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December 14th, 2008, 5:22 am
Psychoneurally paired events are a fact. However that we commonly adduce cause from constant conjunction does not mean that constant conjunction actually implies cause.
Because all we can know is got via our bodily senses our perceptions are the ideas of our bodies (Spinoza) . Our subjective experiences,i.e. our ideas, are real and can influence , consciously or unconsciously, what our bodily senses receive from our senses.It is a two-way process.
I think this still does not answer your question " why isn't it possible?"
It is possible.
However I think it is improbable 1. because we are so impresssed by the success of materialistic science and technology that it is hard not to be prejudiced. 2. Because it is just as possible that matter causes mind as that mind causes matter, it is better to think that mind and matter are together caused by existence itself.Just as night and day are neither the cause of each other but both are together caused by solar events.
Because all we can know is got via our bodily senses our perceptions are the ideas of our bodies (Spinoza) . Our subjective experiences,i.e. our ideas, are real and can influence , consciously or unconsciously, what our bodily senses receive from our senses.It is a two-way process.
I think this still does not answer your question " why isn't it possible?"
It is possible.
However I think it is improbable 1. because we are so impresssed by the success of materialistic science and technology that it is hard not to be prejudiced. 2. Because it is just as possible that matter causes mind as that mind causes matter, it is better to think that mind and matter are together caused by existence itself.Just as night and day are neither the cause of each other but both are together caused by solar events.
February 8th, 2009, 5:48 am
Loudthoughts , your account of AI, right to be called 'alive', definitions of life, etc is satisfyingly factual and objective.
Arguments for AI being conscious lack mention of one of the important attributes of consciousness i.e. sentience. The ability to feel pleasure, pain and all the range of feelings that with the addition of input from the cortex stem from pleasure and pain, is not at present within the capability of any artefacts.I don't think so, anyway.
When sentience is a property of an artefact, then the more empathic among us will allow that it has consciousness and accord it rights.
Animals other than the human already have rights and will soon be accorded more, especially the great apes who are similar to humans in genetic structure and in intelligence.
Arguments for AI being conscious lack mention of one of the important attributes of consciousness i.e. sentience. The ability to feel pleasure, pain and all the range of feelings that with the addition of input from the cortex stem from pleasure and pain, is not at present within the capability of any artefacts.I don't think so, anyway.
When sentience is a property of an artefact, then the more empathic among us will allow that it has consciousness and accord it rights.
Animals other than the human already have rights and will soon be accorded more, especially the great apes who are similar to humans in genetic structure and in intelligence.
February 8th, 2009, 7:50 pm
I think that sentience and sapience are both contents,properties, of consciousness.Obviously computers are sapient.
I too believe that once computers, robots or any other artefacts have properties of sentience as well as sapience, then they will be conscious, although r and d have a long way to go before artefacts possess mirror neurons.
If however you had deep enough general anaesthesia you would not be conscious.
I too believe that once computers, robots or any other artefacts have properties of sentience as well as sapience, then they will be conscious, although r and d have a long way to go before artefacts possess mirror neurons.
Is not actually the case.You could still feel the positioning of your body in space and the various positions of your body. You could also see,hear and smell as well as before your skin was anaesthetised.If I were to have anesthesia injected into all areas of my skin, I would be unable to feel anything, not pain or pleasure, or anything in between
If however you had deep enough general anaesthesia you would not be conscious.
February 12th, 2009, 5:27 am
Consciousness — AWARENESS — is truly in the eye of the beholder. I know I am conscious. But how do I know that you are?
It's an attitude which is inherent in apes and humans. Possibly can be decribed as synthetic a priori together with attitudes to space, time and causality.I say 'inherent in apes and humans' because of the presence of mirror neurons .There is much about mirror neurons via Google. They are frontal lobe neurons that allow us to develop coordinated muscle movements by imitating others, and are probably responsible also for language development through imitating others.Mirror neurons are perhaps also empathy neurons that allow us to laugh and cry with others and become sexually aroused when watching others having sex.
When we assume that others are conscious we are using our empathy ability.True, if one is going to be endlessly sceptical one may propose that mirror neurons are as demonically deceptive as any of the other modes of mapping and perceiving our environments.
May 20th, 2011, 4:00 am
Maybe the way in which we test whether or not other people are conscious selves? We do it by watching their body language, what they say and how they say it. Also when we communicate we don't make our responses de novo but each person is influenced in subconscious ways by the other. The most obvious interaction of this human sort is that between mothers and their babies.I think that computers dont yet have the huge subconscious minds that humans have and which we employ in interactions with each other.I cannot imagine computers having the lateral scope of the human brain. But when they do then they will be persons too.
May 24th, 2011, 2:11 am
Animal species are social and not separate individuals. Therefore to make an artefact that is animal the artefact would have to have a brain that is a social brain. The social brain vannot exist without the social group of individuals, therefore the brain artefacts would have to be able to communicate feelings and ideas with each other. They would also have to be able to cooperate and compete with each other as individual social animals must if the social group is to survive.
May 30th, 2011, 4:59 am
I'll tyake your word for it, Wooden shoe, however by 'social' I mean something like cooperating to feed each other and the youngsters, to defend each other sometimes. perhaps only at certain seasons, and also preying on other species which divides the predator from other groups of animals. Generally, by 'social' I mean having need of others of the same or of a different species.
