Let me start out by saying I don't believe in zombies. We are biophysical systems with a long history of building on and repurposing earlier systems of genes and associated proteins. I saw you don't believe it is symbols all the way down. I agree with you, but I am arguing the beginning of that chain of symbols for many things begins with sensory input and ends with a higher level symbol/abstraction, particularly in fully conscious animals like human beings that are self aware and capable of an inner dialogue.
An earlier example I gave of someone born blind results in someone with no concept of red or any color for that matter, or images, and so on. I don't believe redness is hiding in some molecule in the brain like Brent does. It's only created via pruned neural networks based on someone who has sensory inputs working properly. That's the beginning of the chain of symbols, but it starts with an electrical impulse sent down nerves from a sensory organ. It's the same thing with pain. If a certain gene is screwed up related to a subset of sodium channels (which are critical for proper transmission of signals propagating along certain nerves), a human being is incapable of feeling pain. I'd argue they don't know what pain is, just like a congenital blind person doesn't know what red is. It's the same thing with hearing and music. If a brain is missing that initial sensory input, your consciousness does not have the ability to feel the related subjective sensation. And yes, I'm arguing that a true simulation (let's say for the sake of a thought experiment we were able to replicate every neural connection of a human being in code, including the connectomes, and neurotransmitters, along with a simulated nerve that was connected to a button on the desk we could press which would simulate the signal sent when a biological pain receptor is triggered) would feel pain that is just as real as the pain you and I feel as biological organisms. You asked me for the principle behind how a critter could start having a negative feeling that didn't exist in its progenitors. Again, I believe the answer is as simple as it happened when pain receptors evolved that may have started as a random mutation where the behavior they induced in lower organisms resulted in increased survival. I'm not claiming to have solved the hard problem of consciousness. I don't claim to have the answer for why pain subjectively feels the way it does, or why pleasure does, but I do know that reward systems that evolved much earlier are involved (like dopamine based ones), and that pleasure can be directly triggered via various recreational drugs. That doesn't mean I think the dopamine molecule is where the pleasure qualia is hiding. Even lower forms of life like bacteria move towards what their limited sensory systems tell them is a reward and away from what it tells them is a danger. I believe our subjective experiences are layered onto these much earlier evolutionary artifacts, although as eukaryotes I am not claiming that much of this is inherited from LUCA. I think it blossomed once predator/prey dynamics were possible in the Cambrian explosion and was built on from there over many many years. Getting slightly off topic, I don't think substrate likely matters as far as producing consciousness. The only possible way I could see that it would is if quantum effects are actually involved in generating it that we can't reasonably replicate. That said, I think Penrose and others do not have the odds on their side there for a number of reasons. Like I said though, I don't believe in zombies. On Tue, May 23, 2023 at 9:12 AM Terren Suydam <terren.suy...@gmail.com> wrote: > > > On Tue, May 23, 2023 at 2:25 AM Dylan Distasio <interz...@gmail.com> > wrote: > >> While we may not know everything about explaining it, pain doesn't seem >> to be that much of a mystery to me, and I don't consider it a symbol per >> se. It seems obvious to me anyways that pain arose out of a very early >> neural circuit as a survival mechanism. >> > > But how? What was the biochemical or neural change that suddenly birthed > the feeling of pain? I'm not asking you to know the details, just the > principle - by what principle can a critter that comes into being with some > modification of its organization start having a negative feeling when it > didn't exist in its progenitors? This doesn't seem mysterious to you? > > Very early neural circuits are relatively easy to simulate, and I'm > guessing some team has done this for the level of organization you're > talking about. What you're saying, if I'm reading you correctly, is that > that simulation feels pain. If so, how do you get that feeling of pain out > of code? > > Terren > > > >> Pain is the feeling you experience when pain receptors detect an area of >> the body is being damaged. It is ultimately based on a sensory input that >> transmits to the brain via nerves where it is translated into a sensation >> that tells you to avoid whatever is causing the pain if possible, or let's >> you know you otherwise have a problem with your hardware. >> >> That said, I agree with you on LLMs for the most part, although I think >> they are showing some potentially emergent, interesting behaviors. >> >> On Tue, May 23, 2023 at 1:58 AM Terren Suydam <terren.suy...@gmail.com> >> wrote: >> >>> >>> Take a migraine headache - if that's just a symbol, then why does that >>> symbol *feel* *bad* while others feel *good*? Why does any symbol feel >>> like anything? If you say evolution did it, that doesn't actually answer >>> the question, because evolution doesn't do anything except select for >>> traits, roughly speaking. So it just pushes the question to: how did the >>> subjective feeling of pain or pleasure emerge from some genetic mutation, >>> when it wasn't there before? >>> >>> >>> -- >> 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 view this discussion on the web visit >> https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/CAJrqPH90groRYAgFC0Tux3Y1G-yHZThDBCKaxk%2B3mxcbbKuyRw%40mail.gmail.com >> <https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/CAJrqPH90groRYAgFC0Tux3Y1G-yHZThDBCKaxk%2B3mxcbbKuyRw%40mail.gmail.com?utm_medium=email&utm_source=footer> >> . >> > -- > 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 view this discussion on the web visit > https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/CAMy3ZA9R_BDWiZvvGrA-8Tgx4kC7Syh29Z%3D_Jev09AJvOvknew%40mail.gmail.com > <https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/CAMy3ZA9R_BDWiZvvGrA-8Tgx4kC7Syh29Z%3D_Jev09AJvOvknew%40mail.gmail.com?utm_medium=email&utm_source=footer> > . > -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. 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