Bryan Caplan and I recently discussed if brain emulations “feel.” In such discussions, many prefer to wait-and-see, saying folks with strong views are prematurely confident. Surely future researchers will have far more evidence, right? Actually, no;
I can definitely see where you're coming from. The best we can do empirically is to compare what an entity that claims to be conscious is doing with what brains do (once we know exactly what that is). That is the nature of the 'hard' problem, the subjective perspective is by definition not open to objective analysis. But why would exact (or sufficiently similar) processes occurring in the universe not be the same phenomenon? The way you framed your conclusion, either we all feel or we all don't feel, is just word play and it's why the 'hard' problem is so controversial.
If those things didn’t actually feel, but still had the same signal/info process structure making them say and think they feel, we’d still get exactly the same signals/info from them.
If you're saying on the surface we can't tell whether something is conscious or not, that may be true. But if you're saying that no amount of deep inspection of what exactly the apparently conscious thing is doing can inform us if it actually is feeling, then I can't agree. This is the core of Chalmers' zombie argument and I've never understood why people are convinced by it.
An analogy would be a computer program that just prints the string "2+2=4" and a computer program that REALLY goes through the process of computing 2+2 and returning the answer 4. The physical process in the world that occurs when both these programs run is different. Similarly, if we simulate a ball falling using Newton's equations, or if we just animate several key frames of a ball moving on the screen, they may appear identical, but inspecting the code, seeing exactly what it is doing, will tell us the truth of the phenomenon. Why is consciousness any different? In the future, we can look into an EM that claims to feel and see if what it is doing is what our brains do, or if its just some bot that is coded to say it 'feels'. We should be able to tell the difference upon a deeper inspection.
"The reason feeling/conciousness seems so puzzling is, I think, because the human brain cannot perform introspection to a high enough level, I do not believe we have any real second-order consciousness (consciousness about consciousness). Yes, we know we feel, but we do not have direct conscious awareness of the structure of our feelings."
I think the model shows that We remember events, and we remember attributes arising from feelings that enclose events. The feelings themselves arise fresh and bound to the event memorial rather than the memorial event.If it were any other way we would always punch the guy we remembered punching previously.It would be a closed loop paradox of having no way in and no way out.Phantom limb syndrome for every cubic inch of your body.
The ideas behind every successful theory should be able to be stated in a few sentences and understood by a bright 12-year old. Yes the technical details might be hard and need a high IQ, but the basic ideas should not be, no matter how advanced the theory. For example, take the theory of relativity:
*'The speed of light is independent of the speed of the source, the laws of physics are the same in all reference frames and gravity is locally equivalent to acceleration'.
That's it. And now my basic conception of consciousness:
*Categorization is the process of grouping concepts according to their degree of similarity. Consciousness is simply the special case of categorization that is applied to our own internal decision making systems. This categorization enables the sub-systems to be integrated and coordination'.
That's it. Yes, I believe it really is that simple.
The reason feeling/conciousness seems so puzzling is, I think, because the human brain cannot perform introspection to a high enough level, I do not believe we have any real second-order consciousness (consciousness about consciousness). Yes, we know we feel, but we do not have direct conscious awareness of the structure of our feelings.
But there is no reason why a suffciently advanced mind should not be able to have a sensory modality for feeling/consciousness itself. (consciousness about consciousness). To do this, the various categorization procedures of the mind would have to be extended to enable self-categorization (i.e. categorization of the categorization procedures themselves).
Such a mind would see no mystery about matter and feeling, since both of these concepts would simply be categorized into a new super category that summarized their relationshiip.
And here's the really big punch-line, something the entire OB/LW community has failed to grasp (and yes it really is something that any bright 12-year should be able to see):
Such a mind wouldn't hesitate to classify the concept of 'Bayesian Induction' itself under some particular super category. This would enable such a mind to make correct inferences about Bayesian Induction itself, which are not themselves based on any Bayesian evidence!!!.
If I am right, the implication is that further insights about feelings are possible, even in the absence of empirical data about the feeling/matter relation.
I'll think we'll have an easier time answering the question about things that are less complex than us than about things that are more complex than us, but for historical reasons rather than directly because of the difficulty in analyzing complex systems. If we want to know whether, for instance, a cat shares our experiences of, e.g. hunger, we can look for the neurological structures that fire in a human when he or she reports hunger and look for analogous structures and functions in fluffy (as well as analogous behaviors). We share common ancestry with that cat, which hugely improves the odds of finding analogous structures. If we build an AGI which is more complex than a human, and if its architecture wasn't intentionally designed to be as close to human as possible, there is likely to be much less analogous structure, which would make corresponding arguments much weaker.
