On naturalism and consciousness

[Mudhammam]

Can we? What are we referring to when we claim that we can? Our personal experiences, the assumed experiences of others? If we look at our "functions" is it unimaginable that another architecture might be able to express it?

Yes, I feel emotion! I have sensuous experiences, a sense of "myself," the profoundly puzzling capacity to close my eyes and--through mindbogglingly complex organic circuitry, cells at bottom (apparently) composed of purely non-mental properties, i.e. atomic structures---"visualize" imagery, smells, sounds...do you really think a machine can abstract like this, not simply performing an algorithm, but have an inner sense of the process--with all the mistakes and self-corrections and feelings of dumbness or brilliance--of doing so?

Unimaginable? Eh, I won't go that far, though I cannot imagine how this is accomplished on the basis of our understanding of physical objects alone (in what part of any object does it become a subject?).

I think we can probably agree that there is something extra, not yet accounted for, but that it's most likely not hyperphysical, yes?

I can give you an entire school of thought. Computational theory of mind

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computation...ry_of_mind

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Prominent scholars[edit]
Daniel Dennett proposed the Multiple Drafts Model, in which consciousness seems linear but is actually blurry and gappy, distributed over space and time in the brain. Consciousness is the computation, there is no extra step or "Cartesian Theater" in which you become conscious of the computation.
Jerry Fodor argues that mental states, such as beliefs and desires, are relations between individuals and mental representations. He maintains that these representations can only be correctly explained in terms of a language of thought (LOT) in the mind. Further, this language of thought itself is codified in the brain, not just a useful explanatory tool. Fodor adheres to a species of functionalism, maintaining that thinking and other mental processes consist primarily of computations operating on the syntax of the representations that make up the language of thought. In later work (Concepts and The Elm and the Expert), Fodor has refined and even questioned some of his original computationalist views, and adopted a highly modified version of LOT (see LOT2).
David Marr proposed that cognitive processes have three levels of description: the computational level (which describes that computational problem (i.e., input/output mapping) computed by the cognitive process); the algorithmic level (which presents the algorithm used for computing the problem postulated at the computational level); and the implementational level (which describes the physical implementation of the algorithm postulated at the algorithmic level in biological matter, e.g. the brain). (Marr 1981)
Ulric Neisser coined the term 'cognitive psychology' in his book published in 1967 (Cognitive Psychology), wherein Neisser characterizes people as dynamic information-processing systems whose mental operations might be described in computational terms.
Steven Pinker described a "language instinct," an evolved, built-in capacity to learn speech (if not writing).
Hilary Putnam proposed functionalism (philosophy of mind) to describe consciousness, asserting that it is the computation that equates to consciousness, regardless of whether the computation is operating in a brain, in a computer, or in a "brain in a vat."
Georges Rey, professor at the University of Maryland, builds on Jerry Fodor's representational theory of mind to produce his own version of a Computational/Representational Theory of Thought.

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Fair enough. I will comment only on Dennett, that while I found his book Consciousness Explained highly valuable and enlightening, I tend to side with his critics who charge him with not really dealing with consciousness itself, but the processes that correlate to it. As they like to say, he doesn't explain it, he explains it away!

(Side note, Dennett and Daniel Hofstadter edited a compilation of articles and excerpts into a book called The Mind's Eye, which I recommend, and I think it poses more of the substantial problems, or rather puzzles, that Consciousness Explained just seemed, in my mind's eye, to disregard as irrelevant).

They cease to function, but to "die" I think you'll agree, has a whole lot of biological bias built into it, eh? Death is a thing that "living" things have learned to fear. We couldn't really assume a machine to even recognize it as a valid concept. After all, they can be turned on and off many times - and this is likely the best way we could describe it to them. We would expect them to be different if their architecture was different - we would expect them to have anamalous signals that couldn't be interpreted from one group to the other (otherselves) - without translation.

