Re: Is consciousness a process?


"Stephen Harris" <cyberguard-1048@xxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:a0GYh.3725$H_.2347@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Don Geddis wrote:
Stephen Harris <cyberguard-1048@xxxxxxxxx> wrote on Fri, 27 Apr 2007:


So in this sense I don't disagree. It is clearly not the case that
intelligent behavior _causes_ consciousness.

The real implication is the other way, as you suggest. _If_ an entity
demonstrates ("sufficiently") intelligent behavior, _then_ it must
actually
have consciousness inside.

But if it _doesn't_ happen to demonstrate intelligent behavior while
you're
watching, then you're on much weaker ground to conclude that it does
_not_
have consciousness.

(I made many of the same comments when we discussed the Turing Test.
"Failing" the Turing Test provides very little information about the
presence or absense of consciousness in a candidate entity.)


"I Am A Strange Loop" by Hofstadter page 257

"The cells inside a brain are not the bearers of its consciousness;
the bearers of its consciousness are _patterns_. The pattern of
organization is what matters, not the substance. ... And patterns
can be transferred from one medium to another, even between radically
different media. Such an act is called "transplantation" or, for
short, "translation"."

SH: I like this description. Earlier in the book he mentions that
infants have less consciousness than adults, so its something that
develops. The likely candidate for how it develops is experience,
which I guess can be broken down into behavior interacting with the
environment.

Would it not, then, behoove one to state, rather explicitly, how behavior
interacting with the environment produces the sorts of behavior that are
said to "show consciousness" etc., then to jump into the alleged "patterns"
that such an interaction leaves?

I'm not sure how some of the other terms fit in with
this base description of like mind, self-awareness, and I-ness, I
think Hofstadter uses them interchangeably, maybe because he thinks
they are all patterns (maybe with slightly different functions?).

It doesn't seem like his insight is sufficient to recognize an alien
consciousness, and also its behavior might not be evident. There are
some patterns which appear to have the same trajectories for quite
some time, but then radically diverge. I've seen this playing around
with fractals when they were popular. I'm thinking the trajectory
could be mapped or associated with behavior(s). That is my visual
notion of how a TT program stays within the boundaries of the space
of acceptable human-like conversational responses to questions.

Best regards,
Stephen


.

Relevant Pages

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    ... intelligent behavior _causes_ consciousness. ... But if it _doesn't_ happen to demonstrate intelligent behavior while you're ... the bearers of its consciousness are _patterns_. ... some patterns which appear to have the same trajectories for quite ...
    (comp.ai.philosophy)