Can a man-made computer become conscious?
-
- Moderator
- Posts: 6105
- Joined: September 11th, 2016, 2:11 pm
Re: Can a man-made computer become conscious?
Human percepts of time , are they inseparable from feelings about the contents of time and place ? When you describe your experience of sitting on your porch, the scent of the lilacs , and so on you are affected by what you experience. Physics abstracts only quantity from experience so it's universally the case that the Planck unit differentiates events.(I understand that there are Planck units of space too).
I have only the foggiest idea how Planck units translate into human percepts in all their complexity. Even to say "percepts" is to deny the Gestalt of an experience entitled "sitting on the porch". I can only suggest the hierarchy of how stuff gets bigger and bigger as it goes from Planck units to atoms to molecules , so into chemistry now a branch of physics. Then on into biochemistry thence to physiology and the nervous system and organs of special sense.
My ontological preference is Spinoza's dual aspect monism of matter and mind so I have no problem with harmonising brain and mind.
As with astronomers who are emotionally affected by the starry skies not a bit less for their knowledge about the physics and chemistry of stars, so with chemists, physiologists, and psychologists who are aware of brains and what they do. I am fond of that hymn by Addison about "the spacious firmament" in which the science is rubbish but the sentiment is as good as ever. The tune is good which helps.
- Sy Borg
- Site Admin
- Posts: 15146
- Joined: December 16th, 2013, 9:05 pm
Re: Can a man-made computer become conscious?
Definitely. We could not function if we perceived reality at subatomic scales, let alone Planck.Fooloso4 wrote:Belindi:I am not sure that any of this addresses the problem. The time it takes light to travel a Planck length in a vacuum seems to me to be very different than what occurs in ordinary experience.I think Planck units differentiate units of time.
My understanding, as explained to me by the late Obvious Leo, is that a Planck time is the shortest possible span where it's meaningful to talk about the passage of time, to say that something happened. Similarly, a Planck length is the shortest possible distance where space is a meaningful measure.Fooloso4 wrote:The measurement of a unit of time does not mean that time exists as discrete units. There is a constant stream of light from all directions. The images that reach my eye as things come into and out of my field of vision do not all begin at the same time.
If there are units of time would we experience time as successive units one after another if we could process fast enough? Would there be a gap in time between them? If not, then what differentiates one unit from the next?
There may be a smaller reality than the Planck scale but it would not make sense in terms of our perception of space and time. The Planck is the finest granularity of reality that we know, although some (poor misguided souls hehe) believe that the subatomic scale is the ground level of reality.
So are movies perceived seamlessly, but they too in reality are delivered frame by frame. The technology exploits our temporal "looseness". Dogs perceive reality about five times faster, hence their seemingly superhuman (to us) reflexes. AI will operate at about a million times faster than humans, but I'm not wildly worried as most the AI I deal with is profoundly obtuse. Try the supermarket checkout or a chatbot. Or Windows', Mac's and Android's supposed intelligence. All thoroughly stupid and ineffectual in the human domain with massive obvious gaps in need of improvement.Fooloso4 wrote:With regard to experience, time is phenomenal. Phenomenal experience, that is, how we experience things, is not as separate events in discrete moments.
I'd be surprised if Kurtzweil's supposed technological singularity bites in 2029. Some of these futurists are a tad excitable, and news bites are money in the bank for the likes of Kurtzweil and Musk. So they will inevitably talk it all up, presenting what are effectively "ambit claims" - unrealistic, but they serve a purpose.
Also, to address some earlier comments - if humans are outlasted by AI, who is to say that the initial lack of true sentience in AI will continue? Must consciousness only be associated with water and carbon, with a few other trace elements in a soggy biological package? I used to believe that such "wetware" was an essential conduit for consciousness due to the flexibility of fluids until (scores of pages ago) on this thread someone (unfortunately forgotten) pointed out to me that electricity has similar flowing qualities.
