' effect was a common term, but apparently 
not.  Here's his description starting about half way thru this essay


http://vigeland.caltech.edu/ist4/lectures/Poincare%20Reflections.pdf

Brent

On 6/19/2021 7:52 AM, Jason Resch wrote:



On Fri, Jun 18, 2021, 8:59 PM 'Brent Meeker' via Everything List 
> wrote:




On 6/18/2021 5:16 PM, Jason Resch wrote:
>
> - Is consciousness inherent to any intelligent process?
>
> I think the answer is yes, what do you think?
>
Not just any intelligent process.  But any at human (or even dog)
level.  I think human level consciousness depends on language or
similar
representation in which the entity thinks about decisions by
internally
modelling situations included itself.  Think of how much intelligence
humans bring to bear unconsciously.  Think of the Poincare' effect.



Thanks Brent, I appreciate your answers. But I did not follow what you 
say here regarding the Poincare effect. I did a search on it and 
nothing stood out as related to the brain.


Jason
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Re: Which philosopher or neuro/AI scientist has the best theory of consciousness?

[John Clark]

On Sat, Jun 19, 2021 at 11:36 AM Jason Resch  wrote:

>> I'm enormously impressed with Deepmind and I'm an optimist regarding AI,
>> but I'm not quite that optimistic.
>>
>
> *>Are you familiar with their Agent 57? -- a single algorithm that
> mastered all 57 Atari games at a super human level, with no outside
> direction, no specification of the rules, and whose only input was the "TV
> screen" of the game.*
>

As I've said, that is very impressive, but even more impressive would be
winning a Nobel prize, or even just being able to diagnose that the problem
with your old car is a broken fan belt, and be able to remove the bad belt
and install a good one, but we're not quite there yet.

*> Also, because of chaos, predicting the future to any degree of accuracy
> requires exponentially more information about the system for each finite
> amount of additional time to simulate, and this does not even factor in
> quantum uncertainty,*
>

And yet many times humans can make predictions that turn out to be better
than random guessing, and a computer should be able to do at least as good,
and I'm certain they will eventually.

>  Being unable to predict the future isn't a good definition of the
> singularity, because we already can't.
>

Not true, often we can make very good predictions, but that will be
impossible during the singularity

 > *We are getting very close to that point. *
>

Maybe, but even if the singularity won't happen for 1000 years 999 years
from now it will still seem like a long way off because more progress will
be made in that last year than the previous 999 combined. It's in the
nature of exponential growth and that's why predictions are virtually
impossible during that time, the tiniest uncertainty in initial condition
gets magnified into a huge difference in final outcome.

*> There may be valid logical arguments that disprove the consistency of
> zombies. For example, can something "know without knowing?" It seems not.*
>

Even if that's true I don't see how that would help me figure out if you're
a zombie or not.


> > So how does a zombie "know" where to place it's hand to catch a ball,
> if it doesn't "knowing" what it sees?
>

If catching a ball is your criteria for consciousness then computers
are already
conscious, and you don't even need a supercomputer, you can make one in
your own home for a few hundred dollars and some spare parts. Well maybe
so, I always maintained that consciousness is easy but intelligence is
hard.

Moving hoop won't let you miss


*> For example, wee could rule out many theories and narrow down on those
> that accept "organizational invariance" as Chalmers defines it. This is the
> principle that if one entity is consciousness, and another entity is
> organizationally and functionally equivalent, preserving all the parts and
> relationships among its parts, then that second entity must be equivalently
> conscious to the first.*
>

Personally I think that principle sounds pretty reasonable, but I can't
prove it's true and never will be able to.


> >> I know I can suffer, can you?
>
>
> *>I can tell you that I can.*
>

So now I know you could generate the ASCII sequence "*I can tell you that I
can*", but that doesn't answer my question, can you suffer? I don't even
know if you and I mean the same thing by the word "suffer".


> *> You could verify via functional brain scans that I wasn't preprogrammed
> like an Eliza bot to say I can. You could trace the neural firings in my
> brain to uncover the origin of my belief that I can suffer, and I could do
> the same for you.*
>

No I cannot. Theoretically I could trace the neural firings in your brain
and figure out how they stimulated the muscles in your hand to type out "*I
can tell you that I can*"  but that's all I can do. I can't see suffering
or unhappiness on an MRI scan, although I may be able to trace the nerve
impulses that stimulate your tear glands to become more active.

