Christof Koch - What It Will Take for Computers to Be Conscious

[radicalpolitik]

I guess you didn't even read my other post.



We agree on the bolded part

But, you have to look at all available evidence and observations and the psi evidence is typically ignored. I don't think it's stupid to study how far the brain is responsible for consciousness, but I do think it's stupid to not investigate evidence that strongly suggests to some extent the brain is not responsible.

I think that perhaps we will end up with a model where consciousness is partly brain based, and partly fundamental to the universe. The former is supported by brain injury changing behaviour and personality. The latter by psi, and GCP data. Plus, if QM is holistic, and in Zeilinger's words "we are not just passive observers...we have a much more active roll than we normally think", then there must be something about mind and matter that is very similar, perhaps the same. Or perhaps, and at this point I advocate something I don't accept, that matter is subordinate to mind (idealism)

 

[EthanT]

I think that perhaps we will end up with a model where consciousness is partly brain based, and partly fundamental to the universe. The former is supported by brain injury changing behaviour and personality. The latter by psi, and GCP data. Plus, if QM is holistic, and in Zeilinger's words "we are not just passive observers...we have a much more active roll than we normally think", then there must be something about mind and matter that is very similar, perhaps the same. Or perhaps, and at this point I advocate something I don't accept, that matter is subordinate to mind (idealism)

I pretty much agree with all that and I even go as far as to accept Idealism to an extent! Come on over to the dark side Radicalpolitik, hehe.

In one of his blogs, Bernardo also argued fairly well that some consciousness/memory is probably "sourced" by the brain. It was all based on his expertise in something computer related ... wish I could remember the details, but apparently those memory buffers were flushed to make room for other stuff

 

[steve001]

I guess you didn't even read my other post.



We agree on the bolded part

But, you have to look at all available evidence and observations and the psi evidence is typically ignored. I don't think it's stupid to study how far the brain is responsible for consciousness, but I do think it's stupid to not investigate evidence that strongly suggests to some extent the brain is not responsible.

This is probably a silly question, but how does psi evidence + provide strong evidence consciousness is a fundamental characteristic of spacetime? Could you connect the dots plz?

 

[radicalpolitik]

I pretty much agree with all that and I even go as far as to accept Idealism to an extent! Come on over to the dark side Radicalpolitik, hehe.

In one of his blogs, Bernardo also argued fairly well that some consciousness/memory is probably "sourced" by the brain. It was all based on his expertise in something computer related ... wish I could remember the details, but apparently those memory buffers were flushed to make room for other stuff

I just can't imagine that us being active participators, as zeilinger says, indicates that consciousness is just in the brain. It's not to say that for human sentience you don't need a human brain. That may well be the case. But if we do have an active role as QM seems to suggest according to Z, then there must be some sort of mind like aspect in nature. I can't see how we can escape that.

 

[radicalpolitik]

This is probably a silly question, but how does psi evidence + provide strong evidence consciousness is a fundamental characteristic of spacetime? Could you connect the dots plz?

Steve, if we can acquire information from the future, or across space outside our heads, or that mind can effect matter, i.e. GCP etc, then it stands to reason that consciousness is not entirely a brain thing. I suspect to get the kind of unified personal consciousness we enjoy, we probably need a brain. But psi seems to suggest that some aspect of mind isn't locked or produced exclusively by the brain. This is why I lean toward Neutral Monism right now.

 

[Paul C. Anagnostopoulos]

I guess you didn't even read my other post.

Which one? I thought I'd read them all.

We agree on the bolded part.

I figured we did.

But, you have to look at all available evidence and observations and the psi evidence is typically ignored. I don't think it's stupid to study how far the brain is responsible for consciousness, but I do think it's stupid to not investigate evidence that strongly suggests to some extent the brain is not responsible.

I don't think the psi evidence demonstrates what you think it does. But that's the disagreement that drives this place.

~~ Paul

 

[EthanT]

This is probably a silly question, but how does psi evidence + provide strong evidence consciousness is a fundamental characteristic of spacetime? Could you connect the dots plz?

See my post above on what it means to say consciousness is fundamental. To summarize again, by saying consciousness is fundamental it's really just recognizing that an observed phenomenon behaves in such a way as to suggest consciousness cannot be fully explained in terms of things we currently understand.

This is common in physics. For a long time an electron was fundmental in physics and it couldn't be described in terms of anything else we understood at the time. Then, the field became the fundamental entity and electrons are now described in terms of fields. One day, we may have a new theory that explains fields in terms of some new, currently unknown, even more fundmental entity, which is part of the reason field theory is often called effective field theory.

In the end, I guess the word fundamental probably doesn't mean a whole lot.

 

[EthanT]

But that's the disagreement that drives this place.
~~ Paul

Agreed on that, as well! ;-)

 

[Arouet]

But, you have to look at all available evidence and observations and the psi evidence is typically ignored. I don't think it's stupid to study how far the brain is responsible for consciousness, but I do think it's stupid to not investigate evidence that strongly suggests to some extent the brain is not responsible.

