4 ms·

Claiming something might be emergent is a way of hand waiving away your responsibility to explain the mechanism in your hypothesis. It means nothing.

pa7x1 3y ago
I think you misunderstand what it means for a property to be emergent. It's not about hand waiving its origin, but about highlighting that the property progressively appears ("emerges") as the scale of the system changes in some direction. What I'm suggesting with the above, is that there is nothing magical or distinctive about the mechanisms that generate consciousness vs. those that generate the understanding of semantics, grammar, syntax in a GPT or the ability to keep a pole in vertical position on a rolling cart with some reinforcement learning. Instead, it views consciousness as the mental model that is generated by a sufficiently complex intelligence (biological or not) when it has the ability to perceive inputs of its environment, and crucially, of itself. That is, a sufficiently complex brain with the ability to observe its environment and itself, will inevitably generate a model of both and their relationship. The model of itself and how it distinguishes itself from the environment is what I think is consciousness. What I mean with emergent is that this mental model progressively becomes more and more rich ("emerges") as the cognitive abilities becomes more complex and the inputs of itself and the environment increase. A tapeworm with a very minimal central nervous system, scarce sensory inputs of the environment, and likely even less of itself will develop an excessively simple model that can hardly be recognized as consciousness. As you scale the cognitive abilities and the inputs it processes of both; environment and itself, a richer model of both will emerge. And that thing will start to look a whole lot like consciousness.
- alienicecream 3y ago
  Is a map conscious? It is a model of the environment. Would you classify it as conscious if it could give you output on demand? Is Google maps conscious but a paper map not?

pa7x1 3y ago

I think you misunderstand what it means for a property to be emergent. It's not about hand waiving its origin, but about highlighting that the property progressively appears ("emerges") as the scale of the system changes in some direction. What I'm suggesting with the above, is that there is nothing magical or distinctive about the mechanisms that generate consciousness vs. those that generate the understanding of semantics, grammar, syntax in a GPT or the ability to keep a pole in vertical position on a rolling cart with some reinforcement learning. Instead, it views consciousness as the mental model that is generated by a sufficiently complex intelligence (biological or not) when it has the ability to perceive inputs of its environment, and crucially, of itself. That is, a sufficiently complex brain with the ability to observe its environment and itself, will inevitably generate a model of both and their relationship. The model of itself and how it distinguishes itself from the environment is what I think is consciousness. What I mean with emergent is that this mental model progressively becomes more and more rich ("emerges") as the cognitive abilities becomes more complex and the inputs of itself and the environment increase. A tapeworm with a very minimal central nervous system, scarce sensory inputs of the environment, and likely even less of itself will develop an excessively simple model that can hardly be recognized as consciousness. As you scale the cognitive abilities and the inputs it processes of both; environment and itself, a richer model of both will emerge. And that thing will start to look a whole lot like consciousness.

alienicecream 3y ago
Is a map conscious? It is a model of the environment. Would you classify it as conscious if it could give you output on demand? Is Google maps conscious but a paper map not?