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Uhhh, because I game program in my free time. I understand code and programming.
Inventing credentials does not answer anything I asked. Just because you understand one type of programming does not mean you understand another. Clearly any software for gaming is going to be massively different to software for consciousness.
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Originally Posted by bulmabriefs144
Granted you don't program
False. One wonders about your position when you A) have to make up things about me that you simply do not know and B) those things turn out to be entirely false too.
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Originally Posted by bulmabriefs144
Nothing we've built since human existence (no object at all) has ever demonstrated consciousness.
Irrelevant - the question is whether things COULD be built that are conscious. Not whether they already have. Just because something has not been done yet - says nothing about whether it could be.
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Originally Posted by bulmabriefs144
We're not just machines. We have a design
Do we? What is the design? What is the purpose? Who or what was the designer? And how do you evidence the answers you give?
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Originally Posted by bulmabriefs144
You know what genes are? They're more a personal history than a rule of behavior.
Actually they are more a species history and not a personal history at all. They can not be a personal history given they remain mostly unaltered throughout the life of the host. They are more a history of the species - and the environment and species around it. One can - for example - deduce a history of a predator from reading only the DNA or the prey.
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Originally Posted by bulmabriefs144
Humans are not organic machines, they can decide to follow rules
That does not negate them being biological machines. The attributes of any machine do not suddenly redefine it as not machine.
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Originally Posted by bulmabriefs144
Now, to answer the questions above, no, science has not produced consciousness. Consciousness is... different.
What is different about it? Is it not just an emergent property of the biological machine it runs on? If it is now - then enlighten us as to what it IS.
And just because science has not produced it - we can not declare it CAN not produce it. Again this is an error repeated in many posts on this thread. Correct the error in your rhetoric and the thread might move forward.
The thread is not about what HAS been done but what CAN be done. Is there any reason to think it can not be done? I am not seeing one from you.
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Originally Posted by bulmabriefs144
Since you guys still won't understand...
Not agreeing with you is different from not understanding you. Do not mistake the two.
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Originally Posted by kat949
I don't think one can replicate feelings in a machine..
At this time no - it seems we can not. But that does not mean it can not be done. There _seems_ to be an unspoken and sometimes spoken idea in many posts on this thread that "we can not do it now" and "it can not be done" are somehow the same thing.
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Originally Posted by kat949
so can we produce robots with consciousness? Likely not.
Why not? Why likely not? Just because it has not yet been done?
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Originally Posted by MysticPhD
We exist because we ARE the system and the observer . . . NOT a part of a system.
Why is it not both? You are not answering the question - merely restating the assertion the question was about. And acting like your refusal to answer the question means I am the one stressed.
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Originally Posted by MysticPhD
A machine no matter how cleverly programmed will never "Be." It just runs programs.
Yet there is no reason at this time to assume we are anything but biological machines. And we are conscious it seems. So why would a non biological machine be any less conscious if one were constructed? Merely because you really - really really - desperately - want it not to be so? Or have you any arguments that establish this? It is a simple question. You can pretend to be obtuse and not GET it . . . but that is just your schtick. You criticize my posts and knowledge . . . and denigrate and disparage me. That sort of ad hominem would seem to be your entire raison d'etre.
But the simple fact is you are dodging the question. Again. We appear to be biological machines. So why is it you believe a NOT biological machine can not achieve the same thing? Is it solely because your imagination tells you that consciousness is actually beamed into our "received" brains from some as yet unknown external source - so you simple "can not abide" emotionally any consideration of things that do not fit that fantasy?
I would not expect it, but I am allowing for the possibility. You've said that color-blind Mary could fully understand the qualitative experience of seeing red by studying the neuroscience of people who experience red.
And then using that hypothetical infinite knowledge to create a machine which implants the memory if having the experience. She wouldn't have had the experience of red (or pain, in this case) but would still understand what the experience was like. But keep in mind I'm not convinced this is possible in reality - I was just discussing how things worked in the made-up world the knowledge argument needs to cling to life.
