[ExI] Fwd: Is Artificial Life Conscious?

Mon Apr 25 23:52:30 UTC 2022

On Tue, 26 Apr 2022 at 08:27, Brent Allsop via extropy-chat <
extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:

>
> Hi Jason,
> On Mon, Apr 25, 2022 at 2:18 PM Jason Resch <jasonresch at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> Hi Brent,
>>
>> I appreciate your quick response and for getting to the heart of the
>> issue. My replies are in-line below:
>>
> Likewise.
>
> On Mon, Apr 25, 2022 at 1:43 PM Brent Allsop <brent.allsop at gmail.com>
>> wrote:
>>
>>>
>>> Hi Jason,
>>> Yes, Stathis and I have gone over these same arguments, in a gazillion
>>> different ways, for years, still unable to convince the other.  I agree
>>> with most everything you say, but it is all entirely missing the point.
>>>
>>> I think you get to the core of the issue with your:
>>> "First, I would like you to deeply consider for a moment the question
>>> 'What is matter?'"
>>>
>>> I am curious what your intuition says on this? Do you think that there
>> are intrinsic properties of matter (beyond its third-person observable
>> behavior) which is somehow necessary for consciousness or quale such as red?
>>
>
> There seems to be a physical strawberry out there, which is red.  Our
> intuition about the quality of that physical. thing is right,  just for the
> wrong stuff.  It is your physical knowledge of the strawberry that has the
> redness quality.
>
>
>
>>  The issue is with one of these assumptions:
>>
>>> "1. Given the Church-Turing Thesis, any finitely describable process
>>> can be perfectly replicated by an appropriately programmed Turing Machine
>>> "
>>>
>>> The isus is that any description of redness (our claim that something is
>>> redness) tells you nothing of the nature of redness, without a dictionary
>>> pointing to an example of redness.
>>>
>>
>> Yes this is the "symbol grounding problem". All communication, of
>> anything (even so-called objective properties like mass, distance, time
>> durations, etc.) require ostensive (pointing to) definitions. Since no two
>> minds can ever share that common reference frame, and point out to the same
>> quale, ostensive definitions of these quale, and hence meaningful
>> communication concerning them, is impossible (since there can never be a
>> verifiable common foundation).
>>
>
> It's only a "problem" for functionalists.  For Materialists it is just a
> physical fact that something in the brain has that quality, waiting for us
> to discover it.
> Say we discover it is glutamate, and that no matter how hard a
> functionalist tries, they can't reproduce a redness experience, without
> glutamate, as Materialism predicts.
> What does that say about your non falsifiable proof?
>

Forgive my interjection, but if what you call the abstract properties could
be reproduced without the qualia, that would allow the existence of partial
zombies, which you have agreed are absurd (more obviously so than zombies).
It is to avoid the possibility of partial zombies that qualia can't be
substrate specific. This is a logical argument, not an empirical one, so
not falsifiable in the way a scientific theory is falsifiable. The argument
is that IF we have qualia AND IF they are substrate specific AND IF it is
possible to reproduce the behaviour (what you call the abstract qualities)
without also reproducing the qualia THEN it would be possible to create
partial zombies. There are no falsifiable premises here. You can challenge
the validity of the reasoning, but you have not done that.

>
>>
>>> This is true for the same reason you can't communicate to a blind person
>>> what redness is like, no matter how many words you use.
>>>
>>> Stathis always makes this same claim:
>>>
>>> "It is true that functionalism cannot be falsified. But not being
>>> falsifiable is a property of every true theory."
>>>
>>> no matter how many times I point out that if that is true, no matter
>>> what you say redness is, it can't be that, either, because you can use the
>>> same zombie or neural substitution argument and claim it can't be that
>>> either.
>>>
>>
>> I don't follow this point, could you elaborate?
>>
>>
>>> All you prove is that qualia aren't possible.
>>>
>>
>> I do not follow how this conclusions was reached.
>>
>
> Yea, I possibly just skipped past a few complex years of discussion with
> Stathis.  Basically, no matter what you say redness is (even if it results
> from some function), you can "prove" with the neural substitution argument
> <https://canonizer.com/topic/79-Neural-Substitn-Argument/1-Agreement>
> that it can't be that, either.  Your zombie arguments seem the same, to
> me.  It doesn't prove that redness must be "functional" it proves there can
> be no redness of any kind.  Let me know your zombie argument doesn't have
> the same problem.
>
> Again, it's all about the assumptions you make.  Everyone assumes the
> simulation will succeed.  Materialists simply predict it will fail, and
> that whatever it is that has the redness quality, when you get to the fist
> pixel of redness, nothing but glutamate will enable you to produce an
> experience with a redness quality.  The substitution will fail.
>

