P134 onwards talks about what consciousness is. He says main features of consciousness are sensory awareness, focal attention, emotional colouring and the will.
What I want to understand, is how I work. Consciousness is probably just one aspect. Maybe cows are conscious but they don't exhibit the same behaviour as me.
The behaviour I want explained are things like, how is a human able to
- think about what thought is
- decide where to go for lunch
- express their thoughts in language
- think and judge what they are doing
- have sense of self
- process visual information so they have this virtual reality
What adds complication is that these descriptions include implicit definitions of cognitive abilities. Maybe I can come up with a set of use cases which capture what the mind is. Perhaps what's missing from the use cases above is the idea of sentience. We are not just machines that process stuff 'in the dark'. The idea of sentience, that we see and feel and hear, that more is going on than just the mechanics of information processing... That us wats really interesting
What is the sentience stuff ? The sensation and perceiving ? The qualia? It's not just input. It's as if there is an observer set up, and the observer observes things in the form of sensations. But more than that I don't know. That's the core of our reality tho. These sensations and the virtual world created for us from our eyes.
We might be able to produce intelligent machines that can behave outwardly like us, but we probably wdnt be satisfied with saying they were equivalent to humans until they have that 'light on inside'
It's not enough for them to be programmed to say they feel pain. How do we actually make then feel pain? How do we actually make them think about themselves ? Worry? Want to dance?
We can't observe this stuff bc it's the internal working of the mind. Similarly we can't see that a program is working by running on the java virtual machine. Maybe sentience is itself some kind o machine, a platform through which the other stuff flows.
Imagine u were trying to find out how a java application worked by observing the electrical activity of a computer. Understanding how the mind works is harder.
p132
What good is consciousness? That is, what does the raw sensation of redness add to the train of billiard-ball events taking place in our neural computers? Any effect of perceiving something as red - noticing it against a sea of green, saying out loud "that's red", reminiscing about Santa Claus and fire engines, becoming agitated - could all be accomplished by pure information processing triggered by a sensor for long-wavelength light. Is consciousness an impotent side effect hovering over the symbols, like the lights flashing on a computer or the thunder that accompanies lightening? And if consciousness is useless - if a creature without it could negotiate the world as well as a creature with it - why would natural selection have favoured the conscious one?
Showing posts with label sensation. Show all posts
Showing posts with label sensation. Show all posts
Friday, March 5, 2010
Friday, January 8, 2010
How are we different from machines which are purely mechanical devices?
What is the internal behaviour? What is the "light on inside"?
How did consciousness evolve? How conscious are other animals?
How are we different from machines which are purely mechanical devices?
How is it possible for me to claim that I have awareness?
Voluntary movement and thought? How is that possible?
How cd a machine recognise itself?
Autonomy - we think, and move of our own volition , when there is nothing around. What kind of machine, which is perhaps programmed to constantly process input, heed biological conditions and pursue it's goals... What kind of machine could start questioning why it was doing those things.
Could a machine question things? Could u program something to question things? how wd it then start questioning it's own behaviour? It wd need to be able to observe it's own behaviour, and have a way of recognizing itself.
The Chinese room argument - even if you could program a machine to produce the same human behaviour, it doesn't mean it is the same system and therfore has the properties of self- awareness like we do. Chess playing machines for example , they can do what we can, but they are built completely differently. We can also do a lot more things.
What if our exact behaviour could be mapped out in terms of inputs, starting state, data and rules? If our behaviour is deterministic, then in theory something could emulate that external behaviour. But things would not be happening the same way, involving the same machinery, so you could not claim the internal behaviour was the same.
Does 'internal behaviour' make sense?if yes, how do we describe this internal behaviour as part of the physical world?
By 'internal behaviour' I mean sensations and self-awareness. Can u have awareness without self-awareness?
What are these ghostly properties 'qualia' ? Why do we think there is more going on than mechanical computation? What is consciousness?
I can imagine a computer that can process visual input such that it can detect objects. It can be programmed to say that it can see an object when an object has been detected.
When you ask the computer if it can see something, it will say yes, but there is nothing going on other than 'mechanical' computation there.
We can imagine things we see - form a picture in our mind. Visual representation.
Could u program a computer to recognise it's own output?
