6 ms·

Is Consciousness Computable?

39 points by Fice 12y ago

letstryagain 12y ago
If the human brain is conscious then obviously consciousness is in fact computable. I don't see how the authors can reconcile their findings with this.
- dhruval 12y ago
  It isn't that simple. See... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hard_problem_of_consciousness http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hard_problem_of_consciousness The hard problem has to do with the mere fact of subjective experience. The fact that we experience something rather than nothing. The various permutations of consciousness that make up the entirety of one's experience of reality and the functional relationship between them can of-course be modelled computationally.
  - letstryagain 12y ago
    If we can model or compute physical processes then we can model or compute the human brain. Is consciousness beyond physics? I realise that some people think so but personally I find it preposterous.
    - JunkDNA 12y ago
      Of couse, if you can model or compute the human brain, then none of us has free will since we are merely chemical reactions and the product of environmental inputs at that point.
      - adrianN 12y ago
        I have yet to see a precise definition of "free will" that does not require magic (i.e. humans are not bound by the laws of physics) and somehow captures the intuitive feeling that "we" decide what we do. As far as I'm concerned, free will is an illusion.
        orasis 12y ago
        There is causality. This present moment is the very leading edge of causality being computed. When do you make decisions? Do you make them in the past? Do you make them in the future? Past and future do not exist. They are simply memories and fantasies arising in this present moment. If past and future don't really exist and decisions are made this present moment, is your decision pre-determined or is simply instantly determined, now? If the future were totally deterministic, it would have already been computed. But, it hasn't yet been computed. We are the computation happening right now, and there is reasonable reason to believe that a multitude of possibilities may collapse into the actuality of this moment.
        adrianN 12y ago
        Note that my claim that free will is an illusion does not imply determinism. When I flip a coin (or do a proper quantum-y experiment) the outcome isn't determined either. That doesn't mean the coin decides mid-flight which side feels more comfortable to land on.
        orasis 12y ago
        Fair enough. Most arguments to discount free will rely on determinism. Lets go back to this moment, now. Can you find a present moment in which outcomes are determined? Or, are you left with an infinitely slippery field of experience where outcomes are never fully resolved, but rather constantly morph into a new nowness? What if you, as the experiencer are not a thing that happened in the past or will happen in the future, but rather are exactly this nowness, this exact unfolding computation. What if you are not the data but the present processing? So, instead of us being the coin that decides in mid-flight, what if we are the processing/unfolding that is deciding?
    - tzs 12y ago
      > If we can model or compute physical processes [...] We can't, at least not with Turing machines or with things equivalent to Turing machines. Feynman showed in 1982 [1] that Turing machines suffer exponential slowdowns when trying to simulate quantum physics. Computing physical processes beyond some special cases (which include many very useful physical processes) will have to wait for advances in quantum computing. [1] http://www.cs.princeton.edu/courses/archive/fall05/frs119/papers/feynman82/feynman82.html http://www.cs.princeton.edu/courses/archive/fall05/frs119/pa...
    - orasis 12y ago
      Meditate and you won't find it preposterous. Absolutely everything you experience is consciousness. You have never experienced concrete objective reality, you have only ever experienced experiences, which is consciousness. Every idea you have about concrete objective reality is an idea. Ideas are experiences, which are consciousness. As much as you think you know what is "real", when does "real" exist? Thoughts of the past only ever arise in the present. Thoughts of the future only ever arise in the present. Within this present experience, which is when everything has ever occurred, can you find anything that is not an experience?
      - olalonde 12y ago
        By that logic, you can't even assume that other humans experience consciousness. You are effectively defining consciousness as your own consciousness alone. By that definition, it follows that consciousness cannot be computed because you wouldn't experience it. I don't think this is the definition most people have in mind though.
        orasis 12y ago
        "You are effectively defining consciousness as your own consciousness alone." That is a good point, and it bothered me for some period of time, but there is a way to resolve it. First, we have to recognize that "your own consciousness" is a dualistic framework that assumes that there is a subject (observer) and object (observed). If you do not assume experience to be "my experience", but rather experience that simply knows itself, then we can see that all experiences are simply known of themselves. When hearing a sound, there is just the sound. No hearer. When seeing the sight, there is just the sight. No seer. When feeling the sensation, there is just the sensation. No feeler. Why is it then that the feeling and the seeing seem to be occurring to "me" when they are in actuality simply occurring to themselves? It is because this self-known experiences are highly integrated with each other within this body. I assume that you too are having experiences that are not "happening to you", but are rather self known. So your hearing is just the heard. Your seeing is just the seen. Since "your" seen and "my" seen are not integrated, they appear to be happening "over there" and "over here". But, due to this lack of integration, I ultimately can not be sure that there are other experiences out there, but it seems like a good pragmatic assumption :-)
