tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26951738.post5130354317671929942..comments2024-03-28T19:14:33.619-07:00Comments on The Splintered Mind: AI Consciousness: A Reply to SchwitzgebelEric Schwitzgebelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11541402189204286449noreply@blogger.comBlogger22125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26951738.post-26260266297747925172017-04-21T02:30:22.470-07:002017-04-21T02:30:22.470-07:00To be fair to the super AI, I don't know how I...To be fair to the super AI, I don't know how I could counter it if it argued it and it's interests were more important than us like we are more important than chimps. It would seem to be either objectively correct or... an extreme form of communist veganism philosophy holds.Gnznoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26951738.post-4849143083394420902017-04-21T02:25:13.856-07:002017-04-21T02:25:13.856-07:00One thing that we use to identify consciousness as...One thing that we use to identify consciousness as opposed to automation would be having persistant irrational biases. I suspect we wouldn't recognise a super AI as objectively conscious unless it was the sort that was likely to be dangerous to us. Gnznoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26951738.post-79218095810299947802017-02-23T11:41:45.865-08:002017-02-23T11:41:45.865-08:00Continued ...
3. Cortical surgery for epilepsy se...Continued ...<br /><br />3. Cortical surgery for epilepsy seizure relief<br /><br />Merker relates that Penfield and Jasper (1954!) routinely removed sizeable sectors of cortex in conscious patients for the control of intractable epilepsy. By performing the surgery under local anesthesia only, the authors ensured that their patients remained conscious, cooperative, and capable of self-report throughout the operation. This allowed the neurosurgeons to electrically stimulate the exposed cortex while communicating with the patient, in order to locate functionally critical areas to be spared when removing epileptogenic tissue. They then proceeded to remove cortical tissue while continuing to communicate with the patient. They were impressed by the fact that the removal of sizeable sectors of cortex <i>never</i> interrupted the patient’s continuity of consciousness even while the tissue was being surgically removed.<br />Penfield and Jasper noted that a cortical removal even as radical as hemispherectomy does not deprive a patient of consciousness, but rather of certain forms of information, discriminative capacities, or abilities.<br /><br />4. Hydranencephaly – no cortical tissue<br /><br />Merker additionally discusses consciousness in victims of hydranencephaly because that pathology affords the opportunity to observe consciousness, or its absence, in humans who are equipped with a “reptilian brain,” but have no cortical tissue at all. Damasio has written, “These children, however, are anything but vegetative. On the contrary, they are awake and behaving. To a limited but by no means negligible extent, they can communicate with their caregivers and interact with the world. They are patently minded in a way that patients in vegetative state or akinetic mutism are not. Their misfortune provides a rare window into the sort of mind that can still be engendered when the cerebral cortex is absent.”<br /><br />Damasio continues: “If a parallel could be drawn at all, once the motor defects are factored out, it would be between hydranencephalic children and newborn infants, in which a mind is clearly at work but where the core self is barely beginning to gather. This is in keeping with the fact that hydranencephalics may be first diagnosed <i>months after birth</i>, when parents note a failure to thrive and scans reveal a catastrophic absence of cortex. The reason behind the vague similarity is not too difficult to fathom: normal infants lack a fully myelinated cerebral cortex, which still awaits development. They already have a functional brain stem but only a partially functional cerebral cortex.” (These remarks imply that we are all “brainstem babies” in our first few months of life!)<br /><br />My Conclusion<br /><br />Everything I've read about these conditions is compatible with the hypothesis that consciousness, certainly the core consciousness as defined by Damasio, is generated by sub-cortical activity, most likely in the brainstem, but certainly in sub-cortical structures. In addition, I believe the evidence taken as a whole poses clear challenges to the hypothesis that consciousness is produced by the cerebral cortex.