*> Could a zombie write a book like Chalmers's "The Consciousness Mind"?*
>

I don't think so because it takes intelligence to write a book and my axiom
is that consciousness is the inevitable byproduct of intelligence. I can
give reasons why I think the axiom is reasonable and probably true but it
falls short of a proof, that's why it's an axiom.


>
> *> Some have proposed writing philosophical texts on the philosophy of
> mind as a kind of super-Turing test for establishing consciousness.*
>

I think you could do much better than that because it only takes a minimal
amount of intelligence to dream up a new consciousness theory, they're a
dime a dozen, any one of them is as good, or as bad, as another. Good
intelligence theories on the other hand are hard as hell to come up with
but if you do find one you're likely to become the world's first
trillionaire.

*Wouldn't you prefer the anesthetic that knocks you out vs. the one that
> only blocks memory formation? Wouldn't a theory of 

Re: Which philosopher or neuro/AI scientist has the best theory of consciousness?

[spudboy100 via Everything List]

I agree with Saibal on this and welcome his great explanation. Not to miss out 
on not giving credit where credit is due, let me invoke Donald Hoffman as their 
chief proponent of conscious agents. Or, the best 
known.http://cogsci.uci.edu/~ddhoff/Chapter17Hoffman.pdf


-Original Message-
From: smitra 
To: everything-list@googlegroups.com
Sent: Sat, Jun 19, 2021 7:17 am
Subject: Re: Which philosopher or neuro/AI scientist has the best theory of 
consciousness?

Information is the key.  Conscious agents are defined by precisely that 
information that specifies the content of their consciousness. This 
means that a conscious agent can never be precisely located in some 
physical object, because the information that describes the conscious 
experience will always be less detailed than the information present in 
the exact physical description of an object such a brain. There are 
always going to be a very large self localization ambiguity due to the 
large number of different possible brain states that would generate 
exactly the same conscious experience. So, given whatever conscious 
experience the agent has, the agent could be in a very large number of 
physically distinct states.

The simpler the brain and the algorithm implemented by the brain, the 
larger this self-localization ambiguity becomes because smaller 
algorithms contain less detailed information. Our conscious experiences 
localizes us very precisely on an Earth-like planet in a solar system 
that is very similar to the one we think we live in. But the fly walking 
on the wall of the room I'm in right now may have some conscious 
experience that is exactly identical to that of another fly walking on 
the wall of another house in another country 600 years ago or on some 
rock in a cave 35 million year ago.

The conscious experience of the fly I see on the all is therefore not 
located in the particular fly I'm observing. This is i.m.o. the key 
thing you get from identifying consciousness with information, it makes 
the multiverse an essential ingredient of consciousness. This resolves 
paradoxes you get in thought experiments where you consider simulating a 
brain in a virtual world and then argue that since the simulation is 
deterministic, you could replace the actual computer doing the 
computations by a device playing a recording of the physical brain 
states. This argument breaks down if you take into account the 
self-localization ambiguity and consider that this multiverse aspect is 
an essential part of consciousness due to counterfactuals necessary to 
define the algorithm being realized, which is impossible in a 
deterministic single-world setting.

Saibal


On 18-06-2021 20:46, Jason Resch wrote:
> In your opinion who has offered the best theory of consciousness to
> date, or who do you agree with most? Would you say you agree with them
> wholeheartedly or do you find points if disagreement?
> 
> I am seeing several related thoughts commonly expressed, but not sure
> which one or which combination is right.  For example:
> 
> Hofstadter/Marchal: self-reference is key
> Tononi/Tegmark: information is key
> Dennett/Chalmers: function is key
> 
> To me all seem potentially valid, and perhaps all three are needed in
> some combination. I'm curious to hear what other viewpoints exist or
> if there are other candidates for the "secret sauce" behind
> consciousness I might have missed.
> 
> Jason
> 
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> 
> 
> Links:
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Re: Which philosopher or neuro/AI scientist has the best theory of consciousness?

