On 5/16/2019 5:52 AM, Philip Thrift wrote:This is what I call one form of consciousness denialin that information processing absent actual first-class entities of qualia (or experiences) can only produce zombies. One needs information processing operating in a material substrate where those entities are available to be combined and manipulated.
You still need to explain why your elbow isn't conscious.
Brent
You still need to explain why your elbow isn't conscious.
Brent
The elbow (the matter that is halfway down your arm between your shoulder and hand) could have proto-consciousness (or a proto-experientiality, as some say):
But the elbow will not have full consciousness (first-person) because it cannot do information processing (at the level of the brain with all its neural connectivity).
High-level (and higher-order) information processing is necessary, but not sufficient for consciousness.
That is all of panpsychism in a nutshell.
Information processing absent actual first-class entities of qualia (or experiences) can only produce zombies. One needs information processing operating in a material substrate where those entities are available to be combined and manipulated.
> Information processing absent actual first-class entities of qualia (or experiences) can only produce zombies. One needs information processing operating in a material substrate where those entities are available to be combined and manipulated.
Brent
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But then "panpyschism" does no work. It's just a hypothetical property of matter that says if some matter does information processing then that matter is conscious, otherwise it's not. But that's already what materialists thought.Well said.Telmo.
if you think exhibiting reflexes is the critereon for consciousness, consider the example of someone who has held their breath for fifteen minutes.
Brent
> But what is information processing?
> a robot - which is matter - that is doing very advanced, high-level information processing - could be a winner on Jeopardy, and talk to you in a conversation, could be a zombie.
> Are you a zombie?
> Now I would just way that the jury is out about qualia ⇨ information.
> If the above paper is right, then it's sort of settled, right?
> I still think the phenomenologists are right, that quaia is a different type of entity than information,
On Friday, May 17, 2019 at 1:51:15 PM UTC-5, Brent wrote:
On 5/16/2019 11:59 PM, Philip Thrift wrote:
On Friday, May 17, 2019 at 1:42:41 AM UTC-5, telmo wrote:
But then "panpyschism" does no work. It's just a hypothetical property of matter that says if some matter does information processing then that matter is conscious, otherwise it's not. But that's already what materialists thought.
Well said.
Telmo.
But a robot - which is matter - that is doing very advanced, high-level information processing - could be a winner on Jeopardy, and talk to you in a conversation, could be a zombie.
Are you a zombie?
Not if human-level intelligent behavior is a mark of consciousness. How do you tell if someone is conscious?
BrentThere is the paper I posted here earlier. Here's the conclusion. Do you have something better?Information and the Origin of QualiaRoger OrpwoodCentre for Pain Research, Department for Health, University of Bath...
Despite the overwhelming likelihood that all higher animals experience a degree of consciousness, the only animals we can be a 100% certain about are humans.
Therefore it is necessary ultimately to measure activity in humans that underpins conscious experience. For the theory presented here that evidence has to come from monitoring the activity of networks of individual cells, with sub-millisecond resolution, to see how they behave during conscious acts and how that differs to unconscious acts.
Such work would necessarily have to remove co-varying activity relating to such things as allocation of attention, activity relating to the reporting process, anticipation, etc. Techniques for population monitoring are of course developing fast, with the pioneering use of 2-photon calcium imaging. At present this technique is not quite fast enough to explore the detail firing activity of cells in networks but this is surely not far off. In the first instance such techniques can be usefully used with higher mammals who are strongly suspected of having conscious experience. Strong pointers would result from monitoring local activity such as that described in this article as the animal indicated a perception as opposed to not indicating a perception. If in parallel with such measurements a signature of that activity could be defined using EEG, MEG or ECoG that would enable human experiments to look for those signatures. Ultimately though it will be necessary to find a technique that can be used in humans, perhaps an ethically acceptable form of light imaging, that can detect the local activity described and to show that it occurs only with conscious awareness.@philipthrift
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If you somehow knew for a fact a brilliant being was a zombie then you could immediately make one conclusion about it, the being could NOT be the product of Darwinian Evolution because Natural Selection can see intelligence but it can't see consciousness in others any better than we can, and it can't select for something it can't see.
On Fri, May 17, 2019 at 3:20 PM Philip Thrift <cloud...@gmail.com> wrote:
On Friday, May 17, 2019 at 1:51:15 PM UTC-5, Brent wrote:
On 5/16/2019 11:59 PM, Philip Thrift wrote:
On Friday, May 17, 2019 at 1:42:41 AM UTC-5, telmo wrote:
But then "panpyschism" does no work. It's just a hypothetical property of matter that says if some matter does information processing then that matter is conscious, otherwise it's not. But that's already what materialists thought.
Well said.
Telmo.
But a robot - which is matter - that is doing very advanced, high-level information processing - could be a winner on Jeopardy, and talk to you in a conversation, could be a zombie.
Are you a zombie?
Not if human-level intelligent behavior is a mark of consciousness. How do you tell if someone is conscious?
BrentThere is the paper I posted here earlier. Here's the conclusion. Do you have something better?Information and the Origin of QualiaRoger OrpwoodCentre for Pain Research, Department for Health, University of Bath...Despite the overwhelming likelihood that all higher animals experience a degree of consciousness, the only animals we can be a 100% certain about are humans.I don't see how we can be 100% certain of this, without limiting the domain of humans to the self.Therefore it is necessary ultimately to measure activity in humans that underpins conscious experience. For the theory presented here that evidence has to come from monitoring the activity of networks of individual cells, with sub-millisecond resolution, to see how they behave during conscious acts and how that differs to unconscious acts.How do they know what they think are unconscious acts aren't actually conscious but disconnected from the parts of the brain that can speak? Like split brain patients having two independently consciousness hemispheres.JasonSuch work would necessarily have to remove co-varying activity relating to such things as allocation of attention, activity relating to the reporting process, anticipation, etc. Techniques for population monitoring are of course developing fast, with the pioneering use of 2-photon calcium imaging. At present this technique is not quite fast enough to explore the detail firing activity of cells in networks but this is surely not far off. In the first instance such techniques can be usefully used with higher mammals who are strongly suspected of having conscious experience. Strong pointers would result from monitoring local activity such as that described in this article as the animal indicated a perception as opposed to not indicating a perception. If in parallel with such measurements a signature of that activity could be defined using EEG, MEG or ECoG that would enable human experiments to look for those signatures. Ultimately though it will be necessary to find a technique that can be used in humans, perhaps an ethically acceptable form of light imaging, that can detect the local activity described and to show that it occurs only with conscious awareness.@philipthrift
On Thursday, May 16, 2019 at 5:14:46 PM UTC-5, John Clark wrote:
On Thu, May 16, 2019 at 1:48 PM Philip Thrift <cloud...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Information processing absent actual first-class entities of qualia (or experiences) can only produce zombies. One needs information processing operating in a material substrate where those entities are available to be combined and manipulated.