Which is quite different from your idea that here in reality understanding how pain works will let someone feel as if they have a broken arm on demand without any sort of physical input.
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If she studies a mathematical model of seeing red, but doing this does not trigger her own first-person experience of seeing red, then despite her best efforts, she does not fully grasp the experience of seeing red.
And here in reality we can't experience other people's feelings - as you've said, they're unique to the individual and to a particular time and space - this is hardly a limitation specific to non-dualist approach towards understanding brain function. If all approaches are going to fail in this way, what's the point of singling out a particular approach as failing?
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Studying qualia is different than studying stellar formation because I am not a stellar-formation process, but I am a qualia-experiencing process. A stellar formation process cannot "study" or "represent" or "think about" other stellar formation processes, but a qualia-experiencing process can study other qualia-experiencing processes. At this point we don't have a good enough theory of qualia-experiencing to say whether studying qualia would or would not evoke qualitative experience.
I'm also a digesting process. Does studying how digestion work make me start digesting food which magically appeared just by thinking about it? If not, I'm not sure why you think that studying brain function is somehow different.
In any case, people study pain all the time. We call them doctors. Do you know of any of them who have the ability to create pain in themselves just by thinking about it? If not, that's pretty good evidence that what you're proposing is pretty far fetched.
We exist because we ARE the system and the observer . . . NOT a part of a system.
Neuroscience disagrees. Our consciousness is only a part of what our brain does - there's lots of other stuff that goes on that has nothing to do with consciousness. For example, parts of the brain control hunger, body temperature, heart rate, and so on that have nothing to do with consciousness. So in a very real sense, "we" are one part of what the brain does, but certainly not all of it.
You've said that color-blind Mary could fully understand the qualitative experience of seeing red by studying the neuroscience of people who experience red.
Thinking about it some more, I thought the premise wasn't that she was color blind, just that she was kept in a black and white world (the hypothetical ignores the potential real-world neurological effects of such a scenario, of course) and thus would never have the feeling of what it is like to experience colors. Here, reality gets in the way of what some wish it were with a way to trigger experiences of color using only black and white images - Benham's Top. Expose Mary to this and she'd have the feeling of what it is like to see color without ever being exposed to anything other than a black and white image. No dualism needed, just abusing the edges of how our physical nervous system works.
Just more evidence that making up guesses about how our brains should work in imaginary scenarios is no way to learn about reality.
Thinking about it some more, I thought the premise wasn't that she was color blind, just that she was kept in a black and white world (the hypothetical ignores the potential real-world neurological effects of such a scenario, of course) and thus would never have the feeling of what it is like to experience colors. Here, reality gets in the way of what some wish it were with a way to trigger experiences of color using only black and white images - Benham's Top. Expose Mary to this and she'd have the feeling of what it is like to see color without ever being exposed to anything other than a black and white image. No dualism needed, just abusing the edges of how our physical nervous system works.
Just more evidence that making up guesses about how our brains should work in imaginary scenarios is no way to learn about reality.
As usual, I sense that we are actually saying the same darn thing, but our ways of speaking get in the way of seeing the common ground between us. If Benham's top causes Mary's neurological system to experience "seeing red" then Mary experiences seeing red, so of course she can fully understand the meaning of "seeing red." It doesn't matter if Mary is ever exposed to red light from the environment. I'm pointing to the qualitative experience of seeing red - by whatever means this experience happens to arise. If she does not have this personal experience of seeing red, then she won't fully understand the meaning of 'seeing red.'
In Jackson's original version of the knowledge argument, Mary was a normal human living in a black & white room. Variations on this initial thought experiment have been introduced in order to focus more specifically on the issue of whether or not the qualitative experience of seeing red is a form of knowledge. I've pick the "color-blind" version of Mary because I think it gets to the central point most directly (thus avoiding irrelevant side-issues, like Mary notices pink in her skin, or she see a Benham's top, etc.) I also introduce the concept of "pain-blind" Mary for similar reasons.
