We are no different than computers

[emjay]

Exactly, they are more robust than any digital gate, and -could- function as universal gates.  Charles Peirce first showed that NOR could execute the function of any other gate in series or parallel (or some combination).  Henry Sheffer proved (and importantly, relative to Peirce, published...lol), using NAND, that there was such a thing as a universal gate, upon which any logical function could be built.  

see Peirces Arrow, Peirce generally being the more well known not only because he was the first to publish his work, but also because he was a pioneer when it came to demonstrating that electronic gates could be built.  Obviously useful in hindsight.....lol

It is important, for any theory of mind invoking computation or logical operations, that this was found to be true.  Because whatever we may choose to conceptualize natures role in all of this one thing can be said with confidence.  Nature is not a designer, not a programmer.  It is a much simpler construction paradigm that nature toes the line on.  If nature were capable of "blindly producing" a thinking machine, repetition of components would, by the nature of it's constructive means, feature heavily.  We would not expect to find task specific gates in greater abundance than universal gates, if this were an "accidental computer".  We would expect, instead, to find something very much like a neural net comprised of universals, in structure - which is what we -do- find....yet another reason I feel that computation is a powerful explanation for at least -some- of the effects we attribute to mind, even if I could not, with certainty, say that computation explains it all, to everyones satisfaction (or even my own).

Check this out:

Explicit Logic Circuits Discriminate Neural States

Can you let me know if this is exactly what you're talking about, and there's not some subtle difference between it and comp mind? Because if it is I'm sold! That's an incredible article, albeit one which would take a lot of study to understand fully, and not only does it demonstrate NAND and other logic gates but it also describes the networks, shows that they're feasible given what is known about the brain, and the models accurately predict what perceptual states to expect for given inputs. And more than that it asks and answers the sorts of questions that have bugged me for years, such as how colour is (or could be) processed. Thanks ever so much for putting me onto this theory. Never in my wildest dreams would I have thought that there could be another type of processing going on in the brain, alongside normal neural networking, to account for perception, but now it looks extremely feasible. Cheers 

[The Grand Nudger]

It is, exactly, yes. 
(there -can be- subtle differences, there's room to move in CTM, but that paper expresses the core wonderfully. I noticed that the author likes to propose alternatives to standard models - but notice that the standard models the author challenges are -also- computational models. If I had to really pigeonhole the author, I'd say that it's a "classicist" approach, in that explicit gates are being referenced, rather than the ability of a net to emulate explicit gates and provide the function. I think that this sort of approach offers more demonstrable examples of how a particular function can be achieved withouty reference to some "else" - however, I think that the explicit gate approach opens itself to an equally pressing question in it's attempt to explain features of mind - how could we have gotten explicit gates in there in the first place? How does that work? Eh? Personally, I split the bay- I think that our brains are doing comp, but they are not doing it with explicit gates by design or by nature, the net is emulating the function of explicit gates.)

[emjay]

It is, exactly, yes. 
(there -can be- subtle differences, there's room to move in CTM, but that paper expresses the core wonderfully.  I noticed that the author likes to propose alternatives to standard models - but notice that the standard models the author challenges are -also- computational models.  If I had to really pigeonhole the author, I'd say that it's a "classicist" approach, in that explicit gates are being referenced, rather than the ability of a net to emulate explicit gates and provide the function.  I think that this sort of approach offers more demonstrable examples of how a particular function can be achieved withouty reference to some "else" - however, I think that the explicit gate approach opens itself to an equally pressing question in it's attempt to explain features of mind - how could we have gotten explicit gates in there in the first place?  How does that work?  Eh?  Personally, I split the bay- I think that our brains are doing comp, but they are not doing it with explicit gates by design or by nature, the net is emulating the function of explicit gates.)

Cool, so we're on the same page 

I understand your concern about how explicit gates could have evolved, but I'm not sure I agree. The brain already goes through a development process in the first few years of life that is directed by genetics. And in that process the brain's infrastructure is built including guiding neurons to specific locations etc. So given that evolution is essentially about the mutation of genes, or is now, I don't see why DNA couldn't have mutated at some point in such a way as to lead that development process towards building an infrastructure that included explicit gates. Once it had done that and consciousness resulted, it would certainly have an evolutionary impetus to stay because one certain benefit of consciousness is the organism's fear of death and drive to do anything to prevent it. Anyway that was just a thought and my knowledge of genetics is sketchy so it could be totally wrong and obviously neither would I be assuming that consciousness just appeared in all it's complexity overnight as my simplification above suggests.

But your approach is appealing as well because if the gates are 'emulated' (and I presume by that you mean that in amongst the mass of neurons evolved for a different purpose, some of them happened be placed and connected in such a way as to act as logic gates?) then consciousness truly becomes an 'emergent' property perhaps almost guaranteed to exist in a neural network as complex as the human brain?

