Suppose we create a mechanical brain that we believe is functionally equivalent to a normal working brain. For those who think science can explain consciousness, how would we scientifically determine whether the mechanical brain is conscious or not? — RogueAI
OK, science geeks, how do we determine whether an AI is conscious? What do we do? What tests do we give it? — RogueAI
"Why did you do that?" - list of motives
"Why is the sky blue?" - physical cause of 'blueness'
"Why did the chicken cross the road?" - surprising answer (or non answer) designed to amuse
"Why do humans have noses?" - evolutionary (or developmental) advantages of the nose...
"Why do we have consciousness?" - ...
... what's the kind of answer that goes there? — Isaac
Why should we accept that definition for machine consciousness? It's not the same thing as qualia. You just created an arbitrary definition and assigned it to 'consciousness'. It doesn't answer the question of whether a machine can have qualia. — Marchesk
Well if nature is fundamentally physical, then subjective experience doesn't conceptually fit. The biological level is still function and structure. — Marchesk
As a panpsychist I go much further, and assert that any behaviour at all, including the behaviour of atoms, is valuable for the mind of the atom. Everything happens because of consciousness. I've been toying with the idea that all causation is actually psychological.
— bert1
I would class this understanding along with such other non-physicalist explanations of reality as Tegmark's mathematical universe hypothesis. They are metaphysical approaches and, so, there is no empirical way of testing them. They are not facts, they are ways of thinking about something. As I see it, they are not useful ways of thinking, but that is certainly opinion, not fact. — T Clark
If the ultimate nature of matter is mental (i.e., idealism is true), doesn't that blow neuroscience out of the water? Isn't the whole point of neuroscience based on the assumption that mind and consciousness are produced by a physical brain? — RogueAI
My question is: how would we scientifically go from there? How would science "nail down" the question of whether X is conscious or not? What tests could we perform, that would give us conclusive proof of consciousness (or lack thereof)
— RogueAI
I find this question really good and challenging!!!!
The steps are the following
1. identify a sensory system that feeds data of which the system can be conscious of.
2.Test the ability of the system to produce an array of important mind properties
3. Verify a mechanism that brings online sensory input and relevant mind properties.(conscious state)
4. evaluate the outcome (in behavior and actions) — Nickolasgaspar
But at the bottom of it, the fact is that the subject of experience - you and I - are not reducible to objects - which is what neuroreductionism, as a philosophical attitude, tends to do. — Wayfarer
Good question. Indeed the same question applies to other humans too. How do we scientifically determine if another human is conscious, without begging any questions? — bert1
So, y'know, purposive behaviour, ability to adapt to new scenarios, attempts to communicate, appearance of sensations and emotions - the kind of things we'd expect from a human agent. The more it quacks like a duck, the more likely it is that it's a duck.
I'm not exactly trying to defend the ideas, just gatekeeping how they're argued against. I'm also not strongly committed to what I've written. — fdrake
I think this is dealt with by "consciousness cannot be explained in physicalist/functional terms (see prior arguments)". So it turns on the prior arguments. — fdrake
I think for Chalmers the bridge is one of conception otherwise. — fdrake
One set of reasons for dooming the reductionist research strategy is summed up thus: "I simply cannot imagine that seeing blue or the feeling of pain, for example, could consist in some pattern of activity of neurons in the brain," or, more bluntly, "I cannot imagine how you can get awareness out of meat." There is sometimes considerable filler between the "it's unimaginable" premise and the "it's impossible" conclusion, but so far as I can tell, the filler is typically dust which cloaks the fallacious core of the argument.
Chalmers is arguing against the "necessarily" part by tweaking/analysing/finagling the relevant concept of necessity. — fdrake
does this make you more happy? — fdrake
In this thread, it's like your second example: "Why is the sky blue?" - physical cause of 'blueness'
I want to know the physical 'cause' of consciousness, if anyone thinks there can be a plausible account of this. — bert1
Sunlight reaches Earth's atmosphere and is scattered in all directions by all the gases and particles in the air. Blue light is scattered more than the other colors because it travels as shorter, smaller waves. This is why we see a blue sky most of the time.
The point he’s trying to make is that while cognitive science is adequate for the explanation of the various functions of consciousness, it can’t show how to bridge the explanatory gap between those accounts and the felt nature of first-person experience. — Wayfarer
OK, science geeks, how do we determine whether an AI is conscious? What do we do? What tests do we give it?
— RogueAI
Another good question. — bert1
Can we have a reason why it cannot be (not 'isn't', or 'would prefer not to' - 'cannot' is big word here)? — Isaac
I don't really understand this. Are you saying he's making a point about what it is to be a necessary explicator for consciousness? Does he have an answer to that question, or a reason to doubt? — Isaac
How do we know other people are conscious? What standards do we use? Apply those same standards to AI. — T Clark
This is the question that I think is ill-formed. — Isaac
I don't feel like I have experiences in the sense that some proponents of the idea feel. — Isaac
So often we don't seem to have much of a grip on what is supposed to be meant by 'consciousness.' — plaque flag
fdrake That's interesting. Those premises form the basis of the argument by analogy, or the abductive argument. No science necessary. An armchair philosopher who had never touched a Bunsen burner could make that argument. You could also make the same argument, but weaker, for rocks. — bert1
That is painfully true, as evidenced by just about every related discussion here on the forum. Be that as it may, with current issues about AI, it looks like it's going from an interesting philosophical problem to a practical political and social one. — T Clark
It's not that the difficulty of locating consciousness among the neuro-signaling forces us to look for it in something else--that is, in some other sort of special substrate or ineffable ether or extra-physical realm. The anti-materialist claim is compatible with another, quite materially grounded approach. Like meanings and purposes, consciousness may not be something 'there' in any typical sense of being materially or energetically embodied, and yet may still be materially causally relevant. — Terence Deacon, Incomplete Nature
it looks like it's going from an interesting philosophical problem to a practical political and social one. — T Clark
Like meanings and purposes, consciousness may not be something 'there' in any typical sense of being materially or energetically embodied, and yet may still be materially causally relevant. — Terence Deacon, Incomplete Nature
Like numbers, and natural laws. — Wayfarer
If the position is "consciousness is necessarily explainable by physical/functional accounts", the negation of that is "consciousness is possibly not explainable by physical/functional accounts". — fdrake
If you buy that framing of the debate, anyway. — fdrake
As far as I understand his view, he equates metaphysical possibility with conceivability - or at least takes conceivability as a sufficient condition for metaphysical possibility. Metaphysical necessity is the same as not possibly not true. If you take conception, or the other arguments like Mary's room/inverted qualia/ and all that, as sufficient for establishing metaphysical possibility, then that is actually a negation of the physicalist position. If you grant that it could be true that phenomenal consciousness isn't explainable by physical/functional processes, then if Chalmers is right, that suffices to show that physicalism is false. — fdrake
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