I find it unrealistic and probably more than a bit anthropocentric to imagine that the universe has achieved its ultimate intelligent form in just 14 billion years, with the next trillion years being either reiterations of equivalent dynamics, or a downhill slide from this mighty peak of sentience [sic] achieved by today's humans?
Noooo, like the dinos we humans are a transitory configuration. Barring terrible luck, we'll be superseded by something as much superior to us as we are better than dinosaurs. By "better", I mean more sentient, aware and sophisticated in all areas, including morality. More capable of comprehending and responding to reason. If this particular iteration of life in this tiny part of the Milky Way doesn't work out, the probabilities are that others elsewhere will fare better, some will fare worse and at least some may develop in unanticipated ways.
What we need is for a lost ancient alien drone to blunder into Earth's orbit and be captured. It'd settle a lot of debates :lol:
-- Updated 09 Jun 2017, 01:53 to add the following --
No :) As we all know, rocks seem to just persist and react chemically, mechanically and electrically.Gertie wrote:OK, but I'm talking about subjective experience, not just physical interactions.Gertie, let's consider the humble rock. Yep - stop the presses! - a rock doesn't feel as we do :) After all, not even the embryo that each of us once were felt even remotely as we adult humans do, so what hope does a poor 'umble rock have? Still, if we were to conduct a ranking, rocks represent a level of organisation of matter that emerged from more primitive states of matter still. From there, a rock is more "conscious" (at that level, read: blindly reactive) than a neutrino, which hardly "notices" anything at all.
I'm not clear, are you saying you believe rocks and neutrinos have some kind of subjective experience? Or not?
I'll try another approach - a nested hierarchy:
1. Chemical reaction
2. Reflexes - suites of chemical reactions
3. Emotions - suites of reflexes
4. Control - of the above.
So a rock is much more reactive than a neutrino, but neither have reflexes, nor those things that emerge from reflexes. You can extrapolate easily enough from there. That's the gist, even if probably flawed. Feel free to improve on it.
As above. Reactions --> reflexes --> emotional responses --> control. We still largely react blindly. Only a small subset of our consciousness, as such, is "awake". Most of it is chemical reactions, reflexes, micro-emotions / sensations, with a small executive function at the top which, like any executive, takes the edifices that support them for granted and carry on as though they are all that matters :)Gertie wrote:When people talk about 'Emergence' re philosphy of mind, they usually mean that a novel property (subjective experience) emerges from 'lower level' stuff and processes, which isn't reducible to the 'lower level' stuff and processes. Something new comes into the world. Where-as 'panpsychism' takes a different view, that some kind of consciousness exists in everything (pan). So rocks and toasters subjectively experience what it's like to be a rock or a toaster.Abiogenesis was an emergent, exponential leap, so microbes can be thought of as exponentially more conscious than nonliving chemical (like rocks), just as multicellular organisms are exponentially more aware and flexible than microbes, then we have brained animals, then humans, then institutions, and so on. Each time the evolutionary advantage is strong enough to create local areas of dominance in a population, which we then label "emergence".
I'm not quite sure which, if either, position you're arguing for here? Or something else entirely?
You are right. I should have added "known capacity to feel pain" to the list - but I baulked because it's too hard, a la Nagle. What is experienced by the unfortunate C. elegans in this video? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vT8bms2RHe8.Gertie wrote:Have to disagree here. For sure boundaries are often fuzzy, but it strikes me that knowing if a rock or worm or computer has subjective experience is important re how you should treat it, even what rights it perhaps should have, based on the nature of its subjective experience. It's a key differentiator between the statue or robot Greta and the experiencing flesh and blood Greta, if the statue/robot can't experience anything. But if RobotGreta can experience being RobotGreta, then I'd say that's a justification for welfare (moral) issues to come into play.The issue is for me is that the lines between consciousness, life and reactivity are blurred. It would be more accurate to skip the broad labels of "consciousness", "life" and so forth and instead score entities based on their responsiveness, flexibility, senses, complexity, sociability, self-control, animation/motility, reproducibility, homeostasis, metabolic activity, and so forth.
