There isn't a problem to be solved. I know I have experiences.

Is that the only thing you can say you know directly?

I am invoking something non-physical, in the sense that consciousness may be a fundamental building-block of the entire universe, just like gravity, dark matter, dark energy, the electromagnetic, the strong nuclear, the weak nuclear etc.

It may interact with all these other fundamental building blocks in ways we do not yet know, since we haven't investigated consciousness under the paradigm of it being fundamental.

We empirically know the universe is much older than we are, so it makes more sense to think we came from it.

Of course.

We once looked up at the sky and used our sense of sight (as evidence) to conclude that the sun spins around the earth. Why? because that's exactly what it looks like when you look up at the sun.

Intuition is a guide, sure, but if anything, the universe has shown us time and time again, that our intuition (and view of evidence) sometimes needs to be flipped upside down.

Are you suggesting we created the past? Or that we're just thinking of time wrong?

Not humans per-se. But life in a broader sense. Anything that is subject to some form of subjective experience.

We define consciousness narrowly and then we look at a bacteria or ants and we conclude that they are not conscious. Yet the bacteria, and the ant alike are both subject to some form of subjective experience. So how we define consciousness is really the big issue.

If we're using empiricism, and the assumptions its built on, to define consciousness we'll arrive at a very narrow definition. But if we open up the possibility that consciousness is something fundamental to the presence of the universe itself, then we'd need to look at broadening this definition.

After that, we'd need to look at how it interacts with the other fundamental building blocks to arrive at some rather counter-intuitive conclusions I presume. This of course, also includes time (or at least our current conception of time, since no one really knows what it is yet).

Perhaps we'll never have a science of the subjective, because although science can describe what my neurons are doing and what that represents in real life, it can never explain why or how those functions are accompanied by the feelings and the story/subjective experience going on in my head. Why even have the subjective experience when all of the events could unfold deterministically without the accompanying feelings, senses and inner dialogues?

Masque would argue because these feelings, senses and dialogues are a by-product of evolved complexity (just like photo-synthesis) but I really don't think it's that simple. Especially once you've widened the definition of consciousness to represent subjective experience and to represent a fundamental force, as opposed to a specific set of neuron-interactions and correlations.

These conversations get pretty interesting even though (or because?) they start bordering on mysticism. I love the idea of a greater, maybe collective consciousness. It's much more pleasant to imagine than drifting aimlessly alone through a cold vacuum. Moshing at a Rage concert, seeing an intense ballgame with a crowd, or marching in a protest, these are some examples where I feel in tune with some larger greater state of being, or at least it's impossible to simulate by myself.

There must be some cold explanation though. Who's gonna bring it? I hope it's Brian, he at least tries to make it funny, and I can usually convince myself he's talking from his arse.

You made friends. Yay. That means you have collective consciousness.

Or maybe it just means that you made friends.

The mysterious is more profound than the explained.

Being reminded of the possibilities of just how wrong our world-views might be, is thus not only humbling, but a reminder of the (perhaps) intentional mysteriousness that is the universe.

It is a mistress with a conservative, yet seductive ankle-high dress, and a suggestive allure that beckons you to want to see more.

But you must first impress her.

Sure enough one must remain open to breakthrough possibilities that revolutionize the way we see the world. That doesnt mean however that what we now know is so risky to depend on. Nothing other than advanced animals have consciousness seems a very secure statement to me. Lets not introduce "cheap/lazy" religious and other mysticism here or anywhere really for anything other than symbolic or cultural charm/amusement/comfort of ignorance/simplistic description (demanding future understanding) purposes (but never really anything tangible that proved useful or testable). The reason you know this of course is because far more complex systems than that do not have it ie a cell. A cell is still a very advanced system. It doesnt think lets attack that other cell that is a bacterium and its an enemy to protect the boss lol. It simply behaves that way due to chemistry without getting it. But its chemistry is now so complicated, far more complicated than that of a crystal or pure water or a stone, that it allows it to behave in ways that under a microscope look kind of intelligent and with purpose/motivation etc ie properties that beings with consciousnesses , thinking persons, have also.