['Brent Meeker' via Everything List]

On 6/19/2021 4:17 AM, smitra wrote:
Information is the key.  Conscious agents are defined by precisely 
that information that specifies the content of their consciousness. 
This means that a conscious agent can never be precisely located in 
some physical object, because the information that describes the 
conscious experience will always be less detailed than the information 
present in the exact physical description of an object such a brain. 


But that doesn't imply that the content is insufficient to pick out a 
specific brain.  My house can be specified by a street address, even 
though that is far less information required to describe my house.  That 
is possible of different houses to have been at this address doesn't 
change the fact that there is only this one.


Brent

There are always going to be a very large self localization ambiguity 
due to the large number of different possible brain states that would 
generate exactly the same conscious experience. So, given whatever 
conscious experience the agent has, the agent could be in a very large 
number of physically distinct states.


The simpler the brain and the algorithm implemented by the brain, the 
larger this self-localization ambiguity becomes because smaller 
algorithms contain less detailed information. Our conscious 
experiences localizes us very precisely on an Earth-like planet in a 
solar system that is very similar to the one we think we live in. But 
the fly walking on the wall of the room I'm in right now may have some 
conscious experience that is exactly identical to that of another fly 
walking on the wall of another house in another country 600 years ago 
or on some rock in a cave 35 million year ago.


The conscious experience of the fly I see on the all is therefore not 
located in the particular fly I'm observing. This is i.m.o. the key 
thing you get from identifying consciousness with information, it 
makes the multiverse an essential ingredient of consciousness. This 
resolves paradoxes you get in thought experiments where you consider 
simulating a brain in a virtual world and then argue that since the 
simulation is deterministic, you could replace the actual computer 
doing the computations by a device playing a recording of the physical 
brain states. This argument breaks down if you take into account the 
self-localization ambiguity and consider that this multiverse aspect 
is an essential part of consciousness due to counterfactuals necessary 
to define the algorithm being realized, which is impossible in a 
deterministic single-world setting.


Saibal


On 18-06-2021 20:46, Jason Resch wrote:

In your opinion who has offered the best theory of consciousness to
date, or who do you agree with most? Would you say you agree with them
wholeheartedly or do you find points if disagreement?

I am seeing several related thoughts commonly expressed, but not sure
which one or which combination is right.  For example:

Hofstadter/Marchal: self-reference is key
Tononi/Tegmark: information is key
Dennett/Chalmers: function is key

To me all seem potentially valid, and perhaps all three are needed in
some combination. I'm curious to hear what other viewpoints exist or
if there are other candidates for the "secret sauce" behind
consciousness I might have missed.

Jason

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Re: Which philosopher or neuro/AI scientist has the best theory of consciousness?

[Jason Resch]

On Sat, Jun 19, 2021, 6:17 AM smitra  wrote:

> Information is the key.  Conscious agents are defined by precisely that
> information that specifies the content of their consciousness.


While I think this is true, I don't know of a consciousness theory that is
explicit in terms of how information informs a system to create a conscious
system. Bits sitting on a still hard drive platter are not associated with
consciousness, are they? Facts sitting idly in one's long term memory are
not the content of anyone's consciousness, are they?

For information to carry meaning, I think requires some system to be
informed by that information. What then is the key to an informable system?
Differentiation? Comparison? Conditional statement? Counterfactual states?


This
> means that a conscious agent can never be precisely located in some
> physical object, because the information that describes the conscious
> experience will always be less detailed than the information present in
> the exact physical description of an object such a brain. There are
> always going to be a very large self localization ambiguity due to the
> large number of different possible brain states that would generate
> exactly the same conscious experience.


This is a fascinating line of reasoning, easily provable via information
theory, abd having huge implications.


So, given whatever conscious
> experience the agent has, the agent could be in a very large number of
> physically distinct states.
>
> The simpler the brain and the algorithm implemented by the brain, the
> larger this self-localization ambiguity becomes because smaller
> algorithms contain less detailed information.


I recently had a thought about what it is like to be a thermostat, and came
to the conclusion that it's probably like being any one of a billion
different creatures slowly arousing from sleep. It's hard to square the
stability of experience when there's no elements of that experience to lock
you down to existing in a stable continuous state.