    - dhruval 12y ago
      As a thought experiment, imagine that the mechanical computer in the following comic is used to create a perfect model of your brain... http://xkcd.com/505/ http://xkcd.com/505/ At what point does it become conscious ? It doesn't seem to me like it would. As the comic says, electricity is the same thing as rocks just faster processing. Basic consciousness remains an unsolved problem in my eyes.
- harshreality 12y ago
  From the abstract: "Since lossy integration would necessitate continuous damage to existing memories, we propose it is more natural to frame consciousness as a lossless integrative process and provide a formalization of this idea using algorithmic information theory. We prove that complete lossless integration requires noncomputable functions. This result implies that if unitary consciousness exists, it cannot be modelled computationally." Seems to be setting up a straw man only to knock it down. Does anyone believe the brain losslessly integrates information? If not, the conclusion doesn't seem to apply.
  - DannyBee 12y ago
    They do, for even stranger reasons: " In particular, memory functions must be vastly non-lossy, otherwise retrieving them repeatedly would cause them to gradually decay". To paraphrase babbage, "I am not able rightly to apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a statement." Being lossy does not imply reading is lossy, it could be that writing destroys old information.
    - yongjik 12y ago
      How funny, retrieving memory in human brains do expose them to potential decay or alteration. http://phenomena.nationalgeographic.com/2013/05/20/when-memories-are-remembered-they-can-be-rewritten/ http://phenomena.nationalgeographic.com/2013/05/20/when-memo... > Every time we bring back an old memory, we run the risk of changing it. It’s more like opening a document on a computer – the old information enters a surprisingly vulnerable state when it can be edited, overwritten, or even deleted. It takes a while for the memory to become strengthened anew, through a process called reconsolidation. Memories aren’t just written once, but every time we remember them.
  - thret 12y ago
    The wording is confusing, but I thought perhaps they were assuming that an artificial brain would indeed be lossless and therefore could not be modeled computationally.
- aaron695 12y ago
  Yep it certainly seems crazy in a obvious way. Is it a joke paper perhaps? Reading it, it seems a bit muddled, almost on purpose. Stating known incorrect statements like the brain is 'lossless'. Unless it's trying to say, you can create a conscious computer (obvious) but to compute it, it might be impossible?
- crystaln 12y ago
  How is that obvious? You can't presume that the physical world is a component of consciousness.
  - letstryagain 12y ago
    You believe in stuff beyond the physical world. I do not.
    - crystaln 12y ago
      I certainly believe in the possibility of stuff beyond the "physical world," by which I assume you mean the space-time continuum of our universe. You'd have to be a fool to not be open to that possibility, given that we have no idea what or why anything exists, nor what might exist outside of this universe.
    - orasis 12y ago
      If you look closely, the physical world cannot be found. There is only this present moment. Past and future are memory and fantasy arising in this present moment. The couch that I am sitting on does not exist as a couch, that is a mental label. There is just causality rippling in this present moment.
debt 12y ago
I like the intention but obviously it's impossible to compute consciousness because "computing consciousness" doesn't mean anything. We don't know what consciousness is. I don't think many intelligent people realize how much of our understanding of the mind is like the wild west; we have very little-to-no understanding of how the mind works. Looking at pretty data visualizations from a brain scan doesn't tell you anything about the mind. Some very smart people still contend that consciousness may not even exist[1]. It's hard to tell because it's impossible to measure it objectively. I think to talk about the mind, we need to use different language entirely. We're still talking about it as if it's a science. "Chalmers contends that such reductive explanations are available in principle for all other natural phenomena, but not for consciousness. This is the hard problem." http://www.iep.utm.edu/hard-con/ http://www.iep.utm.edu/hard-con/
- strgrd 12y ago
  It's so clear that you didn't read a single word of the paper. Even if you want to argue that consciousness is somehow unknowable and not worth discussing scientifically because humanity is still too dumb (lol, wat), the authors provide a perfectly reasonable working definition of consciousness. The theory proposes that consciousness is an information processing phenomenon and can thus be quantiﬁed in terms of a systems’ organizational structure, speciﬁcally its capacity to integrate information... What we mean when we say that the human brain produces consciousness is that it integrates information, thus producing behaviour which reﬂects the actions of a uniﬁed, singular system.
  - vixin 12y ago
    That you're satisfied with the definition supplied astounds me. The words are loose as can be. Amoebae integrate information and produce behavior reflecting the actions of a unified singular system insofar as those undefined words mean anything. Somehow unknowable indeed. "While neuroscience might shed light on the input and output functions of the brain, the quantiﬁcation for integrated information we have presented here implies that it will be unable to shed light on the complex tangle that is core consciousness."
