6 ms·

This solution isn’t ignored because it’s boring, but because it isn’t rigorous enough. If consciousness just is an emergent property of the function of neural c

This solution isn’t ignored because it’s boring, but because it isn’t rigorous enough. If consciousness just is an emergent property of the function of neural cells, define function, define neural cells? What is the lowest level of complexity of each that allows consciousness? Why only neural cells, that is if it is only neural cells at all? By the anthropic principle it is a given that consciousness arises from the function of neural cells, but that isn’t a satisfying answer because it doesn’t actually answer anything.

skohan 5y ago
Idk I tend to think it is rigorous enough, and maybe the fact that we don't intuitively believe it's rigorous enough is an artifact of an evolved spiritual impulse. It seems to me consciousness is something we have to have to exist the way that we do. In order for the human animal to function, we need to understand the past, predict the future, understand the motivations of others and come up with stories about the world we use to convince others and facilitate collaboration. Human society wouldn't be possible without consciousness, and I don't see more explanation needed than the idea that we evolved this ability for our brains to talk to themselves in this certain way through the series of selective pressures which lead us to where we are today. Other animals probably have some version of this at varying levels of complexity, and somewhere along the line you could probably draw a line and say a slug with 15 neurons probably is more of a biological machine, and doesn't have anything you could describe as consciousness or subjective experience. Maybe you even need a pretty advanced brain with a neocortex to allow for subjective experience. I don't know why some "spooky stuff" is needed, or why some reach for consciousness to be a property which arises in individual cells. I think it's probably a very complex thing which arises from very complex structures consisting of millions or billions of neurons.
- maverick-iceman 5y ago
  There are various degrees of consciousness, awareness and abstraction capabilities between humans as well. The smarter the human, the more conscious and aware they are about the surroundings, the higher their ability to create and understand abstract concepts etc. Is this just the product of more numerous neurons? Better connected neurons? Higher density neurons in some areas of the brain? Is number of neurons correlated with IQ and in turn correlated to degree of consciousness and abstraction? We don't know yet, but it seems better advised to start looking at the base biological components first vs "spooky stuff"
- roberttod 5y ago
  Could you explain why only some of our neurons are part of our consciousness? If it's emergent then why does only part of our nervous system get to experience the world, or is the other part also concious but we are not aware? There's a lot of tricky questions here that no one can really explain. I don't think the answer need be any "spookier" than any phenomenon that's unexplained - except maybe it's just surprising we've made so little progress at all.
  - skohan 5y ago
    Which part of an internal combustion engine creates the forward motion of a car? Is it the fuel injector? The spark plugs? The pistons? Of course it's none of these things: the function of an engine is obviously a result of all of these parts of a complex system working together. It would be silly to claim that internal combustion is some intrinsic property of matter which exists at some level in the metal of the pistons, and maybe also in the doors of the car in a way we don't fully understand. Consciousness is observably a property of the brain. Consciousness can be predictably altered or removed by interfering with the chemical function at the synapse, or by inflicting physical trauma on brain tissue. Honestly I don't see what is so difficult to understand here.
    - roberttod 5y ago
      Consciousness cannot be measured, the only concious being we can know for certain is ourself. It's not an observable property (or we haven't figured out how to observe it). You could remove the wheels from a car and observe the engine running and the axels turning but it wouldn't go forward. Do you see the difference to your analogy? Forward movement can be measured. And if you removed parts of the car you would eventually get down to the bare minimum required for forward movement because you could observe it. You cannot do this with conciousness.
      - skohan 5y ago