The pathetic monster created by Frankenstein would not have been dangerous if he had been accepted by the human species that he was created to be part of. He was created a social animal and his feelings were created by Frankenstein to be the same as the biologically humans' feelings. Therefore it is theoretically possible to create an artefact, like the Frankenstein monster, who is human without having been being created in the biological way.
I think I heard that some scientist in Canada has already created a life form in the lab, outside of the biological route to creation.
The pathetic monster created by Frankenstein would not have been dangerous if he had been accepted by the human species that he was created to be part of. He was created a social animal and his feelings were created by Frankenstein to be the same as the biologically humans' feelings. Therefore it is theoretically possible to create an artefact, like the Frankenstein monster, who is human without having been being created in the biological way.
I think I heard that some scientist in Canada has already created a life form in the lab, outside of the biological route to creation.
November 18th, 2011, 7:09 am
It can become conscious in the sense that it can calculate, learn, and make moral judgements. But it cannot be conscious in the sense that it feels that it is embodied like other naturally or artificially evolved beings and also part of a mammal type society. Ants and bees are more computer-like in their attitudes than are mammals, and I guess bacteria are even more so.
This is my hypothesis but I am not an AI expert and you would need to ask an AI expert.
This is my hypothesis but I am not an AI expert and you would need to ask an AI expert.
April 10th, 2012, 7:14 pm
Is this thread supposed to be philosophy or futurology?
July 11th, 2012, 3:29 am
Xris wrote:I think we are all considering consciousness from a human perspective. When you meet another human you take it for granted they posses the same degree of conscious ability. If they have not it soon becomes apparent. It would be the same for computer. We debated art a short time ago and it became apparent it was purely a human endeavour. If a computer could create a novel work of art I might just sit up and take notice.
http://www.google.co.uk/imgres?q=comput ... s:49,i:244
November 7th, 2012, 3:58 pm
Quotidian wrote:
Spinoza understood Descartes's idea about mental substance, and extended substance , that is, substance dualism. However Spinoza modified the two separate substances as described by Descartes which according to Spinoza were two aspects of the one substance, nature (or God).
Modes of being, according to Spinoza, are you and I , and the tree and the jellyfish. Each of these modes, and all modes of nature are necessary. Unlike jelly fish and presumably other animals, humans are able to support adequate ideas.
Spinoza's metaphysics chime with modern science. Adequate ideas are ideas that reflect the truth of nature, (or God).
Spinoza's idea of the spiritual is not that it is a separate substance from the extended, but that it is another aspect of nature(or God whose aspects are infinite, but of which we have access to only the two).
Consciousness then in the light of Spinozist theory is ability to reflect upon self, which presumably other animals do not do.An adequate thought includes the ability to have insight into one's own emotional reactions.
Computers may at some stage of development have concepts of self and be able to reflect their computations from the concept of self, as we do. If this happens nature (or God) will not be diminished because to diminish infinite nature or God is impossible.
I am of the view that within this context, there is actually no scope for what was traditionally understood as 'ontology', which is why it poses a problem for you. Again this is nothing personal, it is simply the times we live in. But in the naturalist view, there is no dimension corresponding to 'depth'. The word 'existence' has a single meaning, and something either exists, or doesn't exist.
By contrast, in classical philosophy and metaphysics, within which the notion of 'ontology' is meaningful, there are 'degrees' or 'modes' of being. This is still visible in, for example, Descartes, Liebniz, and others, but by the 19th Century, has been all but eliminated from the philosophical lexicon. (Which is why Descartes was able to speak of a 'spiritual substance', an idea which is generally incomprehensible to moderns.)
Spinoza understood Descartes's idea about mental substance, and extended substance , that is, substance dualism. However Spinoza modified the two separate substances as described by Descartes which according to Spinoza were two aspects of the one substance, nature (or God).
Modes of being, according to Spinoza, are you and I , and the tree and the jellyfish. Each of these modes, and all modes of nature are necessary. Unlike jelly fish and presumably other animals, humans are able to support adequate ideas.
Spinoza's metaphysics chime with modern science. Adequate ideas are ideas that reflect the truth of nature, (or God).
Spinoza's idea of the spiritual is not that it is a separate substance from the extended, but that it is another aspect of nature(or God whose aspects are infinite, but of which we have access to only the two).
Consciousness then in the light of Spinozist theory is ability to reflect upon self, which presumably other animals do not do.An adequate thought includes the ability to have insight into one's own emotional reactions.
Computers may at some stage of development have concepts of self and be able to reflect their computations from the concept of self, as we do. If this happens nature (or God) will not be diminished because to diminish infinite nature or God is impossible.
November 7th, 2012, 5:13 pm
So what is the concept of self, that is to say, the feeling of being a subject of experience, such that a computer cannot have it? I suggest the concept of self is nothing but memory and especially memory of predispositions. There are unfortunates who are ill, who lose the feeling that they are selves. Other unfortunate people incorporate two or more subjects of experience in the same body.
I understand that artificial intelligence is at such a stage of development that computers are about to become more intelligent than humans, meaning that computers will be self replicating and evolve with no need for any programming.
I understand that artificial intelligence is at such a stage of development that computers are about to become more intelligent than humans, meaning that computers will be self replicating and evolve with no need for any programming.
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