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>Will it also be conscious and experience sadness? Imagine you are programming an AI simulation. You could train a detector to associate a certain wavelength w

by zarmin 4y ago

>Will it also be conscious and experience sadness? Imagine you are programming an AI simulation. You could train a detector to associate a certain wavelength with a certain color. When shown a red light, the AI could say "that is red", because it correctly identified the wavelength. But it would never know what it feels like to see red, right? This is similar to how a blind person cannot know what it feels like to see red, but they can intellectually understand that it is an oscillation of 4.3*10^14 cycles per second. A different example: you could train an AI to recognize 10,000 songs. It would listen to the frequencies and patterns, and make an identification. In both of these cases, we have quantity as the input and output. If after training, you asked the AI to identify the first song it was trained on, would the AI experience nostalgia? Would there be a way the AI "feels" about the song? We can probably both agree that the answer would be no. For the same reasons, the answer to your question is also no. (edited for clarity)

russdill 4y ago
I appreciate your response, but it's impossible for me to imagine programming an AI simulation capable of feeling the perception of red. The idea that I can't imagine doing these things is because of a shortcoming in my knowledge. Maybe that knowledge is out there, or maybe it isn't. So the exercise gets us no closer to answering the question at hand. But what I can do is imagine creating a physics simulation. There's no gaps in our knowledge there. So again, I'll ask. We create a physics simulation of a human brain. Can the brain write a novel? Answer questions about what it's like to perceive the color red? This is just a yes or no question.
- zarmin 4y ago
  >The idea that I can't imagine doing these things is because of a shortcoming in my knowledge. I don't think there is a shortcoming in your knowledge. Your metaphysics intuition is correctly tuned: simulations cannot feel. >We create a physics simulation of a human brain. Can the brain write a novel? Answer questions about what it's like to perceive the color red? This is just a yes or no question. GPT-3 can do both of these things. Is it conscious? If you need a direct answer, it is yes. But when we reword your second question as "can a simulated brain experience the color red?" the answer becomes more clear; the simulation can identify a wavelength and know it is called "red". But the experiential part is akin to explaining color to a blind person. A simulated brain could identify molecular patterns of cocoa and sugar, but can it know what it is like to taste chocolate? Think about what it means to taste chocolate. Is it purely quantitative, like the balance of ingredients, or is there something else going on that is qualitative? Something abstract, something with meaning, something more close to the metal? We can probably agree that it feels like there is. What we are describing is subjectivity — your private conscious inner life. I suggest it is this that is fundamental and cannot be simulated. This is the layer where experience "happens". From this layer emerges meta-consciousness. Here is an article by Bernardo Kastrup on meta-consciousness: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5590537/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5590537/
  - russdill 4y ago
    OK, so a simulated human brain acts the same as a real human brain, is capable of the same things, tells you that yes, it can experience the color red, etc, but does not have any internal conscious experience. Why then would evolution produce beings with internal conscious experience? This would also mean that our internal conscious experience has no effect on what decisions we make, on whether we cry, smile, what memories we form, etc.
    - zarmin 4y ago
      >Why then would evolution produce beings with internal conscious experience? Well, I'm arguing it's the other way around. But to address what I think is the spirit of your question: if reality is only mind, if consciousness is truly fundamental, then why can't you read my thoughts? Why do we feel like individuals? Why do we have obviously separate private conscious inner lives? When you are asleep and dreaming, your "alter" generally does not know they are dreaming. Your dream self has dissociated from your waking self, but it is only after you wake up that you realize you were dreaming (if you even remember). Another example of this phenomenon is Dissociative Identity Disorder, where one mind splits into many alters, each unaware the others exist. I'm glossing over a significant amount in order to get to my point, but here are a couple links that go into great detail: - https://www.google.com/books/edition/_/JCdbmFCHYB0C?hl=en&gbpv=1&pg=PP6 https://www.google.com/books/edition/_/JCdbmFCHYB0C?hl=en&gb... (chapter 5) - https://www.mdpi.com/2409-9287/2/2/10/htm#sec4-philosophies-02-00010 https://www.mdpi.com/2409-9287/2/2/10/htm#sec4-philosophies-... (search for "Yet, we know empirically that living people have separate, private experiences (Fact 6)") My point is, our private conscious inner lives are dissociations, alters, from a "mind-at-large" fundamental consciousness. And the boundaries of these dissociations, the "containers" of individual private conscious inner life, (again glossing over so much, like panpsychism's combination problem) are metabolizing organisms. Metabolizing organisms are what alters _look like_ from the outside. Kastrup: "Since we only have intrinsic access to ourselves, we are the only structures known to have dissociated streams of inner experiences. We also have good empirical reasons to conclude that normal metabolism is essential for the maintenance of this dissociation, for when it slows down or stops the dissociation seems to reduce or end. These observations alone suggest strongly that metabolizing life is the structure corresponding to alters of [fundamental consciousness] But there is more: insofar as it resembles our own, the extrinsic behavior of all metabolizing organisms is also suggestive of their having dissociated streams of inner experiences analogous to ours in some sense" (from the mdpi link) >This would also mean that our internal conscious experience has no effect on what decisions we make, on whether we cry, smile, what memories we form, etc. Don't your thoughts and feelings influence your behavior?

