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> But whether it's the source is really a question outside science. For example, it's role could also be analogous to a radio. What happens when the science w

> But whether it's the source is really a question outside science. For example, it's role could also be analogous to a radio. What happens when the science will eventually come up with technology to recreate (by all external empirical evidence) a human consciousness? Would you still say it's a "question outside science"? Then perhaps you can still claim that even the newely created mind inside a machine is also just a "radio" receiving the consciousness signals from the cosmos? Even so, of course noone can stop you from looking at things from that perspective, but then you can perhaps just look at the practical applications of understand exactly how such "radios" work and being able to have a technology which will in all external observable regards act as a human (even if you still perhaps won't believe it will have the same "real" type of consciousness as one). The peculiar thing about this question is that normally people who don't understand some advanced science (like automobiles or computing or radio, etc.) - don't actively express a will to keep others from studying and developing that science. There are billions who don't understand all the intricacies of a modern smartphone, but almost none of them (minus the religious fanatics) say things like "humans should not try to find this out", "that is not a question for science", "you will never be able to understand that", "herecy!", etc. And yet, when it comes to the science of consciousness, the mind, human cognition, artificial intelligence etc - we hear these voices all the time. "Stop studying the brain", "science can't help", "we'll never understand the mind", "it's above our abilities", etc. etc. Latest years have shown a tremendous progress in understanding and recreating parts of human intelligence. The task is huge and a lot is left to do, but every new understanding or technology clearly shows a pattern that we are getting close to it. And yet no matter how much "evidence" (in form of recreating) comes up, people still seem to feel unsettled that the science tries (and slowly succeeds) to understand the human mind. Having talked to many of these people it almost seems like they have a fear, a deep rooted fear of being a "machine" themselves. Somehow if they know that there is someone who understands how they work (and can recreate them), they feel like that diminishes their value, or perhaps removes their "soul" somehow? Well it doesn't. No amount of technical understanding and technological will abilities will diminish any subjective religious and other deep experiences. Because that's what they are: subjective. > But seeing the radio as the source would be kinda missing the whole point, wouldn't it? What point are these scientists missing? They are simply trying to create Strong AI. There is no "point" to this besides the technology itself. Sorry if anyone is upset, I'm just trying to understand the objection here. The scientists are clearly doing great and useful work, why would anyone think that they are wrong in doing that?

zepto 11y ago
I've never heard any of these 'stop studying the brain' statements you are referring to - do you have any citations? As to the question of the soul - sure there exist religious people who fear that science might demystify something they think should stay mysterious. But the fact that such people exist doesn't strengthen the argument that consciousness is just a product of a certain kind of machine. That may yet turn out to be true, but it is simply an unproven assertion at this time. It is attractive to pursue it because we have been successful at using machines to simulate other physical phenomena. There is zero evidence that we are close to producing consciousness in machines. We have plenty of examples of simulating independent information processing functions that are adaptive to their inputs in ways that are analogous to the brain. To assert that this indicates that we are getting close to reproducing consciousness is to affirm the consequent - that consciousness is just a paricular kind of algorithm. That's not scientific either. The radio analogy can't be dismissed so easily by resorting to straw men. It doesn't imply a mystical source. It simply implies that consciousness is not located in the brain. One simple non-mystical explanation for this is that consciousness is a social phenomenon. If this turns out to be true, then it would change the nature of strong AI from a standalone 'consciousness' to something that can only exist as an extension of our collective consciousness. It also opens the door for AI to do harm to our collective consciousness even without a singularity-like self-improving AGI take off. Machines are a metaphor. Biological processes approximate machines to the extent that we can develop machines that capture their behavior, but to date these are strictly limited.
pegasus 11y ago
There's nothing wrong with trying to understand the brain and more generally the machine aspect of ourselves. Yes, these scientists are doing valuable work. But in some very real way none of this can’t ever even begin to answer the question of what consciousness is. Any such question and any possible answer are still pheonomena that arise inside consciousness. Can science explain subjectivity? Does a machine have subjective experience the same way as we do? Is it even possible to create a strong AI? I think people have an intuition that none of this research can ever bring us closer to answering these questions. > What happens when the science will eventually come up with technology to recreate (by all external empirical evidence) a human consciousness? Would you still say it's a "question outside science"? Your question already presupposes that this will be possible. To you, it’s a question of “when” not of “if”. Your argument for that is the progress we’ve lately seen in AI. To me, and many others, this is like somebody saying that they’re closer to flying because he climbed a hill taller than others. But even assuming that this will have happened, does this mean that we’re machines and nothing more? Or that we’ve just fooled ourselves with a clever contraption? I know it’s frustrating, and many people want to swipe this under the rug, but it’s clear we still won’t know for sure.

zepto 11y ago

I've never heard any of these 'stop studying the brain' statements you are referring to - do you have any citations? As to the question of the soul - sure there exist religious people who fear that science might demystify something they think should stay mysterious. But the fact that such people exist doesn't strengthen the argument that consciousness is just a product of a certain kind of machine. That may yet turn out to be true, but it is simply an unproven assertion at this time. It is attractive to pursue it because we have been successful at using machines to simulate other physical phenomena. There is zero evidence that we are close to producing consciousness in machines. We have plenty of examples of simulating independent information processing functions that are adaptive to their inputs in ways that are analogous to the brain. To assert that this indicates that we are getting close to reproducing consciousness is to affirm the consequent - that consciousness is just a paricular kind of algorithm. That's not scientific either. The radio analogy can't be dismissed so easily by resorting to straw men. It doesn't imply a mystical source. It simply implies that consciousness is not located in the brain. One simple non-mystical explanation for this is that consciousness is a social phenomenon. If this turns out to be true, then it would change the nature of strong AI from a standalone 'consciousness' to something that can only exist as an extension of our collective consciousness. It also opens the door for AI to do harm to our collective consciousness even without a singularity-like self-improving AGI take off. Machines are a metaphor. Biological processes approximate machines to the extent that we can develop machines that capture their behavior, but to date these are strictly limited.

pegasus 11y ago

There's nothing wrong with trying to understand the brain and more generally the machine aspect of ourselves. Yes, these scientists are doing valuable work. But in some very real way none of this can’t ever even begin to answer the question of what consciousness is. Any such question and any possible answer are still pheonomena that arise inside consciousness. Can science explain subjectivity? Does a machine have subjective experience the same way as we do? Is it even possible to create a strong AI? I think people have an intuition that none of this research can ever bring us closer to answering these questions. > What happens when the science will eventually come up with technology to recreate (by all external empirical evidence) a human consciousness? Would you still say it's a "question outside science"? Your question already presupposes that this will be possible. To you, it’s a question of “when” not of “if”. Your argument for that is the progress we’ve lately seen in AI. To me, and many others, this is like somebody saying that they’re closer to flying because he climbed a hill taller than others. But even assuming that this will have happened, does this mean that we’re machines and nothing more? Or that we’ve just fooled ourselves with a clever contraption? I know it’s frustrating, and many people want to swipe this under the rug, but it’s clear we still won’t know for sure.