No heavan on earth?

[Isaac]

Some times i wonder if people hold a high opinion of their construction, simply because we don't understand it. Even the very idea of god sometimes seems be brought on by, the fact that we think we're so important, we're worth being looked over, by an all powerful being.

We think being self aware is some king of magic, yet we're not surprised that atoms can also be transparent and on fire. Is being self aware really more miraculous than that, or are we just trying to be proud of ourselves?

With this logic, i dont think we have souls.

[roid]

If we have free will, we certainly do not have the technology to detect it. I doubt if we ever will.

oh i think there are leaps and bounds we are yet to make in dissecting realtime inter-neuron brain scale communication (ie: brain packet-sniffing). Currently we use MRIs and other devices to loosely map realtime oxygen usage within the brain's cells - but i'm always struck with how general the results are - the standard measurement being "blobs of activity" . I recon that when greater resolution "Star-Trekian" diagnostic medical practices are developed (we're getting there) it will reveal a more refined modular nature to the brain - which i'm tipping will reveal the exact pattern of neural interactions used for awareness of and thoughts concerning "self". I dream of the day when we can watch someone's brain physically and directly map it to previously abstract psychology - to confidently be able to declare "I C WUT U ARE DOIN THERE!"... mind reading. how naked would you feel?

So far i've found (modular) Brain Anatomy too vague a science for me to be able to grasp with any confidence . Please those who do get it, speak up.
But i'll speculate that the field of brain anatomy probabaly already has some theorys as to what part (or interaction of parts) holds the concept of "self".

So what do I think about consciousness? Why would humans need a capacity to be self-aware? I think the reason is so that we don't confuse ourselves with other people.This may sound weird --- after all, for each of us it seems intuitively clear who you are. However, from a brain science point of view you need to explain where this everyday feeling comes from and what its function might be. Particularly, because neuroscience finds more and more evidence that humans use the same brain areas - and often even the same neurons - to represent information (like actions, emotions and thoughts) about themselves and about other people. This means that the brain needs something that tells it to whom any kind of information belongs to: is it me or somebody else?

Some times i wonder if people hold a high opinion of their construction, simply because we don't understand it. Even the very idea of god sometimes seems be brought on by, the fact that we think we're so important, we're worth being looked over, by an all powerful being.

We think being self aware is some king of magic, yet we're not surprised that atoms can also be transparent and on fire. Is being self aware really more miraculous than that, or are we just trying to be proud of ourselves?

With this logic, i dont think we have souls.

There's a popular novel called "Ishmael" that i noticed touched on this in the first chapter. You used to be able to read the first chapter here, but it seems to be temporarily down. In the first chapter an inteligent ex-circus Gorilla tells the story of his consciousness's birth into individuality. The epiphany came from his realisation that his human jailers had given him an individual name that was his alone and not shared by other gorillas - as Pandora mentioned, we may take for granted this ability to draw a line between outselves and others. It's a great book i hear but the first chapter is all i've seen

Isaac if you question the validity of Ego, you may like Bhuddism (or is it Tao?) and a concept called Ego Death.

[Lothar]

I thought Ishmael blew. But that's just me.

[Jeff250]

My guess, no, I would not be aware of the switch, but also no, I wouldn't go along exactly the same way you would have. My "Free Will" would probably make some different choices than you would have. How different? Not a clue, after all, it would be working with the same memories and thinking equipment.

OK.

If Joe believes in free will and Jane doesn't, they can shout "Do to!" "Do not!" back and forth at each other all day, but thats about as far as the debate can go. If we have free will, we certainly do not have the technology to detect it. I doubt if we ever will.

I would agree that there is no decisive way of solving the free will issue. But you're also making claims that are outside simply whether or not free will exists. Specifically, you think that supernatural spirits are actively affecting the way we do things and make decisions in the natural universe. This does seem to be scientifically testable. Using futuristic technology, we could test the brains of people making decisions for anything that has no natural cause. Because that's what your idea would require, right, something akin to electrical impulses appearing out of nowhere or something like that?

But, now if you agree with me so far, do you actually predict that hundreds of years from now, after we've developed the necessary technology, we will actively find something akin to electrical impulses appearing out of nowhere occurring continously in the brain?

