Can a man-made computer become conscious?

[Mosesquine]

Mental processes are similar to computational processes. Wittgenstein said that knowledge is calculation. Philosophers of mind who advocate Turing machine model of mind think that mind works by computational processes. If human minds work that way, then man-made computer can possibly become conscious.

[Belindi]

Qualiam wrote:

What I am saying about the mind is that it generates the experience of a physical reality. Think of this: Neurosurgeons have stimulated parts of a conscious patient's brain, and the patient has actual experiences that are not physical. They may hear sounds, see visions, smell things, that are not there physically. But they seem real to the patient. They can even have experiences such as walking down the street. This points out that the mind is capable of creating a real experience of a physical reality that is not really there. Similar to a dream, but much more real. So what I believe is that all of "physical reality" is mind-generated, and there is no actual physical reality anywhere.

I take issue with the implications of your "generates" (first sentence) and your "--mind is capable of creating-----" .

Perhaps mind and extended matter are not creators one of the other, neither mind- first nor extended matter- first, but are two equal expressions of nature: two aspects of the same.

Thus when the neurosurgeon does that which you describe, both the brain event and the mind event are caused by the same cause, the action of the probe. That there is no real street involved is down to the fact that the patient's information source is her memory and not the environment beyond her brain-mind.

[Trajk Logik]

Can a man-made computer become conscious?

In order to answer this question we need to define, "conscious".

Consciousness is simply a model of reality made up of symbols - sensory symbols to be specific. It is an information architecture made up of sensory impressions and the information contained therein.

If a computer could be designed to use information about the world given to it through sensory devices (a camera to collect information in light like our eyes do, a microphone to collect the information in vibrating air molecules like our ears do, a "sniffer" device to collect the molecular make-up of objects like our taste buds and noses do, and another device to collect information about pressure and temperature of the environment and put all this information into a dynamic model that changes in real-time to reflect the changes out in the world as they occur, and then uses this model to navigate the world, then how can we say that the computer isn't conscious? Even if the symbols are different in the model than they are in our model (say they use some other symbol besides colors to represent wavelengths of light), it shouldn't matter if the same symbol is consistently used to represent the same thing (the same symbol (red) is "experienced" every time the same wavelength of light is detected). Just as we don't know that I experience the same green as you do when looking at grass, we are both still conscious and can even communicate if we always experience the same color individually when our eyes interact with the same wavelength of light.

In this sense consciousness can come in many different forms. All that matters is that the forms consistently represent some state-of-affairs out in the world.

Another aspect of consciousness is attention - the focus of the mind on a particular area of an experience based on some goal present in the mind. We focus our attention on the things in consciousness that pertain to our immediate goal and ignore everything else. Computers have a central executive that guides the processing of information - giving more processing power to certain bits of information over others based on the present goal. Computers, like human beings, have long-term memory and working memory and working memory is where attention, or the central executive reside.

[Qualiam]

Qualiam wrote:

What I am saying about the mind is that it generates the experience of a physical reality. Think of this: Neurosurgeons have stimulated parts of a conscious patient's brain, and the patient has actual experiences that are not physical. They may hear sounds, see visions, smell things, that are not there physically. But they seem real to the patient. They can even have experiences such as walking down the street. This points out that the mind is capable of creating a real experience of a physical reality that is not really there. Similar to a dream, but much more real. So what I believe is that all of "physical reality" is mind-generated, and there is no actual physical reality anywhere.

I take issue with the implications of your "generates" (first sentence) and your "--mind is capable of creating-----" .

Perhaps mind and extended matter are not creators one of the other, neither mind- first nor extended matter- first, but are two equal expressions of nature: two aspects of the same.

Thus when the neurosurgeon does that which you describe, both the brain event and the mind event are caused by the same cause, the action of the probe. That there is no real street involved is down to the fact that the patient's information source is her memory and not the environment beyond her brain-mind.

Qualiam wrote:

What I am saying about the mind is that it generates the experience of a physical reality. Think of this: Neurosurgeons have stimulated parts of a conscious patient's brain, and the patient has actual experiences that are not physical. They may hear sounds, see visions, smell things, that are not there physically. But they seem real to the patient. They can even have experiences such as walking down the street. This points out that the mind is capable of creating a real experience of a physical reality that is not really there. Similar to a dream, but much more real. So what I believe is that all of "physical reality" is mind-generated, and there is no actual physical reality anywhere.

