Consciousness in a robot? (pray, cross, meaning, believe)

[TRANSPONDER]

Originally Posted by Arach Angle

I though you mite like this, its Just a side note AR. It doesn't change the point in your post. They think It is really a "field", not "nothing". They think space has "quanta" Of things like electromagnetic, week, and such, that define every point in space. People of my generation called it "nothing". Today they are calling "fields". Feinman describes it nicely.

Thanks. This 'Field' being near to nothing as makes no difference, while at the same time being 'something' (I borrowed the term 'numerical potential') is very significant in terms of cosmic origins.

lmao, they banned from the AN. They couldn't understand that chicken **** is chicken ****. Regardless of belief.

I left because I couldn't live with moderators who evidently didn't understand my posts interfering with them.

[Arach Angle]

yeah, it confused them when I didn't base my opinions on a non belief in something. Working from a philosophy (or preconceived notion) to distort the data in an attempt to support the initial philosophy is not my thing. A when a "scientist" does it like they are "science" that downright pisses me off.

And of course, berating, belittling, and mocking people to make my point seem more valid with the help of sock profiles is sick to me. I was shocked to hear some sites think this is normal.

off topic ...sorry.

I think we will create the next life form. I am honored to think we had the chance hand in it. Of course, we all know we didn't "create it".

[Gaylenwoof]

Originally Posted by KCfromNC

I was looking for some sort of references to neuroscience which showed that brains switch between various discrete modes of functioning as you seemed to be implying with it entering and leaving a "seeing red" mode and going back to a mode of examining objective evidence. That's pretty dubious model of brain function, given what we know about how they work, so I was curious how central it was to the knowledge argument you were making.

I don't think I can really answer your question, but for what it's worth, there is a sub-branch of neuroscience that focuses on the neurological correlates of "mindfulness" and self-reflection.

My own speculation would be this: When I direct my attention to "qualia" I am, in effect, focusing on subtle mind/body processes (relating, once again, to the "enactive/embedded" notion of consciousness - "activated or aborted behaviors" etc) in such a way that my brain, in effect, categorizes these processes as "objects" of attention - roughly similar to the way that my brain might form, say, the abstract concept of "rectangle." There are countless objects of innumerable shapes and sizes that I might refer to as "rectangular" because, through the categorizing nature of the mind, the perception of one particular rectangle unconsciously "primes" me for thoughts about zillions of other objects that are "rectangular." Does this mean that "rectangle-ness" is a "thing"? I'd say no (this goes back to the distinction between Aristotelian and Platonic "universals"). And yet its seems that our brains are responding to patterns in the world when they categorized experiences. The tendency to categorize some types of experiences, but not others, would seem to reflect some important aspects of the nature of brains and the world. So, do qualia exist as "objects" in the world? No. But they do (so I say) exist as usefully categorizable patterns of experience - they are "properties" of mind/brain/world process in roughly the same sense as "rectangular" is a property.

As "physical processes" qualia can be studied objectively as neural correlates tied to behavior (i.e., poke my brain with an electrode and I say "I see blue", etc), but if you - the investigator - do not already have your own subjective sense of what it "feels like" to see blue, the correlation of neural processes with the behavior "I see blue" is all just abstract knowledge. (Think of poking the brain of Martian who says "I see grugal." Great - you can study neurons and Martian behavior to your heart's content, but unless you somehow personally become acquainted with "what it feels like" to see "grugal" you don't really know everything about "seeing grugal." You can know all the "third-person facts," but this aspect - what it feels like - is a property of the neural processes that you can only access via your own personal mindful introspection. You need to activate your own prefrontal regions of your own brain to access this perspective on the information because, according the type of mind-brain identity thesis I'm proposing, "seeing X" is your first-person perspective on your own body's process.

