On 31 Aug 2015, at 19:40, meekerdb wrote:
On 8/31/2015 1:56 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
On 30 Aug 2015, at 20:25, meekerdb wrote:
On 8/30/2015 3:34 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
On 30 Aug 2015, at 03:08, Russell Standish wrote:
Well as people probably know, I don't believe C. elegans can be
conscious in any sense of the word. Hell - I have strong doubts
about
ants, and they're massively more complex creatures.
I think personally that C. Elegans, and Planaria (!), even
amoeba, are conscious, although very plausibly not self-conscious.
I tend to think since 2008 that even RA is already conscious,
even maximally so, and that PA is already as much self-conscious
than a human (when in some dissociative state).
But I don't know if PA is more or less conscious than RA. That
depends of the role of the higher part of the brain consists in
filtering consciousness or enacting it.
But it probably won't be long before we simulate a mouse brain
in toto
- about 2 decades is my guess, maybe even less given enough
dollars -
then we're definitely in grey philosophical territory :).
I am slightly less optimistic than you. It will take one of two
decades before we simulate the hippocampus of a rat, but probably
more time will be needed for the rest of their brain. And the
result can be a conscious creature, with a quite different
consciousness that a rat, as I find plausible that pain are
related to the glial cells and their metabolism, which are not
taken into account by the current "copies".
So now you agree with me that there are different kinds and
degrees of consciousness; that it is not just a binary attribute
of an axiom + inference system.
?
Either you are conscious, or you are not.
But is a roundworm either conscious or not? an amoeba?
I don't know, but i think they are. Even bacteria, and perhaps even
some viruses, but on a different time scale than us.
If they can be conscious, but not self-conscious then there are two
kinds of "being conscious".
Yes, at least two kinds, but each arithmetical hypostases having
either "<>t" or "& p" describes a type of consciousness, I would say.
And they all differentiate on the infinitely many version of "[]A", be
it the "[]" predicate of PA, ZF, an amoeba or you and me ...
And being self-conscious can have different modes. A Mars Rover is
conscious of itself having a certain location, battery charge,
temperature,...but it's not conscious of its purpose or the effect
it's success has on engineers at JPL.
OK. I mean plausible, but I am not sure that Mars Rover is self-
conscious. He might have correct belief about its own location, but he
might not (yet) have a "enough" rich notion of itself.
Then there are many type of consciousness states, and some can have
some notion of degrees assigned to them. In the case I was talking,
I might be obliged to accept the idea that RA is maximally
conscious, and PA might be less conscious or more delusional about
its consciousness. (but that is counter-intuitive, and depends on
the validity of the "Galois connection" account of consciousness. I
have no certainty here (even in the comp frame).
For another example, I have strong evidences that we are conscious
at *all* moment of the nocturnal sleep. It is a question of
training to be able to memorize the episodes enough well to realize
this, but apparently we are programmed to forget those experiences.
Sure, if your wife whispers your name at night while you're asleep
you wake up instantly.
It depends of the man, and perhaps of the wife. I took holiday with a
guy who was incredibly hard to wake up in the morning. Even shouting
his name quite aloud did not woke up. We had too shake him for some
time. Note that he warned us before. He never use an alarm clock, as
he does not work for him. To wake in time, he has to just sleep his
right number of hours.
But you don't if you're anesthetized.
Which proves nothing, as I am sure you agree.
Obviously "to be unconscious" cannot be a first person experience.
But it can be a first body experience.
Perhaps in some metaphorical sense.
But a body has no experience at all, and actually don't even exist.
They are only sharable pattern of information computed in "special
sheaf of computations", whose initial segments are dovetailed in the
arithmetical reality.
To believe that *we have been unconscious* is consistent, but
plausibly false, and probably false with computationalism, where,
to put it with Otto Rossler's phrasing: consciousness is a prison.
I'd say it's more than plausibly true. If there are time intervals
during which we are inert and unresponsive and which we have no
memory of, that's pretty good evidence we were unconscious - in fact
it's the operational defintion.
Once I made a nap. I was very tired and fall asleep, rather deeply, as
like the guy above people around me would have described me as inert
and unresponsive. After waking up, I did not have any memories. With
your criterion, I was unconscious. But then, five hours later, seeing
something on the net recall me a piece of dream, very plausibly done
during that nap.
Most people have no memory of their night experience, except a vague
feeling that the night took some time. Yet, with some training, we can
develop "attention" on basically all sleep state occurring in sleep.
The non REM sleep is full of experiences which are very difficult to
memorize. But since a long time now, I don't ever remember waking up,
and not being able to memorize the last conscious episode, and I do
observe how much they tend to be quickly forgotten.
having no memory of an experience does not mean we were not conscious
during that experience.
Bruno
Brent
http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/
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