Bird wings and airplane wings have many similarities and many differences. Artificial neural networks have become increasingly different from their biological counterparts since the 1940s or 50s. — jkop

Right. There are similarities and difference between the biological and the artificial in the case of wings and neural nets. Still, we see effective information processing emerge from neural nets in either context, just as we see aerodynamic lift emerge from wings in either context.

Here is the reaction from Claude 3 Opus. — Pierre-Normand

Thanks immensely for running that by Claude 3! (Despite the fact that Claude 3 is giving away the persuasive secrets to my methodological madness. :wink: ) Prior to reading Claude's response, I'd never encountered 'anyone' developing an understanding of what I was trying to convey, to the extent that @Srap Tasmaner did.

Again, it seems really freaky to me, to see a machine getting it like that. Although I suppose it shouldn't be that surprising to me, given the extent to which Claude 3 has been trained to understand itself.

It sounds like I should read some Brandom. Any pointers on where to start?

We also comment on the passing away of Daniel Dennett: — Pierre-Normand

Dennett's notion of "intuitions pumps" definitely provided reinforcement for my recognition of the effectiveness of such a communication style. Though I often wished Dennett had developed a more connectionist perspective, he did a lot to promote serious thinking about the mind/brain relationship. And as modern philosophers go, he was better than most at earning the respect of scientists.

Interestingly (but meaninglessly) the author of Darwin's Dangerous Idea died on April 19th, as did Darwin.

Evolution would favor a rational brain? Not necessarily. Even we have irrational biases drilled into us through evolution. — khaled

Not 'perfectly rational', just 'rational enough'. Evolution has many Rube Goldberg like results.

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Beautiful cinematography.

Whether the processing is designed or coincidental doesn't matter. The objection refers to isomorphism and the false promise that by being like the biological process the artificial process can be conscious. — jkop

I'm certainly not making any promises that artificial neural nets will ever be conscious in the sense that we are.

However, my point was about the relevance of isomorphisms. Pointing out that there can be irrelevant isomorphisms such as between a constellation and a swarm of insects, doesn't change the fact that there are relevant isomorphism. (Such as between the shape of bird wings and airplane wings, or between biological neural nets and artificial neural nets.)

Or, there is a very nice documentary — Vera Mont

Unfortunately, Youtube says the video is unavailable.

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Could we per chance be at a point where our knowledge of nature's laws are advanced enough that we are simulating evolution. If so I don't think it's impossible to get a similar outcome from such processes -namely sentience. — Benj96

Interesting thought. I would think that there is a sort of evolutionistic survival of the fittest going on in our brains, at the level of different neural nets encoding different competing paradigms with which to model reality. The more adaptive neural net/paradigms are the ones that are rewarded/strengthened by yet other 'higher level' neural nets, based on which lower level neural net/paradigm are recognized as providing a better fit to observations.

Mind of a Bee is pretty cool. — Patterner

Dammit! Stop making me think that I need to read that book.

:ok:

I don't think so. I like to think that there are others reading but not commenting. I think of the written exchange as only part of it. I do occasionally get a PM from someone appreciating something I said. — Fooloso4

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I always appreciate hearing your perspective.

Careful, if you think about this too much you might come to understand how words do things.

"This sentence is not true" is not a truth bearer thus not a proposition thus cannot be included in any Boolean logic system. — PL Olcott

A physical analog would be a digital logic inverter (NOT gate) with its output connected back to its input. Such a circuit forms an oscillator, with the output continually swinging back and forth between 0 and 1.

The computational theory of mind is pretty much still in vogue. — Lionino

It's relatively easy to think in computationalist terms, so looking at human minds in computationalist terms is like looking for your key under the street light because that's where the light is.

The evidence supporting connectionism is growing at an astronomical rate these days. You can check out the SEP entry on connectionism although it was last revised in 2019, so can't be informed by recent developments in AI.

I've only read the Claude 3 Sonnet response so far, but with the discussion of chess and intuition it reminds me of the discussion I had with @Srap Tasmaner beginning here.

Good paper, but it seems to me that thinking about minds in terms of Turing machines and computationalism is a bit behind the times.