  - debt 12y ago
olalonde 12y ago
Wouldn't that contradict http://arxiv.org/abs/1003.5831 http://arxiv.org/abs/1003.5831 which claims that the laws of physics are computable? To be honest, I'm just a layman so I might be misunderstanding something.
- crystaln 12y ago
  Your presumption is that consciousness falls within the domain of physics, which is not by any means a good assumption.
  - brianberns 12y ago
    Really? I can provide plenty of evidence that consciousness falls within the domain of physics. Can you provide any that it's not?
    - orasis 12y ago
      This present experience falls outside the domain of physics. Physics is just models. This present experience is real. Ideas and models about reality are not reality, but rather contained within it.
      - pygy_ 12y ago
        > This present experience falls outside the domain of physics. [...] This present experience is real. So does/is the "material world" (assuming it is a thing of its own). A model of the universe that doesn't take consciousness into account is incomplete.
    - crystaln 12y ago
      > I can provide plenty of evidence that consciousness falls within the domain of physics So then provide some. Regardless of any evidence you have, it's certainly not conclusive, given the minimal understanding we have of existence and consciousness. And presuming your hypothesis to be true simply because you have some evidence seems rather unscientific.
orasis 12y ago
For a similarly super-geeky exploration of consciousness, I recommend this talk - "Consciousness and The Interface Theory of Perception" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dqDP34a-epI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dqDP34a-epI It provides a computable model of consciousness and reality that requires no objective reality, only conscious agents interacting with each other.
jimmcslim 12y ago
I always liked the idea in the old Cyberpunk tabletop RPG, that an artificial intelligence arose out of the 'internet' with its vast amounts of interconnected computing power, but because it was so loosely coupled and distributed we could not observe it nor be aware of it (apart from a few 'netrunners').
sferoze 12y ago
Algorithmic Information Theory is really amazing to me. I am still learning about it but I feel like I can see the connection to nature. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Algorithmic_information_theory http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Algorithmic_information_theory
wildermuthn 12y ago
I believe there's an argument to be made that consciousness is computation itself. I have a particular thought experiment about consciousness. Take a book, say, Lord of the Rings. Is Frodo conscious? Probably not. But lets say the book was extraordinarily detailed. Lets say the book was actually a mathematical model that described the workings of Middle Earth down to every elementary particle. Each page, a very long page, would describe one 'tick' of the Middle Earth universe. So you've simulated consciousness on paper. Not in a machine, mind you, but on paper. But it isn't really a simulation as much as a description. It isn't computation, but information. And that information doesn't make Frodo conscious. Now what if this book were put into a computer? And what if the world were modeled just as accurately and explicitly as the book? Would Frodo then be conscious, simply because a computer calculated the sequence of atomic movements within Frodo's brain? If so, is it the actual movements of those atoms that creates Frodo's experience of reality, or is it the computation that calculates that movement itself? Whatever process it is that allows reality to compute itself -- to obey the laws of physics -- whatever process that is . . I'd say that act of computation has more to say about consciousness that the actual result itself.
- xal 12y ago
  So, this: http://xkcd.com/505/ http://xkcd.com/505/
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
- shasta 12y ago
  > Is Frodo conscious? Probably not. How do you know? > I'd say that act of computation has more to say about consciousness that the actual result itself. And what is the act of computation? Is it not just a progression of relationships in the physical world? Surely consciousness doesn't require an observer to look at the atoms bouncing around in the computer to decide that they are simulation of Frodo. Surely it's just the evolving relationship between the atoms that's all that matters. If we could interpret any physical system as evolving in a way that's isomorphic to a brain, shouldn't that also produce consciousness? Maybe at the end of the day consciousness is just the "existence" (whatever that means) of a certain Turing machine or number. And if all of your understanding of this world is based on the state of your brain now, then isn't it a simpler explanation that now and your impression of consciousness, in this moment, is all that really exists? A philosopher is someone bright enough to pose such questions and dim enough to pursue their answers.
kanzure 12y ago
