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No, it would not allow you to create consciousness, it would simply mean that there is no such thing as consciousness. eliminative materialism would be true. th

No, it would not allow you to create consciousness, it would simply mean that there is no such thing as consciousness. eliminative materialism would be true. there would be no 'you' to live forever. Us not knowing exactly how something works has never stopped us before from looking into it. With "a simulation of digestion" I specifically mean a software simulation, not a hardware simulation. I assure you I had a meaning with the text I wrote, it is not meaningless. The meaning is for me to say, your interpretation of it (and this is the point) underdetermines the meaning of it. You fully determine what i meant simply from the characters on the screen. Physical instantiations of abstract items work the same way. An item needing to do something is irrelevant of it being able to, a software simulation of food does not actually digest food. A software simulation of abstract concepts do not actually instantiate them. I am repeating myself again but any AI system you believe to have instantiated the abstract concept of triangularity is just an interpretation on your part to having done so, you might as well interpret it to simply being a room heating device or the implementation of some other algorithm that also matches the behaviour.

vidarh 7y ago
> No, it would not allow you to create consciousness, it would simply mean that there is no such thing as consciousness. eliminative materialism would be true. there would be no 'you' to live forever. Do you believe you are conscious? I believe I am conscious. If the brain is purely bioelectrical, then a purely bioelectrical system at least is able to reproduce an entity that believes itself to be conscious. Whether there is a meaningful distinction between that and "actual" consciousness is something we simply don't know, because we don't have a way of measuring whether or not another entity actually is conscious, whatever we take that to mean. Maybe that belief that I am conscious is flawed and merely an illusion, but if copying my mind could allow that illusion to persist forever, then my illusion of consciousness would still be quite pleased with that outcome. That is quite enough for me. > I am repeating myself again but any AI system you believe to have instantiated the abstract concept of triangularity is just an interpretation on your part to having done so, you might as well interpret it to simply being a room heating device or the implementation of some other algorithm that also matches the behaviour. Here is an implementation of the abstract concept of triangularity that does not involve an interpretation of what it means or an instantiation of the concept, merely a symbol that describes the abstract concept as it is: thought = :triangularity I define the symbol :triangularity to refer to the abstract concept, so it does. I can manipulate that concept with or without making any interpretation as to what the concept actually means. Symbolic manipulation of abstract ideas is trivially easy. The idea that we can't is ludicrous. The challenge comes when we try to interpret and reason about specific concrete interpretations, not in holding an abstract concept - we've known how to communicate abstract concepts as data without instantiating an interpretation since at least the moment we could write. You're attacking AI on the basis of one of the problems that are easiest to solve. Symbolic manipulation of abstract concepts with computers in a meaningful form dates back to at least the 50's. The ease with which we can do that was part of much of the early misguided hope of a rapid revolution in general artificial intelligence.
- mooseburger 7y ago
  > Maybe that belief that I am conscious is flawed and merely an illusion That's the Dennett nonsense. Of course our sense inputs are an illusion, it's that there is anything being perceived at all that is the mystery! : DENNETT: So you see, Socrates, consciousness is an illusion. SOCRATES: I see, but I need to clarify something. What do you mean by illusion? DENNETT: An illusion is an appearance contrary to reality. SOCRATES: And what is an appearance? DENNETT: An appearance is something that is apprehended by an observer. SOCRATES: So consciousness is something that is apprehended by an observer which is contrary to reality. DENNETT: But that cannot be, because then the observer would have to be conscious. SOCRATES: Therefore, consciousness cannot be an illusion!
  - vidarh 7y ago
    This makes no sense to me. The point I was making is that we do not know what consciousness actually is. Until we do, we have no way of telling whether my impression of my own consciousness has any reasonable relation to the reality of it. It is meaningless to try to determine whether or not it is an illusion without first having an understanding of what consciousness is. More directly to the argument I was addressing, the point is that whether or not the commenter I replied to is right and there'd be no "me" that could live on forever, that is really rather irrelevant to the "me" that believes I am conscious. In other words: While I need clarity in what consciousness is to be able to even begin to address whether or not what I have is truly consciousness, it really doesn't matter to the question of whether or not whatever I am sees value in a process that'd let me live on.
    - mooseburger 7y ago
      You don't have an impression of your own consciousness (your conscious awareness) to begin with. You just perceive stuff. How exactly could you not have conscious awareness?
      - vidarh 7y ago
        We can't even meaningfully answer that question without an understanding of what consciousness is first. Consciousness appears to us as if we are distinct entities, with a spatial and temporal existence, operating on sensory input and memory. We don't know if any of that is true - we don't know if there is any persistent entity, whether spatially or temporally. I'm not saying there's "nothing" that we could label consciousness. I'm saying we have no way of suggesting whether or not our idea of ourselves as an entity that experiences events and acts on them (even just mentally) is meaningfully connected to reality. My point in making that argument is that it doesn't matter - absent any better information, the only thing that makes sense for us is to act on the basis that our consciousness is real, and interact with people on the basis that they're real and conscious, because it doesn't matter whether or not it is an illusion if we can not "see past the veil". This is incidentally also the classical response to philosophical idealism: Sure, maybe all our senses lie to us, but since everything acts as if we're in a materialist world, it doesn't matter. It remains possible that at some point we find something that lets us lift the veil, and peer out into something "outside" our present reality. But that possibility does not change anything until and unless it becomes reality.

