[ExI] Digital Consciousness .

[Kelly Anderson]

On Thu, Apr 25, 2013 at 2:38 PM, Brent Allsop <brent.allsop at canonizer.com>wrote:

> Yes Kelly,
>
> You're definitely making progress.  There are only a few more minor issues
> you don't seem to be quite fully grasping the significance of yet.
>

:-) I don't know what I've learned exactly... but I'm happy to have
explained what I believed already.


> First off, if you are a functional property dualist,
>

There was another position, Mono something believing that all of reality is
computation, and that we might be in a simulation. I can't rule that one
out completely either.


> that is certainly yet another easily falsifiable theory that has yet to be
> experimentally falsified.  In other words, if it is only glutamate that has
> redness, experiments will bear this out, the same for if any function can
> reproduce a redness experience.  It's only a matter of time till someone
> experimentally demonstrates which of these is the case – forcing all
> experts to the same camp.
>

I can stick an electrode into the head of a patient in the operating room
today and by giving a small electric stimulation to a part of the brain I
can invoke humor, memory of mom's apple pie, and I'd bet, redness. So from
my point of view, this has already been proven.


> Nextly, you seem to be missing the significance of what happens when, as
> you substitute the glutamate, with virtual glutamate, when you say if it
> walks like a duck…  When you substitute real glutamate, the prediction is
> you will experience some kind of fading quale, which Chalmers says is a
> possibility and which is being predicting by these theories.  In other
> words, if it is your brain where we are doing the neural substitution, as
> long as you are using the real merging system, including the corpus
> callosum, that is merging all these elemental qualities into your combined
> painted conscious experience, emotions and all, all the elemental qualities
> you replace with abstracted representations of such, will 'fade' from your
> painted consciousness, as they are removed, from the real thing that knows
> when something is or isn't real glutamate.  The prediction as that nothing
> that is not real glutamate will ever produce real redness for you.
>

reality is overrated. In fact, you can't prove that even staying within the
current abstraction level that anything is "real". It's just real within
the computational framework that surrounds us, you know, the quarks and
stuff.


> And of course, you will be able to eventually replace the entire binding
> system, with abstracted stuff that is only being interpreted as the same
> thing in that it is using the interpretation of the abstracted stuff that
> is not fundamentally anything like glutamate, and not the real thing.  And
> only once you have this interpretation layer fully in place, will the
> abstracted system start to claim that the virtual glutamate, is the real
> thing.  And of course, due to Occam's razor, we must assume that it is a
> zombie, and though it is claiming to be really experiencing real redness,
> we will know that it is really something fundamentally very different, only
> being interpreted as that - and the real fundamental stuff, both causal and
> qualitatively, does not exist in the stuff that is very different, and is
> only being interpreted as the same.  In other words, when it is your mind
> being substituted, it will stop acting like a duck and the red qualities
> will ‘fade’ in some way, whenever you take away real glutamate.  There will
> be no way to bridge this gap, to validate if that stuff which is being
> interpreted as the real thing, produces the real thing, so just like we
> shouldn’t believe in the existence of purple unicorns, because there is no
> evidence for such, the same applies.  But for real glutamate, you will be
> able to validate it with our brain, via such a substitution process.
> Nothing but real glutamate will have your redness quality.
>

Again, I get the quale that you are talking in circles. It's a familiar
sensation in my brain, so it must be "real" in some sense, or maybe it is
just d*éjà vu*.


> As Stathis pointed out, Chalmers' neural substitution argument is a
> general idea, which works for most all theories.  And this general idea can
> also be similarly demonstrated to be invalid in the same way with
> functional property dualism theories.  All you do is replace the glutamate
> in this theoretical idealized effing world with whatever it is that has, or
> is reliably responsible for, or is the neural correlate of a redness
> experience.  James Carroll likes to call this functional stuff that has a
> redness quality a functionally active pattern or "FAP".  This is because he
> admits that a static set of ones and zeros does not have a redness quale
> until it becomes functional, in some way.  So all you do is replace the
> glutamate, with whatever this Functionally Active Pattern or FAP is, or
> whatever your theory predicts has the redness quality.
>

When we get intelligent sentient beings to talk to about all this stuff, it
will be a more interesting argument than it is today. I suspect a shorter
one as well.


> Anders is talking about "level independent consciousness.”  If science
> proves your theory, that a redness quality can ‘arise’ from anything, as
> long as it is functioning correctly, whether it is greenness that is being
> interpreted as redness or whatever, “level independent consciousness” will
> then be proven possible, and we may be in an abstracted simulation.
>

Right. We experience redness in the simulation that is our experience
inside of our brains, and it will be the same at a different level in the
mind of an AGI.


>  Likewise, if only some material substance, like say glutamate, is the
> only thing that science can show to your brain that has a redness quality
> we can experience, it will demonstrably prove that “level independent
> consciousness” is not possible, and that we are not in an abstracted
> simulation.  Though we could still be in phenomenal simulation, where stuff
> with real redness, in the basement world, is being used in the simulation.
>

I see no functional difference between the "reality" we are in, and the
simulation.

So, in this idealized functional effing theory world, which is predicted by
> your camp’s working hypothesis, it is still possible to prove that Chalmers
> idea isn't a proof through this same thought process.  You still suffer
> from the quale interpretation problem in that it is possible for anything,
> including some string of binary numbers, like say a “1”, which doesn’t have
> the redness quality, to be interpreted as if it is the redness quality.
>

I can string together enough 1's and 0's to represent your glutamates.


> But of course, by definition, it will not have the functionally active
> patter, from which the redness quality arises, and will only be like it, to
> the degree that you have overcome the quale interpretation problem, and you
> are able to look up this one in a dictionary, and find the real glutamate,
> um, I mean, the real functionally active patter, and only think of this
> very different pattern as if it is representing that real redness quality.
>

My brain hurts when I think about this stuff, is that a qualia that will be
able to be simulated?

It's like free will. Whether we have it or don't isn't the biggest deal,
but how we use the illusion of having it to further good goals.

-Kelly
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