Slightly off-topic, but here's what Wikipedia says (in part): """ Consciousness — The having of perceptions, thoughts, and feelings; awareness. The term is impossible to define except in terms that are unintelligible without a grasp of what consciousness means. Many fall into the trap of equating consciousness with self-consciousness—to be conscious it is only necessary to be aware of the external world. Consciousness is a fascinating but elusive phenomenon: it is impossible to specify what it is, what it does, or why it has evolved. Nothing worth reading has been written on it.[19] Philosophers and non-philosophers differ in their intuitions about what consciousness is.[20] While most people have a strong intuition for the existence of what they refer to as consciousness,[21] skeptics argue that this intuition is false, either because the concept of consciousness is intrinsically incoherent, or because our intuitions about it are based in illusions. Gilbert Ryle, for example, argued that traditional understanding of consciousness depends on a Cartesian dualist outlook that improperly distinguishes between mind and body, or between mind and world. He proposed that we speak not of minds, bodies, and the world, but of individuals, or persons, acting in the world. [...] More generally, many philosophers and scientists have been unhappy about the difficulty of producing a definition that does not involve circularity or fuzziness.[19] """ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consciousness http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consciousness Suppose that consciousness didn't actually exist, but within this theory you grant that people really do have perceptions and experiences. Is that really so bad? What does it miss?
frozenport 12y ago
I wonder what experts and those doing peer-review would say? Is this good or bad quality work? How do we make sense of a social science article with no context and specialist language? Is there anything good here?
deleted 12y ago
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woodchuck64 12y ago
Michael Graziano's theory that consciousness is computed awareness of attention suggests a far more interesting and perhaps computable solution. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3223025/pdf/nihms328502.pdf http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3223025/pdf/nihm... http://www.amazon.com/Consciousness-Social-Brain-Michael-Graziano/dp/0199928649 http://www.amazon.com/Consciousness-Social-Brain-Michael-Gra...
tekni5 12y ago
This is going to sound pretty absurd, but I have this unscientific hypothesis about what consciousness really is. I believe there is a chance that consciousness is a requirement for a universe to exist. Without consciousness the universe exists as random information, contained within some infinite outside universe, where there is no time or space. So imagine this infinite outside universe full of all possible information, it exists in some metaphysical location, it has always existed and it will always exist. All this data makes zero sense and has zero purpose. Within this information exist patterns of every kind, everything real and not real is there. However for this data to become expressed, a conscious entity is required to exist inside of this data for the overall universe to place it in some sort of order. Therefore consciousness acts as a binder of random information, for this very conscious entity to exist some of this infinite information must be placed in a coherent order. So in this view, the start of the universe does not occur with the big bang, but with the first conscious entity. After this point, for consciousness to continue to exist, it must have a narrative based on fundamental laws which explain how it came into existence. All of history is created after the first conscious entity appears, the formation of the planets, evolution, etc. To better understand this, imagine a roll of film. You take each frame of this film and make it a separate slide. If you shuffle all these separate film slides and ask someone to view them in no given order, it would make very little sense of what the storyline is. However if you let them sort this information, they might be able to arrange this film in a continuous and coherent storyline. Similarly each planck time of our universe is a separate slide of information which exists in infinity. If a conscious entity exists in that frame the universe must provide a coherent storyline for that entity. Therefore additional frames are pulled out from infinity to allow consciousness to glide through infinity and essentially exist. I hope that made sense, if I have failed to explain it I apologize.
- dkarapetyan 12y ago
  Isn't consciousness itself a pattern in that infinitely possible universe of yours? It's kind of a circular argument you're making. If you have no constraints then anything is possible, including consciousness.
  - tekni5 12y ago
hyperion2010 12y ago
So I wrote a longer piece, and then realized that their whole premise is simply incorrect. Our brain lies to us and fills in the gaps all the time. We do not have perfect memory and continually deal with lossy information integration. The idea that consciousness is lossless is basically a straw man. I think it is fair to say that the brain enforces consistency of representations of the universe and in that way provides something that appears to be unitary, but it does so by discarding lots of information. Furthermore it is pretty clear that we do not have lossless memory. Any cursory look at the literature on eyewitness testimony will show this. TL;DR The brain lies to us all the time. Just consider the blind spot. Our unitary perception of the universe is an illusion and there is enormous information loss on the way from the sensory environment to motor output.
dkarapetyan 12y ago
I think any sane or even insane person knows the human brain is nowhere close to a lossless integrative device.
vinceguidry 12y ago
Consciousness is very probably a computing process directly reliant on quantum effects. As such it wouldn't be directly computable any more than any quantum system is.
- adrianN 12y ago
  Turing machines can simulate quantum computers. They just take longer to compute the same function.
  - orasis 12y ago
    Is that true? References?
  - vinceguidry 12y ago
    The question, "is consciousness computable?" appears to me to be asking something different than "can computation done by consciousness be simulated?" The former seems to be asking if you can compute the state of consciousness given some starting conditions. As an entangled quantum state is impossible to compute, it would seem that trying to compute the state of consciousness would be similarly impossible.