Are there things in the physical universe that we can never find out?
If so, is that due to our limitations or time constraint? — Vera Mont

There have been a lot of good answers. I'll try not to be too redundant.

The universe is believed to be much larger than what we can observe of it, so it would seem reasonable to say, that with regards to the sheer number of things/events in the universe we can find out about very few of them. This is independent of our limitations or time constraints. (Unless the speed of light is considered to be an aspect of "our limitations".)

Often the smartest sounding folks can be the dumbest. You have to learn to think differently from others. If you sound the same as the others on these issues, then it wouldn't prove anything apart from that you have spent all your life browsing the internet. If you think differently and come up with different ideas, you may get told that you have a problem in logic by the crowds, but you know that you are thinking with your own mind, not just parroting or agreeing and yearning to be accepted to the group of the crowds. — Corvus

Thanks for the update, on how you are trying to soothe your ego.

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I started writing the following, decided it was too pedantic, and didn't post, but in light of others discussing it...

The model is you interacting with the room. — Banno

How about, "The model emerges in the process of you interacting with the room."?

Very impressive 'self awareness' on Claude's part. I'm quoting your system prompt below, tagged with twas brillig for help in finding it again. Thanks for sharing this.

But as we human bodies can spit out ideas, these ideas only function when they lock down real distinctions into words to quickly package them in sentences for others to employ in a conversation about the real or in a trip to the store. — Fire Ologist

Perhaps this describes the way it seems for you, but frequently I communicate things via pictures rather than words, and there are many things I can accomplish without words. I'm guessing this is 'poetry' on your part?

Could we get back to reading the text carefully and analyzing thoroughly? It may be less exciting, but it would surely be more illuminating. — Ludwig V

One thing I appreciated was what I interpreted as Midgely pointing towards the importance of diversity in life experience to having well informed intuitions. (Regardless of whether Midgely might agree with that way of saying it. And regardless of how myopic and unfair she may have been in doing so.)

A human act is any act that we do on purpose; any act that proceeds from a deliberate will. Objection 3 to the first article gives the complement of human acts, “But man does many things without deliberation, sometimes not even thinking of what he is doing; for instance when one moves one's foot or hand, or scratches one's beard, while intent on something else.” In his reply to objection 3 Aquinas says, “Such like actions are not properly human actions; since they do not proceed from deliberation of the reason, which is the proper principle of human actions.” — Leontiskos

Perhaps creating a dichotomy between acts which are and are not human (when considering the behavior of humans) is a miss when it comes to carving reality at the joints?

Could that be correct? I would think that, if I lost all sensory input, I could still think about things I'd sensed in the past. Or do math in my head. Maybe anesthetics work different on us than they do on bacteria and plants. — Patterner

Maybe Damasio is more referring to "sensing" on a cellular level? The general attenuation of neurons' ability to sense, and pass on outputs that are based on their inputs is something I would expect to attenuate consciousness. In any case you've piqued my curiosity about getting a more up to date understanding of anesthesia.

Is it possible to simulate consciousness by moving rocks around (or, as one of the members here claims, knocking over dominoes)? — RogueAI

Ciitation needed. Where has someone here claimed that consciousness can be simulated by knocking over dominoes?

Chicks. Am I right? — Patterner

Are you a chick? Or is it just barely awake human brains?

Ever wake up mad at someone you know, even though you know it's ridiculous? — Patterner

I had a wife wake up and think that I should apologize for what 'I' did in a dream that she had. :roll:

That's not too say that his particular telling of the story isn't valuable, but I do feel a sense of frustration when I read something suggesting that it's one particular person's ideas when actually these are already ideas in the common domain. — Malcolm Lett

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I appreciate your frustration. Still, I appreciate that Metzinger is able to communicate this way of looking at things effectively.

One process or pattern may look like another. There can be strong isomorphism between a constellation of stars and a swarm of fruit flies. Doesn't mean that the stars thereby possess a disposition for behaving like fruit flies. — jkop

Since artificial neural networks are designed for information processing which is to a degree isomorphic to biological neural networks, this doesn't seem like a very substantive objection to me. It's not merely a coincidence.

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I am quite late to this thread and have not read any of it, so my comment is based only on this one post. But this is an important point, one I take great exception to.