My point is simply that color-blind Mary won't fully understand the qualitative feeling of "seeing red" unless she herself somehow achieves a first-person qualitative experience of seeing red (at which point she will stop being "color blind" in the sense that matters here since she will have seen color for herself, even if her retinae still fail to respond to red light). There is no way to avoid the necessity of a first-person qualitative experience if you really want to understand "seeing red" or "feeling pain" etc. Simply studying a mathematical model of seeing red will not provide full knowledge of what "seeing red" means to those of us who do, in fact, have first-person acquaintance with these qualitative experiences. To me, this seems like such an utterly simple and obvious truth that I have a hard time understanding why I even have to explain it.
Bottom line: To fully understand pain, you need to have some personal experience of feeling pain. Studying abstract models of other people's pain will fall short of full knowledge of pain - unless, somehow, studying the abstract models of pain causes you to personally feel pain (which we both agree is highly unlikely).
And then using that hypothetical infinite knowledge to create a machine which implants the memory if having the experience. She wouldn't have had the experience of red (or pain, in this case) but would still understand what the experience was like.
I think in this case her "memory" of feeling pain is really just a delusion, and this delusion does not count as "understanding what the experience was like". If, in fact, she has never personally experienced pain, then what she "pictures" in her mind is not actually "pain" but just a delusion that she mistakenly refers to as "pain" - in which case she still does not fully understand the qualitative nature of pain.
Comparison: I could be hypnotized into believing that I know how to solve equations in tensor calculus. If asked, "Do you know what it's like to do tensor calculus" I might sincerely say "yes," but in this case I would be mistaken. I don't really know what it's like; I just think I do. If given a tensor calc problem to solve, I would not be able to solve it. Similarly, if color-blind Mary is asked "Do you know what it feels like to experience red" she would sincerely say "yes" because she has the false memory of seeing red, but she would be mistaken. If asked to pick red objects from a set of objects, based on her supposed experience of seeing red, she would score at chance level.
You have, however, raised an interesting point that I will need to think about some more. It is possible, in principle, for a delusion to accidently coincide with reality. I might, for example, have a delusion in which I think I see a rabbit, and it turns out that, in fact, there just happens to be a rabbit in my line of sight, right where I imagine the rabbit to be. Since I am, for whatever reason, not seeing the actual rabbit, it is possible for the actual rabbit to do something - say, wiggle its nose - and I would not be aware of it. But if my imagined rabbit just happens to do all of the same things that the real rabbit does, then we have an epistemological problem of how to distinguish "seeing the real rabbit" from "imagining the rabbit." So long as the delusion and external data from the real rabbit are perfectly in sync, it would be hard to distinguish the two based on my behavior. We would need neuroscientists to sort this out, since presumably the neural activity of having a delusion is not the same as the neural activity of perception. In any case, do I "know" about the real rabbit if what I'm actually aware of is not the rabbit, but just my own delusion that just happens to be in sync with the real rabbit? I would say "no" because my beliefs are not actually justified, even though they seem to be justified due to the accidental synchronization of delusion and reality.
Now replace "delusion of a rabbit" with "false memory of seeing red" and suppose that instead of mere accident, the synchronization of my delusion and neural activity that would occur if I actually see red is planned by the machine that implants the false memory. Would I "know" what it is like to see red? I'm tempted to say "no" for the same reason I said "no" to knowing about the rabbit. In this case I would believe that I've seen red, and I would behave just as if I'd actually seen red, but neuroscientists could still, presumably, distinguish between the two.
