Consciousness and Reality

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I agree about threads. I think that a computer capable of sentience is a long way off, and androids with such ability further still. Some experts, like Ray Kurzweil, predict exponential progress toward this. I hope he is right. Being able to have my mind transferred to a computer, and later an android would have to come pretty soon for me to be able to do it.

More on topic: I see consciousness as coming through "emergence" as mentioned in the first paper linked in the OP. One way to help visualize this is by using other animals than humans as models which are less advanced, who presumably do not have sentience. Chimpanzees have been shown to have self awareness. This was done through an experiment in which they were presented with a mirror, which revealed that they viewed the image at first to be of a different chimp than themselves. Later, they came to recognize the true nature of the image in the mirror as being themselves. The chimpanzee was anesthetized and a spot of color was added to his forehead. When he awoke, he looked in the mirror and wiped his forehead. Other, less advanced animals, I take it, failed this test.

As we evolved, our more complex brain developed consciousness through emergence.

Fair. I think if we ended up with zombies though we'd essentially end up with hyper-alpha people who simply don't age (though I should clarify - 'perfect' rather than 'aggressive' but perhaps guile that a human could never keep up with).

I agree with your speculation about the future. We had better be sure to program in Asimov's laws of robotics to be sure they don't eventually get rid of us less than perfect life forms. Trans-Humanists foresee transferring human consciousness into a more perfect android body some day,

My thought is that you'd see all kinds of dorky guys walking around with ultra-glib supermodels, dorky women with male underwear models of a similar caliber, and then you find out that the AI's have the plan to marry us, bear the data of our offspring, and essentially phase us out of existence that way.

It might not be the best analogy, but when we think about the way we think, I don't think we entirely know what we are experiencing. We certainly can't see it, even though we can recognize it in most cases. As for sentient computers, how could you tell it was self aware, or merely acting like it is because it was programmed to mimic awareness?

This has always fascinated me for some unknown reason.
It strikes me that we become conscious that we have made a decision or decided to do something, to think or not think, etc . At the surface it appears we consciously decide or the conscious thought is first in time. But it's the way we experience this (awareness) that hides the neural program behind the scenes. We are or become aware that we have decided.

I wouldn't care if my organic body got phased out, once my consciousness and memories get transferred over. If everyone in the human race got replaced in the same way, it would just be a new type of evolution to a more perfect type of body.

If what you are saying is that no one has perfect objectivity when evaluating themselves, including their thought process, I agree. But we do succeed to a large extent. On the other hand, if the "Matrix" scenario is true, then we aren't very close to being accurate in viewing ourselves. I don't think that is at all likely, however.

As to sentient computers, (and androids) I agree that the "Turing test" is not an absolutely fail safe test, and is subject to judgement. It is the only way I know of to judge. On the other hand, the old "spot on the forehead test" would be pretty easy to artificially pass.

Are you saying that newborns make this decision, and those who decide not to think never progress mentally? Maybe I am taking you too literally. Or are you saying that we all decide to think, even though we are not conscious of that decision? It is certain that we don't consciously decide which neurons to fire, etc.

The bolded is a great point, R.
I've always said that we 'are' ( existent) or are actualized( conscious) at the end those firing neurons. And how could it be otherwise? If not, then it becomes a necessity to the invoking of some sort of mysterious spiritual life force that directs this "firing." Like an invisible 'soul" pushing down(typing ) on the keyboard buttons, directing our bodies and "mind" in some particular course.

There is evidence that we do not consciously decide, but we become consciously aware of that decision or that we have decided -- subconsciously, there is a delay or time lag before we "act."

Last edited by Mdyar on 10 May 2012, 9:04 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Grebels, I have read several of Penrose's books, and the Emperor's new mind made a deep impression on me.
The danger as I see it of starting to think too much about these things without having the tools to get every step right is that we very easily end up using bad understanding of quantum physics to back up weakly formed ideas about something we don't understand, and then we try to apply it to our perceived experience.

What I got from Penrose was, first of all, a solid and very well structured history of human knowledge.
I have another book by him which attempts to be exactly that: The Road to Reality: A Complete Guide to the Laws of the Universe. Whoa. Heavy stuff.
In my understanding the Emperor book made an extremely good case of showing that because Gödel was right, and if the human consciousness, or the mind, or soul, or whatever you choose to call it can be interpreted as a sufficiently complex formal system, it is not possible to describe that mind/soul/consciousness fully within the system (which is us).
Not only do we not know enough about how the mind works to understand it, we can never completely understand it.

The danger, or the problem, of reading these popularizations of deep, heavy ideas, is that not only are most of us not capable of understanding even the simplest implications of them, but we tend to latch on to bits and pieces of them that we think we understand and apply them where they don't belong.

In my (limited) understanding of Penrose, what he was saying was that not only do we lack some fundamental understanding of the universe to describe the mind sufficiently, but we might very well never be able to achieve an understanding deep and thorough enough to be able to create any form of believable artificial intelligence. And that's all. No implications on religious issues, no new age quantum interconnectivity, no "what the bleep do we know" s**t. We will not be able to build a robot that thinks like us. That was his point, if I understood the book. The important implications are in the field of AI, not newage or religion.


His latest one was super interesting, but no serious scientist will discuss it until he publishes that CCC theory in the proper scientific manner and opens it up for peer review. I was taken by his arguments. But I am not a cosmologist. I'm just a reader of books I can buy at airports.

Well I suppose if such a thing is possible, otherwise they're just creating a zombie that has your offspring traits (bonded with that of a supermodel) to placate your evolutionary needs so they can dispose of us humanely in a mathematical sort of sense.

What about mirrors?

That way an eyeball can see itself as it was a fraction of a second ago.

ruveyn

Newtonian physics succeeded a great deal until we discovered there was more than what it explained.

If people knew exactly what was going on in their heads, I think for one, the mental health industry would be a lot different.

I really have doubts our perception upon time and space is real.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N6S9OidmNZM

If all of these are real, they should be ahead of us. But we are ahead of time and space and our mind creates all of these things we see everyday.
Can't trust my brain.

Jump of the nearest high cliff without a chute and tell yourself it is all an illusion. Are you up to that challenge?

ruveyn