What makes a neuronal network conscious but not a silicon network? Sounds like biological bias to me.

Also, this seems to be 3rd person view of understanding. What is the 1st person view of understanding or consciousness or perception. I know I'm conscious, understanding and perceiving by different means than you would know I'm conscious, understanding and perceiving. Why? — Harry Hindu

I'm not saying a silicon network with a similar complexity as that of a neuronal network will not be conscious. Instead I think it will have and I said asmuch upthread with an analogy to the ship of Theseus.

I confess that I have no answer to the second part.

That's true. We assume other people are conscious because they look like us, and are biological organisms, like ourselves. But we don't know for sure. How can we? — RogueAI

We can look inside our brains and see. Consider my brain and yours. We undergo fMRI and EEG scans when we are awake and find both of us have similar fMRI and EEG patterns. Now for a given brain state as represented by fMRI and EEG patterns, if I consider myself to be conscious, why shouldn't I consider the same for you when you too have a similar fMRI and EEG pattern as me?

If he internalizes all the rules in his head(brain) then effectively he is learning and understanding chinese.... — debd

...so he has understood Chinese
And yet...

Memorizing all the rules does not allow me to answer questions like "How do you feel today?", "What are you grateful for today?".

...so he has not understood Chinese

This doesn't strike you as problematic?

This is what is bugging me about the chinese room. It is restricted and doesn't capture the whole thing. Only the whole system of the room can be conscious, if we deny that then our brains are also not conscious.

We had Searle drop in to a previous incarnation of this forum. I asked him about the Chinese room, and he expressed regret that it had been taken up as if it were the whole of his argument, when it is just a paragraph or two in an extensive body of work on consciousness and artificial intelligence.

So yes, it is not the whole thing. No where near it.

The problem is more that "A nice derangement of epitaphs" could not be translated into Chinese without losing the joke. Hence, there are aspects of language that are not captured by such an algorithmic translation process. — Banno

You didnt answer my question. What makes some string of scribbles nonsense? What makes some string of scribbles a joke? I understand English but didn't find that string of scribbles funny.

What makes some string of scribbles nonsense? — Harry Hindu

Use. What you do with that string of scribbles. Think I've said that before.

That begs another question: why don't we have an agreed upon scientific definition of consciousness yet? Maybe 100 years ago that would have been asking too much, but at this stage in the game? It's remarkable we still can't define what consciousness is, and yet another sign that the phenomenon is outside the "realm" of science — RogueAI

Because consciousness had been in the domain of religion as the soul for so long. Science seems to want to dismiss it as an illusion, but then consciousness is what is used to observe the world and theorize about what is observed. If consciousness were an illusion then so are all scientific theories as they are based on what is observed via consciousness.

There have been many things considered outside the realm of science, but have eventually come under the fold of science. When science takes it seriously we should be able to have better theories. It will take a change in our view, just like other great discoveries like Newton discovering gravity, Einstein discovering the relationship between gravity and space and Darwins theory.

Just wanted to run this by you...I recall opening a discussion of the Chinese Room argument vis-a-vis the Turing Test. If the Chinese Room can't be distinguished from a native Chinese speaker then it's passed the Turing Test with flying colors and it must be, for all intents and purposes, given the same ontological status as a native Chinese speaker. I wonder what ramifications are there for the pressing matter of consciousness? Does the Chinese Room qualify as true AI? The way you've made your case suggests that it does. Can you have a look at this aspect to the issue you raised in your OP?

Yes, I believe the superorganism that would be the Chinese room will pass the Turing test. If it is possible to construct then it would be a true AI.

We can look inside our brains and see. Consider my brain and yours. We undergo fMRI and EEG scans when we are awake and find both of us have similar fMRI and EEG patterns. Now for a given brain state as represented by fMRI and EEG patterns, if I consider myself to be conscious, why shouldn't I consider the same for you when you too have a similar fMRI and EEG pattern as me?

Putting idealism aside, yes, we have indirect evidence other people are conscious because they have brains like our own, but there's no way to know for sure if they're conscious. How do I know that there's not something unique to my brain, some little unnoticeable difference, that makes me (and me alone) conscious? How would I begin to even test such a theory?

I think that if science was going to solve the Hard Problem, it would have made some progress by now. But we're still just as clueless about how non-conscious stuff can produce consciousness as we were during Descartes' time.

Putting idealism aside, yes, we have indirect evidence other people are conscious because they have brains like our own, but there's no way to know for sure if they're conscious. How do I know that there's not something unique to my brain, some little unnoticeable difference, that makes me (and me alone) conscious? How would I begin to even test such a theory? — RogueAI

With advances in technology we will have a far more detailed picture for comparing. Hence the gaps in which this uniqueness can hide will become smaller. For example, magnetoencephalography provides a much more detailed spatial map of our brain than EEG. But sure you can always argue that there is "some little unnoticeable difference". Similarly I can say that consciousness is due to a teapot orbiting the sun somewhere with no way to disprove it but that's not a very helpful way to go about it.

With advances in technology we will have a far more detailed picture for comparing. Hence the gaps in which this uniqueness can hide will become smaller. For example, magnetoencephalography provides a much more detailed spatial map of our brain than EEG. But sure you can always argue that there is "some little unnoticeable difference". Similarly I can say that consciousness is due to a teapot orbiting the sun somewhere with no way to disprove it but that's not a very helpful way to go about it.

"consciousness is due to a three pound hunk of meat orbiting the sun somewhere". Does this make more sense than the teapot?