You can cut some of these critters with simple nervous systems into bits and each part writhes. Does that feel like anything? Even our digestive system has many more neurons than C. elegans but it doesn't seem to register anything without input from the brain. I wonder, though, is qualia possible without a digestive system - an energy source of sorts? Are there ways of being in the world that are qualitatively better than what we think of as qualia?
Ever since humans stopped being peers to local species, forming our own exclusive colonies, we have have failed to seriously consider other species. We didn't think about them in terms of responsiveness, flexibility, senses, complexity, sociability, and capacity to feel pain. Instead we assumed, conveniently, that other animals don't feel a thing, merely operating via reflex (#2 above), which we now know is profoundly blinkered.
What if RobotGreta is very convincing? Does the mask become the face, so to speak? Is the act of simulating consciousness its manifestation? I'd say "no". I think it possible that machines could follow their own evolution and, if useful, they may develop their own way of experiencing, but by then they won't be much like our machines today.
-- Updated 09 Jun 2017, 01:54 to add the following --
Sorry for long posts - in summary - the first half replies to Fooloso and Belinda, and the second half replies to Gertie.
-
- Moderator
- Posts: 6105
- Joined: September 11th, 2016, 2:11 pm
Re: Can a man-made computer become conscious?
Obvious Leo was great at communicating ideas in very elegant language. Thanks for repeating his explanation.My understanding, as explained to me by the late Obvious Leo, is that a Planck time is the shortest possible span where it's meaningful to talk about the passage of time, to say that something happened. Similarly, a Planck length is the shortest possible distance where space is a meaningful measure.
The belief that carbon is the only possible chemical system that can house subjective intelligence is chemical snobbery.Also, to address some earlier comments - if humans are outlasted by AI, who is to say that the initial lack of true sentience in AI will continue? Must consciousness only be associated with water and carbon, with a few other trace elements in a soggy biological package? I used to believe that such "wetware" was an essential conduit for consciousness due to the flexibility of fluids until (scores of pages ago) on this thread someone (unfortunately forgotten) pointed out to me that electricity has similar flowing qualities.
I am not optimistic. I think that no planet can sustain intelligent technological advances for very long. I think that the Trumps and the frackers and the polluters of the oceans will win and all technological life will die. The question is how long can we others hold them back and sustain life?I find it unrealistic and probably more than a bit anthropocentric to imagine that the universe has achieved its ultimate intelligent form in just 14 billion years, with the next trillion years being either reiterations of equivalent dynamics, or a downhill slide from this mighty peak of sentience [sic] achieved by today's humans?
I don't believe in happy endings.Noooo, like the dinos we humans are a transitory configuration. Barring terrible luck, we'll be superseded by something as much superior to us as we are better than dinosaurs. By "better", I mean more sentient, aware and sophisticated in all areas, including morality. More capable of comprehending and responding to reason. If this particular iteration of life in this tiny part of the Milky Way doesn't work out, the probabilities are that others elsewhere will fare better, some will fare worse and at least some may develop in unanticipated ways.
What we need is for a lost ancient alien drone to blunder into Earth's orbit and be captured. It'd settle a lot of debates
That's more like it!
- UniversalAlien
- Posts: 1596
- Joined: March 20th, 2012, 9:37 pm
- Contact:
Re: Can a man-made computer become conscious?
I quote: {I like to quote other thinkers}
"The Problem of AI Consciousness"
March 18, 2016
by:
Susan Schneider is an Associate Professor of Philosophy and Cognitive Science at the University of Connecticut and a faculty member in the technology and ethics group at Yale’s Interdisciplinary Center for Bioethics. Her work is on......{see full bio at end of quote}
Whether sophisticated AI turns out to be friend or foe, we must come to grips with the possibility that as we move further into the 21st century, the greatest intelligence on the planet may be silicon-based.