<br /> <br />Merker proposes that cortical structures are “a medium for the <i>elaboration of conscious contents</i>” and, in my opinion, all of the cortical consciousness proposals I've encountered could easily be interpreted as the elaborative processing he theorizes precedes conscious experience. Where are the studies and papers that provide, as with Merker's paper, similar compelling evolutionary, experimental and observational evidence – at the same level of specificity – that support of the various cortical consciousness hypotheses?Stephen Wysonghttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15213141784165096783noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26951738.post-75378268947676224542017-02-23T11:40:54.466-08:002017-02-23T11:40:54.466-08:00Eric, to wrap up my response to your question abou...Eric, to wrap up my response to your question about why I believe consciousness is created by the brainstem, here's a quick summary of my investigation into evidence that I believe poses serious challenges to cortical consciousness theories.<br /><br />1. Split-brain studies<br /><br />I've looked into the recent split-brain study results, beginning with the article at http://neurosciencenews.com/split-brain-consciousness-6011/ This research deals with the results of a corpus callosotomy that severs the corpus callosum – “a bundle of neural fibres connecting the left and right cerebral hemispheres, is severed to prevent the spread of epileptic activity between the two brain halves”. While mostly successful in relieving epilepsy, the procedure also virtually eliminates all communication between the cerebral hemispheres, thereby resulting in a ‘split brain’.”<br /><br />Historically, “In their canonical work, Sperry and Gazzaniga discovered that split-brain patients can only respond to stimuli in the right visual field with their right hand and vice versa. This was taken as evidence that severing the corpus callosum causes each hemisphere to gain its own consciousness.” Both Susan's article and an earlier post by Callan refer to this dual-consciousness hypothesis which is commonly used to support theories of cortical consciousness.<br /><br />In this new study ... “Our findings, however, reveal that although the two hemispheres are completely insulated from each other, the brain as a whole is still able to produce only one conscious agent. This directly contradicts current orthodoxy ...” And, “According to Pinto, the results present clear evidence for unity of consciousness in split-brain patients.”<br />Given the widespread citing of Sperry and Gazzaniga's original split-brain hypothesis and its support for cortical consciousness hypotheses, I expect a considerable revision in consciousness theorizing should these new results hold up to scrutiny.<br /><br />2. Hemispherectomy and hemisphere isolation<br /><br />I've also investigated the research for the related conditions of hemispherectomy and anesthesia of one hemisphere – the Wada test, an investigative process that anesthetizes one hemisphere at a time to determine the language and memory capacities of each hemisphere. In all of these cases, consciousness itself is observed to be unified, whole and undisturbed, although the <i>content</i> of consciousness is obviously altered by the absence of a functioning hemisphere.<br /><br />[Continued in next post]<br />Stephen Wysonghttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15213141784165096783noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26951738.post-84435788641502609832017-02-15T08:32:50.866-08:002017-02-15T08:32:50.866-08:00Thanks for that reference, Stephen! My student Li...Thanks for that reference, Stephen! My student Linus Huang is actually working on a theory according to which the basal ganglia are the key structure for implementing consciousness. Not quite brainstem, but close. It is quite possible that the cortex is overrated with respect to consciousness.Eric Schwitzgebelhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11541402189204286449noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26951738.post-5703160988107485722017-02-14T10:06:53.558-08:002017-02-14T10:06:53.558-08:00I believe Bjorn Merker makes the case in his paper...I believe Bjorn Merker makes the case in his paper, “Consciousness without a cerebral cortex: a challenge for neuroscience and medicine”. From the Abstract:<br /><br />“A broad range of evidence regarding the functional organization of the vertebrate brain - spanning from comparative neurology to experimental psychology and neurophysiology to clinical data - is reviewed for its bearing on conceptions of the neural organization of consciousness. ... the principal macrosystems of the vertebrate brain can be seen to form a centralized functional design in which an upper brain stem system organized for conscious function performs a penultimate step in action control. This upper brain stem system retained a key role throughout the evolutionary process by which an expanding forebrain - culminating in the cerebral cortex of mammals - came to serve as a medium for the elaboration of conscious contents. This highly conserved upper brainstem