No major disagreement here but I'll just make a few subtleties that I'd enjoy your thoughts further on. First, I don't think death necessarily implies a biological bias and we use it all the time to speak of any process that culminates in termination--from our cars, to the Sun, to the Universe! So that was the intent of my usage. I'm only nitpicking on that point but you started it! Second, wouldn't it be fair to call a machine that possessed consciousness a "living" being? Can consciousness really exist in inanimate matter? I'd say no, but if you open that door of possibility then you're nudging quite a bit closer to the panpsychist's point of view, don't you think? Lastly, isn't our daily requisite for rest a biological function that comes--at least analogously--pretty darn close to "turning off and on," needing our "batteries," so to speak, recharged? (now I've just seemed to reverted to your side of the argument, haven't I? )

If we use ourselves as some sort of bar - we are really just exploring "human like things" - not conscious things.

Isn't that what we tend to do for everything in which we look at a thing's utility? I don't think that's a tendency we can escape really. What other bar can we appeal to? When we talk about animal consciousness or one of its biological functions, for example, we also tend to anthropomorphisize--i.e. whether its an "emotion" or a "thought" or a "purpose" we're talking about. Can we really get out of that without losing any conception of what it is we're really discussing?

If the usage of "alive" were so stacked in our favor we'd be the only living things on this rock, eh? The things we do, assuming we ever see AI, or regarding whether or not our minds are computational systems simply wouldn't be "human attributes" they would be attributes common to conscious entities. All the humanity would require translation (and similarly from them to us). We can use ourselves as a "it can express itself this way" - but not a "it must meet or exceed this bar" sort of way. Thinking of it this way might help to explain why some find computational theories compelling. If we can map this stuff to logic, and logic to gates, and gates to chipsets - perhaps the way that -we- do it is similar. At least we know how machines do it. Explain the unknown by reference to the known.

Perhaps. I'll have to think about that more.

Check that tiny list from just one of the competing theories of mind that require no sauce.

You're looking for a/the unifying theory? Alot of work goes into a fields before it approaches that level of refinement. There were "giants" of those fields other than einstein, newton, and darwin, btw. Both before and after them. Einsteins theory appears to be busting up like Newtons did, eh? Darwin was only glimpsing something ultimately beyond his ability to grasp. Darwinism isn't the modern paradigm, or the unifying theory. In any case, computational theory does attempt to unify.

No doubt, but as to the computational theory, I'm just not really sure that I'm convinced it's really talking about consciousness as philosophers as diverse from Descartes to David Chalmers or Thomas Nagel, have traditionally conceived it. Maybe it boils down to nothing more than semantics, but I do tend to think there is something to be said about "qualia," which Dennett (I don't know about the others in your list) simply flat out denies as being an entirely mythical, useless concept.

If you're looking for "The Big Name" - again, there are tons of them. Which ones history will remember in 50 years (or 200) is beyond my ability to predict. I don't know what this is supposed to indicate - what inference you've drawn from this?

Nothing too major, we can drop the "Einstein" comment as a moot point. I was only saying that perhaps this area of inquiry needs someone who blows the door open to a radically new field of possibilities that others, who no doubt are significant contributors, haven't quite been able to attain as of yet.

I'd appreciate it more if people applied all of that innovative thought to productive areas of research. There are enough ghost hunters and mediums in the world.

And while I share your disdain for so-called ghost hunters and mediums, I'd love to see scientists treat alleged psychical experiences of telepathy or what have you (if there are genuine accounts, genuine as in something unexplained really being experienced) seriously. Take the placebo effect for example--how does the mind seem to effect the body so as to cure illness?--that seems rather mystical, yet it is so widely reported that hard-nosed scientists I think would be better served to take some of these bizarre instances into consideration rather than dismiss them off-hand (as far as I know, the placebo effect is still simply treated as an unknown phenomena, which should at least cause us to be less dogmatic about what we think is and isn't possible).