What does the existence of artificial brain parts have to do with my question?

I didn't ask if a lump of atoms that was identical to a human's brain would be conscious. (Although it isn't a bad question.) I asked if there will ever be any way to examine a lump, and tell it is conscious, aside from asking it, and aside from merely seeing if it duplicates other conscious lumps.

The Turing Test deals with this.

The short and obvious answer is we need a definition for what conscious is to be able to measure it. Whatever you call conscious and can test - you'll be able to label it conscious. If it's conscious the way you are conscious is an impossible question because you can't figure your own self out - it'd be like a dog chasing it's own tail.

Consciousness allows for mind activity and for one to be conscious. You can't use the mind to figure out consciousness same way a dog can't figure out what being a dog is. Dogginess it can't figure out because that's it's essence.

Dogginess is for a dog to experience.

Humanniness is for a human to experience. Not to label and try to rationalize. Oh well falling on deaf ears it seems

Well, you did say this

which implies strongly that you think duplicated lumps wouldn't be conscious. I find this proposition to be somewhat ludicrous, as does Max Raker. Obviously there are many in this thread who agree with you.

I find Van Veen's line of argumentation regarding abstractions to be rather interesting. It does raise serious questions about what we mean to exist. However, I think even arguing (and I realize this is probably oversimplified) "non-physical things like abstractions exist, therefore consciousness can be non-physical" doesn't work for me. For example, suppose I arrange three matchsticks to form a triangle. The matchsticks are physical, the property of trianglehood isn't. But it's clear that that abstract property that they possess is derived from a real, particular physical arrangement. To oversimplify my own argument, collection of neurons:matchsticks :: consciousness:trianglehood.

EDIT: For those in the Sklansky camp, how do you feel about the Chinese Room argument?

Since consciousness is not rigorously defined (like say mass or charge) the only way to tell if something is conscious is to compare it to other conscious things. Either behaviorally (Turing) or physiologically (CAT scans etc). I don't see any other way to do it even in principle.

So you are saying the answer to my original question is "no". Or are you misuderstanding my question? I'll accept your test for whether something is conscious or not. I want to know if there is any way of accurately predicting (short of showing it duplicates other conscious lumps) whether a lump of atoms will pass your test?

I don't think I know. Obviously we can say that some things are not conscious fairly easily, contain too few particles or are too homogeneous. I don't think that you can derive on paper any specific qualities that must be present in a conscious being other than the trivial ones like I stated.

I also think it will be possible for reasonable people to disagree on whether some things in the middle are conscious or not, like in the developing fetus example from the other thread.

Chezlaw definitely has a lot of knowledge - I think his problem is usually that he doesnt understand how dumb the rest of us are. My advice would be to persevere with his posts, they often sink in around a week later (in my case anyhow).

One point though is that Chezlaw isnt actually saying redness/pain/any conscious experience is definitely magical or unanswerable from a physicalist perspective (although that's my belief, I cant possbily demonstrate it as true) he's just saying that there is a puzzle - it is possible that the experiential aspect of consciousness cannot be explained, even in principle, by a purely physical theory. Pain is his favorite illustration of where the difficulty lies.

I often run into trouble trying to paraphrase others, so the rest is my (dualist) position rather than his. Why is the subjective 'what-it-actually-feels-like' experience of pain a puzzle? Because it seems like we could be zombies reacting to pain (or redness or whatever) exactly as we currently do, with our bodies acting physically exactly as the currently do, yet with no inner life - without the actual experience of what it's like. If I built a really convincing robot and had an enormous list of commands saying "if this - respond this". No computation required - just look up the current environment on a massive list and perform the actions written there:
1. If stub toe - say "Ow" and rub your foot
2. If see red - say "that's red"
etcetera
Then I suspect you wouldnt want to say it was even a bit conscious. (Obviously, the list could be made more sophisticated - basing the response on previous events, etcetera) However, given a long enough list, it would be functionally indistinguishable from another human.

It seems to me that a physcialist description needs to explain why particular brain states have an inner life or experience of what it feels like whereas acting out this massive list happens 'in the dark'. Why do we have an inner life when it seems like we could do what we do whilst all being zombies? (Why doesnt the stimulation we receive when we stub our toe make our brain go into a particular state which makes us move our lips and say "ow", move our arm to rub our toe, alter our brain chemically in such a way that we are less likely to perform that action in the future all mechanically with no inner experience - why does it feel like something?)

