Mike Tintner wrote:
Colin:YES....Brains don't have their own sensors or self-represent
with a perceptual field. So what? That's got nothing whatever to do
with the matter at hand. CUT cortex and you can kill off "what it is
like" percepts out there in the body (although in confusing ways).
Touch appropriate exposed cortex with a non-invasive probe and you can
create percepts apparently, but not actually, elsewhere in the body.
Cut off your sensors and your body -remove the body from the brain -
and you also don't have any form of consciousness or sensation -
contrary to the brain-in-a-vat delusion. However if you remove the
brain entirely - from an evolutionary perspective - you still have
consciousness. Living organisms clearly had and have intelligence
*before* the brain was evolved - *before* intelligence was centralised
in one area of the body. Intelligence was clearly at first
*distributed* through a proto-nervous system throughout the body.
Watch a sea anemone wait and then grab, and then devour a fish that
approaches it and you will be convinced of that. The anemone does not
have a brain only a nervous system.
You are trying to locate consciousness in one area of the body rather
than in the brain-body as a whole. It's clearly wrong. You - your self
- and your consciousness - are a whole body affair. Understanding this
is vital not only for understanding consciousness but also general
intelligence and creativity, as I have dealt with elsewhere
I'm talking about human P-consciousness[1] specifically. I'm not talking
about its role in intelligence or the P-consciousness or otherwise in
any other context like an invertebrate. I just want to make sure
everyone's on the same physiological page for human level AGI.
Yes, the normal circumstances are that P-consciousness arises in
brain-body as a whole. But pathological circumstances are very telling.
Phantom limb is where you could have, say, have a perceptual arm 'out
there' in space in a really agonising contorted way, but there's no
actual arm. Male>Female sex changes can produce phantom penises etc.
.... this is P-consciousness of body *without body part.*
The fact that P-consciousness occurs in any particular embodiment
circumstance or intellectual capacity does not alter the empirical fact
of the localisation of the origin of the sensations in humans to the
cranial CNS of the human. Very specific localised cranial (not spinal)
central nervous system (CNS) neurons go to a great deal of trouble to
construct the P-conscious scenes. The peripheral nervous system (PNS)
and the spinal CNS are 100% sensationless, including all cranial
peripherals. That's the main outcome.
If there is anyone out there that thinks that merely hooking up a sensor
to a computer intrinsically creates a percept or a sensation - that is
fundamentally erroneous. That includes a camera chip or any other
peripheral. I have actually met a senior AI worker with that delusion
installed in his mental kit. He didn't like being told about the atomic
level reality.
I'd like to dispel all such delusion in this place so that neurally
inspired AGI gets discussed accurately, even if your intent is to
"explain P-consciousness away"... know exactly what you are explaining
away and exactly where it is.
cheers,
Colin Hales
[1] Block, N. (1995), 'On a Confusion About a Function of
Consciousness'. Behavioral and Brain Sciences 18(2):pp. 227-247.
-------------------------------------------
agi
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