system, which extends from the roof of the midbrain to the basal diencephalon, integrates the massively parallel and distributed information capacity of the cerebral hemispheres into the limited-capacity, sequential mode of operation required for coherent behavior. It maintains special connective relations with cortical territories implicated in attentional and conscious functions, but is not rendered nonfunctional in the absence of cortical input. This helps explain the purposive, goal-directed behavior exhibited by mammals after experimental decortication, as well as the evidence that children born without a cortex are conscious. Taken together these circumstances suggest that brainstem mechanisms are integral to the constitution of the conscious state, and that an adequate account of neural mechanisms of conscious function cannot be confined to the thalamocortical complex alone.”<br /><br />Are children born without a cortex conscious?Stephen Wysonghttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15213141784165096783noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26951738.post-57503672749068429682017-02-06T17:02:23.188-08:002017-02-06T17:02:23.188-08:00Steve Wysong writes: Thanks for your referrals to ...Steve Wysong writes: Thanks for your referrals to Tononi and Prinz which has swollen my enormous required reading list even further. Very much appreciated.<br /><br />I'm still researching, but I have yet to locate anyone who disagrees with the substantial experimental and observational evidence connecting the brainstem to consciousness, which, at a minimum, strongly supports the brainstem's crucial role in activating the cortex. A summary of that evidence appears in the first two paragraphs of Damasio's “Consciousness and the Brainstem”. (There are apparently two acceptable spellings of brainstem, by the way – the other is 'brain stem' which you use … apparently it's a non-issue – Damasio's published works use both). Perhaps more contentious are Damasio's hypotheses regarding emotions and the protoself.<br /><br />I appreciate your brief explanation of your hypothesis commitment criteria as requiring “a consensus position agreed upon by people with very different methodologies and starting points”. I am, of course, coming from a different place with regard to my own search for and evaluation of hypotheses – I'm a ferociously curious non-specialist with specific interests in Cosmology and Consciousness, engaged for decades now in seeking the “Answer to the Question of Life, the Universe, and Everything” and the answer to Kurt Vonnegut's unanswerable question, “What are people for?”. As I construct and amend my views, I'm fully aware that 100% certainty is unattainable, but I'll settle for the best that we can do at this time.<br /><br />My own highest priority in evaluating these sorts of hypotheses is that the information I include in my consideration be evidence-based, which I determined decades ago was the only reliable hope for distinguishing between various propositions in every discipline.<br /><br />My tentative favoring of Damasio's brainstem hypotheses in no way implies that I believe the brainstem to be the only possible implementation of consciousness. I'm very open to the possibility of weirdly constructed aliens and I'm pretty sure that octopi are conscious. In fact, I'm open to the possibility of consciousness in any workable substrate, whether that be a silicon chip the size of Chicago or an engineered neuronal structure constructed with artificial DNA producing Artificial Consciousness. Perhaps we'll fancifully invent the “The Animator” and research brown shoe consciousness, as in Philip K. Dick's "The Short Happy Life of the Brown Oxford". In the meantime, our own and other mammalian brainstems are conveniently close at hand for our investigations.<br /><br />A very recent development from just days ago – “A new research study contradicts the established view that so-called split-brain patients have a split consciousness” (neurosciencenews.com and others) – looks to be very relevant to Callan's earlier post in this thread and also Damasio's brainstem theory. I've been re-reading about split-brain research, hemispherectomies and anaesthesia applied to a single hemisphere at a time. I plan to post my thoughts about this new research and some implications very soon in this thread – the topic seems especially relevant.Eric Schwitzgebelhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16274774112862434865noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26951738.post-7545068170086080372017-02-04T11:13:46.288-08:002017-02-04T11:13:46.288-08:00Eric, I posted this (or so I thought) Wednesday mo...Eric, I posted this (or so I thought) Wednesday morning but it hasn't made it to you blog. Either 1) the posting failed or 2) you've been too busy to approve postings, or 3) you didn't wish to approve it. I'm going to assume the first and repost. By the way, if you don't approve of a posting, does the author ever learn why?