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MikeL
Social climber
Southern Arizona
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Oct 30, 2018 - 09:15am PT
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MH2,
Tell me what or why the picture of a butterfly on an open field of blue and grass is significant.
Do you think that anyone could answer that question *technically?*
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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Oct 30, 2018 - 09:34am PT
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I don't think anyone sane wants to make a conscious machine. There would be serious ethical and moral problems. The machine would need to be treated as humans should treat each other, with respect and freedom to pursue their own interests.
I don't agree. Assuming that a conscious machine would be like a human is a particular instance of the problem represented by the sentiment regarding "mind" that is essentially "I know it when I see it."
This is not a flippant statement, rather it is an observation that we all have a "theory of mind," it is our perception of mind, not mind itself. And our empathy acts on this theory, assuming that other humans have "mind" and in fact other animals, and perhaps even other things.
In particular ethical and moral issues pertain to how we think a conscious machine would "think" about its "death" and how it should be treated. Our default "theory" is that such a consciousness would be like our own, and respond like we do.
It is important to question this particular idea, that our specific experience of mind, and our perception of mind, can be generalized to all minds, all consciousness. A simple examination of our treatment of other life on the planet and our assumptions regarding mind and consciousness outside of humans would seem to be sufficient to question the validity of the generalization.
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paul roehl
Boulder climber
california
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Oct 30, 2018 - 10:03am PT
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I'm sorry for being the cause of disappointment and depression for you, however it would be useful to better describe your idea of human forms of sensibility.
By forms of sensibility I’m referring to the structure of mind that translates sensory information or data into the stuff of experience. That a texture might produce, through the sense of touch, an experience that is not identical to that texture but rather something separate yet informative with regard to that surface. Likewise all hues as experience are translations in the mind of wavelengths that exist outside the mind. That shared experience of blue is the mediated human experience of a wavelength emanating from a given object. Whether other animals share that experience is irrelevant to the basic idea that the sensory experience of the world around us is in many ways a construction existing largely in the mind as experience based on mediated sensory input. The world we sense is not the world but rather a human phenomenological translation of that world.
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Spider Savage
Mountain climber
The shaggy fringe of Los Angeles
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Oct 30, 2018 - 10:19am PT
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While humans may able to program a highly sophisticated AI that can do incredible calculations very quickly and virtually mimic a humnan mind in decision making choices and autonmous function, it will lack life essence.
Such a thing remains relatively safe as long as the programing can be controlled.
However, life, souls, etc., are able to pick up bodies, wheather human, dog fish, etc. No reason why one can't pick up the inorganic AI machine. And there you could get in trouble. If a spirit is able gain the subtle control of the machine now you have a wild variable full of emotions, empathy, hate, love, creativity, etc. That could get tricky. A real Frankenstien's monster.
This has been well explored by a number of very good Sci-Fi authors.
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Largo
Sport climber
The Big Wide Open Face
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Topic Author's Reply - Oct 30, 2018 - 10:27am PT
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China Brain
In the philosophy of mind, the China brain TE or thought experiment (also known as the Chinese Nation or Chinese Gym) considers what would happen if each member of the Chinese nation were asked to simulate the action of one neuron in the brain, using telephones or walkie-talkies to simulate the axons and dendrites that connect neurons. Would this collected assembly have a single, unified mind or consciousness in the same way that human brains do?
The set up looks like this:
Suppose that the whole nation of China was reordered to simulate the workings of a single brain (that is, to act as a mind according to functionalism). Each Chinese person acts as (say) a neuron, and communicates by special two-way radio in the corresponding way to the other people.
The current "mental state" of the China brain is displayed on satellites that may be seen from anywhere in China. The China brain would then be connected via radio to a body, one that provides the sensory inputs and behavioral outputs of the China brain.
Thus, the China brain possesses all the elements of a functional description of mind: sensory inputs, behavioral outputs, and internal mental states causally connected to other mental states.
If the nation of China can be made to act in this way, then, according to functionalism, this system would have a mind.
Early proponents of the China Brain thought experiment sought to show that it is possible for something to be functionally equivalent to a human being and yet have no conscious experience. A creature that functions like a human being but is unaware is known as a "philosophical zombie."
The China Brain TE can also be used to investigate three other notions drawn from Functionalism: the complexity, processing, and architecture arguments.
The complexity argument speculates that (in the case of our China Brain TE) once the radio communication between individual Chinamen and the "body" (that provides the sensory inputs and behavioral outputs) is sufficiently complex, it would de facto become self aware. Since by definition, "complex" means "consisting of many different and connected parts," it follows that a more complex China Brain would involve an increasing NUMBER of individual Chinamen talking on their radios to one another, whereby consciousness is posited as a product of volume.
