who said quantum mechanics and consciousness were the same. Deepak Chopra? Not me.



Well, mind/body initially, but really if the mind and consciousness are one and the same, which I believe, what’s the need for any dualism? I find chalmers phenomenology a sort-of dualism/materialist compromise. Consciousness is an emergent property of the brain but then is separate….where? Floating above the head like a halo?

It's our intelligence that forms the basis of our understanding. We must get it right prior to attempting to attribute it or something like it to something else. Wouldn't you say?
— creativesoul

No. I never really understood what Aristotle meant by "art imitates nature." But he considers nature to be a process so art imitates that process. So, nature exhibits intelligence. The modern preoccupation with subjectivity obscures this idea. — Jackson

Artificial intelligence is not even close to being the same sort of thing that human intelligence is. Not even close. The point here is that it is a misnomer that renders the term intelligence meaningless.
— creativesoul

How is AI different from human intelligence? — Jackson

...consciousness is a muddled notion to begin with, Boolean logic consists of all true statements, inanimate objects have no emotion, emotion is part of thought and belief, and consciousness includes an ability to suspend one's judgment as well as change one's mind about things previously held true. That's just skimming the top of the problems involved with any claims of artificial 'intelligence'(scarequotes intentional). — creativesoul

I don’t see that at all. Do you mean that only humans can have the kind of intelligence you’re talking about? I remember a time when people thought that computers would be unable to do many things that we now know they can. — GLEN willows

Of course AI intelligence is different from human intelligence. What we’re debating is whether AI will eventually develop consciousness and I say why not? It could take hundreds or thousands of years of course. I just believe history is littered with the bodies of men who said “your ‘science’ will never explain ….” — GLEN willows

Sure, I suppose we could say that it is logically possible. That there are certain conditions and/or circumstances that would lead up to robots developing consciousness. Logical possibility alone is insufficient for justified and/or warranted belief. It is logicallly possible that we are the creation of the Flying Spaghetti Monster too. Logical possibility plus adequate explanation is better.

So, what would it take for an inanimate object that operates on Boolean logic to form, have, and/or hold thought and belief about the universe and/or itself?

This requires already having a good ontological understanding of thought and belief, in terms of what it consists of as we know it. Anthropomorphism is popular... and mistaken. WE tend to personify things prior to grasping what sorts of features, qualities, and/or characteristics are uniquely human and which sorts are not. This is the measure of consciousness. This is what informs our viewpoint with regards to which sorts of things can be conscious and which sorts of things cannot.

↪Wayfarer no offence but I find you’re constantly misinterpreting what I’m saying then Straw Manning me. — GLEN willows

I don't know how long you've had the pleasure of 'interacting' with @Wayfarer, but you've nailed his M.O. to a tee (and after more than a dozen years 'interacting' I'm here to tell you, GLEN, he's immune to even the friendliest persuasion, correction or shaming).

I have no idea, I’m not a scientist. But unless we really believe that humans are somehow SO special that our (evolutionarily developed) consciousness couldn’t possibly be repeated, (which I don’t really know why anyone would believe), it’s possible.

Ironically I find the arguments against materialism similar to those for intelligent design. “The eye is just far too complex to have been developed naturally”. And if a natural process developed consciousness, it can be repeated. In theory, of course, but it’s not illogical.

:smile:

...if a natural process developed consciousness, it can be repeated. In theory, of course, but it’s not illogical. — GLEN willows

Whether or not it is logical depends upon the possible world in which robots develop consciousness. Saying it does not make it logical.

Logical possibility alone does not warrant belief. I remain unconvinced that we, as humans, can produce a biological creature replete with thought and belief out of inanimate material.