<br /><br />========================================================<br /><br />Thanks for your referrals to Tononi and Prinz which has swollen my enormous required reading list even further. Very much appreciated.<br /><br />I'm still researching, but I have yet to locate anyone who disagrees with the substantial experimental and observational evidence connecting the brainstem to consciousness, which, at a minimum, strongly supports the brainstem's crucial role in activating the cortex. A summary of that evidence appears in the first two paragraphs of Damasio's “Consciousness and the Brainstem”. (There are apparently two acceptable spellings of brainstem, by the way – the other is 'brain stem' which you use … apparently it's a non-issue – Damasio's published works use both). Perhaps more contentious are Damasio's hypotheses regarding emotions and the protoself.<br /><br />I appreciate your brief explanation of your hypothesis commitment criteria as requiring “a consensus position agreed upon by people with very different methodologies and starting points”. I am, of course, coming from a different place with regard to my own search for and evaluation of hypotheses – I'm a ferociously curious non-specialist with specific interests in Cosmology and Consciousness, engaged for decades now in seeking the “Answer to the Question of Life, the Universe, and Everything” and the answer to Kurt Vonnegut's unanswerable question, “What are people for?”. As I construct and amend my views, I'm fully aware that 100% certainty is unattainable, but I'll settle for the best that we can do at this time.<br /><br />My own highest priority in evaluating these sorts of hypotheses is that the information I include in my consideration be evidence-based, which I determined decades ago was the only reliable hope for distinguishing between various propositions in every discipline.<br /><br />My tentative favoring of Damasio's brainstem hypotheses in no way implies that I believe the brainstem to be the only possible implementation of consciousness. I'm very open to the possibility of weirdly constructed aliens and I'm pretty sure that octopi are conscious. In fact, I'm open to the possibility of consciousness in any workable substrate, whether that be a silicon chip the size of Chicago or an engineered neuronal structure constructed with artificial DNA producing Artificial Consciousness. Perhaps we'll fancifully invent the “The Animator” and research brown shoe consciousness, as in Philip K. Dick's "The Short Happy Life of the Brown Oxford". In the meantime, our own and other mammalian brainstems are conveniently close at hand for our investigations.<br /><br />A very recent development from just days ago – “A new research study contradicts the established view that so-called split-brain patients have a split consciousness” (neurosciencenews.com and others) – looks to be very relevant to Callan's earlier post in this thread and also Damasio's brainstem theory. I've been re-reading about split-brain research, hemispherectomies and anaesthesia applied to a single hemisphere at a time. I plan to post my thoughts about this new research and some implications very soon in this thread – the topic seems especially relevant.<br />Stephen Wysonghttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15213141784165096783noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26951738.post-15265917249152946072017-01-30T14:48:25.360-08:002017-01-30T14:48:25.360-08:00Interesting article, skimmed over it real fast loo...Interesting article, skimmed over it real fast looking for core truths. Working on my own book. It will be far more simple that all this. I believe in "Core or foundation truths", which everything else is "Built on". <br /><br />Like E=mc2 . So when it comes to cracking the secrets of Consciousness, you have to look for core truths. <br /><br />This article surprised me had some stuff in it, I thought only I knew. But knowing something and "really knowing something" are 2 different things. <br /><br />Dr Lector in silence of the Lambs, was always seeing the "obvious" that others over looked. They did not "Value" foundational truths, since they were simply understood.<br /><br />I seen some stuff in this article that need to be looked at far more closely. <br /><br />Not going to really say, exactly what that is. <br /><br /> Unknownhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02163219872961553683noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26951738.post-55696448163578154262017-01-25T14:03:58.095-08:002017-01-25T14:03:58.095-08:00Callan: Most ordinary people in our culture and mo...Callan: Most ordinary people in our culture and most consciousness researchers would regard cows as "conscious", or having a stream of experience, in the plain, minimal sense that I believe the term is ordinarily used (see my recent JCS piece defining and defending consciousness for an attempt at a clear definition of the term). This is different from being more intellectually self-conscious or conceptualizing oneself as a being with consciousness.