So something can behave intelligently but if it is lacking "first-class entities of qualia" it can only be a intelligent zombie. But "first-class qualia" sounds like consciousness to me, so you're basically saying only conscious things can be conscious. A tautology has the virtue of always being true but it involves a unnecessary non-required pointless repetition and reiteration of words where you end up at the exact same place you started with. And that is typical of all consciousness theories.
John K Clark
To be clearer: Qualia (the "ingredients" of consciousness) cannot be reduced to information processing.
(That is what I mean by "first-class". If qualia could be reduced to information processing, then they would derivative from information, or "second-class".)
On 5/17/2019 4:56 AM, John Clark wrote:
>> If you somehow knew for a fact a brilliant being was a zombie then you could immediately make one conclusion about it, the being could NOT be the product of Darwinian Evolution because Natural Selection can see intelligence but it can't see consciousness in others any better than we can, and it can't select for something it can't see.
> I don't see how that follows. If zombies are possible then evolution could have produced brilliant zombies. It might just be an accident that evolution took the "consciousness" path at some point.
On Friday, May 17, 2019 at 5:21:41 PM UTC-5, Brent wrote:
On 5/16/2019 11:51 PM, Philip Thrift wrote:
On Thursday, May 16, 2019 at 5:14:46 PM UTC-5, John Clark wrote:
On Thu, May 16, 2019 at 1:48 PM Philip Thrift <cloud...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Information processing absent actual first-class entities of qualia (or experiences) can only produce zombies. One needs information processing operating in a material substrate where those entities are available to be combined and manipulated.
So something can behave intelligently but if it is lacking "first-class entities of qualia" it can only be a intelligent zombie. But "first-class qualia" sounds like consciousness to me, so you're basically saying only conscious things can be conscious. A tautology has the virtue of always being true but it involves a unnecessary non-required pointless repetition and reiteration of words where you end up at the exact same place you started with. And that is typical of all consciousness theories.
John K Clark
To be clearer: Qualia (the "ingredients" of consciousness) cannot be reduced to information processing.
That's nothing but unsupported assertion. It's not even clear what "reduced" means in that context.
(That is what I mean by "first-class". If qualia could be reduced to information processing, then they would derivative from information, or "second-class".)
Is life derivative from chemistry? Only within a certain environment. Same with information processing. In general it's streams of bits being processed being changed according to some algorithm. But it's qualia if the streams are in some entity whose environment and actions give meaning to the information, like "I've got a headache and I'm going to lie down."
Brent
Isn't qualia can be reduced to information processing the unsupported assertion?
On Fri, May 17, 2019 at 6:06 PM 'Brent Meeker' <everyth...@googlegroups.com> wrote:
On 5/17/2019 4:56 AM, John Clark wrote:
>> If you somehow knew for a fact a brilliant being was a zombie then you could immediately make one conclusion about it, the being could NOT be the product of Darwinian Evolution because Natural Selection can see intelligence but it can't see consciousness in others any better than we can, and it can't select for something it can't see.
> I don't see how that follows. If zombies are possible then evolution could have produced brilliant zombies. It might just be an accident that evolution took the "consciousness" path at some point.
Even if we got super mega ultra lucky and Evolution just happened to produce a mutated gene that gave a being consciousness it would be lost in just a few generations due to genetic drift because however much we may value consciousness natural selection can't see it or hear it or touch it or detect it or be effected by it in any way.
On Friday, May 17, 2019 at 6:09:18 PM UTC-5, Brent wrote:
On 5/17/2019 3:33 PM, Philip Thrift wrote:
On Friday, May 17, 2019 at 5:21:41 PM UTC-5, Brent wrote:
On 5/16/2019 11:51 PM, Philip Thrift wrote:
On Thursday, May 16, 2019 at 5:14:46 PM UTC-5, John Clark wrote:
On Thu, May 16, 2019 at 1:48 PM Philip Thrift <cloud...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Information processing absent actual first-class entities of qualia (or experiences) can only produce zombies. One needs information processing operating in a material substrate where those entities are available to be combined and manipulated.
So something can behave intelligently but if it is lacking "first-class entities of qualia" it can only be a intelligent zombie. But "first-class qualia" sounds like consciousness to me, so you're basically saying only conscious things can be conscious. A tautology has the virtue of always being true but it involves a unnecessary non-required pointless repetition and reiteration of words where you end up at the exact same place you started with. And that is typical of all consciousness theories.
John K Clark
To be clearer: Qualia (the "ingredients" of consciousness) cannot be reduced to information processing.
That's nothing but unsupported assertion. It's not even clear what "reduced" means in that context.
(That is what I mean by "first-class". If qualia could be reduced to information processing, then they would derivative from information, or "second-class".)
Is life derivative from chemistry? Only within a certain environment. Same with information processing. In general it's streams of bits being processed being changed according to some algorithm. But it's qualia if the streams are in some entity whose environment and actions give meaning to the information, like "I've got a headache and I'm going to lie down."
Brent
Isn't qualia can be reduced to information processing the unsupported assertion?
No. It's very well supported. Interfere with information processing by drugs or electrical stimulus of the brain and qualia are changed or eliminated.