39 points by Fice 12y ago

If the human brain is conscious then obviously consciousness is in fact computable. I don't see how the authors can reconcile their findings with this.

dhruval 12y ago
It isn't that simple. See... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hard_problem_of_consciousness http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hard_problem_of_consciousness The hard problem has to do with the mere fact of subjective experience. The fact that we experience something rather than nothing. The various permutations of consciousness that make up the entirety of one's experience of reality and the functional relationship between them can of-course be modelled computationally.
- letstryagain 12y ago
  If we can model or compute physical processes then we can model or compute the human brain. Is consciousness beyond physics? I realise that some people think so but personally I find it preposterous.
  - JunkDNA 12y ago
    Of couse, if you can model or compute the human brain, then none of us has free will since we are merely chemical reactions and the product of environmental inputs at that point.
    - adrianN 12y ago
      I have yet to see a precise definition of "free will" that does not require magic (i.e. humans are not bound by the laws of physics) and somehow captures the intuitive feeling that "we" decide what we do. As far as I'm concerned, free will is an illusion.
      - orasis 12y ago
        There is causality. This present moment is the very leading edge of causality being computed. When do you make decisions? Do you make them in the past? Do you make them in the future? Past and future do not exist. They are simply memories and fantasies arising in this present moment. If past and future don't really exist and decisions are made this present moment, is your decision pre-determined or is simply instantly determined, now? If the future were totally deterministic, it would have already been computed. But, it hasn't yet been computed. We are the computation happening right now, and there is reasonable reason to believe that a multitude of possibilities may collapse into the actuality of this moment.
        adrianN 12y ago
        Note that my claim that free will is an illusion does not imply determinism. When I flip a coin (or do a proper quantum-y experiment) the outcome isn't determined either. That doesn't mean the coin decides mid-flight which side feels more comfortable to land on.
        orasis 12y ago
        Fair enough. Most arguments to discount free will rely on determinism. Lets go back to this moment, now. Can you find a present moment in which outcomes are determined? Or, are you left with an infinitely slippery field of experience where outcomes are never fully resolved, but rather constantly morph into a new nowness? What if you, as the experiencer are not a thing that happened in the past or will happen in the future, but rather are exactly this nowness, this exact unfolding computation. What if you are not the data but the present processing? So, instead of us being the coin that decides in mid-flight, what if we are the processing/unfolding that is deciding?
  - tzs 12y ago
    > If we can model or compute physical processes [...] We can't, at least not with Turing machines or with things equivalent to Turing machines. Feynman showed in 1982 [1] that Turing machines suffer exponential slowdowns when trying to simulate quantum physics. Computing physical processes beyond some special cases (which include many very useful physical processes) will have to wait for advances in quantum computing. [1] http://www.cs.princeton.edu/courses/archive/fall05/frs119/papers/feynman82/feynman82.html http://www.cs.princeton.edu/courses/archive/fall05/frs119/pa...
  - orasis 12y ago
    Meditate and you won't find it preposterous. Absolutely everything you experience is consciousness. You have never experienced concrete objective reality, you have only ever experienced experiences, which is consciousness. Every idea you have about concrete objective reality is an idea. Ideas are experiences, which are consciousness. As much as you think you know what is "real", when does "real" exist? Thoughts of the past only ever arise in the present. Thoughts of the future only ever arise in the present. Within this present experience, which is when everything has ever occurred, can you find anything that is not an experience?
    - olalonde 12y ago
      By that logic, you can't even assume that other humans experience consciousness. You are effectively defining consciousness as your own consciousness alone. By that definition, it follows that consciousness cannot be computed because you wouldn't experience it. I don't think this is the definition most people have in mind though.
      - orasis 12y ago
        "You are effectively defining consciousness as your own consciousness alone." That is a good point, and it bothered me for some period of time, but there is a way to resolve it. First, we have to recognize that "your own consciousness" is a dualistic framework that assumes that there is a subject (observer) and object (observed). If you do not assume experience to be "my experience", but rather experience that simply knows itself, then we can see that all experiences are simply known of themselves. When hearing a sound, there is just the sound. No hearer. When seeing the sight, there is just the sight. No seer. When feeling the sensation, there is just the sensation. No feeler. Why is it then that the feeling and the seeing seem to be occurring to "me" when they are in actuality simply occurring to themselves? It is because this self-known experiences are highly integrated with each other within this body. I assume that you too are having experiences that are not "happening to you", but are rather self known. So your hearing is just the heard. Your seeing is just the seen. Since "your" seen and "my" seen are not integrated, they appear to be happening "over there" and "over here". But, due to this lack of integration, I ultimately can not be sure that there are other experiences out there, but it seems like a good pragmatic assumption :-)
  - dhruval 12y ago
    As a thought experiment, imagine that the mechanical computer in the following comic is used to create a perfect model of your brain... http://xkcd.com/505/ http://xkcd.com/505/ At what point does it become conscious ? It doesn't seem to me like it would. As the comic says, electricity is the same thing as rocks just faster processing. Basic consciousness remains an unsolved problem in my eyes.
harshreality 12y ago
From the abstract: "Since lossy integration would necessitate continuous damage to existing memories, we propose it is more natural to frame consciousness as a lossless integrative process and provide a formalization of this idea using algorithmic information theory. We prove that complete lossless integration requires noncomputable functions. This result implies that if unitary consciousness exists, it cannot be modelled computationally." Seems to be setting up a straw man only to knock it down. Does anyone believe the brain losslessly integrates information? If not, the conclusion doesn't seem to apply.
- DannyBee 12y ago
  They do, for even stranger reasons: " In particular, memory functions must be vastly non-lossy, otherwise retrieving them repeatedly would cause them to gradually decay". To paraphrase babbage, "I am not able rightly to apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a statement." Being lossy does not imply reading is lossy, it could be that writing destroys old information.
  - yongjik 12y ago
    How funny, retrieving memory in human brains do expose them to potential decay or alteration. http://phenomena.nationalgeographic.com/2013/05/20/when-memories-are-remembered-they-can-be-rewritten/ http://phenomena.nationalgeographic.com/2013/05/20/when-memo... > Every time we bring back an old memory, we run the risk of changing it. It’s more like opening a document on a computer – the old information enters a surprisingly vulnerable state when it can be edited, overwritten, or even deleted. It takes a while for the memory to become strengthened anew, through a process called reconsolidation. Memories aren’t just written once, but every time we remember them.
- thret 12y ago
  The wording is confusing, but I thought perhaps they were assuming that an artificial brain would indeed be lossless and therefore could not be modeled computationally.
aaron695 12y ago
Yep it certainly seems crazy in a obvious way. Is it a joke paper perhaps? Reading it, it seems a bit muddled, almost on purpose. Stating known incorrect statements like the brain is 'lossless'. Unless it's trying to say, you can create a conscious computer (obvious) but to compute it, it might be impossible?
crystaln 12y ago
How is that obvious? You can't presume that the physical world is a component of consciousness.
- letstryagain 12y ago
  You believe in stuff beyond the physical world. I do not.
  - crystaln 12y ago
    I certainly believe in the possibility of stuff beyond the "physical world," by which I assume you mean the space-time continuum of our universe. You'd have to be a fool to not be open to that possibility, given that we have no idea what or why anything exists, nor what might exist outside of this universe.
  - orasis 12y ago
    If you look closely, the physical world cannot be found. There is only this present moment. Past and future are memory and fantasy arising in this present moment. The couch that I am sitting on does not exist as a couch, that is a mental label. There is just causality rippling in this present moment.