Ironically I find the arguments against materialism similar to those for intelligent design. “The eye is just far too complex to have been developed naturally” — GLEN willows

No irony to speak of there. That's known and deliberate. As far as creationism goes. Occam's razor applies.

who said quantum mechanics and consciousness were the same. Deepak Chopra? Not me. — GLEN willows

Oh. I thought you were trying to say something along those lines here:

isn't there something called "quantum mechanics" that requires a different approach to particle physics? (not to mention reality itself) — GLEN willows

---

Ironically I find the arguments against materialism similar to those for intelligent design — GLEN willows

That's not the argument that I used. I'll try it one more time. At issue is the fact that consciousness is not an objective phenomenon for science. You can study cognitive function through science - cognitive science, evolutionary and regular psychology. But the scientific study of consciousness is based on observation of objective and measurable data, whereas the key attribute of consciousness is feeling, it is a first person phenomenon, it is only cognizable in the first person, not as an object. So it's not that it's too complex to study, but it's not a satisfactory object of scientific analysis. And that's nothing like an intelligent design argument.

I've just been reading (actually, listening to) a book called Silicon: From the Invention of the Microprocessor to the New Science of Consciousness by Federico Faggin. Note the title: - 'a new science of consciousness'. So he says there is such a thing.

Federico Faggin was the inventor of the world's first microprocessor, the Intel 4004, and later the Zilog Z8000 microprocesser, which is still in production after 40 years. So he's one of the principals of the Information Revolution. The first part of the book is all about chip design, and rather hard to follow unless you have some knowledge of microelectronics. But from there, he started a start-up to commercialise AI software. By this stage he was already immensely wealthy and never had to work again. But it was during this phase that he realised that consciousness is something that can't be realised in a computer. In fact he refers to David Chalmers by name, and basically recapitulates what I said above. This is followed by a completely unexpected spiritual awakening, which transformed his life's direction. He went on to form the Faggin Foundation about which he says 'The Foundation is interested in the scientific investigation of consciousness under the assumption that it is an irreducible property of nature.' Read on for more. Far more fruitful line of enquiry than Churchlands, in my opinion.

So if consciousness and the material brain are not literally the same thing, how do we avoid dualism? — GLEN willows

Hi Glen, I don't really like it when people here refer me to some external article, book or paper, but these few pages from the introduction to Searle's "Mind: A Brief Introduction" say it far better than I can.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Mind-Brief-Introduction-Fundamentals-Philosophy-ebook/dp/B00VQVP8V8?asin=B00VQVP8V8&revisionId=cf1f5c33&format=1&depth=1

Many of the discussions on this forum are weighed down by the conceptual baggage he identifies, and this one is no exception.

He also deals, in my view conclusively, with the question of the possibility of computer consciousness, which has also cropped up in the present discussion and many others. Can digital computation produce consciousness? No, because digital computation is an observer-dependent phenomenon, while consciousness is observer-independent.

I apply the razor to materialism. Simply put - the simplest explanation for consciousness is that it's in the brain. It isn't visible, and doesn't have an obvious single "home." But as I said neither do any brain processes (memory, sight, etc). When you chop out a piece of the brain, or damage the brain, it affects consciousness. When you chop out any other part of the body, it does not.

I understand the arguments that consciousness may reside in the brain, but is not "just" the brain. This can only conjure up some sort of mystical "mist" floating around somewhere. Unless someone can illuminate that aspect to me.

The other options, phenomonology, pan-psychism, have too many conditions and problems (dualism).

From a Wittgensteinian POV it seems that all we're capable of is syntactic manipulation (language + logic), semantics "drops out of consideration". — Agent Smith

This i see as Witty's greatest failing. Linguists are better at cracking those language nuts than philosophers, IMO. I also note that dictionaries exist and are quite useful to folks. Including to computers I would think, ie in machine translation I imagine that the coders include a lexical (or semantic, I don't know) map between the two languages.

Read Searle - not a fan. The Chinese Room hasn't fared well over time.

Consciousness is an emergent property of the brain but then is separate….where? Floating above the head like a halo? — GLEN willows

This can only conjure up some sort of mystical "mist" floating around somewhere. Unless someone can illuminate that aspect to me. — GLEN willows

Can anyone help Glen out?