BrentInformation processing (IP) is necessary for consciousness, but IP has to occur in a substrate that produces qualia. Stop the IP and you stop consciousness. But the same IP in a different substrate could be consciousnessless.
The above substate is the material of the brain: neurons, neurochemistry, glia, ...A simulation of gravity running in a smartphone does not produce gravity.
People talk of telepathy and precognition as delusional - broadly speaking, it is. But the "IP delusion" (that consciousness is substate-independent IP) is up there.@philipthrift
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A simulation of gravity running in a smartphone does not produce gravity.
People talk of telepathy and precognition as delusional - broadly speaking, it is. But the "IP delusion" (that consciousness is substate-independent IP) is up there.
@philipthrift
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>> Even if we got super mega ultra lucky and Evolution just happened to produce a mutated gene that gave a being consciousness it would be lost in just a few generations due to genetic drift because however much we may value consciousness natural selection can't see it or hear it or touch it or detect it or be effected by it in any way.
> But that assumes consciousness has some cost in terms of survival and reproduction.
> Maybe it's just a spandrel.
Or maybe it has a function in the way human intelligence is implemented, but it wouldn't have a function is some other implementation.
A simulated human brain could read the Wikipedia article on pain [ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pain ] and integrate this knowledge into its knowledge base, but it could not experience pain.
A simulated human brain could describe it's back pain in every detail, write whole paragraphs about what it's like, while according to the theory of substrate dependence, it knows nothing of what it's writing about. Where then does this knowledge if pain come from when the AI writes a page about the back pain it is in?
A simulated human brain could read the Wikipedia article on pain [ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pain ] and integrate this knowledge into its knowledge base, but it could not experience pain.
Or maybe it has a function in the way human intelligence is implemented, but it wouldn't have a function is some other implementation.
Evolution is unlikely to have stumbled upon a complex method of achieving intelligence if there was a much simpler basic procedure to do the same thing
>> It's weird, perhaps it comes from watching too much Star Trek but I don't understand why so many people believe it's inherently more difficult to produce emotion than intelligence when Evolution found the exact opposite to be true.
> Evolution of humans on Earth combined (synthesized) a very different set of materials than that which computer engineers have used to make what is today's conventional computer hardware.
>>Evolution is unlikely to have stumbled upon a complex method of achieving intelligence if there was a much simpler basic procedure to do the same thing
> You must not have looked at how DNA is use to code for proteins. There are huge strecthes DNA that are just unused copies of other segments.
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It's not erring, so much as I think it's completely unuseful (of no practical value, unhelpful).
No I can't prove we aren't simulations, or that a simulation running in a big computer made of Intel Cores can't be conscious.
All those things: We are nothing but consciousness. We are simulations. A program running in a computer composed of a zillion Intel Core processors can be conscious.
Are are just plain woo woo.
People can believe any woo they want, of course.
@philipthrift
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On 5/18/2019 11:25 PM, Philip Thrift wrote:
No I can't prove we aren't simulations, or that a simulation running in a big computer made of Intel Cores can't be conscious.
Nor can you give a reply to Chalmer's fading consciousness problem.
On Sunday, May 19, 2019 at 1:50:03 AM UTC-5, Brent wrote:
On 5/18/2019 11:25 PM, Philip Thrift wrote:
No I can't prove we aren't simulations, or that a simulation running in a big computer made of Intel Cores can't be conscious.
Nor can you give a reply to Chalmer's fading consciousness problem.
for a system to be conscious it must have the right sort of biochemical makeup; if so, a metallic robot or a silicon-based computer could never have experiences, no matter what its causal organization
That from David Chalmer's paper is the only good takeaway.
>> I am well aware that there are huge sections of DNA that just repeat the same thing for hundreds or even thousands of times, but I don't see the relevance because if they just repeat the same short phrase over and over then they contain no information. And there are other DNA sections that once were genes but over the eons have been turned off (such as genes in birds that once produced teeth in their ancestors). These sections don't do anything anymore and the way we know they no longer do anything is that the variation from individual to individual in those sections is much much greater than the variation in the parts that still have a purpose. Because they do nothing Natural Selection can't edit out errors in DNA duplication so they accumulate from generation to generation.
> Right. So if consciousness just supervenes on intelligent computation, natural selection couldn't act on it
> and it could persist.
> I don't think this is particularly likely.
> But I do think there may be different kinds of intelligent computation and correspondingly different kinds of consciousness.
On Sunday, May 19, 2019 at 2:40:04 PM UTC-5, Jason wrote:On Sun, May 19, 2019 at 1:21 PM Philip Thrift <cloud...@gmail.com> wrote:
On Sunday, May 19, 2019 at 10:13:22 AM UTC-5, Brent wrote:
On 5/19/2019 12:19 AM, Philip Thrift wrote:
On Sunday, May 19, 2019 at 1:50:03 AM UTC-5, Brent wrote:
On 5/18/2019 11:25 PM, Philip Thrift wrote:
No I can't prove we aren't simulations, or that a simulation running in a big computer made of Intel Cores can't be conscious.
Nor can you give a reply to Chalmer's fading consciousness problem.
for a system to be conscious it must have the right sort of biochemical makeup; if so, a metallic robot or a silicon-based computer could never have experiences, no matter what its causal organization
A natural suggestion is that when experience arises from a physical system, it does so in virtue of the system's functional organization. On this view, the chemical and indeed the quantum substrates of the brain are not directly relevant to the existence of consciousness, although they may be indirectly relevant. What is central is rather the brain's abstract causal organization, an organization that might be realized in many different physical substrates.
In this paper I defend this view.
That from David Chalmer's paper is the only good takeaway.