On my theory (my notion of a primordial qualitative chaos combined with my version of the "enactive" theory of consciousness), we can physically distinguish between: (1) A physical system perceiving red and (2) A physical system suffering from the delusion of believing it sees red, that, nevertheless, accurately behaves as if it sees red. The two systems are not physically identical, so I would see no reason to think that their qualitative experience would be the same - or that their knowledge would be the same - even if they behaved in identical ways. System #2 would be like a "zombie" relative to the qualitative experience of seeing red. It would behave as if it sees red, but it would not actually see red.
Last edited by Gaylenwoof; 10-14-2014 at 01:06 PM..
We exist because we ARE the system and the observer . . . NOT a part of a system. That is what the phenomenon of "Being" means. A machine no matter how cleverly programmed will never "Be." It just runs programs. There is no "there" there. You can pretend to be obtuse and not GET it . . . but that is just your schtick. You criticize my posts and knowledge . . . and denigrate and disparage me. That sort of ad hominem would seem to be your entire raison d'etre.
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Originally Posted by monumentus
Yet there is no reason at this time to assume we are anything but biological machines. And we are conscious it seems. So why would a non biological machine be any less conscious if one were constructed?
Because it is NOT ALIVE! We ARE alive and need NOT be programmed by anyone. Build a living machine and perhaps you will have something to argue about.
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But the simple fact is you are dodging the question. Again. We appear to be biological machines. So why is it you believe a NOT biological machine can not achieve the same thing? Is it solely because your imagination tells you that consciousness is actually beamed into our "received" brains from some as yet unknown external source - so you simple "can not abide" emotionally any consideration of things that do not fit that fantasy?
Consciousness is the sum total of what life IS. Our miniscule little awareness experience is NOT consciousness . . . just the part we use to try to understand it.
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Originally Posted by KCfromNC
Neuroscience disagrees. Our consciousness is only a part of what our brain does - there's lots of other stuff that goes on that has nothing to do with consciousness. For example, parts of the brain control hunger, body temperature, heart rate, and so on that have nothing to do with consciousness. So in a very real sense, "we" are one part of what the brain does, but certainly not all of it.
Those interested in the science of this rather than religious dogma can check out e.g. Autonomic nervous system - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia for more details on how the brain actually works.
Neuroscience does NOT disagree. What we experience as consciousness is a composite (sum total) of EVERYTHING that is going on in the entire brain. Every aspect of the brain influences the composite that we experience as every conscious moment. The state of the entire brain is the source of our composite consciousness . . . that is why it cannot BE the locus without altering the state of the composite that is produced from it.
so we can't build a sum total events that is "alive" on the future? Maybe it would NOT be "alive like we are" (cardon and DNA)but it most certiantly will be "aware". And it will be a life form. You definition of "life" seems small.
And you are both kind of right. I would call them "cells" assigned to do a job, but they are all connected. So an increase in heart rate can trigger a series of events in the brain that you become "aware of " in some way thus your consciousness is affected.
Last edited by Arach Angle; 10-15-2014 at 06:36 AM..
Reason: added the word NOT
As usual, I sense that we are actually saying the same darn thing, but our ways of speaking get in the way of seeing the common ground between us. If Benham's top causes Mary's neurological system to experience "seeing red" then Mary experiences seeing red, so of course she can fully understand the meaning of "seeing red."
Nope, this is strictly a black and white image, so there's no red to see. Yet after being exposed to this black and white image she now knows what it feels like to experience color. The premise of the argument is that she learns something new after being exposed to red, but in this case she's used her infinite knowledge of the universe to cause an feeling of what it is like to seeing red without actually being exposed to anything red. Poof, problem solved.
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It doesn't matter if Mary is ever exposed to red light from the environment. I'm pointing to the qualitative experience of seeing red - by whatever means this experience happens to arise.
Including cases where there isn't any red at all. If our limited understanding of the reality of vision and brain function allows us to find a simple way to sidestep this imaginary scenario, imagine what a truly omniscient scientists might find.
