davidm wrote: ↑Wed Aug 02, 2017 6:59 pmWith respect to this mind-body problem, recently a blogging biochemist raised it only to automatically belittle it. When scientists step out of their particular fiefdoms and dip their toes in philosophy the result is usually unfortunate.
They all do it, but it only gets unfortunate when it is presented as science. Tegmark for instance has a lot of philosopher in him, writing books while his peers are telling him to shut up and calculate.
I order to have a productive conversation you need to answer at least three questions.
1. Are mice conscious? How about fruit flies?
2. Can a robot, like Data on Star Trek: The Next Generation be conscious?
3. Do you believe that humans were created by god(s)?
The wording of the question is already biased, leaving 'conscious' fairly undefined except for an implication that it is a binary state: You are or you're not; A thing has this fundamental difference or not.
Therefore, thus worded, I would answer that a mouse is not conscious, but neither am I. Given my definition (a level of awareness/interaction with environment), it is a question of how conscious something is. and reaching for the lower limit of this scale, I would find a rock less conscious than a thermostat (my favorite example), but more conscious than a neutrino. If you know a thermostat is not conscious, you must have a definition, so out with it. No, it probably doesn't have a soul, but without a test, I will not accept that fact asserted.
A complex-car painting robot that continues its work even when there is no car or when the paint runs out is less conscious than the thermostat, since it seems to exhibit no environmental awareness.
Sure, by my definition, a robot is on that scale. It lacks life, but I don't equate consciousness to being a life form.
Details concerning positron brain detract from the issue at hand.
Recently a computer beat a champion Go player in China, and famously 20 years ago Deep Blue beat Kasparov at chess.
This is a bad example, one that is not AI. It is a powerful automaton. So are self driving cars. But real AI does exist. More conscious? Not necessarily. Intelligence is not consciousness. Just my opinion mind you.
But if we say these machines do not have an inner life (as I believe they do not) the answer is still unsatisfying. Why don’t they? What’s missing?
I find it an implementation detail. What is an inner life that differs from "how it is implemented"? I build a model of the external world as part of my implementation. In that sense, the chess computer is much more conscious than a fruit fly. Yes, maybe this is a better compromise definition with which both sides might be able to work.
John Searle, of course, has his famous Chinese Room argument that purports to show that no digital (or presumably quantum) computer could ever be conscious. If he’s right this just underscores the problem: What’s the missing spark that lights up the interior of our minds that we have, but a machine lacks even in principle? On the Searle account we could build a computer that perfectly simulates a human brain and yet it would have no interior life at all; as a simulation it would always be to the actual brain as a map is to the territory.
Never understood the power of that argument. He equates brain to a trivial algorithm. Given this input, apply some set of rules to lead to the appropriate response. Still, if it were implemented correctly, it would exactly like that. A computer processor has no knowledge of how to play chess, but the process of a running program nevertheless plays good chess. Searle's guy in the room is playing the role of CPU that known nothing except how to follow instructions. Additionally, our brain is not implemented as a Von Neumann architecture.
The Chinese room model is not consciousness either since it simulates a sensory deprived brain with no access to anything but a text feed. It would not be mistaken for a Chinese speaker unless all its answers were something like "please help me!".
Notice that one doesn’t need to create a binary choice here where none exists: saying that, if naturalism is insufficient to explain the generation of consciousness, then supernaturalism must be true. There are other philosophical accounts on offer: metaphysical idealism, panpsychism, Chalmer's property (not Cartesian) dualism. None of these involve speck of supernaturalism, George Berkeley to the contrary notwithstanding.
You ask the question, “What is consciousness?” What is your answer? The answer I hear most from scientists — that it is an emergent property of lower-level physical processes in the brain — is entirely unsatisfactory, IMO. It’s not because the answer is wrong — it may well be true. It’s unsatisfactory because at the current time, it’s entirely devoid of explanatory power.
Searle's answer is no more explanatory, moving it into an untouchable magic realm. The answer seems designed to prevent investigation. The view suggests empirical tests, all of which are declared invalid when they fail. Science is making better progress than that.
3. Do you believe that humans were created by god(s)?
The immaterial explanation does seem to be motivated by a story compatible with this belief, as evidenced by the inclusion of this question in the series.
His response to my response (in part, but this is the substance of it):
Unfortunately, your answers invoke something called "qualia" and that's going to make it impossible to have a serious discussion.
Well that does it I guess!
“Qualia” of course is just fancy word for phenomenal sense experience, but I guess
we don’t have these things according to this blogger whose name shall be withheld (Larry Moran, Sandwalk blog) to protect the (very) innocent.
I have decided to go the p-zombie route. I don't have qualia, but merely echo the wording of those that do. Hence the problem being hard for them, but not for me since I don't have it, but am merely a mindless thing pretending to be conscious.
That story is consistent with the Chalmers view, if not Searle.