I take issue with the implications of your "generates" (first sentence) and your "--mind is capable of creating-----" .

Perhaps mind and extended matter are not creators one of the other, neither mind- first nor extended matter- first, but are two equal expressions of nature: two aspects of the same.

Thus when the neurosurgeon does that which you describe, both the brain event and the mind event are caused by the same cause, the action of the probe. That there is no real street involved is down to the fact that the patient's information source is her memory and not the environment beyond her brain-mind.

Yes, maybe I was careless with my words. Perhaps mind and matter are not creators one of the other. What I want to say is that both arise out of the one thing that I believe is real, and that is what I am calling ideas. So in that sense, mind and matter are two aspects of the same kind of thing, an abstract idea. And I still say the idea of mind "activates," meaning makes real to the body's perception, the physical world.

And concerning induced experiences, whether by stimulating a brain physically, or hypnotizing a mind mentally, the point is that a real physical environment is not necessary for a person to have an experience of physicality. But even that is not the ultimate point of a pure idealism. I have more to say about that, but according to the suggestions of this forum, I think it should be brought out in a new topic. I'm still working on the text for that.

[Wayne92587]

The Mind is capable of generating knowledge of Reality but not Reality itself.
An Illusion is a mind generated Reality, an Illusion not being able to exist without being mistaken to be a Reality, just as a lie can not exist without being taken to be the truth.

Much of Man's knowledge of Reality is an Illusion, man perceiving an Illusion to be a Reality.
If Man's physic is not functioning properly for whatever reason, man will generate an Illusion to take the place of a Reality, whether it be a Physical defect or a mental defect, or is induced by a neurosurgeon.

[Belindi]

Qualiam wrote:

Yes, maybe I was careless with my words. Perhaps mind and matter are not creators one of the other. What I want to say is that both arise out of the one thing that I believe is real, and that is what I am calling ideas. So in that sense, mind and matter are two aspects of the same kind of thing, an abstract idea. And I still say the idea of mind "activates," meaning makes real to the body's perception, the physical world.

But matter is not an abstract idea, it's extended in space and time. Abstract ideas are ideas of something . That something is what the idea is abstracted from. It's impossible to have an idea that is not abstracted from something.

As Spinoza observed, the mind is the idea of the body. If you had no body you would have nothing to have ideas with.

Mind and matter are two attributes of nature, as I think we agree, Qualiam. Are you saying that nature is an idea? If so whose idea? If nature is God's idea, okay, but then why think that God is not intrinsically matter as well as idea?

-- Updated January 22nd, 2017, 5:46 am to add the following --

Qualiam wrote:

And concerning induced experiences, whether by stimulating a brain physically, or hypnotizing a mind mentally, the point is that a real physical environment is not necessary for a person to have an experience of physicality.

But the brain that is being stimulated physically isa real physical environment. So is the surgeon's probe really physical.

If you are "hypnotized " to the effect that you see something that isn't there what is happening is that the idea of what you see is information from your memories your brain, and not from the world outside your skull.

By the way, I think that what you are after is not hypnosis but hallucination. Can people can be hypnotised to hallucinate? Maybe.

[Wayne92587]

A computer can not become conscious because a
computer can not think out of the Box !

-- Updated January 23rd, 2017, 12:53 pm to add the following --

Does anyone get the point ???????

[Qualiam]

Yes, maybe I was careless with my words. Perhaps mind and matter are not creators one of the other. What I want to say is that both arise out of the one thing that I believe is real, and that is what I am calling ideas. So in that sense, mind and matter are two aspects of the same kind of thing, an abstract idea. And I still say the idea of mind "activates," meaning makes real to the body's perception, the physical world.

But matter is not an abstract idea, it's extended in space and time. Abstract ideas are ideas of something . That something is what the idea is abstracted from. It's impossible to have an idea that is not abstracted from something.

This is where I (and Plato) believe that conventional thinking has it backwards. Yes, it seems as if Ideas come about from something that already exists, something material. But if one believes that, one has to explain how that material thing, essentially the whole universe, came into being. And one has to explain why that universe is "fine-tuned" such that life could arise in it, and a whole host of other conundrums that science has a hard time explaining.