[The Grand Nudger]

Precisely, it overcomes a potential hurdle.   It's just a question that will end up arising.  Additionally, from what we can tell, there are no "task specific" gates in our brains - at least not as we conceive of them in, say, a digital computer.  If I removed all of the XNORs in your PC's cpu that's it, you're done....but human beings are remarkably resilient when it comes to "losing gates" (check the "man with no brain" and neural plasticity in general).  If the gates were task specific, exclusive, explicit even..we would not expect this to be so.  There must be a great deal of universality and redundancy to exhibit the effects we see if brain/mind is comp...biology, of course, predicts that there would be, and observation backs up that prediction when we glance at the surface, so to speak.  While it isn't impossible for evolution to have built a great many computers to task, it's a tad less difficulty to understand how nature could have "happened upon them". Sure, the brains development has direction - but comp has a minimum bar, and plenty of life arranges circuits or gates (and a great many other systems) without, so far as we can tell, meeting that bar...so, pointing to the direction in the development of our brains does not actually help to explain -how- that development (or direction) arose, in the context of comp mind. It just pushes the question back from "how does the brain build a system of explicit gates for itself" to "how does evolution build a system of explicit gates for the brain".

Evolved for other purposes or no purpose at all. In a distributed, emulated system, it's only important that the components be present (by any means), not that they have any specific, associated task -or that they ever did-. Complexity, in this case, wouldn't confer consciousness by default. Many things are very complex and yet not, so far as we can tell, conscious. In this case, specifically, it would be a staggering redundancy of structures capable of acting as universal gates...which are engaged in computation......a very simple machine, in principle.

Obviously, I prefer to mix NN and CTM when one or the other offers a better explanation, toes the line /w observations more adequately, or presents fewer unanswered questions in it's attempt to explain. Some combo of NN and CTM -can- account for mind, imo, even though.....in the end, mind may be "else". CTM has a better "how". NN has a better "what". Modern Synth has the best "why". As such, I'm not fond of explanations of mind -by any means- that postulate events or interactions which would seem to rub against an infinitely better demonstrated theory or fact. CTM attempts to explain the underlying principle, but has to climb Mt. Improbable in order to "build the machine". NN has an easy time building the machine, but must - necessarily- lean on the principles of computing in order to explain how the machine, once built, works. And, as above, either way (or any other alternative) must have an explanation as to it's origins - which is an area in which we have knowledge, fact, rather than propositions.

-Consciousness, btw, offers no certain benefits, nothing does. Off the top of my head I can tell you one horrible, massive con to having a "thinking organ". You can be fooled. All benefits it confers may ultimately be eroded by this simple fact. Additionally, plenty of our relatives do fine without the big brains - and there's nothing that a human brain can actually -do- in and of itself, that would yield certain benefit. It's always a system, an interaction, brain as force multiplier, rather than as -the- force itself. The things we call "benefits of the thinking apparatus" may be mis-attribution, and, of course, under CTM a great many things may be "thinking" without seeing any of those benefits we ascribe when we do it. Additionally, wiping away any notion as to how or what mind is, that other things, demonstrably not the same as our brains or minds, are capable of achieving the same effect puts to bed the notion that a big brain, once gotten, would be kept for "reasons", or that a big brain is, relative to other strategies also present -even within us- a net benefit.

"Monkey /w big brain thinks big brain is super important" - well, we would, wouldn't we...but is it?
(again, google, "the man with no brain")

[emjay]

Wow. The man with no brain is amazing and definitely supports your emulation hypothesis much more than explicit gates! And it fits in with what I was saying as well because as far as I can gather from the pictures of his brain scans, it is the outermost area of the brain that has survived - the cerebral cortex... the part that I suggested most likely had the complexity for logic gates in the first place due to its higher than usual number of interconnections, inhibition dynamics, and feedback loops.

But one question. If there are statistically so many emulated universal gates per whatever mass of complex neural tissue, would that imply that more than one computational system could be in operation at the same time, some leading to consciousness and some not? In much the same way that neurons can partake in may different representations at the same time (i.e. they are reusable). In other words if the gates got there by chance then the number of different permutations/combinations of those gates would presumably create an essentially infinite number of possible circuits, all perhaps in operation at the same time, in parallel?

[The Grand Nudger]

As far as potential numbers of circuits....I would hesitate to call anything with a discrete value a "potential infinite".  There could be very many, yes, but their existence is no indicator of their operation (further, their operation no indicator of their efficacy), and their numbers are finite regardless.  As far as how how much para or series processing there could be....I think that's a question that can be misleading, and perhaps less than useful.  