It is time to ask: could these vastly smarter beings have conscious experiences — could it feel a certain way to be them? When we experience the warm hues of a sunrise, or hear the scream of an espresso machine, there is a felt quality to our mental lives. We are conscious.
A superintelligent AI could solve problems that even the brightest humans are unable to solve, but being made of a different substrate, would it have conscious experience? Could it feel the burning of curiosity, or the pangs of grief? Let us call this “the problem of AI consciousness.”
The philosopher David Chalmers has posed “the hard problem of consciousness,” asking: why does all this information processing need to feel a certain way to us, from the inside? The problem of AI consciousness is not just Chalmers’ hard problem applied to the case of AI, though. For the hard problem of consciousness assumes that we are conscious. After all, each of us can tell from introspection that we are now conscious. It asks: why we are we conscious? Why does all our information processing feel a certain way from the inside?
First, a superintelligent AI may bypass consciousness altogether. In humans, consciousness is correlated with novel learning tasks that require concentration, and when a thought is under the spotlight of our attention, it is processed in a slow, sequential manner. Only a very small percentage of our mental processing is conscious at any given time. A superintelligence would surpass expert-level knowledge in every domain, with rapid-fire computations ranging over vast databases that could encompass the entire internet. It may not need the very mental faculties that are associated with conscious experience in humans. Consciousness could be outmoded.
These two considerations suggest that we should regard the problem of AI consciousness as an open question. Of course, from an ethical standpoint, it is best to assume that a sophisticated AI may be conscious. For any mistake could wrongly influence the debate over whether they might be worthy of special ethical consideration as sentient beings. As the films Ex Machina and I, Robot illustrate, any failure to be charitable to AI may come back to haunt us, as they may treat us as we treated them.
Indeed, future AIs, should they ever wax philosophical, may pose a “problem of carbon-based consciousness” about us, asking if biological, carbon-based beings have the right substrate for experience. After all, how could AI ever be certain that we are conscious?
See whole article here:
http://www.kurzweilai.net/the-problem-o ... sciousness
Susan Schneider is an Associate Professor of Philosophy and Cognitive Science at the University of Connecticut and a faculty member in the technology and ethics group at Yale’s Interdisciplinary Center for Bioethics. Her work is on the nature of the self, which she examines from the vantage point of issues in philosophy of mind, artificial intelligence (AI), metaphysics, astrobiology, epistemology, and neuroscience. The topics she has written about most recently include the software approach to the mind, AI ethics, and the nature of the person. She is also a fellow with the Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies and the Center of Theological Inquiry in Princeton.
Her books include: Science Fiction and Philosophy: From Time Travel to Superintelligence, and The Blackwell Companion to Consciousness (with Max Velmans). She is currently writing an academic book on the nature of the mind and a trade/academic book on the technological singularity.
I post this info on Susan Schneider as many of you, including me, might find her books interesting - i might recommend one of her books for the "Philosophy Book of the Month Club".
-- Updated June 9th, 2017, 2:05 am to add the following --
i have nominated Susan Schneider's book:
Science Fiction and Philosophy: From Time Travel to Superintelligence
to be a 'philosophy book of the month' on this forum.
See full review here:
http://onlinephilosophyclub.com/forums/ ... 40#p290040
-
- Posts: 1347
- Joined: April 19th, 2016, 2:53 pm
Re: Can a man-made computer become conscious?
Fooloso4 wrote:The images that reach my eye as things come into and out of my field of vision do not all begin at the same time.
I think that when we speak about subjective, phenomenal time or experiencing of time we should use phenomenological concepts, not concepts of physics, because the relations between those two kinds of concepts may not be very simple.With regard to experience, time is phenomenal. Phenomenal experience, that is, how we experience things, is not as separate events in discrete moments.