debt 12y ago

I like the intention but obviously it's impossible to compute consciousness because "computing consciousness" doesn't mean anything. We don't know what consciousness is. I don't think many intelligent people realize how much of our understanding of the mind is like the wild west; we have very little-to-no understanding of how the mind works. Looking at pretty data visualizations from a brain scan doesn't tell you anything about the mind. Some very smart people still contend that consciousness may not even exist[1]. It's hard to tell because it's impossible to measure it objectively. I think to talk about the mind, we need to use different language entirely. We're still talking about it as if it's a science. "Chalmers contends that such reductive explanations are available in principle for all other natural phenomena, but not for consciousness. This is the hard problem." http://www.iep.utm.edu/hard-con/ http://www.iep.utm.edu/hard-con/

strgrd 12y ago
It's so clear that you didn't read a single word of the paper. Even if you want to argue that consciousness is somehow unknowable and not worth discussing scientifically because humanity is still too dumb (lol, wat), the authors provide a perfectly reasonable working definition of consciousness. The theory proposes that consciousness is an information processing phenomenon and can thus be quantiﬁed in terms of a systems’ organizational structure, speciﬁcally its capacity to integrate information... What we mean when we say that the human brain produces consciousness is that it integrates information, thus producing behaviour which reﬂects the actions of a uniﬁed, singular system.
- vixin 12y ago
  That you're satisfied with the definition supplied astounds me. The words are loose as can be. Amoebae integrate information and produce behavior reflecting the actions of a unified singular system insofar as those undefined words mean anything. Somehow unknowable indeed. "While neuroscience might shed light on the input and output functions of the brain, the quantiﬁcation for integrated information we have presented here implies that it will be unable to shed light on the complex tangle that is core consciousness."
- debt 12y ago

olalonde 12y ago

Wouldn't that contradict http://arxiv.org/abs/1003.5831 http://arxiv.org/abs/1003.5831 which claims that the laws of physics are computable? To be honest, I'm just a layman so I might be misunderstanding something.

