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It's a really deep problem, which bothers a lot of philosophers and cognitive scientists. I don't pretend to know the answer, but here are some speculations. W

by nmaley 6y ago

It's a really deep problem, which bothers a lot of philosophers and cognitive scientists. I don't pretend to know the answer, but here are some speculations. We can speculate that consciousness is some kind of a representational process, using non-verbal, non symbolic representations. We can suppose that what is being represented is in part the state of my own body, and my current interactions with the external world. So this is not a static type of representation, it is a continuously changing representation, which is representing a real time 'dance' between my body and the world. So, returning to your (excellent) analogy of the field of rocks, the field of rocks would not be conscious unless and until it becomes an emergent representation of itself and its boundary with the rest of the world, all happening automatically and in real time. The field of rocks has no sensation of the sun's warmth because it has no representation of warmth, and no way of moving or changing it's own body as a response to that representation of warmth, and no attentional mechanism to prioritise how it responds to representations of warmth, hunger, thirst etc. Once you start to think of consciousness as a representational process you start to see how consciousness might become an emergent phenomenon inside a machine 'designed' for creating representations. A machine like a living animal. Of course, that puts you in the position of having to explain what is a non-symbolic, or non verbal, type of representation. But that's doable, I think.

algoholix 6y ago
Thank you for your thought-provoking answer! You're arguing that consciousness is to be understood as a consciousness of the self (and its environment). That implies that there can be intelligence that is not conscious, right? About the missing sensation of the field of rocks; How about adding some sensors to the system, so depending on measurements like temperature, one could move a certain designated stone, which could then be taken as input by the rules moving all the other stones. Would that change alone yield consciousness? Also, how many different types of such sensations are needed to produce consciousness? Humans sense quite a few different types of such input data, but we can't sense everything there is to be sensed. In your last two paragraphs, I believe you state that consciousness is just the (mathematical) reflexivity of "thoughts" (i.e. representational processes concerning objects). That's an interesting thought I've pondered as well, but doesn't that just move the problem to whether machines can produce such thoughts? Certainly they can produce representations of thoughts, but do they really think them?

by nmaley 6y ago

algoholix 6y ago

Thank you for your thought-provoking answer! You're arguing that consciousness is to be understood as a consciousness of the self (and its environment). That implies that there can be intelligence that is not conscious, right? About the missing sensation of the field of rocks; How about adding some sensors to the system, so depending on measurements like temperature, one could move a certain designated stone, which could then be taken as input by the rules moving all the other stones. Would that change alone yield consciousness? Also, how many different types of such sensations are needed to produce consciousness? Humans sense quite a few different types of such input data, but we can't sense everything there is to be sensed. In your last two paragraphs, I believe you state that consciousness is just the (mathematical) reflexivity of "thoughts" (i.e. representational processes concerning objects). That's an interesting thought I've pondered as well, but doesn't that just move the problem to whether machines can produce such thoughts? Certainly they can produce representations of thoughts, but do they really think them?