When we do stuff, like thinking, or feeling, or calculating or attempting to exercise a free will which we may or may not have, we are actually doing it.

When a digital computer does stuff, it isn't actually doing what we say it's doing. Instead, we are using it to help us do stuff, in exactly the same way we could use an abacus to help us do calculations.

These words you are reading have no meaning at all for the computer. They require your interpretation. It's the same with all aspects of the computer's operation and its outputs.

Researchers had humans search like dogs, on hands and knees, and their performance finding stuff by smell was not greatly inferior to a dog’s!

I accidentally hit myself with a pickaxe, it knocked me out. Have you got anything useful to say?

Speaking from personal experience, when I have a general anaesthetic or hit myself on the forehead with a pick axe, I lose consciousness. Before and after the anaesthetic or pick axe incident I see things, feel things, immediately after the anaesthetic or the pick axe hit I don't feel or see anything. I'm very confident that if I had had more anaesthetic or hit myself harder with the pick axe, I wouldn't have recovered consciousness. This is in fact why people don't want to be dead.

Do you think that makes a difference to what I said? How?

Plants may generate consciousness differently. — Tanner Lloyd

People say somebody is a vegetable, or in a vegetative state, when they have no conscious awareness, generally because of injury or disease. If you are knocked out or if you are given a general anaesthetic, you lose consciousness. So that's what consciousness is. You know what it is.

It's produced by highly specific and exceptionally complex mechanisms and processes in the brain (and body). We know an astonishing amount about those mechanisms and processes.

Neuroscientists in France have implanted false memories into the brains of sleeping mice. Using electrodes to directly stimulate and record the activity of nerve cells, they created artificial associative memories that persisted while the animals snoozed and then influenced their behaviour when they awoke.

Manipulating memories by tinkering with brain cells is becoming routine in neuroscience labs. Last year, one team of researchers used a technique called optogenetics to label the cells encoding fearful memories in the mouse brain and to switch the memories on and off, and another used it to identify the cells encoding positive and negative emotional memories, so that they could convert positive memories into negative ones, and vice versa. — https://www.theguardian.com/science/neurophilosophy/2015/mar/09/false-memories-implanted-into-the-brains-of-sleeping-mice

The mechanisms and processes in humans and animals are very similar.

The mechanisms and processes in plants are not very similar. We know an astonishing amount about those mechanisms and processes. Plants grow towards the light. We know why this happens:

The phototropic response occurs because greater quantities of auxin are distributed to the side away from the light than to the side toward it, causing the shaded side to elongate more strongly and thus curve the stem toward the light. — https://www.britannica.com/science/auxin#ref1279053

So a plant doesn't need to be able to see light in order to respond to it. And it doesn't have the kind of mechanisms and processes you have, the ones that make you conscious. So there isn't any good reason to think that plants are conscious.

Computers even less so!

I am totally convinced by the power of your rationale Oh Thunderballs!

To answer your question about "too (neither?)": it would be grammatical to say "She can't read a clock either", however I don't think that's what you were trying to say. The words "too", "either" and "neither" all refer back to something mentioned previously. I think you needed to start a new thought, maybe something like "Anyway, she can't read a clock". I hope that's helpful.

My dog is 8 years old now and I have had him since he was 8 weeks old, and all that time I have thought about what he knows and how he thinks. He would bite my hands when he was very young, but I learned that the way to stop this is to scream and act like the puppy has really hurt you, in an exaggerated way. This is how other dogs respond to a puppy biting. I hope that's helpful.

I guess that behaviour is instinctive, because it is widespread among dogs.

When I think about my dog's intelligence I see that he works by trial and error more than by reason, and I think that is because he lacks the flexibility provided by human style language and thought. Not only flexibility, but many other aspects of thought are available to us because of the nature of our language.

I am not sure. Could be we are the only ones. But it could also be that we are the only ones who want and need more than what we have. We might be the only animal dissatisfied with ourselves, and life as it is. I mean, look at us! Can you blame us for being so insecure? — James Riley

Speak for yourself!

Dogs aren't humans tho.