crystaln 12y ago
Your presumption is that consciousness falls within the domain of physics, which is not by any means a good assumption.
- brianberns 12y ago
  Really? I can provide plenty of evidence that consciousness falls within the domain of physics. Can you provide any that it's not?
  - orasis 12y ago
    This present experience falls outside the domain of physics. Physics is just models. This present experience is real. Ideas and models about reality are not reality, but rather contained within it.
    - pygy_ 12y ago
      > This present experience falls outside the domain of physics. [...] This present experience is real. So does/is the "material world" (assuming it is a thing of its own). A model of the universe that doesn't take consciousness into account is incomplete.
  - crystaln 12y ago
    > I can provide plenty of evidence that consciousness falls within the domain of physics So then provide some. Regardless of any evidence you have, it's certainly not conclusive, given the minimal understanding we have of existence and consciousness. And presuming your hypothesis to be true simply because you have some evidence seems rather unscientific.

orasis 12y ago

For a similarly super-geeky exploration of consciousness, I recommend this talk - "Consciousness and The Interface Theory of Perception" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dqDP34a-epI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dqDP34a-epI It provides a computable model of consciousness and reality that requires no objective reality, only conscious agents interacting with each other.

jimmcslim 12y ago

I always liked the idea in the old Cyberpunk tabletop RPG, that an artificial intelligence arose out of the 'internet' with its vast amounts of interconnected computing power, but because it was so loosely coupled and distributed we could not observe it nor be aware of it (apart from a few 'netrunners').

sferoze 12y ago

Algorithmic Information Theory is really amazing to me. I am still learning about it but I feel like I can see the connection to nature. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Algorithmic_information_theory http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Algorithmic_information_theory

wildermuthn 12y ago

I believe there's an argument to be made that consciousness is computation itself. I have a particular thought experiment about consciousness. Take a book, say, Lord of the Rings. Is Frodo conscious? Probably not. But lets say the book was extraordinarily detailed. Lets say the book was actually a mathematical model that described the workings of Middle Earth down to every elementary particle. Each page, a very long page, would describe one 'tick' of the Middle Earth universe. So you've simulated consciousness on paper. Not in a machine, mind you, but on paper. But it isn't really a simulation as much as a description. It isn't computation, but information. And that information doesn't make Frodo conscious. Now what if this book were put into a computer? And what if the world were modeled just as accurately and explicitly as the book? Would Frodo then be conscious, simply because a computer calculated the sequence of atomic movements within Frodo's brain? If so, is it the actual movements of those atoms that creates Frodo's experience of reality, or is it the computation that calculates that movement itself? Whatever process it is that allows reality to compute itself -- to obey the laws of physics -- whatever process that is . . I'd say that act of computation has more to say about consciousness that the actual result itself.

xal 12y ago
So, this: http://xkcd.com/505/ http://xkcd.com/505/
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shasta 12y ago
> Is Frodo conscious? Probably not. How do you know? > I'd say that act of computation has more to say about consciousness that the actual result itself. And what is the act of computation? Is it not just a progression of relationships in the physical world? Surely consciousness doesn't require an observer to look at the atoms bouncing around in the computer to decide that they are simulation of Frodo. Surely it's just the evolving relationship between the atoms that's all that matters. If we could interpret any physical system as evolving in a way that's isomorphic to a brain, shouldn't that also produce consciousness? Maybe at the end of the day consciousness is just the "existence" (whatever that means) of a certain Turing machine or number. And if all of your understanding of this world is based on the state of your brain now, then isn't it a simpler explanation that now and your impression of consciousness, in this moment, is all that really exists? A philosopher is someone bright enough to pose such questions and dim enough to pursue their answers.

