Re: artificial intelligence

On Dec 7, 5:39 am, c...@xxxxxxxx (Curt Welch) wrote:

...
So my argument is the same as theirs: My network
is conscious because I say it is. My argument is
now exactly as strong, and exactly as weak, as
your argument.

The word consciousness has many uses but in the sense
it is being used here the source of this knowledge is
not an objective observation. When people say they
are "conscious" or "have a phenomenal experience" they
are not talking about an objective observation rather
they are talking about what it is like to be the one
having the experience.

...


One of those interesting physical behaviors is that
they go around saying stupid things like, "I'm conscious
and computers aren't conscious and I know this is true
because I say it's true".

Not everyone says it is true because they say it is true.

It is one of inference that when they have a conscious
experience there are things going on in the brain that
there is no evidence is going on the same way in a computer.

You might say the computer program is "aware" of the
printer or the keyboard. This is the access notion of
a conscious process. P is conscious of Q means that Q
has an effect of P. Is this sufficient for conscious
behavior? Is this sufficient for a subjective experience?

They can't provide a definition of consciousness which
allows us to know what they are talking about when they
use the word "consciousness" so there's no way to prove
them right or wrong.

They infer you are human and thus would have the same
subjective experiences as themselves and thus would
know what they are talking about.

When we "define" what we are talking about we make a
connection between a symbol and an experience. If you
don't have the experience the symbol means nothing.
The color symbols mean nothing to a person blind from
birth. If you have no subjective experiences no definition
will be possible. If you do have subjective experiences
no definition is required only an associated symbol for
communication.

If you are not human, and have no direct experiences as
to what is like to be human, just a logic machine then we
would have to limit the problem to one of an objective
observation as they do in hospitals to determine if
someone is conscious or not.

If you never experienced pain for example and came
across a creature that would scream and carry on when
you operated on them you might think in terms of
stopping the screaming behavior not in terms of
stopping the pain (whatever that might be as the poor
creature could not define it beyond its behaviors).
So cut out its voice box and you have removed the
"pain" from a behavioral point of view.


And they think that since we can't prove them wrong,
they must be right. But when I use the same argument
against their position, what do they come back with?
Read you words above, you say, "the burden of proof
is on me".

The burden of proof is that the system you are talking
about has to have whatever it is a responding person
has when they say they are conscious.


Well, I also happen to know I'm wearing a balloon hat.
It's invisible, and it can't be detected by any known
tool of science, but I know it's there, and I know you
have one too, and I know my computer doesn't have one,
and I know all this is true because I just do. So if
you think your computer has one, the burden of proof
is on you to prove this is true. If you think I don't
have one, the burden of proof is on you because
everyone believes all humans have balloon hats so you
have to prove them all wrong, not just me.

It cannot be proved deductively as we have no idea why
we have an invisible balloon hat. We observe others talk
about their invisible balloon hat. At this stage we don't
know what generates all this talk about an invisible
balloon hats so we have no way to deduce if others really
do have a invisible balloon hat. we can only infer that
it is possible based on the similarity between them and
ourself. I am talking about the subjective experience
not its source.

Someone you trusted when you were young told you that
you had a balloon hat, and you believed them because
you trusted them.

Now are we talking about the subjective experience or
are we talking about the source of the subjective
experience. My impression is you conflate the experience
with the source of the experience.

Until we knew about the brain the source was unknown
now it is known. But the experience itself doesn't
vanish just because we now know it is due to the
activity of neurons not due to some "mind stuff".

The story about the soul may have been told and believed
just as the story about Santa Clause may have been told
and believed. But the presents at Xmas still had a source.
The presents were real even if the source was mistaken.

You weren't sure what they were talking about but you
believed them because you knew they wouldn't lie to you.

No one ever told me I was having subjective experiences.
Everything we are is a subjective experience. The question
was why was it always associated with this particular body?


Then you found out that everyone thought they had a
balloon hat as long as they were human.

If you are talking about the source than no, everyone
does not think they have a balloon hat (soul) they believe
they are some kind of brain activity.

They told you that this balloon hat was what allowed
you to make decisions. It was what gave you free
will. And you know you can make decisions about what
to eat, and what to do, and that the computer on your
desk never goes to the store to get new floppy disks
so it must not have a balloon hat which allows it to
make decisions.

