[ExI] Digital Consciousness .

[Brent Allsop]

Hi Stathis,

<<<
The argument does not assume any theory of consciousness. Of course,
if the argument is valid and a theory predicts that computers cannot
be conscious then that theory is wrong. What you have to do is show
that either the premises of the argument are wrong or the reasoning is
invalid.
>>>

It’s frustrating that you can’t see any more than this from what I’m trying
to say.  I have shown exactly how the argument is wrong and how the
reasoning is invalid, in that the argument is completely missing a set of
very real theoretical possibilities.

You must admit that the real causal properties of glutamate are very
different than a set of causal properties of real silicon and wires that
are only configured in a way such that their very different properties can
be interpreted as the real thing.  As everyone here has unanimously agreed,
the map is very different than the territory.


<<<
If it is true that real glutamate is needed for redness then the
redness qualia will fade and eventually disappear if the glutamate
detecting system is replaced with alternative hardware. This is not in
itself problematic: after all, visual qualia will fade and eventually
disappear with progressive brain damage. But the problem arises if you
accept that the alternative hardware is just as good at detecting the
glutamate and stimulating the neighbouring neurons accordingly, but
without the relevant qualia, then you have a situation where the
qualia fade and may eventually disappear BUT THE SUBJECT BEHAVES
NORMALLY AND NOTICES NO DIFFERENCE. And that is the problem.
>>>

Again, you are completely missing the significance of what I’m trying to
say, here.  The behavior will be extremely different and problematic as you
attempt the neural substitution.  It will not be anywhere near as simple as
the argument claims it will be.  The prediction is, you will not be able to
replace any single neuron, or even large sets of neurons that are the
neural correlates of a redness quality, without also replacing significant
portions of the rest of the system that is aware of what that redness
experience is like.  The entire system must be configured in a very
contrived way, so it can lie about it having real phenomenal qualities,
when it really just has large sets of ones and zeros that are being
interpreted as such.

Secondly, it will be extremely difficult to emulate when we introspect
about what a redness quality is like, and how it is different than
greenness, and when we reason about the fact that we are picking the
glutamate, I mean the redness quality, because of its quality (and
associated neural correlate properties), and not because some random media
is being interpreted as such – with no such qualities associated with it.
The only way you will be able to get a system to ‘behave’ the same, is by
some very extremely complicated abstracted systems capable of lying about
having redness qualities, when it in fact has no redness qualities.  The
design of the hardware, that is finally able to ‘behave’ as if it really
experiencing a redness quality, will be so extreme, it will be obvious from
the hardware engineers, that it isn’t really aware of real redness.  Only
that an extremely complex mechanism is set up, so that it can lie about
being aware of the qualitative nature of redness, and knowing how it is
different than the qualitative nature of greenness.

Also, another thing you are completely missing is the significance of being
able to connect minds with real qualia together.  Obviously half of our
conscious world is represented with stuff in the right hemisphere, and half
of our conscious world is represented with stuff in the left.  Clearly the
corpus callosum is able to merge these together, so that the right
hemisphere knows that the redness quale in the other hemisphere is very
different than a greenness quality it has in it’s right hemisphere.  It
knows this difference more absolutely than it knows the world beyond its
senses exist.

In other words, the prediction is, we’ll be able to configure merged system
that can experience redness and greenness at the same time, and know
absolutely, how they are qualitatively different.  This is true regardless
of whether you are a functional or a material or any other type of theorist.

Once we can do this, we’ll be able to both connect multiple conscious
worlds together, the way multiple hemispheres are connected together, and
significantly expand them all.  We’ll be able to endow them with hundreds
of thousands of phenomenal qualities nobody has experienced before, using
this to represent much more knowledge than our limited minds can comprehend
now, and everything.  This is all that matters.  You will never be able to
do any of that between a mind with real quale, and a mind with abstracted
information that is only being interpreted as if it was the real thing.

When you have an expanded phenomenally conscious mind, merged with your
very limited conscious mind (the way your right and left hemisphere are
connected), you will be able to have an ‘out of body’ experience, where
your knowledge of yourself moves from one to the other (just like when
regular people have an “out of body experience” and their knowledge of
their spirit travels around from the right field of awareness, to their
left, and so on.  None of that will be possible between a real brain, and
an abstracted brain, because there is nothing in an abstracted brain, other
than a bunch of stuff that is configured in a way, so that it can lie about
what it is really like, and is only believable, as long as nobody is
looking at the actual hardware, in any kind of an effing way.