        Oh I'd say we have plenty of ways to measure and observe consciousness. We can measure brain activity during sleep and understand with some precision whether someone is dreaming or not, which is a state of consciousness. We can give someone a psychoactive drug, and ask them questions about how their consciousness has been altered. > Forward movement can be measured. And if you removed parts of the car you would eventually get down to the bare minimum required for forward movement because you could observe it. You cannot do this with consciousness. What makes you so confident of this? We actually have plenty of evidence in this direction with consciousness. We can observe that lesions in different parts of the brain have very predictable effects on consciousness. We can observe that psychedelics like LSD reduce sensory inputs to the thalamus, having very predictable effects on consciousness. Consciousness is obviously a process which responds to physical intervention, so why should we jump to the conclusion that it somehow exists outside the bounds of the physical world rather than assuming that it's just one of many physical phenomena we have yet to fully understand? To give an example, we cannot reliably predict the movement of the economy. We can understand some of the forces guiding it, we can try to understand it in terms of certain metric, and we can take some actions to get the results we want, but ultimately we can't point to any one thing and say: "this is the economy". It's an emergent property of a vastly dynamic interconnected system of billions of independent actors, and as a result we will probably never be able to fully pin it down. But we don't assume that the economy moves as the result of some magical force controlled by the gods, we rightly know it's just something out of our grasp.
- gus_massa 5y ago
  AlphaStar[1] is an AI program that plays StarCraft against humans. The second version, that has a limited vision of the map and a limited number of clicks per second, plays quite humanlike. > * In order for the human animal to function, we need to understand the past, predict the future,* AlphaStar can do that (or at least simulate that). It it has seen a invisible helicopter, it remembers that. It also understand that the opponent has build an airport to make the helicopter and invested to research the invisibility feature. So other research are probably delayed. Also it expect to see more invisible helicopter in the future, so it builds detector for invisible units. Does it understand the past and the future or only simulates understanding? > understand the motivations of others If it sees an airport that is researching invisibility, it probably guess that the opponent wants to make invisible helicopters, and want to use the helicopters to attack it's units or buildings. > and come up with stories about the world we use to convince others and facilitate collaboration. Human society wouldn't be possible without consciousness, AFAIK there is no multiplayer version of this AI, but it would be interesting to see one. It will be a difficult problem to choose how much communication to allow between to AI so they can play together, but not as a four-handled player. Also, how to interact with a human teammate. But it doesn't look impossible. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AlphaStar_(software) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AlphaStar_(software)
  - skohan 5y ago
    I suspect things like this will converge towards AGI, and at a certain point, AI is going to be so embedded in our lives that whether or not it's truly conscious is going to seem like a pedantic distinction.
Koshkin 5y ago
> This solution isn’t ignored because it’s boring, but because it isn’t rigorous enough. Well, this sounds like what they could say a thousand years ago: "the (say) Greeks' definition of what the natural luminous celestial body is not rigorous enough, so, let's ignore it and continue believing in the sun as a god."
hallgrim 5y ago
What aspect of consciousness does it not explain?
bmitc 5y ago
I'm not sure that is a satisfying critique. If I'm reading you right, you seem to be taking a particulate or reductionist view (apologies if not). This is also a well known battle between particle physicists and others, say condensed matter physicists, like P. W. Anderson. In that context, he was a fan of the "more is different" approach which basically said that certain complex behavior can't be understood by simply breaking things down to their constituent parts, that emergent behavior (more) is indeed different and needs different approaches. His paper and many writings say it better. https://cse-robotics.engr.tamu.edu/dshell/cs689/papers/anderson72more_is_different.pdf https://cse-robotics.engr.tamu.edu/dshell/cs689/papers/ander...