The processing argument speculates that the speed and manner in which the Chinamen talk to each other would create consciousness. That is, once the Chinamen could communicate at light speed, could talk to big blocks of fellow Chinamen at the same time, whereby said blocks were working in concert, so to speak, all the disperate individuals and blocks of individuals wouldn't merely be talking over one another in a cacophony of white noise, rather they would harmonize into a unified whole that would, itself, be conscious.
The architecture argument speculates that it is not so much the speed or complexity of individual and block conversations, rather the spacio position of both individual and blocks of Chinamen - arranged just so, high and low, far and wide, some in each other's laps, still others riding the boundary line - that would "create" consciousness.
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MH2
Boulder climber
Andy Cairns
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Oct 30, 2018 - 12:04pm PT
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Tell me what or why the picture of a butterfly on an open field of blue and grass is significant.
Look at Ed's post prior to it.
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MH2
Boulder climber
Andy Cairns
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Oct 30, 2018 - 12:15pm PT
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Assuming that a conscious machine would be like a human
I didn't mean to imply that a conscious machine would be like a human. Dogs and cats are not human but we should probably allow them a degree of autonomy and not treat them as extensions of ourselves or servants of our needs.
You make good points, though. As a reader of sf I'm aware of ideas about non-human "intelligence." I agree there could be instances of what we call consciousness that are different from our own.
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Don Paul
Social climber
Washington DC
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Oct 30, 2018 - 12:28pm PT
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Chinaman is not a polite expression. "Chinese" is a better name for them. In addition, no matter how robotic Chinese society may be, this experiment seems to bear no resemblance at all to the functioning of a real brain. And you could argue that the Chinese and everyone else does this anyway, by people conversing with each other and deciding which ideas to spread, and which to ignore. This whole thing sounds archaic.
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Largo
Sport climber
The Big Wide Open Face
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Topic Author's Reply - Oct 30, 2018 - 12:29pm PT
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We speak of China like its a person, "all the time." ;)
Does an ant colony have a mind, of its own?
A will? The ability to make collective decisions?
Does a community of humans? Can a whole town feel sad? Do nations get angry?
Good questions, IMO, but are not these instances of a collective ethos drawn from already conscious individuals, as opposed to an assembly of non-aware parts than some speculate collectively CREATE awareness in the first instance?
Ed said: A conscious machine would be like a human is a particular instance of the problem represented by the sentiment regarding "mind" that is essentially "I know it when I see it."
This is a take drawn from Nagel's objective/epistemic perspective, which is different from that drawn from the experiential perspective where "I know it when I HAVE it." That is, following Nagel's lead, we KNOW consciousness only through having and experiencing consciousness. We can't know it by "reading the topo," and "seeing" it externally. All we can directly "see" externally is objective functioning.
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Largo
Sport climber
The Big Wide Open Face
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Topic Author's Reply - Oct 30, 2018 - 12:58pm PT
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And yet those cells ultimately comprise the self-aware brain. The cells are not aware of the brain nor its consciousness but they are aware of the other cells to which they make contact.
It's my understanding that what you describe above is called "machine registration," that is, the ability of, say, the motion sensor in my back yard to register movement and to respond with a light going on, none of which requires awareness. It's also my experience that the brain is not at all aware of or has an experience or subjective knowing of itself anymore than a computer does. At least not in abstraction of consciousness. Once a feedback loop starts between awareness and machine functioning, the brain can respond in remarkable ways because consciousness is in play.
However I believe you are onto something with the hive or collective theory of consciousness, but my take is that it's not about WHAT that awareness is aware of, but rather awareness without content. It requires an individual WITH a brain in which the WHAT of experience can arise. Somehow, in ways I am not yet clear about, empty awareness seems like a global function of the sum of reality, while individual consciousness is an individual iteration of same. I've heard some try and contrast hive or empty awareness to fundamental forces like gravity, insofar that it's hard to talk about gravity, say, separate from the stuff in which gravity is at play, but which nevertheless are not held to create, "cause" or so source gravity. But there's much that is wrong with this for obvious reasons, probably because consciousness is not LIKE any thing or physical force we can measure or even think about.
In some way I'm very much failing to describe here, my sense of it is that the hive consciousness is not individually created by the organisism, and in turn, a hive consciousness arises, rather the individual consciousness derives from the hive rendering individual experience. Or something like that.
