Re: Paper by ~MM on distributed self-awareness


"feedbackdroids" <feedbackdroids@xxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:1146327555.638610.248310@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Stephen Harris wrote:
I happen to have Hofstadter's 1995 book "Fluid concepts and creative
ananlogies" on the shelf, and notice that both Melanie and also
Chalmers were his students. This book also goes into significant detail
about CopyCat and introduces Metacat, so these ideas are well over 11
years old.

In the book H says on pg 309 section heading: "Copycat: self-aware, but
Very Little". I think that sums it up. Next page talks about
consciousness.


Metacat introduced self-monitoring.

Basically, they're trying to make the case that "self-monitoring" is in
some way connected to "self-awareness", but this is really just the
same old quandary Searle talks about regards the difference between
doing and being. Just because something acts like it's conscious
doesn't mean it is conscious. Just because a program monitors it's
output and feeds back information [self-monitoring] doesn't make it
self-aware, rather it's just self-adaptive, AFAIAC. Etc, etc, etc.


I happen to agree with Searle's Chinese Room Argument (CRA).
And I was critical of the Turing Test. The TT has a time limit and
probes human-like responses to a certain depth. If you increase
the complexity of the test over more time, the program which
passes an hour long test will likely fail a ten hour test. Then one
might be able to increase the scope/detail of the program so
that it passes the ten hour test but not the hundred hour test. ...

As I mentioned before, how does a human identify another human
as intelligent. By observing that human's behavior. But the human
also looks like us. We share a common evolutionary background.
So the reason humans agree on abc-->abd : ijk-->ij? = ijl
is because we shared the same evolutionary pressures which
weeded out those not smart enough to survive long enough to
reproduce. As Melanie said, 'they were more likely to get et
by the tigers'. Or maybe they didn't have enough sense to come
into the cave and get out of the rain so died of pneumonia. :-)

So the unique thing which is human intelligence is not likely to
be captured by a program, because human intelligence has a
far too complex history which shaped it. Nor is the brain very
likely to function like a computer although it shares some
functions which are "computable". Establishing exactly which
functions are computable falls under very pervasive problem
of "distinguishing boundaries". Which leads to your other post.

As I said last time, H+M+C's are very LOOSE definitions, like saying a
thermostat is conscious. You just end up getting what you define. To
me, such arguments are just a waste of time, in fact. Good for
philosophy, maybe, but waste of time for engineering. As we've seen,
some people are happy to go on arguing for years and years about what
is and is not conscious, aware, etc. These are endless arguments, and
have no solution, and are a waste of time, AFAIAC.


This is the same problem with the classification of emergent behavior
into four types; it still leaves one trying to decide whether some event
belongs to class III or class IV. Becauses the boundaries are fuzzy
which as you say is a matter of focus and definition.

So originally "emergence" was defined as irreducible, not capable
of prediction. How is one going to engineer which requires control.
a non-algorithmic process? It was necessary to change the definition
of emergence in order to support potgieter: ""In our research and
technology, we are exploiting self-awareness in order to engineer
emergence in complex adaptive systems."

So now one can find different definitions of emergence used to relate to
predicting orbital boundaries and probabilistic locations in a phase space.

Regards,
Stephen


.

Relevant Pages

  • Re: Emergence denial: the consequences
    ... themselves somehow 'contain' consciousness as a fundamental ... So, John, you have a choice: it's either emergence or conscious ... at the electron currents. ... a different pattern represents a completely different one. ...
    (talk.origins)
  • Re: Emergence denial: the consequences
    ... piece by Jim Holt titled "Mind of a Rock: ... if you deny that consciousness ... Chalmers' slogan 'Experience is information from the inside; physics ... exactly the pathway of emergence that physicist R Laughlin describes. ...
    (talk.origins)
  • Re: Emergence denial: the consequences
    ... if you deny that consciousness ... exactly the pathway of emergence that physicist R Laughlin describes. ... As far as ontology vs epistemology, let me ask you, John, whether ...
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  • Re: Emergence denial: the consequences
    ... if you deny that consciousness ... It goes on to consider the atoms ... It's not an either/or between bottom-up emergence and conscious ... matter like molecules, atoms, atomic particles and photons. ...
    (talk.origins)
  • Re: Emergence denial: the consequences
    ... The New York Times magazine section today ... piece by Jim Holt titled "Mind of a Rock: ... if you deny that consciousness ... exactly the pathway of emergence that physicist R Laughlin describes. ...
    (talk.origins)