Anyway, there is some neurological research relating to the ability to turn attention "inward" in such a way that the "category-making" function of the brain applies to a person's own bodily processes (and, since you are the only one who can take this "inner perspective" on your own body, it seem logical - to me, at least - that this perspective must be unique and, as such, it may have properties that are not accessible from other perspectives). Coincidentally, I recently read a book about the neuroscience of mindfulness:
Siegel,Daniel J. (2007) The Mindful Brain:Reflections and Attunement in the Cultivation of Well-Being (New York: W.W.Norton)

Here a few quotes for your amusement:
Activation of these middle prefrontal regions (orbitofrontal and medial prefrontal cortices…seemed to pull the subject out of automatic, into a more reflective state that could take into account a broader perspective of the problem at hand. Though this is not astudy of mindfulness, we can see that the role of these middle prefrontal areas revealed in this and other studies suggests that these regions play an important part in disengaging us from top-down influences, such as prior expectations and our own emotional reactions. [Siegle 110]

This capacity to perceive the mind can be called “mindsight” and enables us to gain deep insight and empathy. Mindful awareness contains the metacognitive processes that enable both awareness of awareness and the focus of attention on the nature of the mind itself. [Siegle 122]

When we recall that the middle prefrontal region is profoundly integrative of body, brainstem, limbic areas, cortex, and the social world of others’ minds, we then can realize how this effortless [“effortlessness”gained after considerable "effort-full" practice with mindful meditation] mindful awareness may be created. As a person’s brain grows with mindful awareness practice (involving side prefrontal cortex effort), the neuroplasticity enhances the growth of the integrative middle prefrontal fibers. As they grow with practice, the individual achieves the trait of effortless mindful living. [Siegle 120]

[Huckleberry3911948]

no that is what makes them so scary. they have non conscious none at all. they just follow orders.
like 3rd reich.

[Sophronius]

okay this just in, two robots and a creator( parent) are required for attempt.

[Gaylenwoof]

Originally Posted by KCfromNC

While I can't feel your pain, it is possible through various other ways to determine that you are in pain. Simply being unable to use a particular sense to detect something doesn't make it subjective. You can't sense radio waves, but that doesn't mean the logic of subjectivity means there is something subjective about how radios work.

All systems, conscious or not, have processes which are more or less observable to the external world. Subjectivity is something different. Or maybe it isn't. No one seems to want to talk about what they mean when they say it - other than to presume they know what it is. It does seem to have the useful property of having many different related meanings that one can switch between to try and make a point, so there is that.

I find your resistance to the concept of subjectivity to be interesting. Sometimes it seems as if you seriously lack comprehension of it (and are thus oblivious to the logical force of it), but I find this hard to believe. Even Dan Dennett - one of the most famously out-spoken "nay-sayers" about qualia - acknowledges his intuitive understanding of it, and his susceptibility to the logical force of it. Here, for example:

There does seem to be a further fact to be determined, one way or another, about whether or not anybody is actually conscious or a perfect (philosopher’s) zombie. This is what I have called the Zombic Hunch (Dennett, 2005). I can feel it just as vividly as anybody; I just don’t credit it, any more than I credit the sometimes well-nigh irresistible hunch that the sun goes around the earth; it surely does seem to go around the earth. [D. Dennett, "The Mystery of David Chalmers" (2012)http://ase.tufts.edu/cogstud/dennett...s/chalmers.pdf ]

So would you agree with Dennett that there "seems to be a further fact"? Or do my efforts to explain subjectivity seem so completely mysterious to you that you have no idea why I even think there is anything to be explained?

On a related note: Do you (like Dennett?) experience any intuitive understanding of what I mean by the concept of "what it is like to BE a process"? Or is this concept so foreign to you that you have no idea what I'm even trying to get at? Sometimes you seem to want me to show you "qualia" or define subjectivity in purely objective terms, but obviously I can't do that because the whole point of subjectivity is that this cannot be done for almost exactly the same logical reason that I can't feel your pain, or sneeze your sneeze, or understand algebra for you.

Perhaps the key to explaining subjectivity is to understand that not every aspect of every experience is perception of external stimuli. Some aspects of experience are grounded in internal body/brain processing that does not represent anything external at all. When John perceives Sally's brain process, he perceives Sally's processes via his own brain processes. John can't "be" Sally's brain, so if there is some aspect of Sally's experience that depends on being Sally's brain, then John can't grasp this aspect of Sally's experience directly. The best he can do is attempt to replicate the critical aspects of Sally's brain process in his own brain process. Now here is where we hit the critical juncture: What are the "critical aspects" of Sally's brain processes that John needs to replicate in his own brain if he want's to know "what it's like" to be Sally?