To me, it is far easier and more reasonable to postulate that Ideas are primary, and that matter is just an Idea. Granted that it is the Idea of a physical universe, which is physically perceptible by our senses, but the main point is that the Idea is primary and the manifestation, or activation, of it secondary. This is a perspective that takes some getting used to, but I believe it yields a much more cohesive, unified picture of reality.

As Spinoza observed, the mind is the idea of the body. If you had no body you would have nothing to have ideas with.

Mind and matter are two attributes of nature, as I think we agree, Qualiam. Are you saying that nature is an idea? If so whose idea? If nature is God's idea, okay, but then why think that God is not intrinsically matter as well as idea?

Here, I believe, is the crux of the misunderstanding about Plato's perspective on Ideas. First, I apologize for not capitalizing the word Idea in my previous post, to distinguish it from our common use of the word idea. Plato maintained, and I agree, that Ideas, or Forms as Plato also called them, are primary, transcendental entities that always have Being. The mind itself is an Idea. So I do agree that mind and matter are two attributes of nature as we perceive it, but I strongly believe that mind, matter and nature are first and primarily Ideas, or Forms. These Forms have been given perceptual reality by our mind, but they have always had Being independent of any mind.

I would challenge anyone to refute that this next sentence I write is not an Idea:
There exists a 7-legged green and orange checkerboard lizard that flies and has nine eyes.
You do not find this in our universe and probably never will. So here we have an Idea that had no physical precedent. Yet it is most definitely an Idea, even in our common sense of the word, "idea." Does that prove that Ideas are primary? I'm not sure, not being a logician. But that, plus other things, convinces me.

If I had no body, it may be true that I could not "have" ideas (meaning think about them), especially if I believed that the brain is the origin of the mind. But Ideas always exist. They are completely independent of bodies, minds, matter, energy or consciousness. And, in my view, Ideas are, in number, infinite. ALL Ideas have Being.

I think a new word is needed to refer to the concept of Ideas or Forms, to distinguish it from ideas. Plato's word "Forms" does not work for me because in modern times, it suggests matter, and also because it has to be capitalized. To denote the primary, autonomous Idea, which I'll use from now on in my posts, I propose the new word, ideon.

-- Updated January 22nd, 2017, 5:46 am to add the following --

And concerning induced experiences, whether by stimulating a brain physically, or hypnotizing a mind mentally, the point is that a real physical environment is not necessary for a person to have an experience of physicality.

But the brain that is being stimulated physically isa real physical environment. So is the surgeon's probe really physical.

If you are "hypnotized " to the effect that you see something that isn't there what is happening is that the idea of what you see is information from your memories your brain, and not from the world outside your skull.

By the way, I think that what you are after is not hypnosis but hallucination. Can people can be hypnotized to hallucinate? Maybe.

Yes, you are right that in my neurosurgeon example, the brain and the surgeon's probe are physical. But the main point was that the mind, whether originating in a brain or as a non-physical consciousness, can be induced to have a real, physical experience. The physical matter is not necessary.

Thanks, Belindi, I think you are right, hallucinate would be a better example. And I'm not sure if one can be hypnotized to hallucinate. But I once observed a woman under hypnosis be given the suggestion that there was no such number as five. She was then brought out of the spell and asked to count her fingers. She was totally bewildered that she kept counting eleven fingers.

Just to get back on the question of whether a man-made computer can become conscious, I say yes because a conscious computer is, and always has been, an ideon. We know for absolute certainty that it is an idea, or no one would be talking about it. In my philosophy, and perhaps in Plato's, it has always been an ideon, a primal, autonomous, timeless, transcendental Idea. But it is now also an idea, because it is being thought about in minds. And those minds, now aware of that ideon, have the capability to activate it, or make it real in our physical perception.

[Wayne92587]

A computer can not become conscious, simply because a computer can not think out of the "Box".

-- Updated January 28th, 2017, 8:01 am to add the following --

If you think that a computer can become conscious, it is obvious that you do not understand the nature of consciousness, the Spirit, the Soul.

Soul, Passion, is the seed of all living things; all living things defined as being "whatever" exists as a material, physical being, thing, Reality; even a rock.

[Chasw]

A computer can not become conscious, simply because a computer can not think out of the "Box".

