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The idea of a thinking machine is an amazing one. It would be like humans creating artificial life, only more impressive because we would be creating consciousness. Or would we ? It's tempting to think that a machine that could think would think like us. But a bit of reflection shows that's not an inevitable conclusion.
To begin with, we'd better be clear about what we mean by "think". A comparison with human thinking might be intuitive, but what about animal thinking? Does a chimpanzee think? Does a crow? Does an octopus ?
The philosopher Thomas Nagel said that there was "something that it is like" to have conscious experiences. There's something that it is like to see the colour red, or to go water skiing. We are more than just our brain states.
Could there ever be "something that it's like" to be a thinking machine? In an imagined conversation with the first intelligent machine, a human might ask "Are you conscious?", to which it might reply, "How would I know?".
http://theconversation.com/what-does-it-mean-to-think-and-could-a-machine-ever-do-it-51316
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(Score: 4, Insightful) by q.kontinuum on Friday January 08 2016, @12:35PM
Interestingly, #2 seems to be a question neither science nor philosophy came any step further solving. Basically this is the question what the difference between data processing and consciousness is. Solving this question is actually quite important, as it determines in how far artificial intelligence / machines should have rights as well from a moral perspective, or if we could theoretically transfer our consciousness into a sufficiently sophisticated computer to achieve immortality.
For me personally, the missing answer to this question is why I call myself an agnostic, but not an atheist. As long as science has no suggestion *at all*, what consciousness means, I can not take it as fact that no superior consciousness exists. Maybe consciousness is an emerging feature of any complex system? Would that mean, "earth" has a consciousness as well? Or the universe? I'm not saying I believe that to be the case, just that it could be a hypothesis I wouldn't discard immediately...
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(Score: 3, Insightful) by acid andy on Friday January 08 2016, @01:15PM
I broadly agree with your points. I agree with you that we cannot prove that no superior consciousness exists. I think we probably can't prove it does exist either, with any of the information currently available. Never mind superior, it's a struggle to prove that human consciousness exists. We just have to accept our own individual consciousness sort of axiomatically.
The philosopher David Chalmers would say yes to this. I like the idea myself as well.
Intuitively, to me, consciousness feels like a sort of restrictive bubble of experience. A single point of view at an instant in space and time. It feels like, in one given instant, I am me and I have access only to the memories of this one particular brain, at this one particular moment. A nanosecond ago I might not have been conscious, or I might have experienced another brain's thoughts and sensations. The important thing is that I am conscious of this one brain's state precisely due to restrictions in connectivity. I have access to information stored in various parts of this brain because there are physical connections between those parts. It's difficult to imagine a planet or the universe having the same kind of vivid conscious experience because the parts of it seem less directly connected - but maybe I'm looking for the connections in the wrong way.
Welcome to Edgeways. Words should apply in advance as spaces are highly limite—
(Score: 2) by Non Sequor on Friday January 08 2016, @01:28PM
It kind of leads you back to dualism which is generally seen (for a variety of good reasons) as a kind of embarrassing pre-modern philosophy. Material/informational dualism? That starts leading you towards something not terribly different from middle ages theology, which is interesting. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Aquinas#Thoughts_on_afterlife_and_resurrection [wikipedia.org]
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(Score: 2) by acid andy on Friday January 08 2016, @01:58PM
It's only embarrassing if you're a hardcore physicalist or materialist. The trouble is physics itself is founded on metaphysics. If physical laws themselves exist, then the laws are metaphysical rather than physical. Perhaps the physicalists could one day be persuaded to consider consciousness as another fundamental physical entity, on the same level as matter and energy are now. The reason physicalists shy away from this sort of thing now and it's seen as unfashionable or embarrassing is because it's something that seems impossible (or at least extremely hard) to draw any testable conclusions from. Consciousness seems to be a sort of axiomatic thing, that doesn't need to be there to explain any other physical phenomenon. It only needs to be part of an understanding of reality if you seek a theorem to describe your own private subjective first person experience.
Welcome to Edgeways. Words should apply in advance as spaces are highly limite—
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Friday January 08 2016, @02:43PM
That's not how I view metaphysics. I view the actual laws of physics to be as much physical as axioms of mathematics to be mathematical. The approximations to the actual laws of physics (which can always be reduced to just one law, through trivial means) which we study, represent, and test, and our agreement on how we study, represent, and test (reality against) them - that's the metaphysics.
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Non Sequor on Friday January 08 2016, @05:18PM
Magnetic field polarization patterns on a metal disc=data
Electrical signals read by hardware=data
Bytes in JPEG format=data
Signal to monitor=data
Pattern of transmitted photons=data
Stimulus pattern in eye=data
Optic nerve signal=data
Analysis of signal in terms of image feature detectors=data
Association of image features to recognizable subjects =data
My private reality of viewing an image=magic
If you're a dualist, the best you can say is that the last step in that sequence is really weird. However, historically, trying to reason about the world based on that weirdness has been a losing bet.
The hardcore materialists by many accounts seem to be backing the winning horse, but it's somewhat intellectually dishonest to not own up to the fact that the last step in the sequence doesn't seem the slightest bit less weird with all of the intermediate details filled in.
So you have two camps, one that tries to pay attention to all of the details, but tends to screw things up when it tries to define its argument, and another that better defines its argument, but basically tries to change the subject when it comes to this one little problem.
Consciousness being something not needed to explain the physical universe but being wedded to it seems like an out, but if that's the case, how do I think that consciousness is weird? How do I observe its weirdness?
(If I posit a mechanism, I'll probably be a crackpot.)
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(Score: 2) by acid andy on Friday January 08 2016, @05:51PM
Well said. People like Dennett use words like "magic" to show disdain for the attitudes of the dualists. Really though that word is just a shorthand to say that this is an extraordinary and significant enough phenomenon that it deserves further research or investigation. Of course, such research can be intensely frustrating due to thousands of years of little to no progress.
Yes, absolutely. If the purest physicalist honestly does not believe that there is any important difference between the first person and third person experience, then why do they perform any selfish actions at all in their lives. Is it purely out of altruism? If however they do believe there is an important difference but are simply afraid to admit it, then yes, that's intellectually dishonest.
Welcome to Edgeways. Words should apply in advance as spaces are highly limite—
(Score: 2) by q.kontinuum on Friday January 08 2016, @03:38PM
My hypothesis (that consciousness might be an emerging feature of complex systems) was the exact opposite of dualism, because it ties the consciousness to the existing complex structure. I agree that the question is quite old, but that was actually my poing: Neither philosophy nor other sciences were showing any progress in answering it, but progress in artificial intelligence makes it IMO far more practically relevant to finally get an answer.
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(Score: 2) by Non Sequor on Friday January 08 2016, @07:34PM
Even once we have non-human examples of consciousness that we can converse with, I'm not sure that we will be any less confused. I could say that "emergent phenomenon of complex systems" is just dualism with extra steps.
The AI answer may be further off anyway. We don't know what fidelity of reproduction is needed for artificial neurons to reconstitute the whole brain. We know that the brain is robust against perturbations of individual neurons, but if all of the neurons are slightly out of tune, the AI may effectively be drunk. Look how much work has had to go into micro-tuning for VR. Small issues with the visual input being out of tune with the brain's current expectations cause dysfunction. To simulate the brain, you may need to overshoot its computational complexity and use the slack for tweaks to get the simulation consistent with the reference.
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