vidarh 7y ago

> No, it would not allow you to create consciousness, it would simply mean that there is no such thing as consciousness. eliminative materialism would be true. there would be no 'you' to live forever. Do you believe you are conscious? I believe I am conscious. If the brain is purely bioelectrical, then a purely bioelectrical system at least is able to reproduce an entity that believes itself to be conscious. Whether there is a meaningful distinction between that and "actual" consciousness is something we simply don't know, because we don't have a way of measuring whether or not another entity actually is conscious, whatever we take that to mean. Maybe that belief that I am conscious is flawed and merely an illusion, but if copying my mind could allow that illusion to persist forever, then my illusion of consciousness would still be quite pleased with that outcome. That is quite enough for me. > I am repeating myself again but any AI system you believe to have instantiated the abstract concept of triangularity is just an interpretation on your part to having done so, you might as well interpret it to simply being a room heating device or the implementation of some other algorithm that also matches the behaviour. Here is an implementation of the abstract concept of triangularity that does not involve an interpretation of what it means or an instantiation of the concept, merely a symbol that describes the abstract concept as it is: thought = :triangularity I define the symbol :triangularity to refer to the abstract concept, so it does. I can manipulate that concept with or without making any interpretation as to what the concept actually means. Symbolic manipulation of abstract ideas is trivially easy. The idea that we can't is ludicrous. The challenge comes when we try to interpret and reason about specific concrete interpretations, not in holding an abstract concept - we've known how to communicate abstract concepts as data without instantiating an interpretation since at least the moment we could write. You're attacking AI on the basis of one of the problems that are easiest to solve. Symbolic manipulation of abstract concepts with computers in a meaningful form dates back to at least the 50's. The ease with which we can do that was part of much of the early misguided hope of a rapid revolution in general artificial intelligence.

mooseburger 7y ago
> Maybe that belief that I am conscious is flawed and merely an illusion That's the Dennett nonsense. Of course our sense inputs are an illusion, it's that there is anything being perceived at all that is the mystery! : DENNETT: So you see, Socrates, consciousness is an illusion. SOCRATES: I see, but I need to clarify something. What do you mean by illusion? DENNETT: An illusion is an appearance contrary to reality. SOCRATES: And what is an appearance? DENNETT: An appearance is something that is apprehended by an observer. SOCRATES: So consciousness is something that is apprehended by an observer which is contrary to reality. DENNETT: But that cannot be, because then the observer would have to be conscious. SOCRATES: Therefore, consciousness cannot be an illusion!
- vidarh 7y ago
  This makes no sense to me. The point I was making is that we do not know what consciousness actually is. Until we do, we have no way of telling whether my impression of my own consciousness has any reasonable relation to the reality of it. It is meaningless to try to determine whether or not it is an illusion without first having an understanding of what consciousness is. More directly to the argument I was addressing, the point is that whether or not the commenter I replied to is right and there'd be no "me" that could live on forever, that is really rather irrelevant to the "me" that believes I am conscious. In other words: While I need clarity in what consciousness is to be able to even begin to address whether or not what I have is truly consciousness, it really doesn't matter to the question of whether or not whatever I am sees value in a process that'd let me live on.
  - mooseburger 7y ago
    You don't have an impression of your own consciousness (your conscious awareness) to begin with. You just perceive stuff. How exactly could you not have conscious awareness?
    - vidarh 7y ago
      We can't even meaningfully answer that question without an understanding of what consciousness is first. Consciousness appears to us as if we are distinct entities, with a spatial and temporal existence, operating on sensory input and memory. We don't know if any of that is true - we don't know if there is any persistent entity, whether spatially or temporally. I'm not saying there's "nothing" that we could label consciousness. I'm saying we have no way of suggesting whether or not our idea of ourselves as an entity that experiences events and acts on them (even just mentally) is meaningfully connected to reality. My point in making that argument is that it doesn't matter - absent any better information, the only thing that makes sense for us is to act on the basis that our consciousness is real, and interact with people on the basis that they're real and conscious, because it doesn't matter whether or not it is an illusion if we can not "see past the veil". This is incidentally also the classical response to philosophical idealism: Sure, maybe all our senses lie to us, but since everything acts as if we're in a materialist world, it doesn't matter. It remains possible that at some point we find something that lets us lift the veil, and peer out into something "outside" our present reality. But that possibility does not change anything until and unless it becomes reality.