Complex Mechanism : any given machine that implements its acquisition through its expression and implements its expression through its acquisition - metabolism.
We have data on whether things of our level of complexity qualify as claiming to feel and being believed. We have some data on less-complex things (computer games) that claim to feel and are disbelieved.
Open question 1: where is the line "below" us (things that claim to feel, and we assign 50% probability that they're correct)?
Open question 2 (relevant to the prior discussion): are things more complex than us likely to claim that they feel? Perhaps they'll have sufficient capacity that they don't need the heuristics and simplifications that present as "feeling" to us.
Open Question 3 (also relevant): even if more complex beings claim to "feel", is it the same thing we claim? They may have a very different level of abstraction at which point they can no longer enumerate their calculations and have to summarize as "feeling" than we do. The flip side of this is whether they'd agree that what we claim is actual "feeling" compared to what they mean.
Robert, I think an important distinction here is between claims that our sense of being "reasoning beings" isn't illusory, and curiosity about the experience at least some of us have of qualia, a "theatre of consciousness". Even if life is a ride and the controls are operated by instinct (or, ultimately randomness or the initial conditions of the universe, etc.) there still is that theatre of conscious experience and its neuroanatomic, neuroalgorithmic (or even extraneural) material intricacies to discover and explain.
karl, i think expert consensus about the accuracy of specific past memories you have of your own feelings would be a closer match to expert consensus about the geologic record.
I think this touches on the main problem with emulations. If they can't get laid, how will they feel about their status? We would just be creating an army of the worst sort of disgruntled workers.
How is saying that one's own memories of feelings is not evidence that we felt in the past any different from saying the geological record is not evidence that the continents had specific forms in the past?
It could be the case that memories are false, sure. But I can use knowledge of those memories to predict my current feelings. Isn't this the standard for evidence? I remember being hurt when I hit my head. I can now hit my head and yes it hurts.
(sorry for double post, forgot the last part)
I can definitely see where you're coming from. The best we can do empirically is to compare what an entity that claims to be conscious is doing with what brains do (once we know exactly what that is). That is the nature of the 'hard' problem, the subjective perspective is by definition not open to objective analysis. But why would exact (or sufficiently similar) processes occurring in the universe not be the same phenomenon? The way you framed your conclusion, either we all feel or we all don't feel, is just word play and it's why the 'hard' problem is so controversial.
Zombies rear their obfuscating heads once more!
If those things didn’t actually feel, but still had the same signal/info process structure making them say and think they feel, we’d still get exactly the same signals/info from them.
If you're saying on the surface we can't tell whether something is conscious or not, that may be true. But if you're saying that no amount of deep inspection of what exactly the apparently conscious thing is doing can inform us if it actually is feeling, then I can't agree. This is the core of Chalmers' zombie argument and I've never understood why people are convinced by it.
An analogy would be a computer program that just prints the string "2+2=4" and a computer program that REALLY goes through the process of computing 2+2 and returning the answer 4. The physical process in the world that occurs when both these programs run is different. Similarly, if we simulate a ball falling using Newton's equations, or if we just animate several key frames of a ball moving on the screen, they may appear identical, but inspecting the code, seeing exactly what it is doing, will tell us the truth of the phenomenon. Why is consciousness any different? In the future, we can look into an EM that claims to feel and see if what it is doing is what our brains do, or if its just some bot that is coded to say it 'feels'. We should be able to tell the difference upon a deeper inspection.
"The reason feeling/conciousness seems so puzzling is, I think, because the human brain cannot perform introspection to a high enough level, I do not believe we have any real second-order consciousness (consciousness about consciousness). Yes, we know we feel, but we do not have direct conscious awareness of the structure of our feelings."
I think the model shows that We remember events, and we remember attributes arising from feelings that enclose events. The feelings themselves arise fresh and bound to the event memorial rather than the memorial event.If it were any other way we would always punch the guy we remembered punching previously.It would be a closed loop paradox of having no way in and no way out.Phantom limb syndrome for every cubic inch of your body.
The ideas behind every successful theory should be able to be stated in a few sentences and understood by a bright 12-year old. Yes the technical details might be hard and need a high IQ, but the basic ideas should not be, no matter how advanced the theory. For example, take the theory of relativity:
*'The speed of light is independent of the speed of the source, the laws of physics are the same in all reference frames and gravity is locally equivalent to acceleration'.