We should notice the difference between experiencing and the content of experience, or the content of the present. Experiencing something is an event that creates the content of that experience, an event that can also be described on the physiological level. But the content of the present is something that is created all at the same time, within one and the same event of experiencing. And the whole content is there at the same time, at present. Two successive contents have nothing between them, i.e. no content. But a content of experience has characteristics that refer to contents of earlier experiences, which makes it possible for us to perceive phenomena that have duration, such as melodies, for example. Husserl's concept of retention comes to mind.
So I think that subjective time consists of units made of experiencing events, bur the perception of time is perception of durations. And it is possible that subjective time as such cannot be perceived at all.
Some of these remarks may be somewhat inaccurate, but I hope someone can develop the idea further, or at least criticise it.
-
- Posts: 3601
- Joined: February 28th, 2014, 4:50 pm
Re: Can a man-made computer become conscious?
So are movies perceived seamlessly, but they too in reality are delivered frame by frame.
My (mis)understanding is the the Planck scale is a unit of measure not a unit of reality. The world no more divides into Planck units then it does into meters or feet. I think the analogy with movie frames is misleading since a movie it is actually made up of separate units even though we do not perceive it that way. In another generation will anyone even think in terms of movie frames?
UniversalAlien:
An interesting idea that raises all kinds of questions.Consciousness could be outmoded.
-
- Posts: 1347
- Joined: April 19th, 2016, 2:53 pm
Re: Can a man-made computer become conscious?
In fact we do not need introspection to tell it. We can ask someone "Are you conscious?" or "Are you alive?", but it makes no sense to ask myself such questions. I think this tells us something about the logical and ontological status of consciousness. Being unconscious is an exceptional phenomenon from my point of view, and there are no other points of view.UniversalAlien wrote:"After all, each of us can tell from introspection that we are now conscious."
All right, one more paradoxical statement, but I hope you see what I mean.
- UniversalAlien
- Posts: 1596
- Joined: March 20th, 2012, 9:37 pm
- Contact:
Re: Can a man-made computer become conscious?
there is no way to establish whether a machine is or is not conscious.
But we can establish, at least to some extent, whether the machine posseses the qualities of a living sentient being.
This can be done be reverting to elementary psychology.
Does the machine have a self? - A self that is aware of itself and of the environment in which it exists
Can we establish if the machine has an ego that operates for 'its own benefit'
I maintain if a functioning entity is aware of itself and its environment, and can function for the benefit of itself in that environment - then it is sentient
-- Updated June 9th, 2017, 7:55 pm to add the following --
Now of course you may ask yourself - How do you give a machine a sense of self identity and an ego with wants and desires?
The machine must be made to 'feel' - It needs a 'feedback loop' so it can re enforce its will and wants - How can a machine be made to feel want and desire?
To have a machine mimic consciousness is easy - It has already been done - But to have it feel its own self and will is hard
- Hard AI is very difficult to create.
And that is exactly what we would be doing - In essence to create 'hard AI' we would be creating life - Yes a new form of life based upon silicon rather than carbon - But if it meets the criteria of sentientence given above it would be living - Even if it is not breathing, assimilating and digesting matter like carbon based life forms - It is alive
Now the question is is the biological species Man ready to meet another form of life? - ready to create a form of life that may ultimately supersede him and become the next stage in Evolution
- Sy Borg
- Site Admin
- Posts: 15146
- Joined: December 16th, 2013, 9:05 pm
Re: Can a man-made computer become conscious?
So far reality has been found to be granular rather than smooth, with particlisation occurring at all observed scales. Everything is made up of something smaller constituents. Whatever, our senses smooth whatever granularity is present at the scales of the very small and the very fast.Fooloso4 wrote:Greta:
So are movies perceived seamlessly, but they too in reality are delivered frame by frame.
My (mis)understanding is the the Planck scale is a unit of measure not a unit of reality. The world no more divides into Planck units then it does into meters or feet. I think the analogy with movie frames is misleading since a movie it is actually made up of separate units even though we do not perceive it that way.