Our conscious experiences
> localizes us very precisely on an Earth-like planet in a solar system
> that is very similar to the one we think we live in. But the fly walking
> on the wall of the room I'm in right now may have some conscious
> experience that is exactly identical to that of another fly walking on
> the wall of another house in another country 600 years ago or on some
> rock in a cave 35 million year ago.
>
> The conscious experience of the fly I see on the all is therefore not
> located in the particular fly I'm observing.


Mind-blowing...


This is i.m.o. the key
> thing you get from identifying consciousness with information, it makes
> the multiverse an essential ingredient of consciousness. This resolves
> paradoxes you get in thought experiments where you consider simulating a
> brain in a virtual world and then argue that since the simulation is
> deterministic, you could replace the actual computer doing the
> computations by a device playing a recording of the physical brain
> states. This argument breaks down if you take into account the
> self-localization ambiguity and consider that this multiverse aspect is
> an essential part of consciousness due to counterfactuals necessary to
> define the algorithm being realized, which is impossible in a
> deterministic single-world setting.
>

I'm not sure I follow the necessity of a multiverse to discuss
counterfactuals, but I do agree counterfactuals seem necessary to systems
that are "informable".

Jason


> Saibal
>
>
> On 18-06-2021 20:46, Jason Resch wrote:
> > In your opinion who has offered the best theory of consciousness to
> > date, or who do you agree with most? Would you say you agree with them
> > wholeheartedly or do you find points if disagreement?
> >
> > I am seeing several related thoughts commonly expressed, but not sure
> > which one or which combination is right.  For example:
> >
> > Hofstadter/Marchal: self-reference is key
> > Tononi/Tegmark: information is key
> > Dennett/Chalmers: function is key
> >
> > To me all seem potentially valid, and perhaps all three are needed in
> > some combination. I'm curious to hear what other viewpoints exist or
> > if there are other candidates for the "secret sauce" behind
> > consciousness I might have missed.
> >
> > Jason
> >
> >  --
> > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google
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> > an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com.
> > To view this discussion on the web visit
> >
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> > [1].
> >
> >
> > Links:
> > --
> > [1]
> >
> https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/CA%2BBCJUik%3Du724L6JxAKi0gq-rPfV%3DXwGd7nS2kmZ_znLd7MT1g%40mail.gmail.com?utm_medium=email_source=footer
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Re: Which philosopher or neuro/AI scientist has the best theory of consciousness?

[Jason Resch]

On Sat, Jun 19, 2021, 5:55 AM John Clark  wrote:

> On Fri, Jun 18, 2021 at 8:17 PM Jason Resch  wrote:
>
> *>Deepmind has succeeded in building general purposes learning algorithms.
>> Intelligence is mostly a solved problem,*
>>
>
> I'm enormously impressed with Deepmind and I'm an optimist regarding AI,
> but I'm not quite that optimistic.
>

Are you familiar with their Agent 57? -- a single algorithm that mastered
all 57 Atari games at a super human level, with no outside direction, no
specification of the rules, and whose only input was the "TV screen" of the
game.


If intelligence was a solved problem the world would change beyond all
> recognition and we'd be smack in the middle of the Singularity, and we're
> obviously not because at least to some degree future human events are still
> somewhat predictable.
>

The algorithms are known, but the computational power is not there yet. Our
top supercomputer only recently broke the computing power of one human
brain.

Also, because of chaos, predicting the future to any degree of accuracy
requires exponentially more information about the system for each finite
amount of additional time to simulate, and this does not even factor in
quantum uncertainty, nor uncertainty about oneself and own mind. Being
unable to predict the future isn't a good definition of the singularity,
because we already can't. You might say the singularity is when most
decisions are no longer made by biological intelligences, again arguably we
have reached that point. I prefer the definition of when we have a single
nonbiological intelligence that exceeds the intelligence of any human in
any domain. We are getting very close to that point. That may not be the
point of an intelligence explosion, but it means one cannot be far off.



> > *But questions of consciousness are no less important nor less
>> pressing:*
>> *Is this uploaded brain conscious or a zombie?*
>>
>
> I don't know, are you conscious or a zombie?
>

There may be valid logical arguments that disprove the consistency of
zombies. For example, can something "know without knowing?" It seems not.
So how does a zombie "know" where to place it's hand to catch a ball, if it
doesn't "knowing" what it sees?