by zarmin 4y ago

russdill 4y ago

I appreciate your response, but it's impossible for me to imagine programming an AI simulation capable of feeling the perception of red. The idea that I can't imagine doing these things is because of a shortcoming in my knowledge. Maybe that knowledge is out there, or maybe it isn't. So the exercise gets us no closer to answering the question at hand. But what I can do is imagine creating a physics simulation. There's no gaps in our knowledge there. So again, I'll ask. We create a physics simulation of a human brain. Can the brain write a novel? Answer questions about what it's like to perceive the color red? This is just a yes or no question.

zarmin 4y ago
>The idea that I can't imagine doing these things is because of a shortcoming in my knowledge. I don't think there is a shortcoming in your knowledge. Your metaphysics intuition is correctly tuned: simulations cannot feel. >We create a physics simulation of a human brain. Can the brain write a novel? Answer questions about what it's like to perceive the color red? This is just a yes or no question. GPT-3 can do both of these things. Is it conscious? If you need a direct answer, it is yes. But when we reword your second question as "can a simulated brain experience the color red?" the answer becomes more clear; the simulation can identify a wavelength and know it is called "red". But the experiential part is akin to explaining color to a blind person. A simulated brain could identify molecular patterns of cocoa and sugar, but can it know what it is like to taste chocolate? Think about what it means to taste chocolate. Is it purely quantitative, like the balance of ingredients, or is there something else going on that is qualitative? Something abstract, something with meaning, something more close to the metal? We can probably agree that it feels like there is. What we are describing is subjectivity — your private conscious inner life. I suggest it is this that is fundamental and cannot be simulated. This is the layer where experience "happens". From this layer emerges meta-consciousness. Here is an article by Bernardo Kastrup on meta-consciousness: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5590537/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5590537/
- russdill 4y ago
  OK, so a simulated human brain acts the same as a real human brain, is capable of the same things, tells you that yes, it can experience the color red, etc, but does not have any internal conscious experience. Why then would evolution produce beings with internal conscious experience? This would also mean that our internal conscious experience has no effect on what decisions we make, on whether we cry, smile, what memories we form, etc.
  - zarmin 4y ago
    >Why then would evolution produce beings with internal conscious experience? Well, I'm arguing it's the other way around. But to address what I think is the spirit of your question: if reality is only mind, if consciousness is truly fundamental, then why can't you read my thoughts? Why do we feel like individuals? Why do we have obviously separate private conscious inner lives? When you are asleep and dreaming, your "alter" generally does not know they are dreaming. Your dream self has dissociated from your waking self, but it is only after you wake up that you realize you were dreaming (if you even remember). Another example of this phenomenon is Dissociative Identity Disorder, where one mind splits into many alters, each unaware the others exist. I'm glossing over a significant amount in order to get to my point, but here are a couple links that go into great detail: - https://www.google.com/books/edition/_/JCdbmFCHYB0C?hl=en&gbpv=1&pg=PP6 https://www.google.com/books/edition/_/JCdbmFCHYB0C?hl=en&gb... (chapter 5) - https://www.mdpi.com/2409-9287/2/2/10/htm#sec4-philosophies-02-00010 https://www.mdpi.com/2409-9287/2/2/10/htm#sec4-philosophies-... (search for "Yet, we know empirically that living people have separate, private experiences (Fact 6)") My point is, our private conscious inner lives are dissociations, alters, from a "mind-at-large" fundamental consciousness. And the boundaries of these dissociations, the "containers" of individual private conscious inner life, (again glossing over so much, like panpsychism's combination problem) are metabolizing organisms. Metabolizing organisms are what alters _look like_ from the outside. Kastrup: "Since we only have intrinsic access to ourselves, we are the only structures known to have dissociated streams of inner experiences. We also have good empirical reasons to conclude that normal metabolism is essential for the maintenance of this dissociation, for when it slows down or stops the dissociation seems to reduce or end. These observations alone suggest strongly that metabolizing life is the structure corresponding to alters of [fundamental consciousness] But there is more: insofar as it resembles our own, the extrinsic behavior of all metabolizing organisms is also suggestive of their having dissociated streams of inner experiences analogous to ours in some sense" (from the mdpi link) >This would also mean that our internal conscious experience has no effect on what decisions we make, on whether we cry, smile, what memories we form, etc. Don't your thoughts and feelings influence your behavior?