BrentThat was written in 1993. (In 2019, I don't think he himself defends this view.)In any case, I read this "defense" like I read papers defending the existence of God.A scientist should be thrilled to find something which might show the ideas he or she holds to be wrong, as it offers a chance to adopt a more correct view. Recently I have seen a lot of people on this list telling others their idea is wrong, but not giving any reason or reasoning to justify that assertion.This doesn't helping anyone. Telling someone else they are wrong without providing a reason won't get them to change their mind, if anything failing to provide a reason is just as likely to reinforce their belief. If you see or intuit something that someone else does not, I think it is best to either point out what it is they are missing or remain silent.Jason
We know our brains, which we examine in science to be made of a complex configuration of cells, neurons and glial, with complex neurochemistry*, produces consciousness. That is the fact we know to be the case.
So it seems reasonable, from both a scientific and engineering stance, that a synthetic intelligence approach - one that combines synthetic-biological assembly with AI information processing to produce outputs that are actually living things - is the road to (synthetic) consciousness.The belief that a conventional computer made of a zillion Intel Core chips with the right programming can be conscious is a religious belief, not a a scientific belief.
The burden of proof is on those with that belief to prove it, just as the burden of proof is on those with the belief that God exists to prove that.
* neurochemistry like the recently reported role of SATB2-expressing neurons in the processing of taste.SATB2: "SATB2 is a 733 amino-acid homeodomain-containing human protein with a molecular weight of 82.5 kDa encoded by the SATB2 gene on 2q33."@philipthrift
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So it seems reasonable, from both a scientific and engineering stance, that a synthetic intelligence approach - one that combines synthetic-biological assembly with AI information processing to produce outputs that are actually living things - is the road to (synthetic) consciousness.
The belief that a conventional computer made of a zillion Intel Core chips with the right programming can be conscious is a religious belief, not a a scientific belief.
The burden of proof is on those with that belief to prove it, just as the burden of proof is on those with the belief that God exists to prove that.
The silicon atom has been much discussed as the basis for an alternative biochemical system, because silicon has many chemical properties similar to those of carbon and is in the same group of the periodic table, the carbon group. Like carbon, silicon can create molecules that are sufficiently large to carry biological information.[10]
However, silicon has several drawbacks as an alternative to carbon. Silicon, unlike carbon, lacks the ability to form chemical bonds with diverse types of atoms as is necessary for the chemical versatility required for metabolism, and yet this precise inability is what makes silicon less susceptible to bond with all sorts of impurities from which carbon, in comparison, is not shielded. Elements creating organic functional groups with carbon include hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen, phosphorus, sulfur, and metals such as iron, magnesium, and zinc. Silicon, on the other hand, interacts with very few other types of atoms.[10] Moreover, where it does interact with other atoms, silicon creates molecules that have been described as "monotonous compared with the combinatorial universe of organic macromolecules".[10] This is because silicon atoms are much bigger, having a larger mass and atomic radius, and so have difficulty forming double bonds (the double-bonded carbon is part of the carbonyl group, a fundamental motif of carbon-based bio-organic chemistry).
Silanes, which are chemical compoundsof hydrogen and silicon that are analogous to the alkane hydrocarbons, are highly reactive with water, and long-chain silanes spontaneously decompose. Molecules incorporating polymers of alternating silicon and oxygen atoms instead of direct bonds between silicon, known collectively as silicones, are much more stable. It has been suggested that silicone-based chemicals would be more stable than equivalent hydrocarbons in a sulfuric-acid-rich environment, as is found in some extraterrestrial locations.[11]
Of the varieties of molecules identified in the interstellar medium as of 1998, 84 are based on carbon, while only 8 are based on silicon.[12] Moreover, of those 8 compounds, 4 also include carbon within them. The cosmic abundance of carbon to silicon is roughly 10 to 1. This may suggest a greater variety of complex carbon compounds throughout the cosmos, providing less of a foundation on which to build silicon-based biologies, at least under the conditions prevalent on the surface of planets. Also, even though Earth and other terrestrial planets are exceptionally silicon-rich and carbon-poor (the relative abundance of silicon to carbon in Earth's crust is roughly 925:1), terrestrial life is carbon-based. The fact that carbon is used instead of silicon may be evidence that silicon is poorly suited for biochemistry on Earth-like planets. Reasons for which may be that silicon is less versatile than carbon in forming compounds, that the compounds formed by silicon are unstable, and that it blocks the flow of heat.[13]
Even so, biogenic silica is used by some Earth life, such as the silicate skeletal structure of diatoms. According to the clay hypothesis of A. G. Cairns-Smith, silicate minerals in water played a crucial role in abiogenesis: they replicated their crystal structures, interacted with carbon compounds, and were the precursors of carbon-based life.[14][15]
Although not observed in nature, carbon–silicon bonds have been added to biochemistry by using directed evolution (artificial selection). A heme containing cytochrome c protein from Rhodothermus marinus has been engineered using directed evolution to catalyze the formation of new carbon–silicon bonds between hydrosilanes and diazo compounds.[16]
Silicon compounds may possibly be biologically useful under temperatures or pressures different from the surface of a terrestrial planet, either in conjunction with or in a role less directly analogous to carbon. Polysilanols, the silicon compounds corresponding to sugars, are soluble in liquid nitrogen, suggesting that they could play a role in very-low-temperature biochemistry.[17][18]
In cinematic and literary science fiction, at a moment when man-made machines cross from nonliving to living, it is often posited,[by whom?] this new form would be the first example of non-carbon-based life. Since the advent of the microprocessor in the late 1960s, these machines are often classed as computers (or computer-guided robots) and filed under "silicon-based life", even though the silicon backing matrix of these processors is not nearly as fundamental to their operation as carbon is for "wet life".
On 18 May 2019, at 00:21, 'Brent Meeker' via Everything List <everyth...@googlegroups.com> wrote:
On 5/16/2019 11:51 PM, Philip Thrift wrote:
On Thursday, May 16, 2019 at 5:14:46 PM UTC-5, John Clark wrote:
On Thu, May 16, 2019 at 1:48 PM Philip Thrift <cloud...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Information processing absent actual first-class entities of qualia (or experiences) can only produce zombies. One needs information processing operating in a material substrate where those entities are available to be combined and manipulated.
