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Post by Bluefinger on Feb 6, 2010 21:52:00 GMT -5
It's possible to experience and even "know" the immeasurable and the unprovable (unknowable in a scientific sense). We do it every day. If you are talking about emotions, then even they have tangible effects and can be defined. Because then, it is just a question of neurology and psychology. But since there is nothing to really specify what exactly you mean by this point as unknowable, then my point still stands.
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Post by John E on Feb 6, 2010 21:53:46 GMT -5
No, not emotion. Consciousness.
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Post by Bluefinger on Feb 6, 2010 22:01:03 GMT -5
No, not emotion. Consciousness. But, consciousness is just an emergent phenomenon of the brain, of which we are starting to understand is something that has emerged from our brain activity as a whole, not from any one particular part of the brain. Self-awareness and means of complex cognition all stem from our brains so it is not something that is unknowable, and is certainly not being treated as such.
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Post by John E on Feb 6, 2010 22:10:33 GMT -5
Show me how we can prove that someone has subjective experience and we'll talk. Sure, we can measure brain activity, and guess that maybe it has something to do with consciousness, but it's just a guess.
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Post by Bluefinger on Feb 7, 2010 10:50:38 GMT -5
Show me how we can prove that someone has subjective experience and we'll talk. Sure, we can measure brain activity, and guess that maybe it has something to do with consciousness, but it's just a guess. Excuse me, John, but we have two means of looking at consciousness: Psychology, the top-down model of consciousness. Neuroscience, the bottom-up model of consciousness. Consciousness, which basically is a descriptor for the self-awareness and complex cognition that we have assigned to the human experience, relies on physical processes in order to manifest. If consciousness manifests, it can be defined, explored, measured. Whilst consciousness is a virtual manifestation of physical processes, it still manifests and thus is not unknowable. It is just an unknown, and Science's business is with unknowns. And calling that a guess? Come on, John. Are you going to logically extend all the research done by Science as guesses then? Because Science has to start from somewhere, and that usually means coming up with hypothesises and testing them. And we study the effects of the brain on consciousness all the damn time, and can see how parts of it DO affect someone's experience. We can quantify mental illnesses, and see how damage to certain areas of the brain can impair or alter a person's consciousness/personality/etc. We can even alter our conscious experience ourselves with chemicals! And what research that we have done so far are yielding plenty of clues onto how our brains work and the implications of such on what we define as the human experience. Example story with the appropriate abstract from the paper the article is referring to. Basically, they've found a way to predict your decision-making process by monitoring your brain activity. And they could do so up to 10 seconds before you become aware of the decision. Whilst the experiment only covered more simple decision-making processes, it still opens questions about just how we define things like "free-will" and how it meshes in with what we are finding out about our own brains. We have methods to investigate this. To proclaim that it is impossible just smacks of personal incredulity. Consciousness is certainly not being treated as an unknowable by the scientific community, and I have shown that. So, because of that, I do not view Consciousness as an unknowable, so in this case, it does not apply as an unknowable that affects me. It is just another unknown.
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Post by John E on Feb 7, 2010 11:13:25 GMT -5
Consciousness, which basically is a descriptor for the self-awareness and complex cognition that we have assigned to the human experience, An advanced AI with digital senses could be have complex cognition and self-awareness (in the sense that it could report to you information about itself and its surroundings like a human can). Does that mean that an advanced AI has consciousness in the sense of subjective experience? I'm aware of the studies showing that brain activity predicts someone's decision-making process before they even become aware of it. I'm WELL aware of how mental illness and chemicals can affect personality, mood, cognition, experience, etc. I know that a person's thoughts, memories, experiences, emotions and all that are manifestations of physical activity in the physical brain. That is all quite irrelevant to my point. I'm talking specifically about the phenomenon of subjective experience, that fact that we are aware of our thoughts, emotions, physical sensations, etc. in a way that computers for example are not (or so we assume). Let me put it another way. All these test subjects that we are using to study consciousness: how to we know that they have subjective experience to begin with?
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Post by Bluefinger on Feb 7, 2010 11:30:50 GMT -5
Actually, John, if an advanced AI was to be able to display cognition and awareness at an adult, human level, then I'd have to assume consciousness on the part of the machine. Because at that point, it'd be no different to another human mind (in my first person perspective).