A baby born doesnt have a clue about what to think of the world. Everything is a shock that takes a while to make sense. (Its not like while inside its mom it is thinking wow its nice in here i wonder how it is outside, it has absolutely no such concepts yet). It takes a while for vision to be understood by the brain even after birth. So its vision initially is a very strange experience that requires training. Over time it starts recognizing faces and first its mom or whoever takes care of it most. The other faces are strangers and a reason to be afraid as default level of behavior (of that new "operating" system). Over time other faces are recognized and they start meaning things, like dad, brother that is a smaller person or other babies etc. Over more time the very young child who has learned to walk and talk a bit has started now recognizing himself/herself even in the mirror etc. A concept of self starts.

Now how can you have a concept of self if you cannot recognize even your own face yet or that of your mother (the moment you are born). So you have no full or even primitive level consciousness at this level yet. But you are conscious to certain things happening like someone touching you, feeling cold , being hungry etc. You have started to learn things already (and some even before being born to a slight degree). You are now starting to recognize things happening and associate primitive meanings to them. The meanings get moire elaborate later as you age. So how can it not be an entirely emergent phenomenon? Its like a city! A city starts like a small village, that has started as a few houses, that have started as a single cabin in the forest, the first person built hundreds of years ago. So when did this thing become a city in the process? Complexity, the accumulation of complex interactive relationships, made it a city. The fact that it has now streets, morning/evening traffic, noise, pollution, peak activity hours, nightlife, an airport, hospital etc all those things eventually made it a city. I could use so many other examples even from the city itself as emergent; Traffic! What is traffic? At what point a collection of cars becomes traffic?

Why is consciousness any different. Years later after you were born it now all looks so cool and understandable and you are the "pilot" behind a control system doing things and thinking etc. When did all this happen? Wasnt it yesterday i was that dirty full of blood and other nasty fluids crying baby in the sink of that delivery room? Furthermore when did that modern sink and a team of doctors, nurses and mom replace that cave, leaves filled - crude floor with the tribe's older experienced delivery woman and mom. Only mom the crying baby and someone helping her is the common theme here thousands of years later. How about 500k years earlier with mom alone and nobody helping her even? When did all this happen that we call modern day baby delivery? Its exactly like that since the very first cell that started this game billions of years ago. A sequence of gradual complexity rises all the way to today. That first cell was not conscious. So how does that cell give you today yourself the thinking person? There is nothing magical to it other than that it is possible to emerge with a stream of interactions after billions of years.

Because we've been trying to tackle consciousness from all scientific angles for the last thirty years and we're still not even beyond the stage of defining it. There is no consensus in the literature (not that I'm aware of). The mirror-test is a test of whether you're able to perceive yourself using one concept (a mirror) that is structured in a particular way. Other life forms may be able to perceive themselves using different concepts that are structured in different ways.

Your definition is narrow, and how do you know for certain that bacteria isn't subject to some primitive form of subjective experience or even 'choice'? By the same measure, how do you know what it's like to be me? you can never be inside of my head and experience what I'm experiencing. What makes you think that you can say for certain that I'm not a projection of your own self-generated reality: simply there to challenge you or annoy you or provide some sort of interaction that changes or influences you in some meaningful (yet unknown) way?

Science can only explain my subjective experience in terms of correlations. It can't explain why I feel the way I feel or what it's like to feel that way because no matter how many equations you use to describe it or how many words you use to describe it, you can never capture the totality of it: you can never be inside my head.

No. I am saying consciousness gives an evolutionary advantage, so individuals with conscious like traits will be selected for. Hence consciousness will tend to develop over time due to natural selection in life forms with a nervous system like structure.

So that would suggest consciousness an emergent trait in the same way that an eye or intelligence is.

Consciousness is in the end the collection/realization of properties that make it what it is, the ability to act and conceptualize (associate with other states of experience of the past real fast) the effects observed through senses, the motions, the steps, the impact of actions, the purpose behind what is happening, the participation of the individual that is one's self in it all. Consciousness is the "local" property of a subsystem of a broader environment that recognizes itself as distinct from the broader environment and as intelligent participant of interactions in that environment. It involves analyzing (often in an elaborate manner) the role of various components of the environment and the understanding of the impact in a future development of the system of current actions of that subsystem you call self (intelligence).