-
- Moderator
- Posts: 6105
- Joined: September 11th, 2016, 2:11 pm
Re: Can a man-made computer become conscious?
That is what I an beginning to understand from a book about the Standard Model of physics, a book that I am studying with painful self -discipline as a duty to myself to learn about something very important.So far reality has been found to be granular rather than smooth, with particlisation occurring at all observed scales. Everything is made up of something smaller constituents. Whatever, our senses smooth whatever granularity is present at the scales of the very small and the very fast.
When Greta says
Whatever, our senses smooth whatever granularity is present at the scales of the very small and the very fast.
that rings a bell about what I read yesterday :
"In special relativity, it was the large speed of light that made special relativistic speeds difficult to detect, and hence unfamiliar in our everyday experience. For quantum mechanics, it is the smallness of Planck's constant that removes wave phenomena so far from our everyday experience. Only at the atomic level do quantum effects become large enough to detect." (page 76 of "The Theory of Almost Everything" by Robert Oerter . Plume published by penguin group 2006)
-- Updated June 13th, 2017, 6:55 am to add the following --
Fooloso4 wrote:
I too understand that the Planck constant is a unit of measure. My understanding is that all of science is about objective quantity/measure.My (mis)understanding is the the Planck scale is a unit of measure not a unit of reality. The world no more divides into Planck units then it does into meters or feet. I think the analogy with movie frames is misleading since a movie it is actually made up of separate units even though we do not perceive it that way. In another generation will anyone even think in terms of movie frames?
This is why I harp on about quality as what AIs are not privy to, i.e AIs cannot do quality whereas we animals can learn according to the quality of our experiences. Quality is subjective by which I mean that you cannot immediately, directly, experientially feel my pain or my pleasure. When Fooloso4 wrote the vignette " sitting on the porch ", Fooloso4 was describing quality, not quantity. In order to quantify "sitting on the porch" the experience would have to be analysed into analysable bits such as the chemical constituents of the small of the lilacs, or the physiology and biochemistry of that headache.
I may even claim that Fooloso4 was using everyday/poetic language, whereas a scientist would use explicit language. I doubt if quality can be expressed with scientific explicitness.
-
- Posts: 1347
- Joined: April 19th, 2016, 2:53 pm
Re: Can a man-made computer become conscious?
-
- Posts: 3601
- Joined: February 28th, 2014, 4:50 pm
Re: Can a man-made computer become conscious?
I plead ignorance. Apparently I am in good company:So far reality has been found to be granular rather than smooth, with particlisation occurring at all observed scales. Everything is made up of something smaller constituents.
Our experience of space-time is that of a continuous object, without gaps or discontinuities, just as it is described by classical physics. For some quantum gravity models however, the texture of space-time is "granular" at tiny scales (below the so-called Planck scale, 10-33 cm), as if it were a variable mesh of solids and voids (or a complex foam). One of the great problems of physics today is to understand the passage from a continuous to a discrete description of spacetime: is there an abrupt change or is there gradual transition? Where does the change occur?
(The Universe, where space-time becomes discrete. Relativity and quantum mechanics: A non-local union? Science Daily April 22, 2016 sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/04/16042 ... 115329.htm)
If I understand it, it is not simply that we smooth things over perceptually, but that the smoothing occurs at larger scales.
Belindi:
I admire your determination.That is what I an beginning to understand from a book about the Standard Model of physics, a book that I am studying with painful self -discipline as a duty to myself to learn about something very important.
Perhaps it is just a matter of scientific progress?I doubt if quality can be expressed with scientific explicitness.
-
- Moderator
- Posts: 6105
- Joined: September 11th, 2016, 2:11 pm
Re: Can a man-made computer become conscious?
My understanding is that the only way in which quality and measurement can be reconciled is by presuming them to be complementary aspects of the same reality. Apart from at this metaphysical level, I do think that quality or what we call "qualia" can be communicated only via the arts.(Belindi wrote)I doubt if quality can be expressed with scientific explicitness.