Maybe your life experience not mine. I rejected religion
very early in life because I couldn't separate it from
other fantasies such as Santa Claus. I discovered the
true source of Xmas presents and I believe the true source
of my subjective experiences is to be found in the activity
of my nervous system.


But yet, people who believe in this balloon hat
consciousness delusion can't see this. They say,
"no, it's more than that - BECAUSE I KNOW IT IS".

So if the brain is not the source of my subjective
experiences what is the source?


A belief is not a proof. A belief is just a belief.
NO matter how strong you believe in something, you
should be smart enough to realize that beliefs are not
facts, they are just behaviors conditioned into you by
your environment.

True it is only an inference that my subjective experience
is due to brain activity. I infer that from the effect on
my subjective experience when my brain is effected by
hormones, alcohol and anesthetics. I could be wrong I
guess but what other source could there be that isn't just
a ad hoc belief?


These debates always end up with qualia. The argument
becomes, blueness has an internal quality to it which
it wouldn't have if I was just a machine.

Why wouldn't a machine have qualia if it was doing the
same things as a biological machine? Why wouldn't it be
like something to be a silicon machine?


That internal quality, and most important, your ability
to sense the internal quality, is just your ability to
sense the behavior of your own brain. One part of your
brain is sensing, and reacting to, the behavior of
other parts of your brain. One part of your brain is
producing the internal quality by producing a signal
which means "I see blue". And the other part of the
brain is reacting to that first part of the brain by
saying, "I see that my brain is seeing something which
is blue".

I would phrase it as my brain is having a "blue" experience.
Plug one of your brain electrodes in the right place and
perhaps you can induce a "blue" experience.


All it takes to make this work is a brain with two
detectors. One wired to a blue light detector, and the
second one wired to the output of the first one.

This is where I would disagree. We have no way to determine
if that is all that is required to have a "blue" experience.
It could be wired to a red light detector and we might still
generate a "blue" experience. We don't know why it is like
this to code for blue, red, and so on...

But why do the balloon hat people say these internal events
are special? It's because they first made the assumption
that balloon-hats were real, (because all their trusted
friends told them it was real), then they went looking for
the evidence to justify their belief.

The educated balloon hat person doesn't say these internal
events are special. Only that the balloon (brain) is the
source of subjective experiences just as a hot wire is the
source of light. The electrons flowing through a wire do
not make the wire "special" they simply explain why it is
now producing light. They don't make the claim that wires
always produce light even when there is no electricity
flowing through it. Just as I don't claim that brains have
subjective experiences when there is no brain activity.


And when the found these "internal" events which seem to
be "not just physical events", they knew they had found
the justification for their beliefs. They had balloon hats
because they had these magical internal events in them and
they had the power to sense these magical events were in
them with no tool of science could sense them.

It is an interesting question I think as to how we could
tell if a brain was having a blue experience. Maybe if
"blue" is due to the stimulation of associations with that
particular coding we could infer they were having a blue
experience. It always seems to come back to an inference
not a deduction.
...


The only thing this leaves, is the simple fact that my
network can't make a robot flap it's jaw in the same
interesting ways a human brain can.

Or maybe code things the way we do when we have a "blue"
experience.

...


A belief in consciousness - something which the supporters
argue can't be measured objectivity - is a rejection of
science in favor of a personal opinion.

Actually it is measured objectively in every hospital.


The root question here, as always, is a faith vs. science
debate. Should we trust the objective evidence, or should
we trust our gut?

The dilemma is that all our objective data is subjectively
experienced. We have no direct knowledge of the real world
only the subjective model we experience. We could all be
dreaming an imaginary world with imaginary people and not
know it. I was dreaming last night about fixing some
electronic equipment and was making purely imaginary
adjustments to imaginary equipment. The imaginary people
in my dream would have agreed with me as to the objective
reality of that equipment.


When a logical argument tells us the lights are off, but
yet we see the lights are on, we reject the logical
argument and go with our gut feeling that the lights are
on. We trust our eyes over our logic. We all do this.
We just assume there's something wrong with the logic
which we haven't found yet. The stronger our gut feeling
is about the truth of something, the quicker we will
reject any argument which is in conflict with it.

A subjective experience is not the same as a gut belief.

When I dream I can see it is an actual subjective experience
although the objective reality is the lights are off. It
has to be explained, just not in terms of actual external
lights but in terms of brain activity.

I know what it is like to be this particular network of
active neurons. I don't know what it is like to be a rock
but I suspect it is like not having active neurons.

--
JC


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