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If a computer was powerful enough would it generate consciousness?

Demosthenes said:
You could ahve a computer simulation, that added meaning to sense data, (or whatever was analogous to its sense data)- it might be a computer character in an internet rpg say, and part of its program would be to observe the behaviour of other players, and classify them as dangerous, friends, chancers, liars, or whatever, and to use this conceptualisation to guide the scripting of its next strategy with regard to them, - and as you say, by doing so, it might well get an advantage within the game
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IMHO, it'd only be a "sentient" choice if it hadn't been programmed to do this, and had formed this strategy itself from first principles*.

*Note that I'm aware that first principles are as ambiguous a target as consciousness ;)
 
littlebabyjesus said:
Well, might I encourage you to read a little Schopenhauer.
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Actually you might, I've been meaning to. Where should I start? And how many Schopenhauers left until Christmas?
 
Well, it's going to be strange whatever.

@ Demosthenes: Computers (as we know them!) only manipulate information. No-one says they create it as such.
 
phildwyer said:
Actually you might, I've been meaning to. Where should I start?
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My way in was through Brian Magee's excellent book on his philosophy, which is very accessible and I would recommend everyone to read from cover to cover.

From there, I started on The World as Will and Representation, which, I think, gets to the crux of his main point - the 'one idea' as he calls it. It's a heavy read, and Schopenhauer is often incredibly pompous, but it pays dividends.

Like Hegel, he starts where Kant left off. Unlike Hegel, he stresses the unknowability of the noumenal, which he treats as the springing point - the Will, by which he means the doer and knower that cannot be known - for experience. He excises the mysticism from Kant where Hegel reinforces it.

For more of a dip-in, Parerga and Paralipomena is well worth it. Aside from his rabid mysogeny, his ideas often still sound very fresh and relevant.
 
butchersapron said:
The claim that if we copy the workings of the brain accurately enough we will induce/develop consciousness is not in the same category as if i spend all my money on beer i'll likely get drunk. I don't need a the same sort of counter-reason to invalidate the claim, and more importantly the lack of that counter-reason doesn't make the original claim true by default
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Quite. Practically speaking, it's making a heck of a lot of assumptions.

Just for one, technically speaking it's assuming the brain is a Turing machine (even though people can do math that Turing machines cannot). It's also assuming consciousness is essentially electrical (no-one would entertain the notion that a liver can be built out of "wires and solder"). And it's assuming that quantum effects are not significant (unlikely really, even digestive enzymes exploit quantum tunnelling).

bluestreak said:
so in conclusion, no-one knows if it would work or not, or why.
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Nor is there any theory as such to suggest that it would; there seems to be not even the faintest glimmerings of a clue how to write a conscious program.

This problem of consciousness requires some serious thought!
 
Kameron said:
There is a text on this subject.

Gödel, Escher, Bach (commonly GEB) is a Pulitzer Prize-winning book by Douglas Hofstadter that discusses how animate beings can form from inanimate matter and what it means to have a 'self'.

It is a book that is really worth picking up, I've read it a dozen times, I think I get about 20% on a good day but it is endlessly fascinating whether you start from the AI point of view or from the question of how this bag of Carbon, Hydrogen and Oxygen that is me has the power to write this.
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butchersapron said:
What does it conclude?
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That the brain is a Universal Turing Machine, the "strong AI" position. The journey's the thing, to be fair.

For a contrary view (that computers are not like the brain) have a read of 'The Emperor's New Mind' by Roger Penrose.
 
Thread titles like this make me contemplate on the mystery if my brain ever shall be powerful enough to generate consciousness.

All we humans do is circling around our self-awareness like moths around a flame. The moment we become really and fully conscious is the moment we burn. And die.

salaam.
 
Jonti said:
It's also assuming consciousness is essentially electrical (no-one would entertain the notion that a liver can be built out of "wires and solder"). And it's assuming that quantum effects are not significant (unlikely really, even digestive enzymes exploit quantum tunnelling).
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I wouldn't say the consciousness is essentially electrical, it's just that our electrical system allows rapid integration of information. To me the essential parts are a large network that can sense the outside and respond.

And quantum effects are not relevent! <spanks Jonti>. As Mation said earlier, there are quantum effects involved in a car engine running but they are not relevant to the funtioning of the car. Electron tunnelling is not the source of the vast majority of the brain's electrical communication.
 
You *may* be right. Thing is, a few months ago, you'd likely have said tunneling is not important for the digestive process! But it is.

We're made of atoms and quanta; the point I was making is that it's quite an assumption to rule out the possibility a priori that such natural (even universal) effects are not exploited in the workings of the brain.
 
Jonti said:
You *may* be right. Thing is, a few months ago, you'd likely have said tunneling is not important for the digestive process! But it is.
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You cheeky rapscallion! Quantum tunnelling has been known of for a good few years, and it makes sense that quantum effects would be relevant when moving things such as electrons and proton around, as these are what scientists call "very very small". But the whole basis of electrical communication in the brain is not moving electrons, it's moving great big huge metal ions (sodium, potassium, calcium). And by modelling the movement of these great big ions you can recreate electrical properties of neurones. I'm vociferously against bringing in quantum wierdness as it a)doesn't seem to be necessary, and b) attracts a whole host of loons that like the sound of the word quantum to explainaway their unsubstantiated convictions.