How can you be even sure of your own subjective experience to begin with? Just because you feel aware and that your intuition gives feelings of self, doesn't mean that the subjective experience is real. It could be a preprogrammed response on our own part which just simulates the experience, since most of our thought processes do not occur at the conscious level. Also, we can never be fully aware of all our thought processes, of all the influences on our consciousness, be it internal or external. Just where does that leave 'subjective experience'?
We assume consciousness based on the response we get to certain circumstances. We look for it with certain behavioural markers that would indicate more complex cognition and self-awareness. So if a computer were to display those markers in particular circumstances, then we are left to assume a conscious entity.
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Post by John E on Feb 7, 2010 13:50:14 GMT -5
I know my experience is real because I experience it. It is by its very nature, self evident, but only to the person experiencing it. Exactly where it was before. What difference does it make if we don't experience most of our thought processes? Actually, John, if an advanced AI was to be able to display cognition and awareness at an adult, human level, then I'd have to assume consciousness on the part of the machine. Because at that point, it'd be no different to another human mind (in my first person perspective). [...] We assume consciousness based on the response we get to certain circumstances. We look for it with certain behavioural markers that would indicate more complex cognition and self-awareness. So if a computer were to display those markers in particular circumstances, then we are left to assume a conscious entity. [emphasis mine] My point exactly. It's not possible to prove consciousness/subjective experience. There are behavioral markers & other traits that we assume are related to consciousness. Maybe they are and maybe they aren't, but there's no way to know for sure. It's unknowable, and yet it's something we experience every day. Or at least, I assume you do too, but I don't really know.
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Post by Oriet on Feb 7, 2010 13:58:18 GMT -5
If it's not possible to prove consciousness or subjective experience, then how can you say with certainty that your thoughts and experiences are real? Especially considering how easily fooled our senses are by things like optical illusions and such.
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Post by John E on Feb 7, 2010 14:03:55 GMT -5
If it's not possible to prove consciousness or subjective experience, then how can you say with certainty that your thoughts and experiences are real? Especially considering how easily fooled our senses are by things like optical illusions and such. I can't, not for certain. The experiences themselves are real, but they may or may not correspond to anything real. I might just be a brain hooked up to a world simulation, for all I know. The computer I'm experiencing using right now and the couch I'm experiencing sitting on may not be real. But the experiences themselves are. Similarly, it's possible this might be my first time writing in this thread. My memories of previous postings might be fake. But my experience of those memories is real either way.
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Post by the sandman on Feb 7, 2010 14:15:35 GMT -5
If it's not possible to prove consciousness or subjective experience, then how can you say with certainty that your thoughts and experiences are real? Especially considering how easily fooled our senses are by things like optical illusions and such. That's the Platonic Conundrum: if your senses can lie to you convincingly, then how can you be certain anything within your sensory reality is true and accurate? Remember the story of the Emperor who dreamed he was a butterfly? When he awoke he spent the rest of his life wondering if he was an Emperor who had dreamed he was a butterfly or a butterfly dreaming about being an Emperor. Empirically we can assume that our senses are giving us accurate information based on the fact that we are still alive, but even that goes out the window if our sense of time or even our understanding of the nature of physical reality are off.
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Post by the sandman on Feb 7, 2010 14:32:22 GMT -5
How do you know that when you see the color "blue," you are seeing the same thing I do?
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Post by Oriet on Feb 7, 2010 14:36:22 GMT -5
How do you know that when you see the color "blue," you are seeing the same thing I do? Based on the wavelength(s) of the light and how the receptors in our eyes and the pathways to and in the visual cortex of the brain work.
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Post by Vene on Feb 7, 2010 14:48:42 GMT -5
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Post by Oriet on Feb 7, 2010 15:20:03 GMT -5
And we know all of that based on how our body's sensory perceptions work. That, and because we are able to test and measure how the perceptions work, and what the processes that make it work are. That's why CAT scans work, how devices like Emotiv function, and how we're able to alter a person's sensory input and cognition, such as mimicing "religious experiences" in a lab ( source). Being that the brain is really just a complex eletro-chemical apparatus it'll just take time to understand it, and it's emergent properties, fully.
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