A single result on the possibility or impossibility of zombies would enable
massive progess in theories of consciousness.

For example, wee could rule out many theories and narrow down on those that
accept "organizational invariance" as Chalmers defines it. This is the
principle that if one entity is consciousness, and another entity is
organizationally and functionally equivalent, preserving all the parts and
relationships among its parts, then that second entity must be equivalently
conscious to the first.



> > *Can (bacterium, protists, plants, jellyfish, worms, clams, insects,
>> spiders, crabs, snakes, mice, apes, humans) suffer?*
>>
>
> I don't know, I know I can suffer, can you?
>

I can tell you that I can. You could verify via functional brain scans that
I wasn't preprogrammed like an Eliza bot to say I can. You could trace the
neural firings in my brain to uncover the origin of my belief that I can
suffer, and I could do the same for you.




>
>> > *Are these robot slaves conscious?*
>>
>
> Are you conscious?
>

Could a zombie write a book like Chalmers's "The Consciousness Mind"? Some
have proposed writing philosophical texts on the philosophy of mind as a
kind of super-Turing test for establishing consciousness.

When GPT-X writes new philosophical treatises on topics of consciousness
and when it insists it is conscious, and we trace the origins of this
statement to a tangled self-reference loop in its processing, what are we
to conclude? Would it become immoral to turn it off at that point?


>
>> * > Do they have likes or dislikes that we repress?*
>>
>
> What's with this "we" business?
>


Humanity I mean.


> > *When does a developing human become conscious?*
>>
>
> Other than in my case does any developing human EVER become conscious?
>
> > *Is that person in a coma or locked-in?*
>>
>
> I don't know, are you locked in?
>

I can move, so no. Being locked in means you are conscious but lack any
control over your body.


> > *Does this artificial retina/visual cortex provide the same visual
>> experiences?*
>>
>
> The same as what?
>

A biological retina and visual cortex.


>
>> > *Does this particular anesthetic block consciousness or merely memory
>> formation?*
>>
>
> Did the person have consciousness even before the administration of the
> anesthetic?
>

Let's assume so for the purposes of the question. Wouldn't you prefer the
anesthetic that knocks you out vs. the one that only blocks memory
formation? Wouldn't a theory of consciousness be valuable here to establish
which is which?


>
>> *> These questions remain unsettled*
>>
>
> Yes, and these questions will remain unsettled till the end of time, so
> even if time is infinite it could be better spent pondering other questions
> that actually 

Re: Which philosopher or neuro/AI scientist has the best theory of consciousness?

[Jason Resch]

On Fri, Jun 18, 2021, 8:59 PM 'Brent Meeker' via Everything List <
everything-list@googlegroups.com> wrote:

>
>
> On 6/18/2021 5:16 PM, Jason Resch wrote:
> >
> > - Is consciousness inherent to any intelligent process?
> >
> > I think the answer is yes, what do you think?
> >
> Not just any intelligent process.  But any at human (or even dog)
> level.  I think human level consciousness depends on language or similar
> representation in which the entity thinks about decisions by internally
> modelling situations included itself.  Think of how much intelligence
> humans bring to bear unconsciously.  Think of the Poincare' effect.
>


Thanks Brent, I appreciate your answers. But I did not follow what you say
here regarding the Poincare effect. I did a search on it and nothing stood
out as related to the brain.

Jason

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Re: Which philosopher or neuro/AI scientist has the best theory of consciousness?

[John Clark]

Suppose there is an AI that behaves more intelligently than the most
intelligent human who ever lived, however when the machine is opened up to
see how this intelligence is actually achieved one consciousness theory
doesn't like what it sees and concludes that despite its great intelligence
it is not conscious, but a rival consciousness theory does like what it
sees and concludes it is conscious. Both theories can't be right although
both could be wrong, so how on earth could you ever determine which, if
any, of the 2 consciousness theories are correct?

John K ClarkSee what's on my new list at  Extropolis

qno
yrm

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Re: Which philosopher or neuro/AI scientist has the best theory of consciousness?