kanzure 12y ago

Slightly off-topic, but here's what Wikipedia says (in part): """ Consciousness — The having of perceptions, thoughts, and feelings; awareness. The term is impossible to define except in terms that are unintelligible without a grasp of what consciousness means. Many fall into the trap of equating consciousness with self-consciousness—to be conscious it is only necessary to be aware of the external world. Consciousness is a fascinating but elusive phenomenon: it is impossible to specify what it is, what it does, or why it has evolved. Nothing worth reading has been written on it.[19] Philosophers and non-philosophers differ in their intuitions about what consciousness is.[20] While most people have a strong intuition for the existence of what they refer to as consciousness,[21] skeptics argue that this intuition is false, either because the concept of consciousness is intrinsically incoherent, or because our intuitions about it are based in illusions. Gilbert Ryle, for example, argued that traditional understanding of consciousness depends on a Cartesian dualist outlook that improperly distinguishes between mind and body, or between mind and world. He proposed that we speak not of minds, bodies, and the world, but of individuals, or persons, acting in the world. [...] More generally, many philosophers and scientists have been unhappy about the difficulty of producing a definition that does not involve circularity or fuzziness.[19] """ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consciousness http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consciousness Suppose that consciousness didn't actually exist, but within this theory you grant that people really do have perceptions and experiences. Is that really so bad? What does it miss?

frozenport 12y ago

I wonder what experts and those doing peer-review would say? Is this good or bad quality work? How do we make sense of a social science article with no context and specialist language? Is there anything good here?

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woodchuck64 12y ago

Michael Graziano's theory that consciousness is computed awareness of attention suggests a far more interesting and perhaps computable solution. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3223025/pdf/nihms328502.pdf http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3223025/pdf/nihm... http://www.amazon.com/Consciousness-Social-Brain-Michael-Graziano/dp/0199928649 http://www.amazon.com/Consciousness-Social-Brain-Michael-Gra...

tekni5 12y ago

This is going to sound pretty absurd, but I have this unscientific hypothesis about what consciousness really is. I believe there is a chance that consciousness is a requirement for a universe to exist. Without consciousness the universe exists as random information, contained within some infinite outside universe, where there is no time or space. So imagine this infinite outside universe full of all possible information, it exists in some metaphysical location, it has always existed and it will always exist. All this data makes zero sense and has zero purpose. Within this information exist patterns of every kind, everything real and not real is there. However for this data to become expressed, a conscious entity is required to exist inside of this data for the overall universe to place it in some sort of order. Therefore consciousness acts as a binder of random information, for this very conscious entity to exist some of this infinite information must be placed in a coherent order. So in this view, the start of the universe does not occur with the big bang, but with the first conscious entity. After this point, for consciousness to continue to exist, it must have a narrative based on fundamental laws which explain how it came into existence. All of history is created after the first conscious entity appears, the formation of the planets, evolution, etc. To better understand this, imagine a roll of film. You take each frame of this film and make it a separate slide. If you shuffle all these separate film slides and ask someone to view them in no given order, it would make very little sense of what the storyline is. However if you let them sort this information, they might be able to arrange this film in a continuous and coherent storyline. Similarly each planck time of our universe is a separate slide of information which exists in infinity. If a conscious entity exists in that frame the universe must provide a coherent storyline for that entity. Therefore additional frames are pulled out from infinity to allow consciousness to glide through infinity and essentially exist. I hope that made sense, if I have failed to explain it I apologize.

dkarapetyan 12y ago
Isn't consciousness itself a pattern in that infinitely possible universe of yours? It's kind of a circular argument you're making. If you have no constraints then anything is possible, including consciousness.
- tekni5 12y ago

hyperion2010 12y ago

So I wrote a longer piece, and then realized that their whole premise is simply incorrect. Our brain lies to us and fills in the gaps all the time. We do not have perfect memory and continually deal with lossy information integration. The idea that consciousness is lossless is basically a straw man. I think it is fair to say that the brain enforces consistency of representations of the universe and in that way provides something that appears to be unitary, but it does so by discarding lots of information. Furthermore it is pretty clear that we do not have lossless memory. Any cursory look at the literature on eyewitness testimony will show this. TL;DR The brain lies to us all the time. Just consider the blind spot. Our unitary perception of the universe is an illusion and there is enormous information loss on the way from the sensory environment to motor output.

dkarapetyan 12y ago

I think any sane or even insane person knows the human brain is nowhere close to a lossless integrative device.

vinceguidry 12y ago

Consciousness is very probably a computing process directly reliant on quantum effects. As such it wouldn't be directly computable any more than any quantum system is.

adrianN 12y ago
Turing machines can simulate quantum computers. They just take longer to compute the same function.
- orasis 12y ago
  Is that true? References?
- vinceguidry 12y ago
  The question, "is consciousness computable?" appears to me to be asking something different than "can computation done by consciousness be simulated?" The former seems to be asking if you can compute the state of consciousness given some starting conditions. As an entangled quantum state is impossible to compute, it would seem that trying to compute the state of consciousness would be similarly impossible.