But it's precisely because we are freed (by language and language-based thought) that we are in a completely different world to the other animals.

Maybe I am misunderstanding you DanLager but you said their is little difference between us and other animals and I am saying there is a big difference. So I don't think we are saying the same thing.

The difference ain't that big. All animals are culturally fixed. No language is needed. They understand one another without words. The communicate by means of body and sound. — DanLager

And we aren't culturally fixed, and we are free in limitless other ways, and so the difference between us is vast.

Consider how language must have formed back in the day. We went from random noises to words to complete and ever increasingly complex sentences. This obviously started out as instinct, warning signals like monkeys do. It evolved from there but I'd argue that much of the same function is retained. The ability to consider a multitude of scenarios ("what if") beforehand is an excellent tool for survivability. I'd guess the truth lays somewhere in the middle. This ability is likely able to overwrite instinct - but at the same time it is an instinct. It's not like you have to try very hard to think at all. — Hermeticus

I think you're overlooking the vast difference between human and animal language and thought. We can say something new any time we want. No other animal can do that, and the effects are enormous.

Neil Degrasse Tyson is making a similar mistake in that somewhat over-excited video we were linked to. The difference between us and the other animals isn't the 1% he refers to. The difference between human and animal language and thought isn't 1%, there's a vast chasm between us.

Of course we still have instincts, by their nature they are difficult to overcome, but we can recognise them and seek to overcome them. We can explicitly identify our instincts, communicate our thoughts about them to other humans, and modify our behaviour. We don't wholly succeed, of course not, but we do have the capacity to change our behaviour at will, en masse. No other animal can do anything like that.

I was just watching a game of rugby. In games like that we recognise our instinct for aggression, and we use language-based thought to devise and communicate measures to reduce the risk of serious injury. Other animals can't do that, so they are trapped in their aggressive behaviour indefinitely.

Sex, war, exceeding carrying capacity, all the things animals do, the list goes on. I look around at people and I see animals. No better, but maybe a little worse. In fact, the only worthwhile thing we've ever brought to the table is art. Everything else is about us. No giving, just taking. — James Riley

You were talking initially about animal intelligence, in a Philosophy of Mind forum. Whether our intelligence or our minds are different to those of other animals. But now you are moralising. You are using a mental capacity that (some?) other animals don't have. Fish can't look around at other animals and ascribe moral properties to them in the way you are.

We can overcome our instincts to the extent that we agree to limit the number of children we have, to avoid overpopulation, as in China. Maybe you don't think that was a "worthwhile" thing to do. Maybe you think it is immoral. But that doesn't change the fact that the world's most populous country could make a decision that no group of other animals could make.

Art is all about us! And while fish couldn't make a moral/political decision to limit their population, a fish is "probably nature's greatest artist", according to David Attenborough:

https://youtu.be/VQr8xDk_UaY

Art is just a way of attracting attention to yourself.

And so I think it's time for a total reconfiguration of your current world view.

If our instinct is to invent, which it apparently is, then yes. — James Riley

Well, no. Human level language equips us to transcend instinct, for example it enables us to consider "what if" questions, it allows us to consider alternatives, it allows us to pass on knowledge obtained through that kind of thinking and thereby to build on progress made by others.

I wonder what motivates you to deny this.

I was in an aircraft flying at 30,000 feet yesterday. You think we make aircraft using our instinct?

We would be a whole lot more interesting than ants to an objective observer. However complex and fascinating their behaviour might be, they are unable to escape from their instinctive patterns in the way we can.

That's not an interesting comment.