I don't disagree with pursuing both hypotheses (and others) . It just seems there is a lot of ink being spilled arguing that it can't be physical (the only conclusion to that being that scientists should give up that route.) It's no more satisfying an argument than a skeptic who says that psi is impossible. Unless you've got a logical impossibility, arguments that something is impossible don't go very far and aren't terribly convincing to people who aren't already convinced.

 

[radicalpolitik]

I don't disagree with pursuing both hypotheses (and others) . It just seems there is a lot of ink being spilled arguing that it can't be physical (the only conclusion to that being that scientists should give up that route.) It's no more satisfying an argument than a skeptic who says that psi is impossible. Unless you've got a logical impossibility, arguments that something is impossible don't go very far and aren't terribly convincing to people who aren't already convinced.

I would be the camp that would say that consciousness is a physical phenomena, but not just a brain thing. The problem seems to be that I think materialists and non materialists envision that if consciousness is physical it must be in the brain. This is nonsense, neutral monism, panpsychism, and pan-experientialism all cast consciousness as physical.

 

[Paul C. Anagnostopoulos]

I would be the camp that would say that consciousness is a physical phenomena, but not just a brain thing. The problem seems to be that I think materialists and non materialists envision that if consciousness is physical it must be in the brain. This is nonsense, neutral monism, panpsychism, and pan-experientialism all cast consciousness as physical.

On the other hand, those metaphysical models don't mean that consciousness has to be "all over the place." It might require certain configurations of matter/energy that only occur in brain-like structures. There could be a big difference between fundamental consciousness and human-like consciousness.

~~ Paul

 

[radicalpolitik]

On the other hand, those metaphysical models don't mean that consciousness has to be "all over the place." It might require certain configurations of matter/energy that only occur in brain-like structures. There could be a big difference between fundamental consciousness and human-like consciousness.

~~ Paul

Absolutely agree. I doubt that if consciousness is fundamental it is human like. That seems supremely arrogant.

 

[Sciborg_S_Patel]

I don't disagree with pursuing both hypotheses (and others) . It just seems there is a lot of ink being spilled arguing that it can't be physical (the only conclusion to that being that scientists should give up that route.) It's no more satisfying an argument than a skeptic who says that psi is impossible. Unless you've got a logical impossibility, arguments that something is impossible don't go very far and aren't terribly convincing to people who aren't already convinced.

What's there to give up? The arrangements that correlate with consciousness still need to be found, not to mention there's still decisions to be made regarding the other possibilities (Idealism, Panpsychism, etc). This whole "God of the gaps" accusation some materialists complain about doesn't really fit since there's merely a shift in ontological primitives. Harris has already talked about ways one can investigate consciousness in a scientific manner, and there's also parapsychology/paranthopology along with a revitalization of metaphysics.

If anything, a lot of things often accepted as brute facts under materialism - causality, laws of nature, mechanistic closure- lose their sacred cow status and come under investigation. As Feser notes, those genuinely seeking the intelligibility of the world have to confront brute facts. There's actually more for science to do, mechanistic reductionism just loses the privileged place it's had in some minds.

Really, the only people who seem to be demanding a restriction to the search space are the pseudoskeptics who want to reject any immaterialist explanations* . IMO their religious faith in materialism is only holding us back, though it seems that won't necessarily be for much longer.

*eta: I guess you could add religious fundamentalists into that mix, but they aren't really part of the science community.

 

[Arouet]

What's there to give up?

If your conclusion is that it is impossible for consciousness to matter based the only rational conclusion is to also reject pursuing that line of study.

My point is that arguing something is impossible rarely takes us very far (again, unless its a logical impossibility).

 

[Sciborg_S_Patel]

If your conclusion is that it is impossible for consciousness to matter based the only rational conclusion is to also reject pursuing that line of study.

My point is that arguing something is impossible rarely takes us very far (again, unless its a logical impossibility).

This makes no sense to me. Whether one assumes the brain is a consciousness-producer, icon/image of a process, transmitter/filter and so on there's still a brain to study.

Same with memories. Just because the neuroscientist Tallis argues memories cannot be held in the brain doesn't mean he thinks we should give up on studying how the brain accesses memories.

The work goes on, all that's expanded is the search space of science.

 

[Haruhi]

I think it is clear that the human consciousness is a brain function in the mathematical sense of the term function: we can modify in some way the brain, independent variable, and then can be modified in some way the consciousness, dependent variable. But this does not imply that human consciousness is always brain function and that there is no afterlife. In fact the evidence of apparitions, possessions and mediumship points to that there are being identifiable as deceased humans manifesting mental attributes: memories, motivations...

 

[Bart V]

Not magical at all, because you accept it as an ontological primitive.

Or ,as Harry Potter would say, ontologicalum primitivus.

 

[Bart V]

Software isn't matter.

But without matter there is no software, you need matter to run it.
Without an appropriate medium software is completely meaningless.
Software is what a computer does, just as mind is what the brain does.

 

[Sciborg_S_Patel]

But without matter there is no software, you need matter to run it.
Without an appropriate medium software is completely meaningless.
Software is what a computer does, just as mind is what the brain does.

Without a mind software is always completely meaningless, as what arrangements of matter mean is otherwise indeterminate. As Lanier points out, you can claim anything anywhere is a "software".

As for "mind is what the brain does", not sure this means much of anything.