<br /><br />Stephen: If you'd like to resubmit without typos, I can delete the old and approve the new, but then the temporal order will be garbled.<br /><br />My position in the dialectical space of the field is to be sufficiently dubious about our methodologies that I cannot commit to any position that is not a consensus position agreed upon by people with very different methodologies and starting points, so of course I will not accept Damasio's claims -- though I respect that the field would not go far if everyone were as skeptical as I. Your commitment to the brain stem in particular might conflict with everyday and philosophical intuition about possible alien species and perhaps also with the actual case of the octopus -- *if* you are willing to grant the view that some weirdly constructed aliens and/or octopi with very different neural structures might be conscious.Eric Schwitzgebelhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11541402189204286449noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26951738.post-15497522401710133402017-01-23T21:54:59.654-08:002017-01-23T21:54:59.654-08:00That's what I'm trying to learn more about...That's what I'm trying to learn more about. Wherever and however that functionality operates today within the brain, whether Damasio's hypotheses prove correct or not, I cannot imagine that a duplicate functionality for creating those feelings would evolve. As such, it seems reasonable to believe that the structures initially responsible – and there was very little brain structure beyond the brainstem at that point – would be conserved and enhanced in their feelings repertoire over generations, leading me to suspect that the brainstem, or some other primitive brain structure should Damasio's hypothesis be falsified, continues to be the “dreamer” of oneself centered in the world.<br /><br />To finally return to a statement on-topic, millions of evolutionary years down the line from the origins of core consciousness, however instantiated, we find our own minds with complex information processing abilities and intelligence, both of which arose in the context of consciousness. In a purely chicken-egg sense, I simply find it difficult to imagine a purely intelligent pattern matching system spontaneously developing a completely unrelated and unnecessary feeling of itself in a world.Stephen Wysonghttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15213141784165096783noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26951738.post-72148528532421222052017-01-23T21:53:22.689-08:002017-01-23T21:53:22.689-08:00Eric, I appreciate your remark about typos and, be...Eric, I appreciate your remark about typos and, believe me, I barely notice them myself, since my fat-fingering on a small onscreen keyboard is legendary. :-) But something about that missing 'il' syllable leaving a legitimate word in place of the intended one just gave me a brain itch, so I requested your assistance. <br /><br />As you and I know, but your blog audience doesn't yet, in answer to your question about the source of my remarks, I emailed you the PDF of Antonio Damasio's “Consciousness in the Brainstem” and identified Damasio as providing the information grounding my remark that consciousness is essentially a feeling produced by the brainstem. <br /><br />You replied that “his work on the brainstem as the source of consciousness is definitely a minority position.” Damasio certainly agrees with your assessment. In Self Comes to Mind (2010), he writes:<br /><br />“But contrary to tradition and convention, I believe that the mind is not made in the cerebral cortex alone. Its first manifestations arise in the brain stem. The idea that mind processing begins at brain-stem level is so unconventional that it is not even unpopular. Among those who have championed the idea with great passion, I single out Jaak Panksepp. This idea, and that of early feelings arising in the brain stem, are of a piece. Two brain-stem nuclei, the nucleus tractus solitarius and the parabrachial nucleus, are involved in generating basic aspects of the mind, namely, the feelings generated by ongoing life events, which include those described as pain and pleasure. I envision the maps generated by these structures as simple and largely devoid of spatial detail, but they result in feelings. These feelings are, in all likelihood, the primordial constituents of mind, based on direct signaling from the body proper. Interestingly, they are also primordial and indispensable components of the self and constitute the very first and inchoate revelation, to the mind, that its organism is alive.”