Animal intelligence is not a matter of debate. What is surprising and shocking is that, apparently, a lot of people once thought they are just machines. — tim wood

Chemotaxis is the directed motion of an organism toward environmental conditions it deems attractive and/or away from surroundings it finds repellent. Movement of flagellated bacteria such as Escherichia coli can be characterized as a sequence of smooth-swimming runs punctuated by intermittent tumbles. Tumbles last only a fraction of a second, which is sufficient to effectively randomize the direction of the next run. Runs tend to be variable in length extending from a fraction of a second to several minutes.
As E. coli cells are only a few microns long, they behave essentially as point sensors, unable to measure gradients by comparing head-to-tail concentration differences. Instead, they possess a kind of memory that allows them to compare current and past chemical environments. The probability that a smooth swimming E. coli cell will stop its run and tumble is dictated by the chemistry of its immediate surroundings compared to the chemistry it encountered a few seconds previously. — https://www.cell.com/current-biology/comments/S0960-9822(02)01424-0

We have a full understanding of the biochemical "machinery" that allows the bacteria to behave in this way, as set out in the article I quoted from. Is this "intelligence"?

You ok mate?

Look, you've just told us that computation is 0's and 1's, the program pulls through the 0's and 1's, whatever that means.

Then I've pointed out to you that there are no 0's and 1's. You need to address that.

Stop wasting our time.

There are no 1s and 0s in a PC. There are voltages, or "pits and lands" on an optical disc, and we interpret these as representing 1s and 0s.

Does a digital computer actually compute? Try reading the brief argument I've posted twice now. It answers your original question.

"An analog computer or analogue computer is a type of computer that uses the continuously variable aspects of physical phenomena such as electrical, mechanical, or hydraulic quantities to model the problem being solved."

There's something missing from this definition, something that is crucial to the question whether the brain works like an analogue computer. What's missing is the fact that we use the computer to model the problem being solved. The computer doesn't use the physical phenomena, we do.

A slide rule is a mechanical analogue computer. Mathematical calculations are performed by aligning a mark on a sliding central strip with a mark on one of two outer fixed strips, and then observing the relative positions of other marks on the strips.

The computer's output has to be interpreted by an outside observer. It's the same with any computer, analogue or digital. It isn't the same with the brain/mind. Your brain is producing your present conscious experiences regardless of how an outside observer might interpret what is happening.

Therefore the brain/mind does not work in the same way as a computer. QED

There isn't any doubt about the existence of analogue computers, just try to read and understand what people are saying to you.

Could you stop wasting everybody's time please?

"An analog computer or analogue computer is a type of computer that uses the continuously variable aspects of physical phenomena such as electrical, mechanical, or hydraulic quantities to model the problem being solved."

There's something missing from this definition, something that is crucial to the question whether the brain works like an analogue computer. What's missing is the fact that we use the computer to model the problem being solved. The computer doesn't use the physical phenomena, we do.

A slide rule is a mechanical analogue computer. Mathematical calculations are performed by aligning a mark on a sliding central strip with a mark on one of two outer fixed strips, and then observing the relative positions of other marks on the strips.

The computer's output has to be interpreted by an outside observer. It's the same with any computer, analogue or digital. It isn't the same with the brain/mind. Your brain is producing your present conscious experiences regardless of how an outside observer might interpret what is happening.

Therefore the brain/mind does not work in the same way as a computer. QED

It's time for me to mention that all this stuff with memory, neurons, cells, etc. is kind of "floating on the air". There's still no definite proof that memory is part of the brain. — Alkis Pskas

https://www.theguardian.com/science/neurophilosophy/2015/mar/09/false-memories-implanted-into-the-brains-of-sleeping-mice

Neuroscientists in France have implanted false memories into the brains of sleeping mice. Using electrodes to directly stimulate and record the activity of nerve cells, they created artificial associative memories that persisted while the animals snoozed and then influenced their behaviour when they awoke.

Manipulating memories by tinkering with brain cells is becoming routine in neuroscience labs. Last year, one team of researchers used a technique called optogenetics to label the cells encoding fearful memories in the mouse brain and to switch the memories on and off, and another used it to identify the cells encoding positive and negative emotional memories, so that they could convert positive memories into negative ones, and vice versa.

The new work, published today in the journal Nature Neuroscience, shows for the first time that artificial memories can be implanted into the brains of sleeping animals. It also provides more details about how populations of nerve cells encode spatial memories, and about the important role that sleep plays in making such memories stronger.

