[ExI] Is Artificial Life Conscious?

Fri May 6 00:00:59 UTC 2022

On Fri, 6 May 2022 at 07:47, Brent Allsop via extropy-chat <
extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:

>
> Hi Stathis,
> On Thu, May 5, 2022 at 1:00 PM Stathis Papaioannou via extropy-chat <
> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:
>
>> On Fri, 6 May 2022 at 02:36, Brent Allsop via extropy-chat <
>> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:
>>
>>> On Wed, May 4, 2022 at 6:49 PM Stathis Papaioannou via extropy-chat <
>>> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:
>>>
>>>> I think colourness qualities are what the human behaviour associated
>>>> with distinguishing between colours, describing them, reacting to them
>>>> emotionally etc. is seen from inside the system. If you make a physical
>>>> change to the system and perfectly reproduce this behaviour, you will also
>>>> necessarily perfectly reproduce the colourness qualities.
>>>>
>>>
>>> An abstract description of the behavior of redness can perfectly capture
>>> 100% of the behavior, one to one, isomorphically perfectly modeled.  Are
>>> you saying that since you abstractly reproduce 100% of the behavior, that
>>> you have duplicated the quale?
>>>
>>
>> Here is where I end up misquoting you because I don’t understand what
>> exactly you mean by “abstract description”.
>>
>
>
> [image: 3_robots_tiny.png]
>
> This is the best possible illustration of what I mean by abstract vs
> intrinsic physical qualities.
> The first two represent knowledge with two different intrinsic physical
> qualities, redness and greenness.
> "Red" is just an abstract word, composed of strings of ones and zeros.
> You can't know what it means, by design, without a dictionary.
> The redness intrinsic quality your brain uses to represent knowledge of
> 'red' things, is your definition for the abstract word 'red'.
>
>
>> But the specific example I have used is that if you perfectly reproduce
>> the physical effect of glutamate on the rest of the brain using a different
>> substrate, and glutamate is involved in redness qualia, then you
>> necessarily also reproduce the redness qualia. This is because if it were
>> not so, it would be possible to grossly change the qualia without the
>> subject noticing any change, which is absurd.
>>
>
> I think the confusion comes in the different ways we think about this:
>
> "the physical effect of glutamate on the rest of the brain using a
> different substrate"
>
> Everything in your model seems to be based on this kind of "cause and
> effect" or "interpretations of interpretations".  I think of things in a
> different way.
> I would emagine you would say that the causal properties of glutamate or
> redness would result in someone saying: "That is red."
> However, to me, the redness quality, alone, isn't the cause of someone
> saying: "That is Red", as someone could lie, and say: "That is Green",
> proving the redness isn't the only cause of what the person is saying.
>

The causal properties of the glutamate are basically the properties that
cause motion in other parts of the system. Consider a glutamate molecule as
a part of a clockwork mechanism. If you remove the glutamate molecule, you
will disrupt the movement of the entire clockwork mechanism. But if you
replace it with a different molecule that has similar physical properties,
the rest of the clockwork mechanism will continue functioning the same. Not
all of the physical properties are relevant, and they only have to be
replicated to within a certain tolerance.

The computational system, and the way the knowledge is consciousnessly
> represented is different from simple cause and effect.
> The entire system is aware of all of the intrinsic qualities of each of
> the pixels on the surface of the strawberry (along with any reasoning for
> why it would lie or not)
> And it is because of this composite awareness, that is the cause of the
> system choosing to say: "that is red", or choose to lie in some way.
> It is the entire composit 'free will system' that is the initial cause of
> someone choosing to say something, not any single quality like the redness
> of a single pixel.
> For you, everything is just a chain of causes and effects, no composite
> awareness and no composit free will system involved.
>

I am proposing that the awareness of the system be completely ignored, and
only the relevant physical properties be replicated. If this is done, then
whether you like it or not, the awareness of the system will also be
replicated. It’s impossible to do one without the other.

If I recall correctly, you admit that the quality of your conscious
> knowledge is dependent on the particular quality of your redness, so qualia
> can be thought of as a substrate, on which the quality of your
> consciousness is dependent, right?  If you are only focusing on a different
> substrate being able to produce the same 'redness behavior' then all you
> are doing is making two contradictory assumptions.  If you take that
> assumption, then you can prove that nothing, even a redness function can't
> have redness, for the same reason.  There must be something that is
> redness, and the system must be able to know when redness changes to
> anything else.  All you are saying is that nothing can do that.
>

I am saying that redness is not a substrate, but it supervenes on a certain
type of behaviour, regardless of the substrate of its implementation. This
allows the system to know when the redness changes to something else, since
the behaviour on which the redness supervenes would change to a different
behaviour on which different colour qualia supervene.

That is why I constantly ask you what could be responsible for redness.
> Because whatever you say that is, I could use your same argument and say it
> can't be that, either.
> If you could describe to me what redness could be, this would falsify my
> camp, and I would jump to the functionalist camp.  But that is impossible,
> because all your so-called proof is claiming, is that nothing can be
> redness.
>
> If it isn't glutamate that has the redness quality, what can?  Nothing you
> say will work, because of your so-called proof.  Because when you have
> contradictory assumptions you can prove all claims to be both true and
> false, which has no utility.
>

Glutamate doesn’t have the redness quality, but glutamate or something that
functions like glutamate is necessary to produce the redness quality. We
know this because it is what we observe: certain brain structures are
needed in order to have certain experiences. We know that it can’t be
substrate specific because then we could grossly change the qualia without
the subject noticing, which is absurd, meaning there is no difference
between having and not having qualia.

Until you can provide some falsifiable example of what could be responsible
> for your redness quality, further conversation seems to be a waste.
> Because my assertion is that given your assumptions NOTHING will work, and
> until you falsify that, with at least one example possibility, why go on
> with this contradictory assumption where qualitative consciousness, based
> on substrates like redness and greenness, simply isn't possible?
>
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-- 
Stathis Papaioannou
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