That's it. And now my basic conception of consciousness:
*Categorization is the process of grouping concepts according to their degree of similarity. Consciousness is simply the special case of categorization that is applied to our own internal decision making systems. This categorization enables the sub-systems to be integrated and coordination'.
That's it. Yes, I believe it really is that simple.
The reason feeling/conciousness seems so puzzling is, I think, because the human brain cannot perform introspection to a high enough level, I do not believe we have any real second-order consciousness (consciousness about consciousness). Yes, we know we feel, but we do not have direct conscious awareness of the structure of our feelings.
But there is no reason why a suffciently advanced mind should not be able to have a sensory modality for feeling/consciousness itself. (consciousness about consciousness). To do this, the various categorization procedures of the mind would have to be extended to enable self-categorization (i.e. categorization of the categorization procedures themselves).
Such a mind would see no mystery about matter and feeling, since both of these concepts would simply be categorized into a new super category that summarized their relationshiip.
And here's the really big punch-line, something the entire OB/LW community has failed to grasp (and yes it really is something that any bright 12-year should be able to see):
Such a mind wouldn't hesitate to classify the concept of 'Bayesian Induction' itself under some particular super category. This would enable such a mind to make correct inferences about Bayesian Induction itself, which are not themselves based on any Bayesian evidence!!!.
If I am right, the implication is that further insights about feelings are possible, even in the absence of empirical data about the feeling/matter relation.
I made no claim that one must judge only on surface features.
I'll think we'll have an easier time answering the question about things that are less complex than us than about things that are more complex than us, but for historical reasons rather than directly because of the difficulty in analyzing complex systems. If we want to know whether, for instance, a cat shares our experiences of, e.g. hunger, we can look for the neurological structures that fire in a human when he or she reports hunger and look for analogous structures and functions in fluffy (as well as analogous behaviors). We share common ancestry with that cat, which hugely improves the odds of finding analogous structures. If we build an AGI which is more complex than a human, and if its architecture wasn't intentionally designed to be as close to human as possible, there is likely to be much less analogous structure, which would make corresponding arguments much weaker.
Sorry. I will provide a definition.
Complex Mechanism : any given machine that implements its acquisition through its expression and implements its expression through its acquisition - metabolism.
"Open question 1: where is the line “below” us (things that claim to feel, and we assign 50% probability that they’re correct)?"
Look for a complex mechanism,
"simply no apparatus by which they could. "
How about; they lack a mechanism.
We have data on whether things of our level of complexity qualify as claiming to feel and being believed. We have some data on less-complex things (computer games) that claim to feel and are disbelieved.
Open question 1: where is the line "below" us (things that claim to feel, and we assign 50% probability that they're correct)?
Open question 2 (relevant to the prior discussion): are things more complex than us likely to claim that they feel? Perhaps they'll have sufficient capacity that they don't need the heuristics and simplifications that present as "feeling" to us.
Open Question 3 (also relevant): even if more complex beings claim to "feel", is it the same thing we claim? They may have a very different level of abstraction at which point they can no longer enumerate their calculations and have to summarize as "feeling" than we do. The flip side of this is whether they'd agree that what we claim is actual "feeling" compared to what they mean.
"First-person experience” "
How about experience of experience of experience?
Robert, I think an important distinction here is between claims that our sense of being "reasoning beings" isn't illusory, and curiosity about the experience at least some of us have of qualia, a "theatre of consciousness". Even if life is a ride and the controls are operated by instinct (or, ultimately randomness or the initial conditions of the universe, etc.) there still is that theatre of conscious experience and its neuroanatomic, neuroalgorithmic (or even extraneural) material intricacies to discover and explain.
karl, i think expert consensus about the accuracy of specific past memories you have of your own feelings would be a closer match to expert consensus about the geologic record.
I think this touches on the main problem with emulations. If they can't get laid, how will they feel about their status? We would just be creating an army of the worst sort of disgruntled workers.
'okely-dokely'.
How is saying that one's own memories of feelings is not evidence that we felt in the past any different from saying the geological record is not evidence that the continents had specific forms in the past?
It could be the case that memories are false, sure. But I can use knowledge of those memories to predict my current feelings. Isn't this the standard for evidence? I remember being hurt when I hit my head. I can now hit my head and yes it hurts.