So something can behave intelligently but if it is lacking "first-class entities of qualia" it can only be a intelligent zombie. But "first-class qualia" sounds like consciousness to me, so you're basically saying only conscious things can be conscious. A tautology has the virtue of always being true but it involves a unnecessary non-required pointless repetition and reiteration of words where you end up at the exact same place you started with. And that is typical of all consciousness theories.
John K Clark
To be clearer: Qualia (the "ingredients" of consciousness) cannot be reduced to information processing.
That's nothing but unsupported assertion. It's not even clear what "reduced" means in that context.
(That is what I mean by "first-class". If qualia could be reduced to information processing, then they would derivative from information, or "second-class".)
Is life derivative from chemistry? Only within a certain environment. Same with information processing. In general it's streams of bits being processed being changed according to some algorithm. But it's qualia if the streams are in some entity whose environment and actions give meaning to the information, like "I've got a headache and I'm going to lie down.”
Brent
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On 18 May 2019, at 00:33, Philip Thrift <cloud...@gmail.com> wrote:
On Friday, May 17, 2019 at 5:21:41 PM UTC-5, Brent wrote:
On 5/16/2019 11:51 PM, Philip Thrift wrote:
On Thursday, May 16, 2019 at 5:14:46 PM UTC-5, John Clark wrote:
On Thu, May 16, 2019 at 1:48 PM Philip Thrift <cloud...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Information processing absent actual first-class entities of qualia (or experiences) can only produce zombies. One needs information processing operating in a material substrate where those entities are available to be combined and manipulated.
So something can behave intelligently but if it is lacking "first-class entities of qualia" it can only be a intelligent zombie. But "first-class qualia" sounds like consciousness to me, so you're basically saying only conscious things can be conscious. A tautology has the virtue of always being true but it involves a unnecessary non-required pointless repetition and reiteration of words where you end up at the exact same place you started with. And that is typical of all consciousness theories.
John K Clark
To be clearer: Qualia (the "ingredients" of consciousness) cannot be reduced to information processing.
That's nothing but unsupported assertion. It's not even clear what "reduced" means in that context.
(That is what I mean by "first-class". If qualia could be reduced to information processing, then they would derivative from information, or "second-class".)
Is life derivative from chemistry? Only within a certain environment. Same with information processing. In general it's streams of bits being processed being changed according to some algorithm. But it's qualia if the streams are in some entity whose environment and actions give meaning to the information, like "I've got a headache and I'm going to lie down."
Brent
Isn't qualia can be reduced to information processing the unsupported assertion?
The burden of proof is on those who claim qualia comes out of information processing.If that claim were true, then any IP system - like a smartphone that can execute programs - can have human-type qualia existing inside it.
@philipthrift
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On 18 May 2019, at 08:11, Philip Thrift <cloud...@gmail.com> wrote:
On Friday, May 17, 2019 at 6:09:18 PM UTC-5, Brent wrote:
On 5/17/2019 3:33 PM, Philip Thrift wrote:
On Friday, May 17, 2019 at 5:21:41 PM UTC-5, Brent wrote:
On 5/16/2019 11:51 PM, Philip Thrift wrote:
On Thursday, May 16, 2019 at 5:14:46 PM UTC-5, John Clark wrote:
On Thu, May 16, 2019 at 1:48 PM Philip Thrift <cloud...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Information processing absent actual first-class entities of qualia (or experiences) can only produce zombies. One needs information processing operating in a material substrate where those entities are available to be combined and manipulated.
So something can behave intelligently but if it is lacking "first-class entities of qualia" it can only be a intelligent zombie. But "first-class qualia" sounds like consciousness to me, so you're basically saying only conscious things can be conscious. A tautology has the virtue of always being true but it involves a unnecessary non-required pointless repetition and reiteration of words where you end up at the exact same place you started with. And that is typical of all consciousness theories.
John K Clark
To be clearer: Qualia (the "ingredients" of consciousness) cannot be reduced to information processing.
That's nothing but unsupported assertion. It's not even clear what "reduced" means in that context.
(That is what I mean by "first-class". If qualia could be reduced to information processing, then they would derivative from information, or "second-class".)
Is life derivative from chemistry? Only within a certain environment. Same with information processing. In general it's streams of bits being processed being changed according to some algorithm. But it's qualia if the streams are in some entity whose environment and actions give meaning to the information, like "I've got a headache and I'm going to lie down."
Brent
Isn't qualia can be reduced to information processing the unsupported assertion?
No. It's very well supported. Interfere with information processing by drugs or electrical stimulus of the brain and qualia are changed or eliminated.
Brent
Information processing (IP) is necessary for consciousness, but IP has to occur in a substrate that produces qualia. Stop the IP and you stop consciousness. But the same IP in a different substrate could be consciousnessless.The above substate is the material of the brain: neurons, neurochemistry, glia, ...
A simulation of gravity running in a smartphone does not produce gravity.
People talk of telepathy and precognition as delusional - broadly speaking, it is. But the "IP delusion" (that consciousness is substate-independent IP) is up there.
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We do know that some synthetic-biological objects (SBOs) exist that are conscious: Us.Except here the material synthesis was accomplished via natural selection, not bay a team of scientists and engineers.
An android that came with a resume outlining its manufacturing via sufficiently synthetic-biological processes and said "I am conscious" might be believed.
We could cut it open, but that would not be nice.
There are several alternatives to our biochemistry, of course [ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypothetical_types_of_biochemistry ], even involving silicon*. (This is about the 20th time I have posted this.)But I claim that no zillion-processor Intel Core computer (that ultimately runs programs compiled to Intel machine code) can be conscious. I also claim God does not exist.It is this context that [ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_room ] is correct.
"The Chinese room argument holds that an executing program cannot [have] consciousness, regardless of how intelligently or human-like the program may make the computer behave."