1. You probably are more intelligent than average, judging solely from this post.
2. But what does it mean to be "very existential"?
3. There are endless discussions about what consciousness means, what intelligence means, the words are used in many different ways. There are also discussions about "levels of consciousness". So you're not going to get a straightforward answer to your question, here or anywhere else.

We are conscious of very little of what our brain is actually doing, and it's doing a lot of information processing moment by moment. Why does information integration viz-a-viz digestion not result in conscious experience? — RogueAI

The brain doesn't do information processing any more than digestion does. The brain does things like ion exchanges at synapses. We can describe this as information processing, but all the actual work is done by things like ion exchanges.

From Scholarpedia via Wayback Machine, (thanks @magritte!):

While there may well be a practical threshold for Φmax below which people do not report feeling much, this does not mean that consciousness has reached its absolute zero. Indeed, according to IIT, circuits as simple as a single photodiode constituted of a sensor and a memory element can have a minimum of experience (Oizumi, Albantakis et al. 2014).

but also:

For example, it may soon be possible to program a digital computer to behave in a manner identical to that of a human being for all extrinsic intents and purposes. However, from the intrinsic perspective the physical substrate carrying out the simulation in the computer—made of transistors switching on and off at a time scale of picoseconds—would not form a large complex of high Φmax, but break down into many mini-complexes of low Φmax each existing at the time scale of picoseconds. This is because in a digital computer there is no way to group physical transistors to constitute macro-elements with the same cause-effect power as neurons, and to connect them together such that they would specify the same intrinsically irreducible conceptual structure as the relevant neurons in our brain. Hence the brain is conscious and the computer is not - it would have zero Φ and be a perfect zombie. [25] This would hold even for a digital computer that were to simulate in every detail the working of every neuron of a human brain, such that what happens to the virtual neurons (the sequence of firing patterns and ultimately the behaviors they produce) is the same as what happens to the real neurons. On the other hand, a neuromorphic computer made of silicon could in principle be built to realize neuron-like macro-elements that would exist intrinsically and specify conceptual structures similar to ours.

A photodiode has experience, but a PC doesn't, unless it is "neuromorphic", whatever that means, and it is "made of silicon".

@Frank: you started this, do you think there's really anything in it?

Wow, I only just discovered Scholarpedia thanks to you Frank. Has it gone for good??

The word "simulated" needs to be used with care. Simulating consciousness and giving rise to consciousness are two very different things. You can simulate weather on a PC, but that's not going to give rise to wind and rain.

Perhaps an anesthesiologist could use PHI to gauge consciousness in addition to heart and respiration rates for surgery? — magritte

Nope. Tononi and Koch think computers and thermostats and photodiodes are conscious. Anaesthetists know better.

If all your sense organs stopped working, you would still be conscious. — RogueAI

I'm not sure how you could know that. But in any case you are starting from a position where I previously had working sense organs. But suppose I had never had them: I don't think I'd ever have been conscious. And consider this from an evolutionary perspective: consciousness would never have developed at all without sensing, sense organs.

An electronic device is only an "entity" insofar as it is defined as such by ourselves.
We also define which elements of the device are to count as the relevant "information".

The electricity flowing around my laptop now came from a power station 10 miles away, it passes through various other electronic devices before it gets here, and it passes through elements of the laptop that we don't include when considering the information content of the "system", such as the cooling fan motor.

This theory is not a serious scientific proposal.

How do you think Tononi et al would respond to the evidence presented by Mark Solms' about his patients with no cortex?

https://youtu.be/CmuYrnOVmfk

I've read somewhere that they accept that a thermostat is conscious. A thermostat but not the whole brain? And the whole body is involved in consciousness!

What's the hypothesis and how would it be tested?

Why is it ok to consider their hypothesis as it is, when it seems to be fatally flawed from the outset?

What does this mean for us?

Well, it simply means that there's something out there, perhaps a quality, I'm not sure what, that's universal [present everywhere and everytime] but the continuous exposure to it over innumnerable generations has desensitized our sensory apparatus with the upshot being that "something out there" is no longer perceivable to us. It's undetectable in all sensory modalities - they've all lost the ability to detect it. — TheMadFool

That doesn't follow, you've set off on a fantasy.