skohan 5y ago

Idk I tend to think it is rigorous enough, and maybe the fact that we don't intuitively believe it's rigorous enough is an artifact of an evolved spiritual impulse. It seems to me consciousness is something we have to have to exist the way that we do. In order for the human animal to function, we need to understand the past, predict the future, understand the motivations of others and come up with stories about the world we use to convince others and facilitate collaboration. Human society wouldn't be possible without consciousness, and I don't see more explanation needed than the idea that we evolved this ability for our brains to talk to themselves in this certain way through the series of selective pressures which lead us to where we are today. Other animals probably have some version of this at varying levels of complexity, and somewhere along the line you could probably draw a line and say a slug with 15 neurons probably is more of a biological machine, and doesn't have anything you could describe as consciousness or subjective experience. Maybe you even need a pretty advanced brain with a neocortex to allow for subjective experience. I don't know why some "spooky stuff" is needed, or why some reach for consciousness to be a property which arises in individual cells. I think it's probably a very complex thing which arises from very complex structures consisting of millions or billions of neurons.

maverick-iceman 5y ago
There are various degrees of consciousness, awareness and abstraction capabilities between humans as well. The smarter the human, the more conscious and aware they are about the surroundings, the higher their ability to create and understand abstract concepts etc. Is this just the product of more numerous neurons? Better connected neurons? Higher density neurons in some areas of the brain? Is number of neurons correlated with IQ and in turn correlated to degree of consciousness and abstraction? We don't know yet, but it seems better advised to start looking at the base biological components first vs "spooky stuff"
roberttod 5y ago
Could you explain why only some of our neurons are part of our consciousness? If it's emergent then why does only part of our nervous system get to experience the world, or is the other part also concious but we are not aware? There's a lot of tricky questions here that no one can really explain. I don't think the answer need be any "spookier" than any phenomenon that's unexplained - except maybe it's just surprising we've made so little progress at all.
- skohan 5y ago
  Which part of an internal combustion engine creates the forward motion of a car? Is it the fuel injector? The spark plugs? The pistons? Of course it's none of these things: the function of an engine is obviously a result of all of these parts of a complex system working together. It would be silly to claim that internal combustion is some intrinsic property of matter which exists at some level in the metal of the pistons, and maybe also in the doors of the car in a way we don't fully understand. Consciousness is observably a property of the brain. Consciousness can be predictably altered or removed by interfering with the chemical function at the synapse, or by inflicting physical trauma on brain tissue. Honestly I don't see what is so difficult to understand here.
  - roberttod 5y ago
    Consciousness cannot be measured, the only concious being we can know for certain is ourself. It's not an observable property (or we haven't figured out how to observe it). You could remove the wheels from a car and observe the engine running and the axels turning but it wouldn't go forward. Do you see the difference to your analogy? Forward movement can be measured. And if you removed parts of the car you would eventually get down to the bare minimum required for forward movement because you could observe it. You cannot do this with conciousness.
    - skohan 5y ago
      Oh I'd say we have plenty of ways to measure and observe consciousness. We can measure brain activity during sleep and understand with some precision whether someone is dreaming or not, which is a state of consciousness. We can give someone a psychoactive drug, and ask them questions about how their consciousness has been altered. > Forward movement can be measured. And if you removed parts of the car you would eventually get down to the bare minimum required for forward movement because you could observe it. You cannot do this with consciousness. What makes you so confident of this? We actually have plenty of evidence in this direction with consciousness. We can observe that lesions in different parts of the brain have very predictable effects on consciousness. We can observe that psychedelics like LSD reduce sensory inputs to the thalamus, having very predictable effects on consciousness. Consciousness is obviously a process which responds to physical intervention, so why should we jump to the conclusion that it somehow exists outside the bounds of the physical world rather than assuming that it's just one of many physical phenomena we have yet to fully understand? To give an example, we cannot reliably predict the movement of the economy. We can understand some of the forces guiding it, we can try to understand it in terms of certain metric, and we can take some actions to get the results we want, but ultimately we can't point to any one thing and say: "this is the economy". It's an emergent property of a vastly dynamic interconnected system of billions of independent actors, and as a result we will probably never be able to fully pin it down. But we don't assume that the economy moves as the result of some magical force controlled by the gods, we rightly know it's just something out of our grasp.
gus_massa 5y ago
AlphaStar[1] is an AI program that plays StarCraft against humans. The second version, that has a limited vision of the map and a limited number of clicks per second, plays quite humanlike. > * In order for the human animal to function, we need to understand the past, predict the future,* AlphaStar can do that (or at least simulate that). It it has seen a invisible helicopter, it remembers that. It also understand that the opponent has build an airport to make the helicopter and invested to research the invisibility feature. So other research are probably delayed. Also it expect to see more invisible helicopter in the future, so it builds detector for invisible units. Does it understand the past and the future or only simulates understanding? > understand the motivations of others If it sees an airport that is researching invisibility, it probably guess that the opponent wants to make invisible helicopters, and want to use the helicopters to attack it's units or buildings. > and come up with stories about the world we use to convince others and facilitate collaboration. Human society wouldn't be possible without consciousness, AFAIK there is no multiplayer version of this AI, but it would be interesting to see one. It will be a difficult problem to choose how much communication to allow between to AI so they can play together, but not as a four-handled player. Also, how to interact with a human teammate. But it doesn't look impossible. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AlphaStar_(software) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AlphaStar_(software)
- skohan 5y ago
  I suspect things like this will converge towards AGI, and at a certain point, AI is going to be so embedded in our lives that whether or not it's truly conscious is going to seem like a pedantic distinction.

Koshkin 5y ago

> This solution isn’t ignored because it’s boring, but because it isn’t rigorous enough. Well, this sounds like what they could say a thousand years ago: "the (say) Greeks' definition of what the natural luminous celestial body is not rigorous enough, so, let's ignore it and continue believing in the sun as a god."

hallgrim 5y ago

What aspect of consciousness does it not explain?

bmitc 5y ago

I'm not sure that is a satisfying critique. If I'm reading you right, you seem to be taking a particulate or reductionist view (apologies if not). This is also a well known battle between particle physicists and others, say condensed matter physicists, like P. W. Anderson. In that context, he was a fan of the "more is different" approach which basically said that certain complex behavior can't be understood by simply breaking things down to their constituent parts, that emergent behavior (more) is indeed different and needs different approaches. His paper and many writings say it better. https://cse-robotics.engr.tamu.edu/dshell/cs689/papers/anderson72more_is_different.pdf https://cse-robotics.engr.tamu.edu/dshell/cs689/papers/ander...