As above, some things have a value, how many bits per seconds our brains are capable of handling, for examplee.  Anything dumping more than 60 bits a second and we're talking about potential data loss.  Which is to say, if our thinking apparatus was dumping 75bytes/s (parallel pro) only one tenth of that would be actively contributing to what we observe and describe as "consciousness" at any given moment.  The rest might need to be buffered (imagine the resources on that count).  So - whatever- computing is going on, -if- computing is going on, no matter how many parallel implementations are running(and whatever their requirements in architecture may be), there will still be operating parameters, theoretical maxes and mins determined by reference to system architecture (and that's allowing that any value we have set ourselves upon now might one day wind up being wrong). Take 100billion or so neurons, if they only acted as a single, explicit gate, they could potentially be 20 times more powerful than the worlds most robust commercially available computer. I suppose that makes an intuitive sort of sense, because we think to ourselves "Well, of course, look at all that we can do that a computer can't" but a more disturbing question might arise.....look at what computers do that -we- can't. Further, that a neuron is only a single, explicit gate is fantasy, and demonstrably so. The difference in specs between our brains and a modern PC increases exponentially accepting that...and then those areas where we lag behind a digital computer, for example, become even more disturbing. If we are computers...something is clearly lacking in our implementation.

What at first seems full of potential..... begins to look like a particularly shitty job of building a comp system......but that's what we would expect, eh? There's a reason that we build computers out of electronic components as opposed to building them out of leaves (biological material). I'm not saying our brains aren't fantastic, only mentioning that every known implementation of computational architecture, in addition to offering the function and perhaps some benefits over others....comes with inherent limitations. Wondering how much may be going on "in there" is entirely different from assessing how much of what goes on in there is actually a factor in what we observe "out here", though I;d stress that it's likely to be far, far less than most would imagine, off the cuff.

After all, at 60bits per second......consciousness can demonstrably express itself........doesn't take a whole hell of alot of computing to max out -that- pipe, eh?

[emjay]

Sorry Rhythm, I shouldn't have used the word 'infinite' at all - the number of combinations or permutations of something is finite by definition. In terms of parallel processing I wasn't meaning in the computing sense really - as in part of the same system - but rather in an abstract sense of many possible circuit designs, each completely distinct from the rest, operating at the same time and reusing the same components, some leading to 'useful' computation and some being completely meaningless.

You don't have to convince me about the computational limits of the human brain in comparison to a man-made computer. Without comp mind they are different types of processing entirely and with comp mind, well I'm still learning about that. In any case I think consciousness serves to simplify the whole system rather than complicate it. Put aside the amazing experience of qualia and think about what it actually is - eg colour is a labelling system - and you see that it simplifies neural activity, in my opinion. In other words if the perceptions of consciousness could be put into a flow chart it would actually be fairly simple, at least when contrasted with the neural networks alone.

[The Grand Nudger]

With CTM, we aren't just talking about computational systems (we have that other thing..the mind bit...to explain), which, taken as a group have attributes that any given representative may not have.  So, for example, while we can demonstrate that your statement is true with reference to comp systems made of digital components - the (truly) universal machine, it may not hold with reference to comp systems made of biological components.  What is true of the whole may not be true of the part.  

I'd say, by reference to computation alone, yes - that could be possible- there are some implementations of logic with which that could be achieved(as digital, above)..that doesn't mean that -all- comp systems can do that, or, specifically, that ours can (or is arranged thusly).

/w Comp Mind, btw, they are the same kind of processing with distinct implementations.  Comp Mind, in a nutshell, is this: Neuron is to transistor what transistor is to tube.

[emjay]

Thanks Rhythm. Clearly I'm starting to get a bit confused by all of this but just because I don't have much of an idea of the principles of electronic circuits. That article I linked to covers them but I read it mainly looking at the stuff relating to neurons - the rest was to come later when I studied it in depth. Even your last line didn't make much sense until I looked up transistors and found it talking about 'vacuum tubes' as being their predecessors. So now that idea of neurons as being an advanced form of transistor, which is an understandable way of looking at it now that I know what they are, puts another spin on the whole thing: if each neuron represents a transistor in a circuit then these logic gates only need a small number of neurons each and therefore there can be a lot more than I had envisaged. And there couldn't really be different 'parallel' arrangements in the way I had imagined either because the neurons are 'wired' in a certain way even without comp mind... in other words I think you're saying that comp mind would still use the same physical layout of the neurons, and their connectivity, just when viewing neurons also as transistors it opens up the possibility of looking at neural networks in terms of logical circuits as well as their more traditional role. Sorry about that, perhaps we weren't on the same page after all. Still, I very much like this theory even if I'm having trouble visualising it and am interested in learning more about it.

As for mind, yes I know it would have to explain the qualia as well but for my own part I'd be happy if it just showed how to say convert neural inputs into say numbers representing colours, which I think is what that article may show how to do. How those distinct states convert into conscious qualia is not all that important to me because just knowing that the 'numerical' representations are possible will be a massive step in the right direction as far as I'm concerned.

Anyway my mafia game is about to start so that's gonna take up most of my time for the next few days, so let's leave this here and I'll get back to you on it sometime down the line, hopefully when I've made some progress on it It's been great chatting with you and thanks for everything