[smitra]

Information is the key.  Conscious agents are defined by precisely that 
information that specifies the content of their consciousness. This 
means that a conscious agent can never be precisely located in some 
physical object, because the information that describes the conscious 
experience will always be less detailed than the information present in 
the exact physical description of an object such a brain. There are 
always going to be a very large self localization ambiguity due to the 
large number of different possible brain states that would generate 
exactly the same conscious experience. So, given whatever conscious 
experience the agent has, the agent could be in a very large number of 
physically distinct states.


The simpler the brain and the algorithm implemented by the brain, the 
larger this self-localization ambiguity becomes because smaller 
algorithms contain less detailed information. Our conscious experiences 
localizes us very precisely on an Earth-like planet in a solar system 
that is very similar to the one we think we live in. But the fly walking 
on the wall of the room I'm in right now may have some conscious 
experience that is exactly identical to that of another fly walking on 
the wall of another house in another country 600 years ago or on some 
rock in a cave 35 million year ago.


The conscious experience of the fly I see on the all is therefore not 
located in the particular fly I'm observing. This is i.m.o. the key 
thing you get from identifying consciousness with information, it makes 
the multiverse an essential ingredient of consciousness. This resolves 
paradoxes you get in thought experiments where you consider simulating a 
brain in a virtual world and then argue that since the simulation is 
deterministic, you could replace the actual computer doing the 
computations by a device playing a recording of the physical brain 
states. This argument breaks down if you take into account the 
self-localization ambiguity and consider that this multiverse aspect is 
an essential part of consciousness due to counterfactuals necessary to 
define the algorithm being realized, which is impossible in a 
deterministic single-world setting.


Saibal


On 18-06-2021 20:46, Jason Resch wrote:

In your opinion who has offered the best theory of consciousness to
date, or who do you agree with most? Would you say you agree with them
wholeheartedly or do you find points if disagreement?

I am seeing several related thoughts commonly expressed, but not sure
which one or which combination is right.  For example:

Hofstadter/Marchal: self-reference is key
Tononi/Tegmark: information is key
Dennett/Chalmers: function is key

To me all seem potentially valid, and perhaps all three are needed in
some combination. I'm curious to hear what other viewpoints exist or
if there are other candidates for the "secret sauce" behind
consciousness I might have missed.

Jason

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Re: Which philosopher or neuro/AI scientist has the best theory of consciousness?

[John Clark]

On Fri, Jun 18, 2021 at 8:17 PM Jason Resch  wrote:

*>Deepmind has succeeded in building general purposes learning algorithms.
> Intelligence is mostly a solved problem,*
>

I'm enormously impressed with Deepmind and I'm an optimist regarding AI,
but I'm not quite that optimistic. If intelligence was a solved problem the
world would change beyond all recognition and we'd be smack in the middle
of the Singularity, and we're obviously not because at least to some degree
future human events are still somewhat predictable.

> *But questions of consciousness are no less important nor less pressing:*
> *Is this uploaded brain conscious or a zombie?*
>

I don't know, are you conscious or a zombie?

> *Can (bacterium, protists, plants, jellyfish, worms, clams, insects,
> spiders, crabs, snakes, mice, apes, humans) suffer?*
>

I don't know, I know I can suffer, can you?


> > *Are these robot slaves conscious?*
>

Are you conscious?


> * > Do they have likes or dislikes that we repress?*
>

What's with this "we" business?

> *When does a developing human become conscious?*
>

Other than in my case does any developing human EVER become conscious?

> *Is that person in a coma or locked-in?*
>

I don't know, are you locked in?

> *Does this artificial retina/visual cortex provide the same visual
> experiences?*
>

The same as what?


> > *Does this particular anesthetic block consciousness or merely memory
> formation?*
>

Did the person have consciousness even before the administration of the
anesthetic?


> *> These questions remain unsettled*
>

Yes, and these questions will remain unsettled till the end of time, so
even if time is infinite it could be better spent pondering other questions
that actually have answers.


> *>If none of these questions interest you, perhaps this one will: Is
> consciousness inherent to any intelligent process?*


I have no proof and never will have any, however I must assume that the
above is true because I simply could not function if I really believed that
solipsism was correct and I was the only conscious being in the universe.
Therefore I take it as an axiom that intelligent behavior implies
consciousness.

John K ClarkSee what's on my new list at  Extropolis

qno

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