The conviction of the existence of consciousness and its universal properties common in all intelligent systems of higher animals and mostly humans is all we have for now, until we analyze it further and successfully isolate/identify the role of the parts of a biological large scale system that enables it and move to replicate/reproduce it elsewhere (but advances and understanding so far of various parts is impressive if one cares to study the topic). One (always) or more (often) are convinced about the existence of consciousness. The observer (another person we interact with if available) and our own self (the internal observer ie imagine it as you observing your stream of thoughts) are the typical audience! Biological (biochemical) brain functions reproduce both the ultimate behavior of that system we call self and the concept (representation) inside its brain of itself. So we convince ourselves and the others that we are conscious by the continuous demonstration of various intelligent dynamical self interacting patterns of behavior. If a system can convince you it understands itself as existing and the impact of its actions and also participate in some original behavior that was never programmed to be exactly like that necessarily (unless it developed on its own by interaction with the world) then for all purposes you can see this system as conscious. It is indeed a glorious thing but still its a simple thing that can be reproduced ultimately in many ways by simulating it or by recreating an analogous system.


Furthermore our consciousness is enhanced and rendered spectacular by our culture, our civilization, our math, our sciences and arts etc. All those are emergent concepts/conditions/systems. Complex enough systems develop consciousness and modify their environments to enhance its range. Complexity develops further complexity. Notice here that mankind develops also consciousness (understanding of itself) over time and its constantly enhanced also. Yet the animal, H. Sapiens, is the same animal, basically similar DNA to that of 100k years ago. That old animal though had a much different understanding of itself and the world 100k years ago than it does today. It is obviously a consciousness that is emergent over time with further wisdom and interactions with the world (observations, thoughts, testing etc). Our understanding of the universe is impossible if we were restricted to an individual existence (eg feral children?). It is the sum of all humanity that gives us our collective understanding of our position in the universe or our origin. In a similar manner our cellular basis is the foundation of our consciousness. It doesnt exist at the cellular level but it acquires its character in complex enough neural systems.


So you think really i cant be inside your head? It is that impossible to imagine it? Are you seriously confident its that tough? How do i know consciousness is as elementary and yet demanding of the proper system in place as i describe it eventually? Because we can test things and find out that our individual parts are often stupid!!! It is the sum that acquires the glorious properties exactly as i describe it. This is why we get diseases by the way. Because ultimately, moreover their complexity, cells (and larger scale collections of them ie organs) are not smart enough often.


Brain itself is not smart enough at the single neuron level! They (eg cells) are just participating in a collection of complex interactions and when something goes wrong they keep doing it without "getting it" or interact based on simple rules that they do not understand (at least not the the same way we do when we study eg Biology or Chemistry). They just do their functions that evolution programmed them to do based on input because it served some purpose associated with some advantage. They do not actively understand that advantage or what is generally happening. They can approximate a very elementary concept of understanding of a situation (but not better than a current computer understands things eg your computer is aware of your mouse movements) if they have sensor/information relaying functions that inform eg certain cell centers affecting behavior of the changing environment and then this understanding is not anything other than a basic set of "if then else" type rules of causal behavior. So the cell may appear to react to things going on intelligently but there really isnt some part in it that does anything more than react to changes without understanding the broader impact of things. Its the foundation of intelligence though. You start seeing how it begins right there at the cellular level as it reacts and relays information. Cells do not have some ego observing the action of the system but a system of cells can create complex enough functions that are essential to the ultimate build up of consciousness (eg the system of vision or cellular systems that support the function of other senses). Cells cannot represent what is going on inside a complex memory system for example. So how can they have consciousness without a system to record and retrieve it. They are simple (cells) yet still complex from a physics point of view systems.


I know that you think and see the world more or less similarly to the way i do in most basic things because i can test it by relating to you and because common culture gave us a common origin in our ideas for many things by shared examples. My concept of hot is similar to yours because a fire will leave both of us afraid to touch it, because we did once as curious kids and we didnt like it! So i know you dislike very hot objects like i do too. I also know you like a bit of warmth in a cold winter night when you get inside a shelter with a fireplace. I know you hate looking at the sun because i do too but you welcome its existence usually. I know you welcome the moon also in an otherwise dark night in some remote location. I know you get very briefly scared if in a room you are supposed to be alone if a sudden noise happens just behind you. And so much more. All those help me imagine what it must be to be you without ever being exactly that, because what is that is a collection of very detailed hard to replicate systems (billions of neurons and connections ) unique to you but not entirely ie without their universality properties common to other systems, because after all, common biology and chemistry (common origin) and a common input (the world) unites us so it has to leave common imprints in our neural systems.


