--- On Fri, 11/14/08, Richard Loosemore <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > http://susaro.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/11/draft_consciousness_rpwl.pdf
Interesting that some of your predictions have already been tested, in particular, synaesthetic qualia was described by George Stratton in 1896. When people wear glasses that turn images upside down, they adapt after several days and begin to see the world normally. http://www.cns.nyu.edu/~nava/courses/psych_and_brain/pdfs/Stratton_1896.pdf http://wearcam.org/tetherless/node4.html This is equivalent to your prediction #2 where connecting the output of neurons that respond to the sound of a cello to the input of neurons that respond to red would cause a cello to sound red. We should expect the effect to be temporary. I'm not sure how this demonstrates consciousness. How do you test that the subject actually experiences redness at the sound of a cello, rather than just behaving as if experiencing redness, for example, claiming to hear red? I can do a similar experiment with autobliss (a program that learns a 2 input logic function by reinforcement). If I swapped the inputs, the program would make mistakes at first, but adapt after a few dozen training sessions. So autobliss meets one of the requirements for qualia. The other is that it be advanced enough to introspect on itself, and that which it cannot analyze (describe in terms of simpler phenomena) is qualia. What you describe as "elements" are neurons in a connectionist model, and the "atoms" are the set of active neurons. "Analysis" means describing a neuron in terms of its inputs. Then qualia is the first layer of a feedforward network. In this respect, autobliss is a single neuron with 4 inputs, and those inputs are therefore its qualia. You might object that autobliss is not advanced enough to ponder its own self existence. Perhaps you define "advanced" to mean it is capable of language (pass the Turing test), but I don't think that's what you meant. In that case, you need to define more carefully what qualifies as "sufficiently powerful". -- Matt Mahoney, [EMAIL PROTECTED] ------------------------------------------- agi Archives: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/303/=now RSS Feed: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/303/ Modify Your Subscription: https://www.listbox.com/member/?member_id=8660244&id_secret=120640061-aded06 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