<br /><br />Assuming that “not even unpopular” is less disastrous than “not even wrong,” I find Damasio's case convincing, in my admitted neuroanatomical ignorance. He also wrote in 2010 of these research results, which I have no reason to believe are misrepresented:<br /><br />“New research indicates that the protoself level corresponds to a gathering of information regarding the state of the body. It is constructed in the brain stem and it generates feelings that signify our existence.”<br /><br />As I indicated in my email to you, I'm particularly interested in the origin and workings of those feelings which are, Damasio hypothesizes, an elemental component of our own complex consciousness. Those “first manifestations” of mind, the “early feelings arising in the brainstem” are, to my mind, simply astonishing in the evolutionary history of living organisms: a complex biological organism composed, in part, of a body shaped network of meat electronics, creates an internal analog representation – a feeling – of itself in an external world. Simply fantastic!<br /><br />(I apparently have exceed the character limit for a post … to be continued.)<br />Stephen Wysonghttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15213141784165096783noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26951738.post-37745176010424770032017-01-23T21:32:30.384-08:002017-01-23T21:32:30.384-08:00I feel a cow 'knows' those things - a cow ...I feel a cow 'knows' those things - a cow or bull will charge trespassers sometimes. They know to graze. Bison are nomadic for food and will run off lions that are all over a fellow adult bison. Do they pass as having consciousness?<br /><br />In some ways I think it'd take fewer and fewer people asking questions for it to be consciousness - so we're getting there, but you're ruining your own theory, Eric!Callan S.http://philosophergamer.blogspot.com.au/noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26951738.post-20733132463943903752017-01-23T07:29:00.520-08:002017-01-23T07:29:00.520-08:00A self-model approach to the issue fits nicely wit...A self-model approach to the issue fits nicely with Higher Order views and could probably take care of some of the problems. I disagree about the U.S., though! You write:<br /><br />"A country, like the US, is really complicated - how much can it actually self model that is both relatively accurate and also relevant to its survival? Or can it simply not self model and survive, like a cow? Ask people how the economy works and generally people just make up a big story that doesn't explain why factories being shut down/jobs ending is somehow a news worthy concern to us or why people sleep in cardboard boxes."<br /><br />Of course humans have very little idea of how they work, esp. before modern science (we didn't even all agree about the role of the brain in thought) -- and the U.S. does know some broad things about its survival, e.g., protect the borders from invading armies; grow, manufacture, or import food; etc. Eric Schwitzgebelhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11541402189204286449noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26951738.post-16115100724665926972017-01-21T15:15:31.471-08:002017-01-21T15:15:31.471-08:00Eric, I think really it involves the processing sy...Eric, I think really it involves the processing system forming a virtual model of the processor and the body it's housed in, within that processing system. Though it doesn't have to be all that accurate a model, it has to have some correlation with reality for the next part to be significant - that of observing oneself (well, the model). Which is, to the degree the model is actually accurate, taking oneself into account as part of situational problems - which is quite distinct from simply perceiving situational problems by perceiving input to senses. The latter leads to things like monkey grip - where the monkey reaches in through the gap and grabs the peanuts, but now it's fist can't retract through the gap when holding the nuts. Without a (relatively accurate) model of self, the problem is intractable - "there are nuts, I want the nuts, I cannot remove them!?". Without a self model, the creature cannot see what they have contributed to the problem space that is causing their problem. The problem is always outside them, never them. Just like Trump (oh! I could not resist...what am I contributing to my own problem space now, eh?)