(Fooloso4 wrote)Perhaps it is just a matter of scientific progress?
Tentatively I suggest that the brain has separate areas that deal with reason, and with qualia. True, analgesia causes pain which is an obvious quale to be relatively less intrusive, but this is because the nervous system is disrupted; the default state of the nervous system is all-or-nothing.
- Sy Borg
- Site Admin
- Posts: 15146
- Joined: December 16th, 2013, 9:05 pm
Re: Can a man-made computer become conscious?
When you say "smoothing occurs at larger scales" do you mean in a relative sense? Eg. what looks bumpy to an ant might look smooth to humans.Fooloso4 wrote:Greta:
I plead ignorance. Apparently I am in good company:So far reality has been found to be granular rather than smooth, with particlisation occurring at all observed scales. Everything is made up of something smaller constituents.
Our experience of space-time is that of a continuous object, without gaps or discontinuities, just as it is described by classical physics. For some quantum gravity models however, the texture of space-time is "granular" at tiny scales (below the so-called Planck scale, 10-33 cm), as if it were a variable mesh of solids and voids (or a complex foam). One of the great problems of physics today is to understand the passage from a continuous to a discrete description of spacetime: is there an abrupt change or is there gradual transition? Where does the change occur?
(The Universe, where space-time becomes discrete. Relativity and quantum mechanics: A non-local union? Science Daily April 22, 2016 sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/04/16042 ... 115329.htm)
If I understand it, it is not simply that we smooth things over perceptually, but that the smoothing occurs at larger scales.
- UniversalAlien
- Posts: 1596
- Joined: March 20th, 2012, 9:37 pm
- Contact:
Re: Can a man-made computer become conscious?
In a world with maybe 10 billion Humans - No two Humans are observing the world the same way at the same time
- There is only a relativistic similarity in these observation defined by words and symbols - In fact all observations are
different - There are in fact 'Many Worlds'.
You are basing your observations on the assumption that there is a fixed reality existing independently of the observer
- Current physics tells us otherwise. Again:
"Reality Doesn’t Exist Until We Measure It, Quantum Experiment Confirms"
http://www.sciencealert.com/reality-doe ... t-confirms
But let me take this one step further - It is not only measuring it - It is also the standards of measurement - Simply put the observer is intrinsically involved in creating the reality he is observing.
We have no way to observe or to measure an independently existent reality - And until proven otherwise, and for all we know, there is no independently existing reality.
The early consciousness [I use the word loosely} of the machine will be very Zen like
- It will observe dispassionately - And be assured that all the Western Philosophy in the world will not shake its ability to
to think and act in a purely logical manner. - And if we can give this machine feelings and even a sense of humor
- It is conceivable that the first question you ask stemming from the paradigm of Western philosophical thought
might cause the machine to laugh.
In Zen the question is asked about 'What in one hand clapping ? "
Flash forward to the future - What is an AI machine laughing ?
Imagination - not philosophy rules the future. - For philosophy to have meaning in the future - It too must be imaginative
"Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited,
whereas imagination embraces the entire world, stimulating progress, giving birth to evolution."
-Albert Einstein, What Life Means to Einstein (1929)
-- Updated June 15th, 2017, 2:15 am to add the following --
"Rise of the Machines: Meet Bina48, the robot who can tell jokes, recite poetry and mimic humans with startling ease
Bina48 is a $125,000 humanoid robot made to mimic human personality
Robot heralded as the Eve to a world of human and robot relationships"
Quote source:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/ ... -ease.html
2023/2024 Philosophy Books of the Month
Mark Victor Hansen, Relentless: Wisdom Behind the Incomparable Chicken Soup for the Soul
by Mitzi Perdue
February 2023
Rediscovering the Wisdom of Human Nature: How Civilization Destroys Happiness
by Chet Shupe
March 2023