* Silicon biochemistry
See also: OrganosiliconThe silicon atom has been much discussed as the basis for an alternative biochemical system, because silicon has many chemical properties similar to those of carbon and is in the same group of the periodic table, the carbon group. Like carbon, silicon can create molecules that are sufficiently large to carry biological information.[10]
However, silicon has several drawbacks as an alternative to carbon. Silicon, unlike carbon, lacks the ability to form chemical bonds with diverse types of atoms as is necessary for the chemical versatility required for metabolism, and yet this precise inability is what makes silicon less susceptible to bond with all sorts of impurities from which carbon, in comparison, is not shielded. Elements creating organic functional groups with carbon include hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen, phosphorus, sulfur, and metals such as iron, magnesium, and zinc. Silicon, on the other hand, interacts with very few other types of atoms.[10] Moreover, where it does interact with other atoms, silicon creates molecules that have been described as "monotonous compared with the combinatorial universe of organic macromolecules".[10] This is because silicon atoms are much bigger, having a larger mass and atomic radius, and so have difficulty forming double bonds (the double-bonded carbon is part of the carbonyl group, a fundamental motif of carbon-based bio-organic chemistry).
Silanes, which are chemical compoundsof hydrogen and silicon that are analogous to the alkane hydrocarbons, are highly reactive with water, and long-chain silanes spontaneously decompose. Molecules incorporating polymers of alternating silicon and oxygen atoms instead of direct bonds between silicon, known collectively as silicones, are much more stable. It has been suggested that silicone-based chemicals would be more stable than equivalent hydrocarbons in a sulfuric-acid-rich environment, as is found in some extraterrestrial locations.[11]
Of the varieties of molecules identified in the interstellar medium as of 1998, 84 are based on carbon, while only 8 are based on silicon.[12] Moreover, of those 8 compounds, 4 also include carbon within them. The cosmic abundance of carbon to silicon is roughly 10 to 1. This may suggest a greater variety of complex carbon compounds throughout the cosmos, providing less of a foundation on which to build silicon-based biologies, at least under the conditions prevalent on the surface of planets. Also, even though Earth and other terrestrial planets are exceptionally silicon-rich and carbon-poor (the relative abundance of silicon to carbon in Earth's crust is roughly 925:1), terrestrial life is carbon-based. The fact that carbon is used instead of silicon may be evidence that silicon is poorly suited for biochemistry on Earth-like planets. Reasons for which may be that silicon is less versatile than carbon in forming compounds, that the compounds formed by silicon are unstable, and that it blocks the flow of heat.[13]
Even so, biogenic silica is used by some Earth life, such as the silicate skeletal structure of diatoms. According to the clay hypothesis of A. G. Cairns-Smith, silicate minerals in water played a crucial role in abiogenesis: they replicated their crystal structures, interacted with carbon compounds, and were the precursors of carbon-based life.[14][15]
Although not observed in nature, carbon–silicon bonds have been added to biochemistry by using directed evolution (artificial selection). A heme containing cytochrome c protein from Rhodothermus marinus has been engineered using directed evolution to catalyze the formation of new carbon–silicon bonds between hydrosilanes and diazo compounds.[16]
Silicon compounds may possibly be biologically useful under temperatures or pressures different from the surface of a terrestrial planet, either in conjunction with or in a role less directly analogous to carbon. Polysilanols, the silicon compounds corresponding to sugars, are soluble in liquid nitrogen, suggesting that they could play a role in very-low-temperature biochemistry.[17][18]
In cinematic and literary science fiction, at a moment when man-made machines cross from nonliving to living, it is often posited,[by whom?] this new form would be the first example of non-carbon-based life. Since the advent of the microprocessor in the late 1960s, these machines are often classed as computers (or computer-guided robots) and filed under "silicon-based life", even though the silicon backing matrix of these processors is not nearly as fundamental to their operation as carbon is for "wet life".
>The Chinese room argument holds that an executing program cannot [blah blah]
On 18 May 2019, at 00:33, Philip Thrift <cloud...@gmail.com> wrote:Isn't qualia can be reduced to information processing the unsupported assertion?The burden of proof is on those who claim qualia comes out of information processing.If that claim were true, then any IP system - like a smartphone that can execute programs - can have human-type qualia existing inside it.It is not because some “information processing” could support consciousness that we can conclude that all information processing can support consciousness. You need at least one reflexive loop. You need two reflexive loop for having self-consciousness (Löbianity).But the information processing is not enough, you need a reality, also, be it the arithmetical truth, or a physical phenomenologies which would be Turing universal.The arithmetical truth must be understood as something beyond all information processing possible, as we know since Gödel and Tarski.The advantage of mechanism is that we do have a theory: computer science (aka Recrusion theory, or Arithmetic).That does not make Mechanism true, but it makes the problems amenable to mathematical formulation and testing.Bruno
On Monday, May 20, 2019 at 10:39:20 AM UTC-5, Jason wrote:That was interesting. Data has consciousness or doesn't. It's like being pregnant.
On Monday, May 20, 2019 at 10:39:20 AM UTC-5, Jason wrote:That was interesting. Data has consciousness or doesn't. It's like being pregnant.
Can something be a conscious object but not a living object?
--@philipthrift
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On Monday, May 20, 2019, Philip Thrift <cloud...@gmail.com> wrote:
On Monday, May 20, 2019 at 10:39:20 AM UTC-5, Jason wrote:That was interesting. Data has consciousness or doesn't. It's like being pregnant.So what would you say to data, if he existed? That you're not conscious because every other conscious being that we know of is biological?
All examples of consciousness we have exist in living objects. (Us, for example.)
True but that's not evidenceCan something be a conscious object but not a living object?Depending on your definition of life, yes, I think so.Jason
Jason
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> If a program (multi-core x86 code) running on a zillion-processor Intel Core computer can be conscious, then the proposition of "Chinese room" is wrong.
On 19 May 2019, at 03:34, 'Brent Meeker' via Everything List <everyth...@googlegroups.com> wrote:
On 5/18/2019 12:55 PM, Philip Thrift wrote:
On Saturday, May 18, 2019 at 2:39:29 PM UTC-5, Brent wrote:
On 5/18/2019 6:37 AM, Philip Thrift wrote:
A simulated human brain could describe it's back pain in every detail, write whole paragraphs about what it's like, while according to the theory of substrate dependence, it knows nothing of what it's writing about. Where then does this knowledge if pain come from when the AI writes a page about the back pain it is in?
