On 5/15/2015 10:29 PM, Bruce Kellett wrote:
meekerdb wrote:
On 5/15/2015 9:31 PM, Bruce Kellett wrote:
meekerdb wrote:
On 5/15/2015 7:37 PM, Bruce Kellett wrote:
meekerdb wrote:
But you could turn this around and pick some arbitrary sequence/recording and say,
"Well it would be the right program to be conscious in SOME circumstance, therefore
it's conscious."
I think it goes without saying that it is a recording of brain activity of a
conscious person -- not a film of your dog chasing a ball. We have to assume a
modicum of common sense.
Fine. But then what is it about the recording of the brain activity of a conscious
person that makes it conscious? Why is it a property of just that sequence, when in
general we would attribute consciousness only to an entity that responded
intelligently/differently to different circumstances. We wouldn't attribute
consciousness based on just a short sequence of behavior such as might be evinced by
one of Disney's animitronics.
What is it about the brain activity of a conscious person that makes him conscious?
Whatever made the person conscious in the first instance is what makes the recording
recreate that conscious moment.
Unless we know what it is about the brain processes that make it conscious we can't
know what it is necessary to record.
I thought the idea was that we recorded everything that was going on.
The point here is that consciousness supervenes on the brain activity. This makes no
ontological claims -- simply an epistemological claim. This brain activity is
associated with the phenomenon we call consciousness.
So are you assuming that only a brain can instantiate consciousness?
No. All functional brains are conscious does not entail that all consciousness comes
with function goo in a skull.
Do you not believe that consciousness is a matter of what information processing the
brain is doing, but that it requires wetware? Bruno's idea is that he may solve the
mind-body problem; but you seem not to see any problem.
No, I don't see any particular problem. In fact, if there is a difference between brain
activity and consciousness, you are introducing some weird dualist Cartesian theatre --
the brain activity is only conscious when it is enlivened by some extra computational
magic stuff.
Of course consciousness supervenes on brain activity - but maybe not just any brain
activity (c.f. anesthesia). The question is whether it can supervene on something else
and if so, what?
I don't see any problem here -- see above: brain goo activity -> consciousness does not
mean that consciousness -> brain goo activity.
How we determine whether a person is conscious in the first place is a
different matter.
But that completely avoids the question of creating a conscious AI program, whether
it's possible, and whether it's identical with making an intelligent AI program.
I didn't think we were trying to create a conscious AI in this discussion. I think this
is probably possible, and that the means by which it is done will probably be quite
different from programs written to control robots. I suspect that the difference might
well be in the provision of language skills -- so that an internal narrative can be
developed.
The AI that I envisage will probably be based on a learning program of some sort, that
will have to learn in much the same way as an infant human learns. I doubt that we will
ever be able to create an AI that is essentially an intelligent adult human when it is
first turned on.
I agree with that, but once an AI is realized it will be possible to copy it. And if it's
digital it will be possible to implement it using different hardware. If it's not
digital, it will (in principle) be able to implement it arbitrarily closely with a digital
device. And we will have the same question - what is that makes that hardware device
conscious? I don't see any plausible answer except "Running the program it instantiates."
Brent
--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups
"Everything List" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email
to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com.
To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com.
Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