My non-pithy response: The fact that materialism can't disprove "consciousness is due to a teapot orbiting the sun" is a problem, don't you think? Shouldn't it be able to show the absurdity of such a thing? After all, if I said that "the earth's rotation is due to a teapot orbiting the sun" or "the sun's energy comes from a teapot orbiting the sun", I could easily be disproven.

Well it can certainly be proven that atleast our consciousness is due to the activity of neurons. Destroy enough of them and we cease to have consciousness.

Before you can claim consciousness depends on matter, you have to clearly define matter and conciousness. Science has not defined either adequately. It doesn't know what we are looking at, nor what is looking.
This is plainly obvious for all to see.
As far as we can tell, its impossible to know anything about objective reality. Science has not revealed a single objective truth as of yet, only subjective observations (repeated observations sure. But no amount of subjective observation will change the fact that its subjective) — debd

Yes, there's a strong correlation between brain-states and mental-states and this implies a causation. We've known for a long time that when you damage the brain, you damage the mind. It seems natural to assume that the brain causes the mind as well. The problem is that we're no closer to a causal explanation than we've ever been, and we should have made considerable progress by now. I'm convinced that materialism won't solve the problem. Either something like panpsychism is the case, or we have some kind of soul, or it's all just a dream.

Consciousness has a pretty clear definition. You learn it when you do a first aid course.

The issues that are causing such consternation here are borderline.

I think there has been considerable progress made. The rate of progress is not comparable to other sciences or even within subfields of biology because the brain, particularly the human brain does not lend itself very well to experimentation. It is incredibly complex and unforgiving - unforgiving in the sense that neuronal injuries are usually irreversible - so invasive experiments are very difficult even unethical to perform. The only data we have from human subjects are those from patients who have very special circumstances. But certainly we know a lot more than we did 50 years back.

To give an idea of the complexity, there are about 100 trillion connections within our brain and the present technology allows us to put leads with 4-8 channels in a lead and and usually only two leads are put in for long term use. It is like doing nanotechnology with hammers.

I am not trying to find objective truth. In a narrow sense, something struck me odd about the chinese room argument and I'm trying to sound it out. In an broader sense I'm trying to find a model that would fit my observations, which as you say may be subjective.

Consciousness has a pretty clear definition. You learn it when you do a first aid course — Banno

Nice. I shall use this in future.

With proper attribution, I hope...

Yes, surely.

I'll grant you that we're great at discovering neural correlates of mental states. We've made great stride and will continue to. That's an easy problem.

None of the progress has been made on the causal explanation: How do brains produce consciousness? Also: Why are we conscious? There's an Explanatory Gap. Science hasn't filled it with anything except speculation. Integrated Information Theory and Panpsychism are all the rage, but they're just guesses.

Now, will this gap eventually be filled? I doubt it. If it were, we'd have seen some progress by now. The Hard Problem was ignored for a long time, but the lack of an explanation is starting to bother people.

You don't just jump from "a single neuron" to "full human consciousness" like that.
— Outlander

Yes, I agree. I am trying to draw an analogy in which a neuron is the man in the chinese room and our whole brain is the room itself. Both the man and the neuron have no understanding of chinese yet the brain will understand chinese, hence the room should too. — debd

So you are saying that the Chinese room is a brain with one neuron... as the man is analogous to the neuron. Yet you proved it that one neuron does not a brain or consciousness make.

And there is one man (1 man) in the Chinese room.

How do you explain a room / brain with one neuron to be conscious?

I think that if science was going to solve the Hard Problem, it would have made some progress by now. But we're still just as clueless about how non-conscious stuff can produce consciousness as we were during Descartes' time. — RogueAI

Like i said, it will require a change in the way we think about reality - like abandoning dualism, materialism and idealism. Everything is relationships, or information.

Well it can certainly be proven that atleast our consciousness is due to the activity of neurons. Destroy enough of them and we cease to have consciousness. — debd

But then you have to explain how neurons cause consciousness, or changes in consciousness. Is it a temporal or spatial change? How does something physical cause a change in something non-physical?

What language are the instructions in the Chinese room written in? Seems like the man in the room has to understand some language in order to know what to do in the room. If the man were one neuron then one neuron possesses an understanding of the language of neurons.

Use. What you do with that string of scribbles. Think I've said that before. — Banno

And we use scribbles to communicate. Think I've said that before.

Consider the whole system of the chinese room. There must be a light source in there so that our man can read, there are stacks of shelves or something analogous to whole all the rules through which our man is going to search. There would be a pen which he will use to write down the response. All this will form the part of the system, and no individual object in the system will have an understanding of chinese. Now replace all these objects forming this systems with neurons.

You can also replace the man in the room with a single neuronal network that does the processing instead of a single neuron but the argument against the chinese room will still stand. If the superorganism that is the chinese room does not understand chinese, our brain will also not understand chinese.

Yes, I believe the superorganism that would be the Chinese room will pass the Turing test. If it is possible to construct then it would be a true AI. — debd

At this point I'd like you to consider the nature of consciousness, specifically the sense of awareness, particularly self-awareness. The consciousness we're all familiar with comes with the awareness of the self, recognition of one's own being and existence, which unfortunately can't be put into words as far as I'm concerned. It's quite clear that the Chinese Room is, from the way it operates, aware, albeit in a very limited sense, of its external environment in that it's speaking Chinese fluently but is it self-aware?

At this point I'd like you to consider the nature of consciousness — TheMadFool

I've already asked them to do that as well as define understanding, but they only seem willing to keep asserting their unfound notions.

They also ignore the fact that the man in the room still understands the language the instructions are written in and how the man learned THAT language, and then they're failure to define understanding and consciousness, this thread is just a bunch of smoke and mirrors. Interesting how you can learn another language using your language, hmmm?