-- Updated January 28th, 2017, 8:01 am to add the following --

If you think that a computer can become conscious, it is obvious that you do not understand the nature of consciousness, the Spirit, the Soul.

Soul, Passion, is the seed of all living things; all living things defined as being "whatever" exists as a material, physical being, thing, Reality; even a rock.

Wayne: Its not quite as simple as one might think. Its true that a machine will never have any connection to the spiritual realm, no automated witch doctors. At the same time, machines with "strong AI" capabilities are rapidly approaching. Once they become believable, i.e., able to carry on a normal (per Turing test) conversation with us and other machines, in natural language, we will fully accept them as friends and servants, and consider them to be conscious in a way similar to our own.

Thus, a broader philosophical definition of the term Consciousness, should include several subcategories, including one for machine consciousness. Think of the human-like characters of Data in the Star Trek series, or Sonny in the movie I-robot. A European court recently ruled that a machine might have "personhood". - CW

[Gertie]

Can a man-made computer become conscious?

In order to answer this question we need to define, "conscious".

Consciousness is simply a model of reality made up of symbols - sensory symbols to be specific. It is an information architecture made up of sensory impressions and the information contained therein.

If a computer could be designed to use information about the world given to it through sensory devices (a camera to collect information in light like our eyes do, a microphone to collect the information in vibrating air molecules like our ears do, a "sniffer" device to collect the molecular make-up of objects like our taste buds and noses do, and another device to collect information about pressure and temperature of the environment and put all this information into a dynamic model that changes in real-time to reflect the changes out in the world as they occur, and then uses this model to navigate the world, then how can we say that the computer isn't conscious? Even if the symbols are different in the model than they are in our model (say they use some other symbol besides colors to represent wavelengths of light), it shouldn't matter if the same symbol is consistently used to represent the same thing (the same symbol (red) is "experienced" every time the same wavelength of light is detected). Just as we don't know that I experience the same green as you do when looking at grass, we are both still conscious and can even communicate if we always experience the same color individually when our eyes interact with the same wavelength of light.

In this sense consciousness can come in many different forms. All that matters is that the forms consistently represent some state-of-affairs out in the world.

Another aspect of consciousness is attention - the focus of the mind on a particular area of an experience based on some goal present in the mind. We focus our attention on the things in consciousness that pertain to our immediate goal and ignore everything else. Computers have a central executive that guides the processing of information - giving more processing power to certain bits of information over others based on the present goal. Computers, like human beings, have long-term memory and working memory and working memory is where attention, or the central executive reside.

Your definition of 'conscious' means that a thermostat is conscious in much the same way you and I are, and leaves out the part which matters - phenomenal subjective experiencing. That's what people really want to know is possible when they talk about conscious AI. That's what would potentially further our understanding, potentially have ethical implications and so on.

It might be that the sort of robot you describe would have subjective experiencing, mimicking conscious critters like us is a sensible approach, but we can't predict that it would or wouldn't, without knowing what the necessary and sufficient ingredients are which give rise to subjective experiencing.

[Belindi]

Gertie wrote:

Your definition of 'conscious' means that a thermostat is conscious in much the same way you and I are, and leaves out the part which matters - phenomenal subjective experiencing. That's what people really want to know is possible when they talk about conscious AI. That's what would potentially further our understanding, potentially have ethical implications and so on.

I would like to suggest to you that conscious subjective experiencing marks the difference between empathy (intellectual)and sympathy(feeling, affect). True, conscious subjective experiencing happens to psychopaths who lack sympathy. To be sufficient for sympathy to occur conscious subjective experiencing would need to be accompanied by the appropriate intact and experienced anatomical structures for sympathy , which I understand is the fore part of the cortex.

My explanation is crude and lacks detailed knowledge. The kernel of my meaning is that intellectual empathy can be a quality of a machine, whereas feeling sympathy is at present limited to embodied brain-minds

[Gertie]

Nice quoting!

Gertie wrote:

Your definition of 'conscious' means that a thermostat is conscious in much the same way you and I are, and leaves out the part which matters - phenomenal subjective experiencing. That's what people really want to know is possible when they talk about conscious AI. That's what would potentially further our understanding, potentially have ethical implications and so on.