<br /><br />So in terms of individual neurons, I think it's fairly clear they just lack the processing power to form a model of themselves as individuals. That's why I describe them as the inarticulate multitude. Only with the inter actions of a great many (and in the process of that, forgetting the great many) can a model of the organism be formed within the organism. Ironically, the more individuals neurons that get forgotten/attention neglected during the creation of that model, the more complete the model will seem (as it both boosts processing power when combining neurons into a larger processor but obviously also during that process, neglecting to make any process about those individual neurons). So that's why individual neurons are out.<br /><br />In terms of a country (with the United States being just one example), taking me with a grain of salt, the thing is there are plenty of animals that don't form these models of their environment with them in it, because they don't really need to/there is no survival benefit. Cows, for instance. Plus the modeling has to be fairly accurate - the more complicated the creature, the more the complexity outstrips the ability to self model (which on a side note is something against cybernetic enhancement). A country, like the US, is really complicated - how much can it actually self model that is both relatively accurate and also relevant to its survival? Or can it simply not self model and survive, like a cow? Ask people how the economy works and generally people just make up a big story that doesn't explain why factories being shut down/jobs ending is somehow a news worthy concern to us or why people sleep in cardboard boxes. They don't understand and so far in survival terms, they haven't had to understand 'the economy'. As long as they aren't near a cardboard box and the job loss is distant, like lions in a nature doco being about fifty meters from a heard of bison is distant enough to the bison to leave them complacently feeding, no questions need be asked.<br /><br />Speaking of Trump, though, on the other hand, with all the 'How did this happen!?!?' talk, maybe a consciousness is arising? A broad attempt to form a self model.Callan S.http://philosophergamer.blogspot.com.au/noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26951738.post-62624119821431606272017-01-20T17:16:10.842-08:002017-01-20T17:16:10.842-08:00Hi Stephen -- I can't correct comments, just a...Hi Stephen -- I can't correct comments, just approve or disapprove, but I think we can all forgive typos in blog comments! I'm not sure on what grounds you think consciousness arises from the brain stem? I do tend to share your suspicions about over-intellectualizing consciousness, but there really are lots of ways to go without over-intellectualizing, I think.<br /><br />Callan: Fun thought. I'm sure Tononi would through some mathematical integration measure at you, but I think it's a really big problem. We normally think: one organism, one stream of conscious experiences. But it's not clear how justified that thought is, or on what grounds, or how you can exclude subsets (individual neurons) or sets of organisms (the United States) from being conscious.<br /><br />Eric Schwitzgebelhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11541402189204286449noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26951738.post-63711094311485649742017-01-18T16:38:47.207-08:002017-01-18T16:38:47.207-08:00Also it's worth considering to simply extend t...Also it's worth considering to simply extend the split brain patient idea, many fold. If a split brain patient has two consciousnesses, what if what you take to be consciousness is instead that every single cell of your brain can be taken to be split from every other brain cell? As much as the two hemispheres of the split brain patient are taken to be separate? That the cells are simply observing each other - or perhaps it'd be more accurate to say just reacting to each other. That consciousness is a massive case of synedoche. A inarticulate multitude who can only speak once they have ignored they are a multitude, and so speak as 'one' entity.<br /><br />Callan S.http://philosophergamer.blogspot.com.au/noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26951738.post-72579526803505598362017-01-17T17:58:10.794-08:002017-01-17T17:58:10.794-08:00Eric, in my comment, I intended the word "Evo...Eric, in my comment, I intended the word "Evolutionarily" and not Evolutionary. If you approve my comment I'd appreciate the correction. Thanks in advance!Stephen Wysonghttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15213141784165096783noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26951738.post-8030490830584277292017-01-17T10:21:58.333-08:002017-01-17T10:21:58.333-08:00I continue to believe that consciousness has littl...I continue to believe that consciousness has little or nothing to do with intelligence which, if IQ tests are any guide, appears to be skill in pattern matching across multiple domains. Note that approximately 98% of the cognitive operations of the human brain are unconscious and not at all accessible to consciousness, so pattern matching as intelligence is almost completely an unconscious process.