. This is short and sweet. https://archive.philosophersmag.com/paul-churchland/

Pat is very active on Twitter. If you hate twitter, just look at her's - most of the comments and arguments are intelligent and made by Phil. profs and Phil. writers.

Apparently you can't.

I quit other social media because too many people just came on to argue. Getting too old for that, nothing personal.

No offense taken (although the whole point of a forum like this is debating ideas.)

If you read my posts I said I don't agree with the concept of eliminating folk psychology. I do agree with educating people about what's really going on in their brains.

Agreed. No argument from a materialist perspective....mine anyway.

Read Searle - not a fan. The Chinese Room hasn't fared well over time. — GLEN willows

I know that many objections have been raised, but I haven't been convinced by any of them. Searle's argument from the observer-dependent nature of digital computation seems straightforward and decisive to me: whether a computer is carrying out computation or not is determined by us, outside observers, and is not inherent in the physics of the computer. In exactly the same way, arithmetic is not inherent in the physics of an abacus.

Can you present an argument against that?

And did you understand what he was saying in that introduction about the futility of "how do we avoid dualism?" discussions?

In this quote lies the confusion. When the materialist theorist says things like

"...it is a very strong argument for reductive or eliminative materialism: we can do without consciousness and meaning and still have the capacity to reason." Paul Churchland

...it obviously doesn't mean that - if eliminative materialism is correct - our minds will abruptly stop having consciousness or meaning. I have this horror movie image of people turning immediately into Zombies without intelligence or goals in their lives.

This is a silly image - but there seems to be a whiff of that in everyone's feelings about devaluing folk psychology. It's why I think it's the weakest chink in the EM's armour - might have been better to downplay it.

The feeling of a moving present or `now' seems to form part of our most basic perceptions about reality. Such a present, however, is not reflected in any of our theories of the physical world. In this short note I argue for a tenseless view of time, where what we call `the present' is just an emergent secondary quality arising from the interaction of perceiving self-conscious individuals with their environment. I maintain that there is no flow of time, but just an ordered system of events.

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/224905185_The_nature_of_the_present

So the elimination of the present, which is what physics does, entails the elimination of 'process' in favour of "an ordered system of events" and the elimination of flow and dynamics in favour of a static world of 4 dimensions.

"the interaction of perceiving self-conscious individuals with their environment" is nothing but such a static orders system. Thus at every moment I am equally conscious, while at each moment I am located in the particular moment of time by the state of memory and imagination that constitute knowledge of past and future respectively.

Science here achieves the god's eye view from 'outside time'; it is a view shared by some mystics:

Time is the enemy of man. And that enemy has existed from the beginning of man. And we said why has man from the beginning taken a wrong turn, a wrong path - in quotes. And if so is it possible to turn man in another direction in which he can live without conflict? Because, as we said yesterday, the outer movement is also the same inner movement, there is no inner and outer. It is the same movement carried on inwardly. And if we were concerned deeply and passionately to turn man in another direction so that he doesn't live in time, but has a knowledge of the outer things. And the religions have failed; the politicians, the educators, they have all never been concerned about this. Would you agree to that?

https://jkrishnamurti.org/content/cleansing-mind-accumulation-time

Can anyone help out? — Wayfarer

Me think there is merit to the idea that we are our brainwaves.

I understand what the Chinese Room is doing...correct me if I'm wrong. It's dispelling the notion that the computer is doing anything that requires complex thought.

If so, then the argument is that it's obviously true, to anyone but an uneducated person. It seems like a reaction to the initial amazement with computers. Regardless, it still doesn't mean that an AI device can't eventually develop such advanced capacities, and even consciousness. This isn't something that would necessarily be a positive thing, would it? It would definitely be an ethical dilemma at the very least.

That's kinda what I'm sayin'....