>
>    And since we know, absolutely, It is a physical fact that I can
>> experience redness,
>>
>> What does "physical" add to the above sentence? To me it seems redundant
>> and only adds to the confusion (as we still haven't settled what is meant
>> by physics or matter).
>>
>
> Yea 'physical' is probably redundant.
>
>>
>>
>>> this just proves your assumptions (about the nature of matter) are
>>> incorrect.
>>>
>>
>> I don't see why you think the assumption of functionalism leads to a
>> denial of qualia/consciousness.
>>
> Again, it is the neural substitution argument, which makes people think
> things like redness are functional.  But the neural substitution problems
> proves nothing, including some function, can have a redness quality.
> And my understanding is the main reason people think they are forced to
> accept functionalism (despite all the 'hard' problems that go along with
> it) is because of neural substitution and zombie arguments.
>
>>
>>
>>>   To say nothing about all the other so-called 'hard problems' that
>>> emerge with that set of assumptions.
>>>
>>> We can abstractly describe and predict how matter "whatever it is" will
>>> behave.  But when it comes to intrinsic colorness qualities or qualia, like
>>> redness and greenness, you've got to point to some physical example of
>>> something that has that redness quality.  And without that, there is no
>>> possible way to define the word "redness", let alone experience redness.
>>>
>>
>> A shared physical realm is necessary to ostensively define properties
>> like mass, distance, and time durations. Two beings, kept apart in two
>> different universes but allowed to communicate bit strings back and forth
>> could never reach any agreement on how long a "meter" is.
>>
>> This is the situation we are in with qualia. Two minds are in a sense,
>> like two partially isolated simulated universes, with an inability to ever
>> share the meaning of what they mean when they refer to their red
>> experiences, short of an Avatar-like neural link to temporarily bridge
>> their two independent and isolated mental realities.
>>
>
> I thought we already went over this.  Brain Hemispheres and conjoined
> twins
> <https://www.cbc.ca/cbcdocspov/features/the-hogan-twins-share-a-brain-and-see-out-of-each-others-eyes>
> prove what you think cannot be done can be done.
> If a brain hemisphere isn't an island, why would a brain be so
> constrained.  it's kind of like saying we will never fly, while watching
> birds fly.  It is only a matter of time before we can do all of the
> following engineereing in an artificial way.
>
> 1. weak form of effing the ineffable.
> 2. Stronger form of effing the ineffable.
> 4. Strongest form of effing the ineffable.
>
> For a more detailed description of these, see this quora answer
> <https://www.quora.com/How-can-we-prove-consciousness-in-the-universe/answer/Brent-Allsop-1>
> .
>
> Take the 16th color of the knowledge of that shrimp, which no human has
> ever experienced, which you mentioned.
> How are you going to reproduce that in your brain, so you can both know
> what it is like and then can use it to represent an additional wavelength
> of sensed light?
> You just need to take whatever it is, and computationally bind it into
> your consciousness.  Nothing hard about that.
> Claiming that could be duplicated simply by programming some function
> called 16th colorness quality doesn't even pass the laugh test does it?
>
> We may not know what matter is, but we know, absolutely, that something
> has a redness quality.
> We just don't yet know what.  That's the only problem.
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
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-- 
Stathis Papaioannou
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