Why havent we developed conscious machines yet? Because only now we are finally making systems that are fast enough and detailed enough (complex enough) and we havent programmed them smartly enough and released them free (in whatever ways that freedom can be realized) to develop their self, exactly like a thinking person does from the moment born.

How does it feel being a witch?

Even if we did all that and agree the robot is experiencing consciousness just like us, we haven’t solved the problem. What you’re describing is no different than saying that electricity emerges when we pass a magnet over a wire. No doubt it does, but until we could explain ‘how’ it happened we didn’t genuinely understand it. Same goes with a conscious robot: if we were to assemble all the right ingredients in the right way and there is agreed upon consciousness, so what? Even the robot, being fully aware of how it was built, would be no closer to understanding its own consciousness than we are ours. That is, the robot wouldn’t know its consciousness was an emergent property of matter, just because it knows it’s merely a complex arrangement of matter. In other words, it’s still a live-option that once a degree of material complexity is reached, a mind embodies itself in the robot rendering it conscious. As VD noted, we don’t even have a theory as to how something like conscious can emerge from matter, nor does one seem possible without vastly expanding our notion of matter, or rendering material reality as only a part of a larger spectrum of manifest reality.

Duffee, to be fair, this thread is about whether we can/will make a conscious machine. So in your example, our goal would in fact be accomplished.

"What is consciousness" is another interesting question too though.

Electricity is fundamental because its the Electromagnetic field theory with sources (charges) and fields or add QED and solid state to it to be even better. If you talked superconductivity for example it would start going towards consciousness area in analogy.

You guys that think its something monumentally mystic need to first understand how much information human brain processes each second and how many systems are involved and then you will see why our computers are trivial still in comparison but not at all trivial in many specifically narrow areas (ie Mathematica makes integration or equation solving and general algebraic manipulation trivial although still seen as laborious by humans and with high probability of error and Watson now beats any human player in Jeopardy by getting to read dictionaries and encyclopedias and making connections to understand questions and answers and see the ultimate maximizing choice and pretty soon programs will be able to diagnose better than doctors. Add to a computer a ton of such functions and the ability to experiment with environment and have some reward functions as well to determine behavior around them and see what happens.

Have you even considered not only how complex human brain is but also how much information we have received since the day born through interactions. A computer dwarfs in comparison in terms of input or freedom to do anything with it and experiment.

We put a lot of work into educating ourselves, decades of endless hours even. In fact even our entertainment is educational. The entire culture is designed to train the brain 24/7/365. We are also an endless trial and error learning system. We know so much that it appears almost continuous and dense but in fact its not exactly that impressive.

Eventually mechanical systems will get there. They will at least be able to confuse you a lot and they will be able to produce original work and concepts. By then of course you will have recognized that we are not that special but we are so substantially complex that the sequence of ideas and thoughts that bombards us appears impressive.

Spend an hour to think about vision alone how much information it provides us every min and you will see its impressive.

You think that playing BG vs a computer is very different than how the computer does it. It is only less efficient for us but in the end its the same problem for both to examine what position is better looking for the future. The computer certainly has a very narrow understanding of the game because nobody cared to program the computer to also visualize a real BG board with wood and players playing it and have memories of people behaving bad during the game , getting angry, getting happy etc. Supply the computer a vast array of topics and allow it to make connections and see how fast it starts looking very smart. You think we are remarkable but its our complexity that is remarkable and the huge age of this system (4.5 bil years) that makes it all possible. The function itself is basic physics and chemistry (information generation and processing and representation of that information /storage and access) and requires no physics breakthrough to understand it likely because all steps that support it are basic chemistry ie standard hard to calculate in closed forms QM. There is nothing mystic. Study how ants behave and you will see that the colony behaves like it has consciousness but the individual ant doesnt as much. Their society depends on basic simple rules they follow that in big numbers leads to interesting collective properties.

I can gather up all the requisite materials, follow the instructions and build an airplane. There’s a big difference between that and what an aeronautical engineer does. He’s working off principles, whereas I’m just providing the specific conditions for those principles to operate. The aeronautical engineer knows why the plane will fly because he understands the how. I merely know that it will fly but not why because I don’t understand the how. It’s like Sagan’s Contact, where no one understood why or what the contraption would do since they didn't understand the principles behind its design. They were just following the instructions. So I guess in a broad sense we could say those scientists ‘made’ a machine that could transport someone to another realm of reality, and maybe we could ‘make’ a conscious machine by following the instructions nature has given us, but that’s a pretty loose sense of the word.