<br /><br />Consciousness, as distinguished from intelligence, is essentially a feeling produced by the brainstem. Evolutionary speaking, it seems likely that the most primitive form of consciousness created an embodied feeling within the organism-self of external or proprioceptive pressure or temperature or similar sensations via sensory connections within the organism or to the external world.<br /><br />Neuroscientist Antonio Damasio in “The Feeling of What Happens” (1999) defines core consciousness as “the simplest kind of consciousness” which “provides the organism with a sense of self about one moment – now – and about one place – here. The scope of core consciousness is the here and now.” Every organism that has ever had a brainstem partakes in core consciousness and I think we overly complicate our view of consciousness by focusing on human consciousness and confusing issues of consciousness with issues of human intelligence.<br /><br />If we really wish to create a conscious machine, core consciousness is the effect we need to produce in the machine – “a feeling of what happens.” And I haven't read of any approaches to solving this problem using AI or any other computational strategy. Our computing devices+software are already doing remarkable pattern recognition ... they are already “intelligent,” but, clearly, consciousness is a completely unrelated property.<br /><br />In summary, intelligence appears to have nothing at all to do with consciousness. As for creating machine consciousness in silicon, creating circuits that are “dispositional duplicates of neurons” will require circuitry in those duplicates that mimics the brainstem's creation of a feeling in a (presumably) neuronal structure. Is anyone pursuing this path to achieving machine consciousness?<br />Stephen Wysonghttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15213141784165096783noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26951738.post-64843945238752962912017-01-17T02:09:42.194-08:002017-01-17T02:09:42.194-08:00I'm not sure why 'consciousness' gets ...I'm not sure why 'consciousness' gets such a mystical and inexplicability attributed to it? Couldn't consciousness be described as no more than thinking about thoughts or feelings one has had in the past (including mere seconds or fractions of a second ago)? A brain that thinks about it's thinking, as opposed to the other animals which mostly respond to the outside world (there may be some thinking about thinking in other animals, but I suspect it's in considerably lower levels than in us)<br /><br />It's almost like how people can't seem to agree on anything, but when it comes to spoilers everyone has somehow agreed to a rule on that without even talking about it. Same with 'consciousness' - there seems some grand, unspoken agreement to treat it in inexplicable terms.Callan S.http://philosophergamer.blogspot.com.au/noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26951738.post-84882448365814473602017-01-16T14:48:01.561-08:002017-01-16T14:48:01.561-08:00Just to be silly, (I'm in a hurry and have to ...Just to be silly, (I'm in a hurry and have to run off to a dinner engagement)- but there must be some super smart computer geek/guru who believes in God.<br />If AI is conscious it might have a spiritual life and believe in a God- a God made in our image or its image- but this God might make this super intelligence think twice- unless with Asimov (The Last Question) you equate the computer with God.<br />Just a silly objection- but I'm curious- it's my immediate response to your cruxhowie bnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26951738.post-44454934203760723962017-01-16T11:14:46.088-08:002017-01-16T11:14:46.088-08:00I really appreciate Susan's thoughtful and int...I really appreciate Susan's thoughtful and interesting reply, and her willingness to let me post it on my blog!<br /><br />I'm interested in others' thoughts, so I won't post a long answer here -- at least not yet -- but I would mention one clarification: I would include "broadcast" or "fame" models of consciousness (e.g., Prinz, Dennett) alongside central system or global workspace models as another architecture for action coordination that is associated with consciousness. If we consider central system, plus broadcast, plus higher-order, plus information integration models, broadly speaking, we seem both to (a) cover most of the leading empirically based models for consciousness, and (b) cover most of the most obvious models for effectively implementing co-ordinated, sophisticated action over time. If we can hook (a) and (b) together plausibly, then we have a plausibility argument for consciousness in General Artificial Intelligence. I agree with Susan, though, that we shouldn't be highly confident about this, because all such theories of consciousness are still in doubt.Eric Schwitzgebelnoreply@blogger.com