Matt,
Although Richard's paper places considerable focus the zombie/non-zombie distinction, its pronouncements do not appear to be so limited. For example, its discussion of the analysis of qualia bottoming out is not so limited, since presumably qualia and their associated conscious experience only occur in Non-Zombies. The paper states in the last sentence of its section on page 5 entitled "Implications" that "...we can never say exactly what the phenomena of consciousness are, in the way we give scientific explanation for other things." As I said in my prior post, this is one of the major points to which I disagree, and it does not seem to be limited to the zombie/non-zombie distinction, since all the zombie/non-zombie distinction has to do is provide a basis for distinguishing between zombies and non-zombies, and has no relevance to what the phenomena of consciousness are beyond that. I disagree with the above quote, because although our current technical capabilities decrease the extent to which we can make explanations about the phenomena of consciousness, I believe we already can give initial explanations for many aspects of consciousness and I believe that within the next 20 to 40 years we will be able to give much greater explanations. I admit that currently there are problems in making the Zombie/non-zombie distinction. But this same limitation arguably applies to making the zombie/non-zombie distinction for humans as well as AGI's. Based on my own subjective experience, I believe I have a consciousness, and as Richard points out, it reasonable to consider that subjective experience as real as anything else, some would say even more real than anything else. Since I assume other humans have brainware similar to my own, --- and since I outward manifestations of substantial similarities between the way the minds and emotions of other humans appear to work, and the way my mind appears to me to work --- I assume most other humans are not Zombies. But after serious brain damage, we are told by doctors such as Antonio Damasio, humans can become zombies. And we have to face medical and moral decisions about when to pull the plug on such humans, as in the famous case of Terri Schiavo. The current medical and political community bases their zombie/non-zombie decisions for humans based on a partial understanding of what "human" consciousness is, and current measurements they can make indicating whether or not such a consciousness exists. When it comes to determining whether machines have consciousness of a type that warrants better treatment than Terri Schiavo, such decision will probably be based on the advanced understanding of consciousness that we will develop in the coming decades. Like Richard, I do not believe the attribute of human consciousness we hold so dear are a mere artifact. But I don't put much faith in his definition of consciousness as the ability to sensing something is real even though analyze of it bottoms out. I believe the sense of awareness humans call consciousness is essential to power of the computation we call the human mind. I believe a human-like consciousness arises from the massively self-aware computation --- having an internal bandwidth of over 1 million DVD channel/second --- inherent in a massively parallel spreading activation system like the human brain --- when a proper mechanism is available for rapidly successively selecting certain items for broad activation in a relatively coherent manner based on the competitive relevance or match to current goals or drives of the system of competing assemblies of activation, and/or based on the current importance and valence of the emotional associations of such assemblies. The activations that are most conscious, are sufficiently broad that they dynamically activate experiential memories and patterns representing the grounded meaning of the conscious concept. The effect of prior activations on the brain state, tend to favor the activations of those aspects of a currently conscious concept's meaning that are most relevant to the current context. This contextually relevant grounding and the massively parallel dynamic state of activation and its retention of various degrees and patterns of activation over time, allows the consciousness to have a sense of being aware of many things at once, and of extending between points in time and space. People have asked for centuries, what is it inside our mind that seems to watch the show provided by our senses. The answer is the tens of billions of neurons and trillion of synapses that respond to the flood of sensory information, and store selected portions of it in short, mid, and then long term memory, to weave a story out of it which is labeled with recognized patterns, and patterns of explanation. Thus, I believe that the conscious/subconscious theater of the mind, with its reactive audience of billions of neurons, and its ability to rapidly select in succession which groups in the audience gets the microphone and spot light, creates a mindbogglingly complex, interwoven, self aware computation this is consciousness. Barring some sort of major setback to our civilization I firmly believe than in 20 to 40 years we will understand the computational nature and origin of consciousness, and we will have tools capable of monitoring the brian in much greater detail, making the zombie/non-zombie distinction in humans much easier. I also believe that we could design AGI's that let us make similar measurements on their brains, and that from such measurements or analysis we would be able to guess fairly well where on the zombie/non-zombie continuum they reside. Ed Porter -----Original Message----- From: Matt Mahoney [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Saturday, November 15, 2008 10:02 PM To: agi@v2.listbox.com Subject: RE: [agi] A paper that actually does solve the problem of consciousness --- On Sat, 11/15/08, Ed Porter <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > With regard to the second notion, >that conscious phenomena are not subject to scientific explanation, there is >extensive evidence to the contrary. The prescient psychological writings of >William James, and Dr. Alexander Luria's famous studies of the effects of >variously located bullet wounds on the minds of Russian soldiers after World >War II, both illustrate that human consciousness can be scientifically >studied. The effects of various drugs on consciousness have been >scientifically studied. Richard's paper is only about the "hard" question of consciousness, that which distinguishes you from a P-zombie, not the easy question about mental states that distinguish between being awake or asleep. I think the reason that the hard question is interesting at all is that it would presumably be OK to torture a zombie because it doesn't actually experience pain, even though it would react exactly like a human being tortured. That's an ethical question. Ethics is a belief system that exists in our minds about what we should or should not do. There is no objective experiment you can do that will tell you whether any act, such as inflicting pain on a human, animal, or machine, is ethical or not. The only thing you can measure is belief, for example, by taking a poll. -- 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/?&; Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com ------------------------------------------- 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
