[ExI] The symbol grounding problem in strong AI

[John Clark]

On Dec 27, 2009, Gordon Swobe wrote:

> It seems that you take it on faith that science will one day find the neurological correlates of consciousness (NCC) in the biological activities taking place between neurons and not in the activities taking place inside them. [...]It looks to me like you just drew an arbitrary wall at the cellular membrane.

The reason activity between neurons is important is that 100 billion neurons can do things that one neuron can't, but if its something inside the neuron that causes consciousness with no signal about this sent to other neurons then its all on it's own; then one neuron is all you need for consciousness. If you want to run with that idea you're a braver man that me because even giving it a grand name like "neurological correlates of consciousness" doesn't make the idea any less dumb or evolutionary tenable.  In fact the name is contradictory, you say consciousness is internal to the cell with no signals about it sent to other neurons, but "neurological correlates" means a connection between neurons.

> Nobody has yet elucidated a coherent theory of consciousness.

Nobody has yet elucidated a coherent theory of intelligence, consciousness theories are a dime a dozen.

> any theory then seems about as good as any another, I offer one that I made up two minutes ago that illustrates the problem that I see with your neuron replacement arguments:
> I call it the mitochondrial theory of consciousness. On this theory, which I just made up, consciousness appears as an effect of chemical reactions taking place inside the mitochondria located inside neurons.

Like I say, a dime a dozen.

> Your challenge is to show that replacing natural neurons with your mitochondria-less nano-neurons that only behave externally like real neurons will still result in consciousness

I can't disprove your consciousness theory any more than you can disprove my theory that consciousness is caused by my left foot.

> I note that my mitochondrial theory of consciousness represents just one of a very large and possibly infinite number of possible theories of consciousness 

That is true and no observation in the real world depends on the truth or falsehood of a single one of those infinite number of theories. That's why consciousness theories are crap.

  John K Clark



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