Suppose we get there and develop a p-zombie detector, yet “the lights are on but nobody’s home?” In other words, if your elimitavist hypothesis is somehow falsified, what’s your out?

My out is that i do not need any out. (the run it once because opponent is running dead anyway equivalent) (if there is nobody at home then next time there will be one at home when we get it right because we have the original system, ourselves, available to work with and replicate eventually if all else fails. Besides many humans in arguments say such irrational unreasonable nonsensical things so often that a computer could top them lol so even when someone is at home they really arent!

If the universe did it to produce man then man can do it as well by reproducing himself/herself in a slightly different way after understanding all the biological mechanisms involved.

We can simulate any physical system we know its laws if we want and have enough resources. Why would we be unable to do it with a man?

What i want you to understand is that what we perceive as human consciousness is really a very dense computer that makes everyone including itself feel as if this is all magical and continuous when in reality its just a big collection of elementary actions taking place fast and in parallel often whose resulting "music" is the sense of self...Its like a classic symphony that needs all the pieces/organs to get to the result you like and understand or relate to. It becomes symphony only when all pieces act together.

Its a giant if then else system that is designed to connect things based on input. It builds as you age with effort and experience. Certain processes are enhanced compared to others because they have associated advantages. Like a mouse that learns to find the food with a trick it does, we also have experienced pleasure when some thoughts work so they are promoted in the future as well and the search for patterns is vindicated and we learn to see and exploit these patterns all the time to recover the pleasure. Most of our ideas and behavior have been repeated before. To get consciousness you need a big enough system with many degrees of freedom that can access the environment and interact often enough with a memory/data registering system to store/represent previous experiences and a reward system to promote certain previously successful operations that are advantageous to that system. The maximization of pleasure resulting has an intelligent character that is advantageous. The 2 pleasure and advantage have often happened together or the memory is stored in that manner (eg finding food is rewarding always when hungry, learning how to obtain food and cook it becomes interesting and pleasurable now). Eg we learn what works in thoughts the same way we learn how to fish or ride a bike or read words in a book and understand their meaning. Its an information receiving, manipulation, storage and access system that is connected with pleasure centers too.

Why do you guys think there is something mystical about human consciousness? You do not have consciousness on simpler systems because its pure chemistry (but already complex enough) what you are seeing (eg in a cell). And yet this is how it starts and builds a large animal that now has a vast number of systems that it can store information and retrieve it, senses to provide constant information flow and neural connections relating/combining things in novel experimental fashion or in familiar groups/synthesis. Most of the time particular input triggers formation of proper fitting ideas to the situation etc. An idea is a connection of separate things that have happened before and you put them together to form a complex design that you may also have seen before or you create for the first time based on some analogies with other things you have seen. There is logic to this miracle. You just need to appreciate how big the system is and how many millions of seconds it spends training itself to access information.


Some info also

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turing_test

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artificial_consciousness

On another note why do humans miss the first 3-4-5 years of their lives in terms of memories?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Childhood_amnesia

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Limbic_system

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amygdala

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hippocampus

mdz what do you think you asserted in your last post, and what are those links for? The central question is how/why/by virtue of what do complex physical systems (like biological organisms) produce subjective states of experience? Nothing you said addresses that question, and your roll of links needs these additions:

Hard Problem of Consciousness

Explanatory Gap

Cognitive Closure

Masque's posts address the question of how to create a philosophical zombie at the least. But I think that he thinks that science can also study the subjective, in the same way it studies the objective. I think he's taken the basic assumptions on which empiricism is based (for example - other people exist) and he's unable to (with any seriousness) acknowledge philosophy that starts from the base level of direct subjective experience.

Masque: Why should physical processing give rise to a rich inner life at all? It seems objectively unreasonable that it should, and yet it does.

That seems like a misunderstanding of what the point of the philosophical zombie is, the point is not to think about how in actuality to create a zombie, the point is whether philosophical zombies are possible at all, and what that means one way or the other for your ontological commitments. The very general idea is that if zombies are conceivable then physicalism is false, because zombies are defined as failing to have the same phenomenological properties as physically identical beings (although if one defines zombies somewhat differently, different things follow).