You seem to think that these critical aspects are purely functional and thus can be fully transferred from Sally's brain to John's brain, and, as functions, they can, in principle, be fully understood in terms of abstract structure and dynamics (e.g., a mathematical model). I'm trying explain that you might not be right about this. (I'm really just trying to get you to imagine the possibility that you are not right about this.) It seems possible - to me, at least - that some of the properties of Sally's experience are grounded in the fact of BEING Sally's brain - not just in the abstract structure and dynamics that can be used to model Sally's brain, but grounded, instead, in being this particular brain. Abstract structure and dynamics can be replicated from Sally's brain and appear in John's brain (the self-same function can be manifest in both brains), but even if we grant that the particular "feel" of any given quale is fully determined by structure and dynamics, we still need to acknowledge that the structure and dynamics alone are ultimately not enough. They need (according to me) to be instantiated in a real physical system (otherwise the purely abstract structure and function - like Plato's Forms? - would somehow "feel like" something even if there were no physical entities at all - and I'm pretty sure you don't what that, since it would be "disembodies qualia").

So my point is that the embodiment is crucial, and every embodiment is a particular embodiment, so it seem perfectly plausible that qualitative "what it's like-ness" crucially depends on the particular body in which it is embodied. John can study Sally's brain, but John can only understand Sally's brain via his own embodiment of functions that he assumes (for, perhaps, good reasons) are crucially similar to the functions embodied in Sally's brain. Abstract understanding of structure and dynamics alone won't be enough for John to understand Sally's qualia - John has to BE an embodied structure and function that is abstractly interpreting what he believes to be the functions embodied in Sally's brain. These differences in embodiment and the assumptions (inductive leaps) required for John to believe that he understands the functions in Sally's brain brings us right back to subjectivity, and perhaps to the roots of an "explanatory gap." As I said in a prior post: Qualia are not actually "objects" of perception; they are processes of perceiving, so the logic of abstract/objective quantification cannot be fully applied.

You can only convey the full meanings of subjective qualitative terms to a conscious subject who experiences "what it's like" to experience the qualia you are discussing because the subject needs to instantiate the qualia for themselves. If they don't actually instantiate the qualia as such in their own embodied experience, then no amount of abstract discussion about structure and dynamics will bring them complete understanding. This is the point of the "Mary" example, and it is also the central point of the "zombie" examples.

[MysticPhD]

Originally Posted by MysticPhD

That is what I find so completely mind-boggling. The ONLY thing that you can be certain exists is YOU experiencing ANYTHING . . . but you think you are an illusion!

Originally Posted by AREQUIPA

There is certainly something with wrong with your learning abilities. Reality is real. I became convinced as a teenager that reality is real apart from what we might be thinking, because the universe surprises us. (that is a rather more sciency -sounding statement of the 'cheese -sandwich [which turnout unexpectedly to be jam] experiment').

Science has shown that what conclusions we come to about the world of matter are often wrong. Matter is far from solid. a rainbow does not really exist. These are all illusions. But they are not non -existent things or causes of the illusions. Though what we can conjure up in our minds, shapes in the dark, nameless enemies out to get us, invisible cosmic beings guiding our evolution may very well be non -existent. There, we need science to validate (or not) whether these things are real or not

We touched on this very early in the matrix -Plantinga debate and I have reiterated it several times since. What is your problem?

It is not my problem and not my learning deficit, Arq. I assumed the pronoun reference would alert you to the thing that eludes YOU because we are so accustomed to talking from the perspective of observer we forget to consider WHO the observer IS. Illusions have to fool someone. WHO is having this illusion???

[Arach Angle]

Originally Posted by MysticPhD

It is not my problem and not my learning deficit, Arq. I assumed the pronoun reference would alert you to the thing that eludes YOU because we are so accustomed to talking from the perspective of observer we forget to consider WHO the observer IS. Illusions have to fool someone. WHO is having this illusion???

I think you are looking at the word and assigning a value he (nor me) is assigning. "illusion" doesn't mean "to fool you" or "trick you". What word would you use to describe something being different than it appears?

Like a solid. It really is not "solid" it is a sea of particles being exchanged between surfaces. If we could "magically" turn off the electrostatic interactions in you, you would fall through the planet. It's not a trick. It's really cool. again what word would you use?

[Sophronius]

From above, While I can't feel your pain, it is possible through various other ways to determine that you are in pain. Simply being unable to use a particular sense to detect something doesn't make it subjective.

The simple answer in opinion is, its called subjective because the particular sense to detect something, is the control center of -knowing, how things are going with respects to the whole individual human operation, all survival including the survival of the ability to detect anything, for it's self's surviving continuance. Subjective or me inside here gets the reading for my own conditions, no where else.

[Arach Angle]

for now.