I don't know. The idea is that the brain is a brainwaves transponder.

I understand what the Chinese Room is doing...correct me if I'm wrong. It's dispelling that the computer may SEEM like it's doing something that requires complex thought, but it isn't. — GLEN willows

The way I would put it is that thought is not consciousness, but a mechanical process of symbol manipulation that one is sometimes half conscious of, rather as I am half conscious of the kettle coming to the boil in the kitchen, but don't mistake it for the essence of consciousness.

Oh and it's a critique of the Turing Test. My bad

In threads such as this, it is helpful to begin by investigating the 'opposite' notion of unconsciousness, which at first glance appears to be a simpler concept and which people mistakenly take for granted; for they naively presume that they have a sound understanding of the concept of "unconsciousness", a presumption which they naively carry forward when using their understanding of 'unconsciousness' as a baseline when constructing and appraising theories of consciousness.

First of all, one should examine situations in which they claim not to have been conscious of anything. For example, take the claim that one wasn't conscious of anything while one was sleeping last night. If this were indeed the case, then how could one possibly know it? Isn't empiricism, i.e. conscious verification, supposed to be the most authoritative methodology for making epistemological claims, in which case, isn't unconsciousness an inadmissible concept? Or are we supposed to put faith in pure reason here and unquestionably accept the testimony of others?

One is tempted to say that one can only deduce one's state of unconsciousness in retrospect via a rational reconstruction of what happened in the past. This conclusion ought to encourage a focusing of attention on the meaning of retrospection, including the nature and existence of the past itself , a topic which impinges upon debates concerning the nature and existence of time, space and causation.

At the very least, thinking about sleep and unconsciousness illuminates the conceptual inter-dependencies of philosophies of consciousness with philosophies of time and philosophies of causation, in which the debate between realism and idealism is ever present. Sadly, most neuroscientists appear not to grasp the conceptual scope of their investigations and instead derive trite and unenlightened conclusions.

↪Joshs If you read my posts I said I don't agree with the concept of eliminating folk psychology. I do agree with educating people about what's really going on in their brains. — GLEN willows

As in ‘the really, really real’? Or as in ‘pragmatically useful ways of interacting with the world’? I side with those philosophies of science ( Kuhn , Feyerabend) who see the latter as the role of science, which is. it that different from the role of the arts, whereas writers like Dennett have not been able to peel themselves away from a certain realism that is not far enough removed from
correspondence notions of empirical truth.

I understand what the Chinese Room is doing...correct me if I'm wrong. It's dispelling the notion that the computer is doing anything that requires complex thought. — GLEN willows

Hm. Well then I don't think you do understand the Chinese Room. What it shows is that semantics is not intrinsic to the computer. Some ten years later however Searle came to the realisation that syntax is not intrinsic to the computer either. He said he ought to have realised that years earlier. It's this point that I believe makes computer consciousness a logical impossibility

Once again I find it useful to consider the analogy with an abacus. Here are some instructions on how to use one:

Choose whether you want your ones to be the top row or the bottom row. You can either start at the top and increase the place value as you go down, or start at the bottom with your tens, hundreds, thousands and so on above you.

The user chooses how the positions of the beads are to be interpreted. Neither the syntax (the rules for moving the beads) nor the semantics (the meaning of the position of the beads) are intrinsic to the physics of the abacus.

The situation is no different with a digital computer. The designers and users of the computer choose how the physical states and features of the computer are to be interpreted. So whether or not a computer is carrying out computation is an observer-dependent matter.

Regardless, it still doesn't mean that an AI device can't eventually develop such advanced capacities, and even consciousness. — GLEN willows

According to the argument from the observer-dependence of computation itself, the computer has no such capacities, advanced or primitive.

Note that consciousness, in humans, or dogs, is not an observer-dependent phenomenon. Whether you (or your dog if any) are conscious is not a matter of interpretation by an external observer.

This is the argument that I take to decisively rule out computer consciousness.