My biggest concern is that it's not just solvent abilities or the fluid dynamics of water that makes it work; electricity can flow similarly. But it might be the other qualities as well, its heat responses and its electromagnetic qualities. Putting all those factors together in the right way would be difficult.Yes, water seems essential for our type of carbon based life. It's almost a universal solvent. So if you were going to use "a tiny fragment of human brain protected by an impervious synthetic body" as a kernel of consciousness, I imagine water would be needed to carry nutrients to it and to carry away wastes. For non-wet components, maybe you could just use electricity to power them rather than sodium ion channels that need H2O.
Like you, I lean towards the informational picture and if artificial components could do everything that our wetware does, I can't see why the substrate should matter. If consciousness can be created artificially then I wonder whether that would put paid to notions of "Universal Consciousness" and to Idealism, Panpsychism, etc?
Statistics: Posted by Lagayscienza — Yesterday, 9:57 pm
Statistics: Posted by Cathal — Yesterday, 10:54 am
Yes, that’s the nub of the problem. The evidence IS what is given in consciousness, the phenomena as experienced. But what exactly is experience and how is an experience experienced? Still, all the serious attempts at explaining consciousness that I have seen are science based and I can’t help feeling that the answers are there waiting to be discovered. It’s just going to take a lot more science. To go with Idealism or mysticism feels like giving up to me – it means not knowing and being content to never know.Physicalism is miles ahead when it comes to building an explanatory model - of almost everything! I 'd just go back to my point that the The Evidence IS the content of your experience. That's the bind we're in. In the end you have to hypothesise about why the content of your experience is the way it is. And Physicalism is one such possible explanation. One with vast explanatory power, until it comes to the experience itself.
Statistics: Posted by Lagayscienza — Yesterday, 6:15 am
That’s true, Gertie. There might be some necessary ingredient we don’t know about which results in conscious experience. But there might not be. And if there is, and if we can discover what it is, then we might be able to recreate it in artificial neuronal networks. But if it is some mysterious, unknowable, magic, supernatural ingredient then, yes, we’re stuck.I'm thinking there's a different way to consider what the ''evidence'' is.McGinn doesn't demonstrate that mind does not emerge from matter. His “immaterialism’ is just a restatement of Berkeleyan Idealism for which there is no evidence. Materialism on the other hand, for which there is much evidence,
The evidence for the existence of a physical world is the content of my conscious experience. That's it. Other ontological isms simply give different accounts for the content of my experience. One account, the physicalist monist account, is as you say -
says that mind is just what physical brains do. Materialism says that mind emerges by way of electrochemical processes that occur in highly complex neuronal networks.
You go on to say -Right, this isn't outlandish under Physicalism. And is a potential way to test the viability of Physicalism's account. But there are problems which arise from physicalism being unable to account for conscious experience. First, physicalism can't tell us the necessary and sufficient ingredients for conscious experience to manifest from physical processes. It might be there's some necessary ingredient within biological cells, which an artificial neural network wouldn't capture. Second, how do we test an AI neural network for conscious experience, when we can't third-person observe it, and we don't know if it's captured the nec and sufficient ingredients?This means that if it were possible to create an artificial neuronal network of similar complexity to physical brains then consciousness should emerge. Thus mind would emerge from matter as per the materialist conception. Of course, this is not yet possible, but the idea does not seem outlandish or illogical
I agree that your second point is also a problem for the physicalist/materialist account. But then, how do we test for consciousness in other people?
This line of questioning leads to solipsism – the idea that only I am conscious. That’s difficult to swallow. Your brain can no doubt be shown to have the same structure and level of complexity as mine, if I hooked you up the an fMRI machine I’d no doubt see similar patterns as those which are seen in my own fMRI readout, you seem to be able to perform the mental functions necessary for writing coherently at least as well as me, you no doubt utter “ouch” when you stub your toe… Thus, from the evidence available, I think it would be fair to assume that we are both similarly conscious. If an artificial neuronal network produced similar phenomena as those that occur in both of our brains, I am tempted to say that it, too, would be conscious.
Because no one has any idea what McGinn's “invisible, intangible, semi-divine, inscrutable, spiritual, cosmic super-stuff” refers to. It’s just words. How do we build consciousness from that? It’s like saying that consciousness is “*)_+%#””. It’s as likely to be *)_+%#” as it is “invisible, intangible, semi-divine, inscrutable, spiritual, cosmic super-stuff”. With “electrochemical processes that occur in highly complex neuronal networks” such as your brain, we at least have something tangible to work with.
The problem for materialism is that we cannot, as owners of physical brains, perceive the details of what is happening in our brains to produce the feeling of being aware. But an understanding of this may not be forever beyond us. However, an explanation will certainly require a lot more science. Idealism benefits from the fact that, although there is no evidence for it, it is not clear that is can ever be disproved.
Gertie wrote: ↑Today, 6:30 pm For now at least, all science can do is note neural correlation in ever greater detail. That doesn't address Chalmers' Hard Problem imo. Something paradigm shifting might show up, but there's no (current) theoretical reason to expect so. Science simply doesn't seem to have a way to address Levine's ''explanatory gap''.
Again, that’s true. It’s a thorny problem for which Chalmers has no answer either, apart from Panpsychism which suffers from the “combination problem”.
I have a paper of his (which I am plucking up the courage to read) whose abstract purports to deal with this problem.
Fair point. Physicalism is miles ahead when it comes to building an explanatory model - of almost everything! I 'd just go back to my point that the The Evidence IS the content of your experience. That's the bind we're in. In the end you have to hypothesise about why the content of your experience is the way it is. And Physicalism is one such possible explanation. One with vast explanatory power, until it comes to the experience itself.But I wonder if anything will ever convince me that rocks are “fundamental physical entities [that] can have conscious experiences”. Maybe this is just outsourcing the problem rather than solving it. It is true that there is this "explanatory gap" and we can only hope (or not) that something turns up as the science progresses. I can't see any other way to solve the problem. We can go with Panpsychism or Idealism or solipsism but they lack any empirical evidence whatsoever and the best that can be said for them is that they cannot be disproved. So I am forced to go with the materialist/physicalist project of science.
Statistics: Posted by Gertie — March 17th, 2024, 7:27 pm
Statistics: Posted by Sy Borg — March 17th, 2024, 3:50 pm
Statistics: Posted by Lagayscienza — March 17th, 2024, 7:17 am
Yes, it would be a cool experiment. The neurone(s) would have to be fed somehow, but if we got to the stage where we could build a neuronal network of staggering brain-like complexity and functionality, we'd probably also be able to figure out how to keep a neurone fed with glucose and oxygen and get rid of waste CO2, etc.Doesn't it depend on whether technology can achieve the complexity of wetware?
Maybe water, with its fluid dynamics, temperature responses and electromagnetic charges, is too complex?
The usual thought experiment is to replace brain cells with technological equivalents, one at a time, until all cells are replaced. Basically a sci-fi version of grandfather's axe. Maybe there comes a point where it no longer works, that some minimum amount of organic brain is needed? That's my personal guess. Or maybe that's my hope, because the idea of a tiny fragment of human brain protected by an impervious synthetic body, in space exploring the solar system's, is too cool :)
Performing this experiment for real would probably answer a lot of the questions raised on this thread, but I don't see it happening any time soon.
Statistics: Posted by Sy Borg — March 17th, 2024, 4:52 am
Statistics: Posted by Lagayscienza — March 17th, 2024, 1:33 am