I would like to suggest to you that conscious subjective experiencing marks the difference between empathy (intellectual)and sympathy(feeling, affect). True, conscious subjective experiencing happens to psychopaths who lack sympathy. To be sufficient for sympathy to occur conscious subjective experiencing would need to be accompanied by the appropriate intact and experienced anatomical structures for sympathy , which I understand is the fore part of the cortex.

My explanation is crude and lacks detailed knowledge. The kernel of my meaning is that intellectual empathy can be a quality of a machine, whereas feeling sympathy is at present limited to embodied brain-minds

I think we simply disagree Belindi.

If you believe psychopaths subjectively experience 'what it's like' to see red or feel pain or remember what they did yesterday, then as far as I'm concerned they're conscious experiencing beings with mental states, just ones which are dysfunctional in some areas. Like blind people's subjective experiencing doesn't function in another area. Or someone with a head injury who loses their memory. In each case (in theory) we can look at the brain and see where the correlated physical dysfunction occurs.

I believe the key distinction is between any and all kinds of subjective experiencing (the what it's like to experience empathy or sympathy or anything else), and none. That thinking, feeling, rationalising, remembering, imagining, seeing, hearing, etc - all phenomenological 'what it's like' mental states - are equally mysterious to us, because we don't understand the in principle mechanism which gives rise to any of them. Therefore we don't know if a machine is capable of any type of subjective experiencing. And if they are, we don't know if it would be comparable to ours.

[JamesOfSeattle]

Your definition of 'conscious' means that a thermostat is conscious in much the same way you and I are

Actually, some of us say that a thermostat is conscious, but only sorta in the way you and I are. The difference is not in the whether there is an experience, but in how many it has in a given time period, and how many things it does with them. By my understanding, the thermostat pretty much has the absolute minimum experience repertoire (one psychule), whereas a person has the most complex set of psychules in the universe, so far.

I believe the key distinction is between any and all kinds of subjective experiencing (the what it's like to experience empathy or sympathy or anything else), and none.

So the difference between you and the thermostat is not the difference between lots and none, but the difference between lots (say thousands per second) and exactly one.

That thinking, feeling, rationalising, remembering, imagining, seeing, hearing, etc - all phenomenological 'what it's like' mental states - are equally mysterious to us, because we don't understand the in principle mechanism which gives rise to any of them.

Gertie, I suggest you make the mistake here of mixing descriptions of experiences (seeing, hearing) with what people do with them, I.e., the outcomes (rationalizing, remembering).

*

[Gertie]

James

Actually, some of us say that a thermostat is conscious, but only sorta in the way you and I are. The difference is not in the whether there is an experience, but in how many it has in a given time period, and how many things it does with them. By my understanding, the thermostat pretty much has the absolute minimum experience repertoire (one psychule), whereas a person has the most complex set of psychules in the universe, so far.

When you use the word 'experience' here I'm not sure if you're suggesting a thermostat :

A) has some tiny experiential 'feeling of 'what it's like' to experience a change of temperature?

or 2) has a change in its state/moving parts in response to stimuli with no subjective 'what it's like-ness' involved?

The way I see it -

A) would lead to a requirement for further explanation, such as panpsychism, which I'm open to the possibility of. But I didn't think that was the position Trajk was taking.

2) would be irrelevant to the 'hard problem' of phenomenal subjective experience, which is what I think most people are interested in. Me anyway.

Or are you saying this is the wrong way to look at it?





ME -

That thinking, feeling, rationalising, remembering, imagining, seeing, hearing, etc - all phenomenological 'what it's like' mental states - are equally mysterious to us, because we don't understand the in principle mechanism which gives rise to any of them.

JAMES -

Gertie, I suggest you make the mistake here of mixing descriptions of experiences (seeing, hearing) with what people do with them, I.e., the outcomes (rationalizing, remembering).

No, I'm specifically claiming that all forms of phenomenal subjective experiencing (mental states/'what it's likeness') are equally mysterious, don't fit into our physical models of the world. We can't explain why there's 'something it is like' to see red, or remember our first day at school, or compose a logical post on a philosophy board. It's the phenomenological 'what it's likeness' which is apparently inexplicable, no matter which flavour.

And because we can't (currently) explain it, because we don't know the necessary and sufficient conditions, we can't predict if computers or thermostats can experience 'what it's like' to feel a change in temperature, or add 7 plus two, or be sad, or see red, etc.