A simulated human brain could read the Wikipedia article on pain [ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pain ] and integrate this knowledge into its knowledge base, but it could not experience pain.
How do you know this so-called fact?
Brent
My main point is that those who say it can (I say it can't) can't talk about telepathy, precognition, astral projection etc. being crazy.
No, but I can talk about them as tested and disproven.
Brent
@philipthrift
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On 19 May 2019, at 17:13, 'Brent Meeker' via Everything List <everyth...@googlegroups.com> wrote:
On 5/19/2019 12:19 AM, Philip Thrift wrote:
On Sunday, May 19, 2019 at 1:50:03 AM UTC-5, Brent wrote:
On 5/18/2019 11:25 PM, Philip Thrift wrote:
No I can't prove we aren't simulations, or that a simulation running in a big computer made of Intel Cores can't be conscious.
Nor can you give a reply to Chalmer's fading consciousness problem.
for a system to be conscious it must have the right sort of biochemical makeup; if so, a metallic robot or a silicon-based computer could never have experiences, no matter what its causal organization
A natural suggestion is that when experience arises from a physical system, it does so in virtue of the system's functional organization. On this view, the chemical and indeed the quantum substrates of the brain are not directly relevant to the existence of consciousness, although they may be indirectly relevant. What is central is rather the brain's abstract causal organization, an organization that might be realized in many different physical substrates.
In this paper I defend this view.
That from David Chalmer's paper is the only good takeaway.
Brent
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On 19 May 2019, at 22:39, Philip Thrift <cloud...@gmail.com> wrote:
On Sunday, May 19, 2019 at 2:40:04 PM UTC-5, Jason wrote:On Sun, May 19, 2019 at 1:21 PM Philip Thrift <cloud...@gmail.com> wrote:
On Sunday, May 19, 2019 at 10:13:22 AM UTC-5, Brent wrote:
On 5/19/2019 12:19 AM, Philip Thrift wrote:
On Sunday, May 19, 2019 at 1:50:03 AM UTC-5, Brent wrote:
On 5/18/2019 11:25 PM, Philip Thrift wrote:
No I can't prove we aren't simulations, or that a simulation running in a big computer made of Intel Cores can't be conscious.
Nor can you give a reply to Chalmer's fading consciousness problem.
for a system to be conscious it must have the right sort of biochemical makeup; if so, a metallic robot or a silicon-based computer could never have experiences, no matter what its causal organization
A natural suggestion is that when experience arises from a physical system, it does so in virtue of the system's functional organization. On this view, the chemical and indeed the quantum substrates of the brain are not directly relevant to the existence of consciousness, although they may be indirectly relevant. What is central is rather the brain's abstract causal organization, an organization that might be realized in many different physical substrates.
In this paper I defend this view.
That from David Chalmer's paper is the only good takeaway.
BrentThat was written in 1993. (In 2019, I don't think he himself defends this view.)In any case, I read this "defense" like I read papers defending the existence of God.A scientist should be thrilled to find something which might show the ideas he or she holds to be wrong, as it offers a chance to adopt a more correct view. Recently I have seen a lot of people on this list telling others their idea is wrong, but not giving any reason or reasoning to justify that assertion.This doesn't helping anyone. Telling someone else they are wrong without providing a reason won't get them to change their mind, if anything failing to provide a reason is just as likely to reinforce their belief. If you see or intuit something that someone else does not, I think it is best to either point out what it is they are missing or remain silent.JasonWe know our brains, which we examine in science to be made of a complex configuration of cells, neurons and glial, with complex neurochemistry*, produces consciousness. That is the fact we know to be the case.So it seems reasonable, from both a scientific and engineering stance, that a synthetic intelligence approach - one that combines synthetic-biological assembly with AI information processing to produce outputs that are actually living things - is the road to (synthetic) consciousness.The belief that a conventional computer made of a zillion Intel Core chips with the right programming can be conscious is a religious belief, not a a scientific belief.
The burden of proof is on those with that belief to prove it, just as the burden of proof is on those with the belief that God exists to prove that.
* neurochemistry like the recently reported role of SATB2-expressing neurons in the processing of taste.SATB2: "SATB2 is a 733 amino-acid homeodomain-containing human protein with a molecular weight of 82.5 kDa encoded by the SATB2 gene on 2q33."@philipthrift
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"The Chinese room argument holds that an executing program cannot [have] consciousness, regardless of how intelligently or human-like the program may make the computer behave.”
* Silicon biochemistry
See also: OrganosiliconThe silicon atom has been much discussed as the basis for an alternative biochemical system, because silicon has many chemical properties similar to those of carbon and is in the same group of the periodic table, the carbon group. Like carbon, silicon can create molecules that are sufficiently large to carry biological information.[10]
However, silicon has several drawbacks as an alternative to carbon. Silicon, unlike carbon, lacks the ability to form chemical bonds with diverse types of atoms as is necessary for the chemical versatility required for metabolism, and yet this precise inability is what makes silicon less susceptible to bond with all sorts of impurities from which carbon, in comparison, is not shielded. Elements creating organic functional groups with carbon include hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen, phosphorus, sulfur, and metals such as iron, magnesium, and zinc. Silicon, on the other hand, interacts with very few other types of atoms.[10] Moreover, where it does interact with other atoms, silicon creates molecules that have been described as "monotonous compared with the combinatorial universe of organic macromolecules".[10] This is because silicon atoms are much bigger, having a larger mass and atomic radius, and so have difficulty forming double bonds (the double-bonded carbon is part of the carbonyl group, a fundamental motif of carbon-based bio-organic chemistry).