I think if you are a materialist - if you think the phenomenon of consciousness is purely a physical one, then I think you will answer "yes" to DS's question. You believe that it is, in principle, possible to explain why that inner, subjective, sensation which is inaccessible to others occurs in some lumps of matter and not others. If you're a dualist like me, you think that a physical account will always fall short - because that subjective nature of consciousness will never be explained by a purely physical account.

It's hard to talk about precisely because of its subjective, inaccessible nature. I cant tell you what it's like when I feel pain, nor can I know what it's like for you when you feel pain. All I can do is hope that when I refer to pain, your experience is similar to mine and you'll understand what I mean. If physicalism is right, then in principle, it will eventually be possible for me to know everything about your pain (including what it actually feels like to you) since by definition a purely physical analysis and understanding is "everything there is to know".

bunny,

yeah that's pretty much what I had in mind as well. Except my explanations seem to be ignored, given SMP is so prone to judging posters and only replying to those they consider "worthy" - the very snobbish behaviour I called chezlaw out on.

In short, the map is not the territory. Any explanation does not equal the actual phenomena.

This is obvious - why pain or redness has to be used as an example is beyond me. The same applies to absolutely everything a human experiences.


The "how do we know something is conscious" is a Turing Test dilemma.

I never said or suggested that pain or redness had to be used as an example. Its not being snobbish to despair that you can think that i did.

Turing test is about intelligence and may or may not be a completely different problem. knowing whether its a different problem or not would be verey interesting.

there is no difference between intelligent, conscious, happy, sad and all the rest of them.

If it's something a human experiences - it's territory.

Anything we can measure using science or any other tool - it's only a map.


Like I said before - we can't jump out of our consciousness and experience being a dog. So we can't ever know if a dog feels intelligent/happy/sad/stupid/smart/funny/conscious. We can only GUESS aka compare the map to our territory and say yeah... this seems pretty accurate...

We can't even experience what another human being experiences - we can only guess... That's the "how do we know my red is same as your red?" in other words how do we know the way I perceive the color red isn't actually the color BLUE for you? We don't know... and we can't know... other than to measure scientifically and say yeah - it seems that your eye and my eye are similar... this map seems to match my territory... I believe it...

The same way, we could actually not use science and believe based on some other form of data. That's where psychic phenomena comes in and becomes VERY interesting, because it doesn't use same rules as science, yet gets very good map matches territory results. We like to call it intuition

Well perhaps you are not a materialist. A materialist says that consciousness is a purely physical phenomenon. If you have a complete physical description of a mental event event, including knowledge of whichever laws of physics are required in that event, then you know everything there is to know about that experience. If you consider the subjective element - a complete theory would need to explain why the particular experience felt the way it did (and would confirm that my red and your red were the same) if total knowledge of the physical components of a conscious event are not enough to confirm that what you and I experience when we see red, how can we say there is a physical explanation? That subjective experience is not captured by this physical description and is therefore "something else".

It does, but it can be hard to explain to people what you mean by the subjective element of experience (witness Lestat's thinking chezlaw and/or I were claiming consciousness was outside evolution/an argument for god/etcetera). Giving an explanation in terms of pain can simplify things because the potential "in the dark" experience of pain (functionally identical, yet with no subjective element) is at least conceivable to some people (though perhaps impossible - the best materialist counterargument imo) and is perhaps something the materialist can grasp - to see that the description of pain in terms of survival advantage, functionality, whatever doesnt capture everything we know about pain - it doesnt capture what it actually feels like.

I think the turing test is a purported way of determining if something is intelligent (a test I think is flawed anyhow, by the way). I dont think we have established that intelligence and consciousness are the same. (Again to back this up, look back at Nielsio's account of consciousness earlier - he was ascribing a primitive form of consciousness to a whole host of animals which would fail a turing test. Similarly, a newborn baby is not going to do very well at a Turing test - who'd want to declare a newborn "not conscious?"

Except that it gets terrible results. Consistently terrible.

Speak for yourself. My intuition is pretty damn sharp.

bunny,

My stance is that this is not possible. A theory is by definition not capable of defining subjective experience. A theory may be able to replicate subjective experience, for instance when I press the gas pedal, the car goes every time I do so. We are replicating subjective experience of driving - never explaining or defining what it feels like to drive because that's impossible.

A picture is worth 1000 words is a faulty but kind of decent analogy. You can't verbalize a painting the same way you can't scientify consciousness.


If we exchange "this physical description" for "anything a mind can comprehend" - I think we have a far more accurate picture.

To enjoy life - it has to be lived. Scientific method keeps trying to avoid subjective experience (living life) and instead lives in the world of mind 24/7. This is the perfect formula for being miserable, oh well

Self-reports of personal ability are even more unreliable than intuition.