What you claim is an isomorphism, I claim is an equivocation ("calling two different things by the same name"), an informal fallacy resulting from the use of a particular word/expression in multiple senses within an argument.

The information processing in a digital computer is nothing at all like the "information processing" in a brain.

In the computer, information is a bitstring, a sequence of 0's and 1's. The bitstrings are processed in a finite state machine. If you conceptually allow arbitrary amounts of memory you have a Turing machine. We know exactly what Turing machines can compute and what are their limits, things they can not compute.

Brains -- I can't believe I even have to explain this. Brains don't work this way. They don't have an internal clock that inputs the next bit and flips a pile of yes/no switches and takes another step along a logic path. Neurons are not bits, and connections between neurons are mediated by the neurotransmitters in the synapses between the neurons. It's a very analog process in fact.

I know the idea you expressed, "Computers process information, brains process information, therefore computers = brains" is a very popular belief among highly intelligent and competent people who in my opinion should know better. — fishfry

Why is your opinion of particular relevance? I'm an electrical engineer with a lot of experience with analog and digital circuitry. So I can explain to you why it would be silly to try to map a Turing machine to the parallel distributed processing that results in modern AI being so powerful. You need to make a case for there being any particular importance to being able to map between the operation of a Turing machine and a modern AI processor.

You don't recognize the isomorphism? Have you tried to understand it?

Computer code is a bunch of symbols, recall. Could a bunch of symbols become consciously alive? The idea seems as far fetched as voodoo magic. — jkop

Computer code, in the process of being run, is a lot of information processing occurring in a physical hardware system. In modern AIs there is a powerful isomorphism to neural networks like the sort in our brains. I.e. there is an isomorphism between the sort of information processing that occurs in modern AIs and a substantial amount of the information processing that occurs in our brains.

As Arthur C. Clarke said, "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." Perhaps you aren't up on the technology?

Just limit it to critical thinking. Even that will cause problems with parents in our Great Republic — Ciceronianus

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Rather than withdraw in order to develop ideas in harmony with their own personality, it may be a trait of their personality and/or neurology that leads them to withdraw. Rather than their thoughts having power enough to keep them gazing into the pool of solitude, it may have more to do with neurodivergence. — Fooloso4

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That is to say, despite the fact that no one else I can find is wiser... — Chet Hawkins

I guess I am lucky, in that all I have to do is to look around, to see all sorts of people who are wiser than I in a wide variety of ways.

For example, those who know better than I, than to waste time on narcissitic guru wannabees.

I find it interesting to find out about the insights of philosophers with regard to thinking, when those philosophers didn't have the advantage of modern neuroscience in making sense of what is going on.
— wonderer1

Don’t you think that is just a tad ‘scientistic’? — Wayfarer

It's a fact about me that I am interested in that sort of thing. You'd need to explain what you mean by "scientistic" for me to know how to reply to that.

Have you ever read anything about the well-known book The Philosophical Foundations of Neuroscience, Bennett and Hacker? — Wayfarer

I've read some Amazon reviews of it.

I've written about before in the context of R. Scott Bakker's "Blind Brain Theory" (https://medium.com/@tkbrown413/blind-brain-theory-and-the-role-of-the-unconscious-b61850a3d27f) — Count Timothy von Icarus

Very good article!

The meaning in the system is only seen by us. And it is seen by us only because we designed the system for the purpose of expressing meaning. — Patterner

I'd say it's not that simple. These days AIs regularly recognize meaningful patterns in data that humans had not previously recognized.

And I am called Hypocrite for championing this cause of denial of delusion, acclimation to truth, on a forum dedicated to the love of wisdom. — Chet Hawkins

You seem more a lover of your belief that you are particularly wise, than a lover of wisdom.

But here's a chance for you to show me that I'm wrong. Name five posters on TPF who you have learned from.

It seems to me that neuroscience (and psychology) have changed the game. It has been pretty obvious for a long time (over a century, I would say) that this would happen. But now we are facing the opening up of the reality and peering anxiously into the dark. I say that because there is a widespread tendency to speak as if we know it all already or to speculate wildly on what might be revealed. Both very human traits, but still not helpful. — Ludwig V

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