The Still Hard Problem of Consciousness (Re: Consciousness and Quantum Voodoo - Jeffkosmo)

[onetruekeeper]

I don't believe physics will ever be able to prove that consciousness arises from matter / brain. Thinking of something can produce a electrical signal in the brain and vice versa but that still doesn't explain how matter can produce a thought.

[socratus1]

Does electron have consciousness ? Molecular biology & molecular evolution Cosmology & cosmic evolution If Universe evolve can electron evolve too ? Does evolution of life begin on electron level ? Origin of life is a result of physical laws that govern Universe Electron takes important part in this work Question Why does the simplest particle - electron have six formulas: E=h*f  e = +ah*c e = -ah*c +E=Mc^2 -E=Mc^2 E= ∞ ? Nobody knows Electron is not as simple as we think

[jogayot]

touche. damn it but i can't stop myself from demnstrating in spite of it being sinful. see quote besides my ram dass video.

but it's really ironic of you demanding demostration from me when the whole point of our dialogue is about inherent undemonstrability. qualia are so weird because they can not be measured (second hand demonstrated). and theory of computation or information as encoded by entropy is exactly about it... anyway. adios.

[jogayot]

wal się. yes, i treat this stuff seriously. what do you think the point of life can be? a wank, a sniff or stuffed face? any brainless ape can do it and eventually rot like the rest of the lot. but to gain a true insight into the mind of god... now, there is hubris worthy of a homo sapiens. just because i'm interested in yoga you think i can't get irritated, am supposed to be nice and fluffy? hah... that's not why i do yoga! and as far as attention goes... that's the stupidest escape (cont.)

[jogayot]

into empty syllogism. paltry elementary particle must have attention. what do you think the significance of heisenberg principle is? we can't measure its exact parameters because in order to do it we would have to get at its attention, become it. but it's impossible the same way we can never know if zombie is "aware". and jeffkosmo's explanation misses the point because he's committing exact same mistake you do. mistaking awareness for self-consciousness. the hard problem is how a (cont.)

[jogayot]

minuscule collection of mere disjoint particles forms unity of will being able to ponder intelligently about fate of the whole universe... sheesh, waste of time and space you are.

[jogayot]

quack, quack...

[jogayot]

"A simulation can only model conscious behavior, not conscious-ness."

jeez, and you are back to the zombie loop... at the end of the day behaviour is all we've got. if it quacks like a duck it is a duck. i'm not here to convince you. just like with consciousness i can't do your homework for you. brain may not turing machine... but then again when it's dead it's only gray pulp of goo...

[jogayot]

yes, there are definite disjunctions. but you are looking at it from the forward or both-encompassing point of view. comparing real orange and simulated orange from the point of view of the former meta-level and of course discovering that they are not (they can not be the same). but i would urge you to take a page from computer science. you always have to implement virtual machine in some language but you immediately lose access to the lower lang from the constructed one. (cont.)

[jogayot]

it's like the 2D versus 3D world incomparability metaphor. or to liken it to something more appropriate. the tower of meta-levels is similar to what we come upon in the physical world through entropy. you can try to turn around, make a full cycle in the phase space, but the best you can do is come back to same place energy-wise locally not globally i.e. why i used word "environment". older computational models under-neglected its role in evolution of consciousness... i think.

[jogayot]

"Can a computationally simulated cloud rain real drops of water?"

what is real? /insert matrix monologue

can real clouds rain simulated drops of water? will real clouds be "real" to something which feels wet from simulated drops of water?

i don't think there is any hard problem... it arises only when we silently assume qualities produced by one turing machine as natural and fail to find them exactly reproduced by another turing machine. but like i said the difference is only up to (cont.)

[jogayot]

isomorphism. last century of investigation in logic or number theory shows there is infinite progression of meta-systems. but there is a semantic barrier between them and it's impossible to judge one from inside of another for the want of syntactic equality of basic truths/axioms (aka reality) between them. to somehow trivialize it: is "prawda" any less real from the "truth"? in my opinion reflective consciousness can occupy any of those meta-logical environments.

[jogayot]

i'm not familiar with particular differences between "then" cognitive-computational and today's "better" neuroscience. i'm speaking in pure theoretical generalities.

at the end of the day we will still have to implement consciousness and i do not see how it would be able to "leave the building" without using some computational gate...

[jogayot]

"but a simulation is not the thing itself."

as they say in math it doesn't matter up to the isomorphism... if you don't know about the "real" weather the weather you of know is the real weather. it is tied to things like bisimulation and boson-fermion statistics. looking at it psychologically whether one is nuts or only acts nuts is distinguishable only at the source of the thing in itself.

[prhughes0]

Strongly influenced by Dennet, i cannot quite believe that there really is a "hard problem" at all.

At least a problem harder than actually "knowing" if another human (or a machine) is "conscious" like i think i am.

Behavior and analogy are the only clues i know of, and surely an up-to-date Turing test is as good as it gets.

If a machine capable of acting "human" in every measurable respect is NOT conscious, then what IS?

The "hard" problem seems to me more like a hubris problem.

best,

p

[jogayot]

"The "hard" problem seems to me more like a hubris problem."

yup, but there still remains the challenge of actually reproducing a machine that passes Turing test ;) i christen this a Turing test of recursion ;)

[jogayot]

"in what way are they?"

in that way that they can be simulated by universal turing machine.

[gratex]

from the post-babbage definition of the word, yes. Looking at Babbage's machine you could contrive it to be a pruning machine ;) . Compare computation with amputation. Putare is Latin for "to prune"., trimming down raster data into vector form for ease of expression and correlation. As I said, contrived.

[gratex]

to compute is to prune. from an etymological perspective, at least.

[detriplea]

Another Masterpiece.

[Barklord]

looking up, i could see the blue in the sky

but realized that i've never breathed the blue,

only the invisible elements. only the hidden parts

fed my flesh and blood.

never the dreamy, still-blue daughter of day