What is this stuff that we think we experience that is more than just blind mechanical cause and effect chains. I say I can 'see' really see. I say I can see this room and myself and all these colours, and describe what Im thinking, but what if we are just wired to think and say that how do I
How did consciousness evolve? How conscious are other animals?
How are we different from machines which are purely mechanical devices?
How is it possible for me to claim that I have awareness?
Voluntary movement and thought? How is that possible?
How cd a machine recognise itself?
Autonomy - we think, and move of our own volition , when there is nothing around. What kind of machine, which is perhaps programmed to constantly process input, heed biological conditions and pursue it's goals... What kind of machine could start questioning why it was doing those things.
Could a machine question things? Could u program something to question things? how wd it then start questioning it's own behaviour? It wd need to be able to observe it's own behaviour, and have a way of recognizing itself.
The Chinese room argument - even if you could program a machine to produce the same human behaviour, it doesn't mean it is the same system and therfore has the properties of self- awareness like we do. Chess playing machines for example , they can do what we can, but they are built completely differently. We can also do a lot more things.
What if our exact behaviour could be mapped out in terms of inputs, starting state, data and rules? If our behaviour is deterministic, then in theory something could emulate that external behaviour. But things would not be happening the same way, involving the same machinery, so you could not claim the internal behaviour was the same.
Does 'internal behaviour' make sense?if yes, how do we describe this internal behaviour as part of the physical world?
By 'internal behaviour' I mean sensations and self-awareness. Can u have awareness without self-awareness?
What are these ghostly properties 'qualia' ? Why do we think there is more going on than mechanical computation? What is consciousness?
I can imagine a computer that can process visual input such that it can detect objects. It can be programmed to say that it can see an object when an object has been detected.
When you ask the computer if it can see something, it will say yes, but there is nothing going on other than 'mechanical' computation there.
We can imagine things we see - form a picture in our mind. Visual representation.
Could u program a computer to recognise it's own output?
What is this stuff that we think we experience that is more than just blind mechanical cause and effect chains. I say I can 'see' really see. I say I can see this room and myself and all these colours, and describe what Im thinking, but what if we are just wired to think and say that how do I
Tuesday, December 15, 2009
Iconic transfer, consciousness requires control and ownership - Igor Aleksander's thoughts
He thinks machines can have meaningful sensations by something called "iconic transfer".
Igor says consciousness requires the organism to have a sense of control and ownership.
What is a 'sensation' or feeling? Can an artificial system have sensations and feelings? Like 'consciousness', the word 'sensation' is one for which we develop a meaning based entirely on experience
--Igor Aleksander "A Neurocomputational View of Consciousness"
Maybe I need to read some Wittgenstein and understand the "non-essetialism of language"
Consciousness is in need of a scientific enquiry.
Consciousness is altered by drugs. Why/how?
Igor thinks we should study consciousess with artifical neurons bcos there aren't good enough measuring techniques to study real neurons.
He thinks machines can have meaningful sensations by something called "iconic transfer".
building a mental image of what the world is like
Igor says consciousness requires the organism to have a sense of control and ownership. Are these the things missing from that Chinese room AI?
Igor says consciousness requires the organism to have a sense of control and ownership.
What is a 'sensation' or feeling? Can an artificial system have sensations and feelings? Like 'consciousness', the word 'sensation' is one for which we develop a meaning based entirely on experience
--Igor Aleksander "A Neurocomputational View of Consciousness"
Maybe I need to read some Wittgenstein and understand the "non-essetialism of language"
Consciousness is in need of a scientific enquiry.
Consciousness is altered by drugs. Why/how?
Igor thinks we should study consciousess with artifical neurons bcos there aren't good enough measuring techniques to study real neurons.
He thinks machines can have meaningful sensations by something called "iconic transfer".
building a mental image of what the world is like
Igor says consciousness requires the organism to have a sense of control and ownership. Are these the things missing from that Chinese room AI?
What are sensations? How can we prove their existence?
Sensation is a subjective experience. Take pain as an example. Pain is a sensation. I am not just avoiding things mechanically. I am not just mechanically saying I feel pain , I actually feel pain, I cannot deny it.
Cd consciousness be considered a sensation? It is the sensation we have of being alive. Of perceiving. How does it relate to awareness and self-awareness?
Cd consciousness be considered a sensation? It is the sensation we have of being alive. Of perceiving. How does it relate to awareness and self-awareness?
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