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healyje
Trad climber
Portland, Oregon
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Oct 30, 2018 - 06:03pm PT
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Damn, an actual stance with some meat.
Largo: It's also my experience that the brain is not at all aware of or has an experience or subjective knowing of itself anymore than a computer does.
That is quite an experience...
It requires an individual WITH a brain in which the WHAT of experience can arise.
Sounds magical...
Somehow, in ways I am not yet clear about, empty awareness seems like a global function of the sum of reality, while individual consciousness is an individual iteration of same.
Another loop around the panpsychic / fundamental consciousness...
I've heard some try and contrast hive or empty awareness to fundamental forces like gravity, insofar that it's hard to talk about gravity, say, separate from the stuff in which gravity is at play, but which nevertheless are not held to create, "cause" or so source gravity. But there's much that is wrong with this for obvious reasons, probably because consciousness is not LIKE any thing or physical force we can measure or even think about.
Or not, so default back to magic...
In some way I'm very much failing to describe here, my sense of it is that the hive consciousness is not individually created by the organisism, and in turn, a hive consciousness arises, rather the individual consciousness derives from the hive rendering individual experience. Or something like that.
The brains as mind antennas theory...
Still unavoidably begs the question of why a universal / hive consciousness would have any use for, need of, or interest in meat?
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Largo
Sport climber
The Big Wide Open Face
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Topic Author's Reply - Oct 30, 2018 - 06:58pm PT
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The brains as mind antennas theory...
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Nope. Fanned on that one again, Fruity.
To use the fundamental force metaphor, are falling rocks antennas for gravity? Do particles "channel" the weak attraction.
Not surprisingly, you are positing awareness as a physical force or phenomenon that the brain "receives," when the dualism inherent in this take is the very point that is being denied. If it's not that, what is it? the functionalist asks.
What might that mean? Start with the 6th Jhana and find out for yourself.
Woo, to fruity, means sans mechanism. He done got mechanitus. But this falls apart because determinism is a fiction, as are fundamental explanations.
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MH2
Boulder climber
Andy Cairns
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Oct 30, 2018 - 07:02pm PT
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Fanned on that one again, Fruity.
Here is irony.
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Jim Clipper
climber
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Oct 30, 2018 - 07:55pm PT
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just a shout out to the one they call fruit. what is boxing without a punching bag?
edit: if you're friends carry on. brief encounter of largesse, suggests the boxing might not be definitive, and I am mistaken
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Jim Clipper
climber
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Oct 30, 2018 - 08:31pm PT
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its just that the ad hominem stuff doesn't seem very mindful, argumentative for the sake of something other than owned, neither.
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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Oct 30, 2018 - 08:45pm PT
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it will lack life essence.
what is "life essence?"
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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Oct 30, 2018 - 08:51pm PT
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"In the philosophy of mind, the China brain TE or thought experiment (also known as the Chinese Nation or Chinese Gym) considers what would happen if each member of the Chinese nation were asked to simulate the action of one neuron in the brain, using telephones or walkie-talkies to simulate the axons and dendrites that connect neurons. Would this collected assembly have a single, unified mind or consciousness in the same way that human brains do?"
details count, and there is insufficient detail in this "thought experiment" to understand whether or not such an network would act like the cells in the brain do.
Most likely this instance of a thought experiment does not represent the brain architecture, even though it "sounds like it does."
The post upthread regarding such networks:
http://www.supertopo.com/climbing/thread.php?topic_id=1593650&msg=3131927#msg3131927
spells out some of the essentials, the "China brain thought experiment" doesn't act like that...
garbage in, garbage out...
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Jim Clipper
climber
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Oct 30, 2018 - 08:58pm PT
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ed, i appreciated your post a page or so back. Darwin warned about anthropocentric worldviews, i.e identifying humans as a higher evolved form of life. Maybe there is something about mind in that humility. moreover, i havent really studied the history, or his writings, but i think he was aware of the potential abuse of his ideas in an era of government sanctioned slavery, colonialism, religion, divine right monarchs, etc.
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TWP
Trad climber
Mancos, CO & Bend, OR
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Oct 31, 2018 - 02:26am PT
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On Oct. 30, Jan wrote:
"Example, the first sentence most students of Chinese language learn is Ma ma ma ma? Each ma is a different tone and only the characters can provide the meaning which is,"Why is the woman beating the horse with a rope?"
The Thai language has an identical feature with a very similarly-sounding phoneme.
"Mai Mai Mai Mai Mai" - pronounced using the five different tones in Thai, means "Green wood doesn't burn well, does it?"
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