Jonti said:
We're made of atoms and quanta; the point I was making is that it's quite an assumption to rule out the possibility a priori that such natural (even universal) effects are not exploited in the workings of the brain.
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Everything's made up of atoms (well bits of atoms at least) and quanta, but not everything is conscious. I'm not ruling out completely quantum effects, but then I'm not technically ruling out the pink unicorn. :p
 
axon said:
You cheeky rapscallion! Quantum tunnelling has been known of for a good few years, and it makes sense that quantum effects would be relevant when moving things such as electrons and proton around, as these are what scientists call "very very small".
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the idea that the strange properties of subatomic particles are only relevant when studying things that are "very very small" is bunk. Rubbish that has nothing to do with science.

For example, - consider what happens when you fire a single photon at a half-silvered mirror angled at 45 degrees. "Half" the photon goes through the mirror, and the other half bounces off at ninety degrees, so you now have waveform progressively extending itself on either side of the mirror, over essentially any distance, - so you now have a single particle, - and you can prove it's a single particle that by virtue of its distribution as a waveform, stretches out over many kilometers.

That's just by way of example, but, equally, the materialist thesis that all relevant properties of the brain can be understood at the molecular level, is equally obviously unscientific rubbish. Molecules are entities that are made out of atoms, that are made out protons, neutrons, electrons, that are made out of, etc. - and it's pretty much universally accepted by physicists and chemists that we can't understand the behaviour of the higher-level parts without reference to the behaviour of the lower-level constituents.
 
But overall with this question about whether a computer could be conscious, I just think it's an irresolvable question,.. And I really don't have a firm view on it, - as soon as I think, no, I think well, why not, we're conscious after all, and as soon as I think yes, I think, no way.
 
Demosthenes said:
the idea that the strange properties of subatomic particles are only relevant when studying things that are "very very small" is bunk. Rubbish that has nothing to do with science.

For example, - consider what happens when you fire a single photon at a half-silvered mirror angled at 45 degrees..<snip>
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But photons do fit into the category of "very very small" :confused: The fact of the matter is that you do not need to calculate the collapse of the wave functions of the particles involved in an internal combustion engine to describe how a car works. In a similar vein (so far) it seems as if the properties of neurones, which can be described in terms of their connections and electrical properties (ions not electrons though), are the fundamental in how nervous systems operate, and neurones are what us neuroscientists call "not very very small".
 
Photons *are* QM phenomena tho'.

And they interact just fine with the human nervous system, via the retinal cells of the eye (nerve cells, of a sort) which can discharge on being 'hit' with a single photon!
 
Is that why blind people aren't conscious? :D (Dunno about you but I've got pretty good vision and still can't detect single photons.)

Unless someone can come up with a reason to link quantum phenomena to conciousness it seems a bit of a futile exercise. It's the old "QM is weird, consciousness is weird therefore consciousness is due to QM effects."
 
axon said:
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Unless someone can come up with a reason to link quantum phenomena to conciousness it seems a bit of a futile exercise. It's the old "QM is weird, consciousness is weird therefore consciousness is due to QM effects."
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The point I made here, is that your theory makes a shedload of assumptions. Now, they may all be justified -- but if you are making assumptions it is for you to justify them, not for others to disprove them. :)
 
Jonti said:
The point I made here, is that your theory makes a shedload of assumptions. Now, they may all be justified -- but if you are making assumptions it is for you to justify them, not for others to disprove them. :)
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Yes, it does have a shedload of assumptions <scuffs floor>. But it would have to otherwise this wouldn't be a thread it would be a 16 volume thesis on the nature of consciousness.
I just can't elevate consciousness up to a level of mysticism (read, more than wire and solder). I'm aware of stuff, and I can't have any thoughts that don't seem to involve cross references to something I've already experienced/learnt. And everything I've experienced was detected outside my head, encoded and sent into my head, was shuffled about a bit and then filed away for later.
 
That's all good stuff. I'd express things a little differently, and in doing so drop a couple of assumptions -- I just can't elevate consciousness up to a level of mysticism (read, more than matter behaving strangely).

The essential point here seems to be that, methodologically speaking, one has to try one's best to fit explanations within the framework of the already known, or risk offending Ockham by unnecessarily multiplying entities.

There remains the possibility that the quest will be fruitless, but how to prove this? Michelson and Morley come to mind as an example of an experiment that was able to demonstrate the non-existence of ether. Physics was then were forced to seek alternative explanations for how light propagates through empty space. And when it comes to the "brain as universal turing machine" model, the mathematician Roger Penrose claims that math shows it is not. I don't really understand how it is possible to disagree.

One thing's for sure, and that is information is a major part of the picture.
 
Humans wouldn't build one though if they could. It would challenge our dominance on this planet.
 
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