Most people who call themselves sharp, when tested, turn out to be pretty dull blades. There's plenty of research on this.

Most people are factually wrong about their self-reports and memories.

If you think it's the facts about life that make it worth living, you got a point.

If not, all that research is worthless. Bottom line is intuition is very reliant for survival aka avoidance of pain in the absolute majority of cases and you use it far more often than you realize - given you think it's unreliable.

I am not very sharp.

Interesting argument, not sure if anyone has already mentioned it but the concept of "is my red the same as your red" is known as Qualia, and there are quite a few philosophical arguments that they don't actually exist.

It's very unreliable at coming to the correct conclusion. It's reliable at keeping us alive in a human social environment. But the beliefs we form on its basis are almost all wrong.

You know well enough that the behaviors of computer programs and configurations of atoms are fundamentally difficult to predict. This is true in, in some cases, for even very small programs and configurations. A conscious being is a very large and complex system. If you are asking whether there is a shortcut to determine whether something we encounter is conscious, without examining it's behavior over time, in reality or in a simulation, the answer is certainly no. I think we can predict a lot of things aren't conscious (according to most definitions) in this manner, but when you encounter something that you can't make long term predictions on, your only hope is observation.

You took my question too literally. I wasn't really asking whether humans will ever be able to look at a lump and know it is conscious. Because you are likely correct that even if there is a way to know by looking, it could involve more complexity than we could ever deal with. I hope people realize I was really asking if such a prcoedure exists, even if it would take a superhuman to perform it.

The consciousness subject does not seem like a fruitful area of debate ultimately. The issue in my mind is that consciousness is not directly perceived by outside observers. To study consciousness we would have to identify behaviors or actions of an individual that could not exist without the presence of consciousness.

For my point of view, every other living thing could be devoid of consciousness and could just be an organic machine programmed to behave in a manner consistent with my expectations of consciousness. I cannot see how I would ever be able to detect that situation. As long as that is the case, consciousness cannot be studied in any meaningful scientific manner. Philosophical musing about it is as much theology as any religion.

The answer is still no for the same reasons. A super intelligent entity, no matter how advanced, will still not be able to predict the behavior of some systems without simulating or observing them long term, and cannot confidently call them conscious or not otherwise.

For what it's worth, I suspect this may not be true. I think consciousness may be a prerequisite for complex behavior. In fact, I am nearly 100% certain of it, solely due to considerations of parsimony.

I’m having a hard time understanding that some are unequivocally stating that we know nothing about consciousness or in some manner have rationalized it away into the garbage dumps of skepticism. Those who do see it that way should take a deep breath upon awakening tomorrow morning and note that somehow you are “conscious” and of course previously you were “unconscious” to a significant extent.

Earthly consciousness is about our earthly senses which cannot be rationalized away unless one prefers illusion. This illusion seems to manifest itself by some demanding an “objective” appreciation of consciousness that of others rather than one’s self. This type of person wants to “prove” consciousness in another before believing in the so called “objectivity” of consciousness. Someday this same person will not eat any longer until someone “proves” digestion to him. He reserves the right to judge an objective reality but will not allow himself to be objective about himself. Therefore he denies the viability of “consciousness” within himself for it is not objective and at the same time reserves the right to judge that which is without but forgets that he is still back within himself, into that “subjective” limbo he refuses to allow.

I’d ask that person, upon awakening tomorrow; to please note the senses he is using to be “what ever it is” for we cannot call it consciousness, according to him. The senses are rampant in this little scientific study and are: taste, sight, smell hearing, tone, balance, warmth, concept, speech, movement, life and to some, touch. This is earthly consciousness though some of the aforementioned senses may not be well known the general idea should be apparent. I know this may be tough for some of you to have such an obvious perception within yourself but live with it, it’s real. There is no theoretical positing of atoms, molecules, bosons, quarks, etc…. but a phenomenon observed “objectively” within yourself.

If you insist on doing the quantum mechanical or Newtonian approach then you will enter into an illusory state, a GRAND ENCHANTMENT. This is the world where thoughts demand that the world follow their lead, abstract theoretical thoughts, of negative relevance. The mathematizing accomplished in this scientific manner is abstract and devoid of life for they do not look at the phenomenon itself and therefore there is a gross failure in perception.” TO REPEAT, THERE IS A FAILURE IN PERCEPTION”.


Yes, there is a color red and one does have an earthly consciousness. As an aside there are other consciousnesses that man on earth can experience such as “dream consciousness”. Some are also able to experience that “consciousness of deep sleep” for which most of us are totally unaware.