Brent Allsop




On Thu, Apr 25, 2013 at 5:51 PM, Stathis Papaioannou <stathisp at gmail.com>wrote:

> On Fri, Apr 26, 2013 at 1:15 AM, Brent Allsop
> <brent.allsop at canonizer.com> wrote:
> >
> > Hi Stathis,
> >
> > (And Kelly Anderson, tell me if given what we've covered, does the below
> > make sense to you?)
> >
> > It is not a 'proof' that abstracted computers can be conscious.  It
> > completely ignores many theoretical possible realities. For example
> Material
> > Property Dualism is one of many possible theories that proves this is
> not a
> > 'proof".
>
> The argument does not assume any theory of consciousness. Of course,
> if the argument is valid and a theory predicts that computers cannot
> be conscious then that theory is wrong. What you have to do is show
> that either the premises of the argument are wrong or the reasoning is
> invalid.
>
> > There is now an "idealized effing theory" world described in the Macro
> > Material Property Dualism camp: http://canonizer.com/topic.asp/88/36 .
> >
> > In that theoretically possible world, it is the neurotransmitter
> glutamate
> > that has the element redness quality.  In this theoretical world
> Glutamate
> > causally behaves the way it does, because of it's redness quality.  Yet
> this
> > causal behavior reflects 'white' light, and this is why we think of it
> has
> > having a 'whiteness' quality.  But of course, that is the classic
> example of
> > the quale interpretation problem (see:
> http://canonizer.com/topic.asp/88/28
> > ).  If we interpret the causal properties of something with a redness
> > quality to it, and represent our knowledge of such with something that is
> > qualitatively very different, we are missing and blind to what is
> important
> > about the qualitative nature of glutamate, and why it behaves the way it
> > does.
> >
> > So, let's just forget about the redness quality for a bit, and just talk
> > about the real fundamental causal properties of glutamate in this
> > theoretical idealizing effing world.  In this world, the brain is
> > essentially a high fidelity detector of real glutamate.  The only time
> the
> > brain will say: "Yes, that is my redness quality" is when real glutamate,
> > with it's real causal properties are detected.  Nothing else will produce
> > that answer, except real fundamental glutamate.
> >
> > Of course, as described in Chalmers' paper, you can also replace the
> > system that is detecting the real glutamate, with an abstracted system
> that
> > has appropriate hardware translation levels for everything that is being
> > interpreted as being real causal properties of real glutamate, so once
> you
> > do this, this system, no matter what hardware it is running on, can be
> > thought of, or interpreted as acting like it is detecting real glutamate.
> > But, of course, that is precisely the problem, and how this idea is
> > completely missing what is important.  And this theory is falsifiably
> > predicting the alternate possibility he describes in that paper.  it is
> > predicting you'll have some type of 'fading quale', at least until you
> > replace all of what is required, to interpret something very different
> than
> > real consciousness, as consciousness.
> >
> > It is certainly theoretically possible, that the real causal properties
> of
> > glutamate are behaving the way they do, because of it's redness quality.
> > And that anything else that is being interpreted as the same, can be
> > interpreted as such - but that's all it will be.  An interpretation of
> > something that is fundamentally, and possibly qualitatively, very
> different
> > than real glutamate.
> >
> > This one theoretical possibility, thereby, proves Chalmers' idea isn't a
> > proof that abstracted computers have these phenomenal qualities, only
> that
> > they can be thought of, or interpreted as having them.
>
> If it is true that real glutamate is needed for redness then the
> redness qualia will fade and eventually disappear if the glutamate
> detecting system is replaced with alternative hardware. This is not in
> itself problematic: after all, visual qualia will fade and eventually
> disappear with progressive brain damage. But the problem arises if you
> accept that the alternative harware is just as good at detecting the
> glutamate and stimulating the neighbouring neurons accordingly, but
> without the relevant qualia, then you have a situation where the
> qualia fade and may eventually disappear BUT THE SUBJECT BEHAVES
> NORMALLY AND NOTICES NO DIFFERENCE. And that is the problem.
>
>
> --
> Stathis Papaioannou
> _______________________________________________
> extropy-chat mailing list
> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org
> http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat
>
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