Silanes, which are chemical compoundsof hydrogen and silicon that are analogous to the alkane hydrocarbons, are highly reactive with water, and long-chain silanes spontaneously decompose. Molecules incorporating polymers of alternating silicon and oxygen atoms instead of direct bonds between silicon, known collectively as silicones, are much more stable. It has been suggested that silicone-based chemicals would be more stable than equivalent hydrocarbons in a sulfuric-acid-rich environment, as is found in some extraterrestrial locations.[11]
Of the varieties of molecules identified in the interstellar medium as of 1998, 84 are based on carbon, while only 8 are based on silicon.[12] Moreover, of those 8 compounds, 4 also include carbon within them. The cosmic abundance of carbon to silicon is roughly 10 to 1. This may suggest a greater variety of complex carbon compounds throughout the cosmos, providing less of a foundation on which to build silicon-based biologies, at least under the conditions prevalent on the surface of planets. Also, even though Earth and other terrestrial planets are exceptionally silicon-rich and carbon-poor (the relative abundance of silicon to carbon in Earth's crust is roughly 925:1), terrestrial life is carbon-based. The fact that carbon is used instead of silicon may be evidence that silicon is poorly suited for biochemistry on Earth-like planets. Reasons for which may be that silicon is less versatile than carbon in forming compounds, that the compounds formed by silicon are unstable, and that it blocks the flow of heat.[13]
Even so, biogenic silica is used by some Earth life, such as the silicate skeletal structure of diatoms. According to the clay hypothesis of A. G. Cairns-Smith, silicate minerals in water played a crucial role in abiogenesis: they replicated their crystal structures, interacted with carbon compounds, and were the precursors of carbon-based life.[14][15]
Although not observed in nature, carbon–silicon bonds have been added to biochemistry by using directed evolution (artificial selection). A heme containing cytochrome c protein from Rhodothermus marinus has been engineered using directed evolution to catalyze the formation of new carbon–silicon bonds between hydrosilanes and diazo compounds.[16]
Silicon compounds may possibly be biologically useful under temperatures or pressures different from the surface of a terrestrial planet, either in conjunction with or in a role less directly analogous to carbon. Polysilanols, the silicon compounds corresponding to sugars, are soluble in liquid nitrogen, suggesting that they could play a role in very-low-temperature biochemistry.[17][18]
In cinematic and literary science fiction, at a moment when man-made machines cross from nonliving to living, it is often posited,[by whom?] this new form would be the first example of non-carbon-based life. Since the advent of the microprocessor in the late 1960s, these machines are often classed as computers (or computer-guided robots) and filed under "silicon-based life", even though the silicon backing matrix of these processors is not nearly as fundamental to their operation as carbon is for "wet life".
@philipthrift
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So I still don't see from your description what exactly is missing for it to produce|execute human qualia?
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On 20 May 2019, at 10:32, Philip Thrift <cloud...@gmail.com> wrote:But I claim that no zillion-processor Intel Core computer (that ultimately runs programs compiled to Intel machine code) can be conscious. I also claim God does not exist.Which God?It is this context that [ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_room ] is correct."The Chinese room argument holds that an executing program cannot [have] consciousness, regardless of how intelligently or human-like the program may make the computer behave.”The Chinese room argument is based on a misunderstanding of how a computer work. It has been refuted correctly by Dennett and Hofstadter, since long.Bruno
In science, we don’t claim truth, especially on the fundamental reality. We only try theories, like plausibly Nature itself, through selection, mutation, etc.
> (Isn't Hofstadter a joke?)
> ” His [Dennett's] position was summarized in an interview in The New York Times: “The elusive subjective conscious experience—the redness of red, the painfulness of pain—that philosophers call qualia? Sheer illusion.”
On 21 May 2019, at 14:58, Philip Thrift <cloud...@gmail.com> wrote:
On Tuesday, May 21, 2019 at 6:06:19 AM UTC-5, Bruno Marchal wrote:On 20 May 2019, at 10:32, Philip Thrift <cloud...@gmail.com> wrote:But I claim that no zillion-processor Intel Core computer (that ultimately runs programs compiled to Intel machine code) can be conscious. I also claim God does not exist.Which God?It is this context that [ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_room ] is correct."The Chinese room argument holds that an executing program cannot [have] consciousness, regardless of how intelligently or human-like the program may make the computer behave.”The Chinese room argument is based on a misunderstanding of how a computer work. It has been refuted correctly by Dennett and Hofstadter, since long.BrunoI think in 2019 Dennett may have changed from his previous "consciousness denier" belief, but I'm not sure. (Isn't Hofstadter a joke?)
This is how philosophers in the twentieth century came to endorse the Denial, the silliest view ever held in the history of human thought.“When I squint just right,” Dennett writes in 2013, “it does sort of seem that consciousness must be something in addition to all the things it does for us and to us, some special private glow or here-I-am-ness that would be absent in any robot… But I’ve learned not to credit the hunch. I think it is a flat-out mistake, a failure of imagination.” His position was summarized in an interview in The New York Times: “The elusive subjective conscious experience—the redness of red, the painfulness of pain—that philosophers call qualia? Sheer illusion.” If he’s right, no one has ever really suffered, in spite of agonizing diseases, mental illness, murder, rape, famine, slavery, bereavement, torture, and genocide. And no one has ever caused anyone else pain.This is the Great Silliness. We must hope that it doesn’t spread outside the academy, or convince some future information technologist or roboticist who has great power over our lives.
@philipthfift
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Bruce
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On 21 May 2019, at 15:46, John Clark <johnk...@gmail.com> wrote:On Tue, May 21, 2019 at 8:58 AM Philip Thrift <cloud...@gmail.com> wrote:> (Isn't Hofstadter a joke?)Hofstadter wrote the single best book I ever read in my life, "Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid".> ” His [Dennett's] position was summarized in an interview in The New York Times: “The elusive subjective conscious experience—the redness of red, the painfulness of pain—that philosophers call qualia? Sheer illusion.”I sure hope Dennett was misquoted, but if not I'm appalled he would say something so silly. One thing we know for certain about consciousness is that it's a subjective phenomenon; and so is an illusion.
So all he's saying in the above is subjectivity is sheer subjectivity, and that is certainly true but it is also very silly.John K Clark
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