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"They can be interesting to think about, but without any evidence for them there isn't any reason to give them particular consideration. (I am including rationa

by garyrob 11y ago

"They can be interesting to think about, but without any evidence for them there isn't any reason to give them particular consideration. (I am including rational, mathematical, or logical arguments based on experimental evidence as evidence here)" I'm glad we're discussing this because you're an example of the kind of thinking that is a mystery to me. The fact that I have qualia when looking at, for example, the color yellow, is directly knowable by means of just a little introspection. This is not "rational, mathematical, or logical" or based on "experimental evidence". It is simply direct observation. Observation is where the scientific processes you name start. Observation does not depend on those processes. They depend on it and build from it. Observations are the most fundamental thing. From the direct observation of your experience of yellowness, which I think you must agree is something more than merely classifying the wavelength as being in a certain range, I would think you would know that qualia exist. That is enough evidence. "How do we decide what the actual answer is? Science and materialism have repeatedly produced predictions that pan out in experiments. Theories of souls and sprituality have repeatedly had to retreat from testable predictions." So, let's not have a theory of souls or spirituality at this point. We don't know enough. That doesn't mean that those things don't exist, it only means we don't understand them. Suppose a cave man-level creature on another planet encounters an iPhone because we somehow send one there. This cave man creature knows how to build fires and has used reasoning to make weapons, etc. In doing those things, he probably tried different ideas about how best to make fires and rejected the ones that didn't work well. In other words, he has a rudimentary understanding of the scientific method. Now he tries to figure out how an iPhone works. He constructs theories based on what he knows. The theories are all shown, over hundreds of years, to be wrong. Therefore, he is told, iPhones don't exist because when he constructs theories about them, they are wrong. But he directly observes the existence of the iPhone because he holds it in his hand. He knows they exist. He doesn't need a scientific theory to prove that they exist. Maybe, eventually, he will have a correct scientific theory as to how they work; it will just take more time. Or maybe he never will. Either way, iPhones exist. Awareness is, in my view, exactly the same, and it is mystifying to me that people such as yourself come to a different conclusion.

habitue 11y ago
Oh, I'm not saying qualia doesn't exist. Our experiences are definitely an actual phenomenon. And we can't currently explain exactly how it works and we should try to find out what produces the experience of qualia. What we shouldn't do, is say humans have qualia and jump to the conclusion that machines can't have qualia, and can't be "aware" in the same sense a human can be. I apologize if that wasn't your intended argument.
- garyrob 11y ago
  OK, good, so we have in common that we both believe qualia exist. I didn't get that from your preceding posts. "What we shouldn't do, is say humans have qualia and jump to the conclusion that machines can't have qualia, and can't be "aware" in the same sense a human can be. I apologize if that wasn't your intended argument." No, we can't make that jump. But my intuition as a programmer (and one who is interested in A.I. and does A.I. in the sense that some of my mathematical ideas were incorporated into a number of spam filter products) is that they don't. There is simply nothing there that would "add" awareness to the algorithm. All there is is information processing. It can classify something as either having the attribute of yellowness or not. But something beyond that functionality is required to have it experience the qualia of yellowness. My point is that we have no idea what that something extra is. Somehow, people have it. But we don't know how. There are hypotheses, like those of Roger Penrose who discuss quantum phenomena as possibly being behind it, as made manifest in certain microscope structures in the brain. Suppose Penrose is right. Then, maybe one day a quantum computer can incorporate the same phenomena and be conscious for the same reasons we are. But I do not believe that, for example, a spam filter as we know it today has the slightest experience of qualia. There is just no "room" for it. Everything in the spam filter has a specific function for the classification task and has nothing to do with experiencing qualia. The same is true for the most complicated deep learning network. Maybe software as we know it can induce qualia as some kind of an emergent phenomenon, and the brain also induces it through some kind of emergent phenomenon. But I tend to hypothesize there would be something that causes that, some mechanism that the emergent phenomenon grows out of, that is not embodied in something like a current-day deep learning network. My hypothesis is that to create a machine that experiences qualia, we will first understand the mechanism behind our own experience of qualia, and then reproduce that mechanism in a machine. I hypothesize that this would be a new and extremely fundamental, and transforming, scientific discovery. And if we do reproduce that mechanism in a machine, and THEN that machine passes the Turing Test without us programming mechanisms to merely MIMIC human behavior, then I'll tend to assume that we've created a truly conscious entity -- though we may never be able to completely prove it. On the other hand, there's no reason to assume we'll ever discover how it works -- for instance, we can't rule out the idea that there is a God who doles out souls to human bodies, and that we'll never have the means to understand God or souls. I don't believe that's the case -- but plenty of people do, and we can't presently prove they're wrong.

by garyrob 11y ago

habitue 11y ago

Oh, I'm not saying qualia doesn't exist. Our experiences are definitely an actual phenomenon. And we can't currently explain exactly how it works and we should try to find out what produces the experience of qualia. What we shouldn't do, is say humans have qualia and jump to the conclusion that machines can't have qualia, and can't be "aware" in the same sense a human can be. I apologize if that wasn't your intended argument.

garyrob 11y ago
OK, good, so we have in common that we both believe qualia exist. I didn't get that from your preceding posts. "What we shouldn't do, is say humans have qualia and jump to the conclusion that machines can't have qualia, and can't be "aware" in the same sense a human can be. I apologize if that wasn't your intended argument." No, we can't make that jump. But my intuition as a programmer (and one who is interested in A.I. and does A.I. in the sense that some of my mathematical ideas were incorporated into a number of spam filter products) is that they don't. There is simply nothing there that would "add" awareness to the algorithm. All there is is information processing. It can classify something as either having the attribute of yellowness or not. But something beyond that functionality is required to have it experience the qualia of yellowness. My point is that we have no idea what that something extra is. Somehow, people have it. But we don't know how. There are hypotheses, like those of Roger Penrose who discuss quantum phenomena as possibly being behind it, as made manifest in certain microscope structures in the brain. Suppose Penrose is right. Then, maybe one day a quantum computer can incorporate the same phenomena and be conscious for the same reasons we are. But I do not believe that, for example, a spam filter as we know it today has the slightest experience of qualia. There is just no "room" for it. Everything in the spam filter has a specific function for the classification task and has nothing to do with experiencing qualia. The same is true for the most complicated deep learning network. Maybe software as we know it can induce qualia as some kind of an emergent phenomenon, and the brain also induces it through some kind of emergent phenomenon. But I tend to hypothesize there would be something that causes that, some mechanism that the emergent phenomenon grows out of, that is not embodied in something like a current-day deep learning network. My hypothesis is that to create a machine that experiences qualia, we will first understand the mechanism behind our own experience of qualia, and then reproduce that mechanism in a machine. I hypothesize that this would be a new and extremely fundamental, and transforming, scientific discovery. And if we do reproduce that mechanism in a machine, and THEN that machine passes the Turing Test without us programming mechanisms to merely MIMIC human behavior, then I'll tend to assume that we've created a truly conscious entity -- though we may never be able to completely prove it. On the other hand, there's no reason to assume we'll ever discover how it works -- for instance, we can't rule out the idea that there is a God who doles out souls to human bodies, and that we'll never have the means to understand God or souls. I don't believe that's the case -- but plenty of people do, and we can't presently prove they're wrong.