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My point is simply that color-blind Mary won't fully understand the qualitative feeling of "seeing red" unless she herself somehow achieves a first-person qualitative experience of seeing red
Asserting this over and over doesn't make it any more true.
I think in this case her "memory" of feeling pain is really just a delusion, and this delusion does not count as "understanding what the experience was like".
Why not? How is her imperfect memory of what it feels like to experience red empirically any different than the imperfect memory of any other person? If you're going to require something other than a feeling itself to be its own justification then all of the previous stuff you've said about those feelings being the only think we can know for sure goes out the window.
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If, in fact, she has never personally experienced pain, then what she "pictures" in her mind is not actually "pain" but just a delusion that she mistakenly refers to as "pain" - in which case she still does not fully understand the qualitative nature of pain.
Seems like you're simply asserting your conclusion here. You're also contradicting your claim that feelings of what it is like are primary - now you're saying people can be wrong about the content of those feelings?
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Comparison: I could be hypnotized into believing that I know how to solve equations in tensor calculus. If asked, "Do you know what it's like to do tensor calculus" I might sincerely say "yes," but in this case I would be mistaken. I don't really know what it's like; I just think I do. If given a tensor calc problem to solve, I would not be able to solve it. Similarly, if color-blind Mary is asked "Do you know what it feels like to experience red" she would sincerely say "yes" because she has the false memory of seeing red, but she would be mistaken. If asked to pick red objects from a set of objects, based on her supposed experience of seeing red, she would score at chance level.
Yeah, it would take a while for her brain to be trained to recognized red, assuming that's even possible after not being exposed to it her whole life.
Still, how does that objectively make her understanding of her own feeling of what it was like to experience red incorrect? Is the concept of being wrong about your own feelings even a coherent idea?
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You have, however, raised an interesting point that I will need to think about some more. It is possible, in principle, for a delusion to accidently coincide with reality. I might, for example, have a delusion in which I think I see a rabbit, and it turns out that, in fact, there just happens to be a rabbit in my line of sight, right where I imagine the rabbit to be. Since I am, for whatever reason, not seeing the actual rabbit, it is possible for the actual rabbit to do something - say, wiggle its nose - and I would not be aware of it. But if my imagined rabbit just happens to do all of the same things that the real rabbit does, then we have an epistemological problem of how to distinguish "seeing the real rabbit" from "imagining the rabbit." So long as the delusion and external data from the real rabbit are perfectly in sync, it would be hard to distinguish the two based on my behavior. We would need neuroscientists to sort this out, since presumably the neural activity of having a delusion is not the same as the neural activity of perception. In any case, do I "know" about the real rabbit if what I'm actually aware of is not the rabbit, but just my own delusion that just happens to be in sync with the real rabbit? I would say "no" because my beliefs are not actually justified, even though they seem to be justified due to the accidental synchronization of delusion and reality.
Again, you're going back and forth on whether feelings count as knowledge. At least you're starting to see why defining them as such is problematic.
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Now replace "delusion of a rabbit" with "false memory of seeing red" and suppose that instead of mere accident, the synchronization of my delusion and neural activity that would occur if I actually see red is planned by the machine that implants the false memory. Would I "know" what it is like to see red? I'm tempted to say "no" for the same reason I said "no" to knowing about the rabbit. In this case I would believe that I've seen red, and I would behave just as if I'd actually seen red, but neuroscientists could still, presumably, distinguish between the two.
Again, accepting this brings all of your other claims about feelings being knowledge into question. How can you justify that you had a feeling and are accurately recalling it when there's no external validation possible?
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On my theory (my notion of a primordial qualitative chaos combined with my version of the "enactive" theory of consciousness), we can physically distinguish between: (1) A physical system perceiving red and (2) A physical system suffering from the delusion of believing it sees red, that, nevertheless, accurately behaves as if it sees red. The two systems are not physically identical, so I would see no reason to think that their qualitative experience would be the same
Nor would you have any reason to think that they would be different.
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