If self awareness simply arises out of the organization of the brain, would it still arise if the neurons fired in the same pattern but were not physically connected? If not, why not?

No. Because being connected is a part of the pattern?

I still don't get the significance of this question. It'd be like asking, if the Firefox Web Browser simply arises out of the organization of the computer, would it still arise if the computers' chips, circuits, wires, etc. sent information in/out in the same pattern but were not physically connected? If you've broken it down far enough, it won't, because all you'll be left with is a bunch of unconnected circuits, etc., exchanging electrons. No Firefox there!

[Kilarin]

Using futuristic technology, we could test the brains of people making decisions for anything that has no natural cause. Because that's what your idea would require, right, something akin to electrical impulses appearing out of nowhere or something like that?

Valid point, assuming quantum noise doesn't obscure the results.

I still don't get the significance of this question. It'd be like asking, if the Firefox Web Browser simply arises out of the organization of the computer, would it still arise if the computers' chips, circuits, wires, etc. sent information in/out in the same pattern but were not physically connected?

But then you are implying that something ABOUT the connection causes self awareness. What and why? Probably an unanswerable question, scientist just don't know, and I don't think they ever will. How do you test it? A brain WITH self awareness and a brain without it would perform EXACTLY the same.

And the Chinese room IS connected, but not self aware?

Self awareness seems to be against the very nature of nature.

[Jeff250]

But then you are implying that something ABOUT the connection causes self awareness. What and why?

So, we have a bunch of neurons lying around in some laboratory, and you're sending to and receiving from them input and output, the same that they would be receiving if they were in a brain. Well there's already a few problems with this thought experiment.

1. You're way over-simplifying the brain such that it only deals with input and output between neurons. Even if they are premature, none of the theories that I linked to suggest that consciousness can be explained only in terms of input and output between neurons. Other things must be accounted for too, like synapses, other squishy things, EM fields, and who knows what else.

2. Having any parts of the brain that are receiving and giving input just lying around in the laboratory is already a relavant enough disanalogy just due to the fact that that they are lying around. If consciousness arises from a brain state, I would suspect that it, if not many other important functions of the brain, might be sensitive to EM fields or other phenomena which are relative to distances and thereby spatial positions. Sure, you could try to account for these dynamics too, but

3. I suspect that by the time you've covered all contingencies in #1 and #2 (and other ones not thought up yet), you're going to wind up with something extremely similar to or exactly like a brain, thus defeating the purpose of the thought experiment in the first place.

And the Chinese room IS connected, but not self aware?

About that Chinese Room, I'm still waiting to hear the explanation for why if self-awareness can be naturally explained then any machine that can speak Mandarin Chinese must be self-aware. Because it seems to me that without that expectation, I'm not obligated to explain how the Chinese Room can be self-aware if self-awareness can be explained naturally.

Valid point, assuming quantum noise doesn't obscure the results.

So then your answer to this question:
"[D]o you actually predict that hundreds of years from now, after we've developed the necessary technology, we will actively find something akin to electrical impulses appearing out of nowhere occurring continously in the brain?"
is yes, assuming quantum noise doesn't obscure the results? I'm not familiar with quantum noise, but would this be another technological hurtle, or something like a fundamental limitation? Could you give background info on it?

[Kilarin]

I'm still waiting to hear the explanation for why if self-awareness can be naturally explained then any machine that can speak Mandarin Chinese must be self-aware.

In other words, since the "natural" explanation for the brains self-awareness is still unknown, we can't actually debate whether the Chinese Room would be self-aware. The Chinese Room duplicates the organization of the brain, it's pattern. But if the ORGANIZATION of the brain is NOT the key element in self-awareness, then the Chinese Room doesn't apply. However, would that also imply that things without the organization MIGHT be subject to awareness?

Like I said, it seems against the nature of nature to me.

I'm not familiar with quantum noise, but would this be another technological hurtle, or something like a fundamental limitation? Could you give background info on it?

The Heisenberg uncertainty principle puts certain fundamental limits on how finely grained we can make our knowledge of any particular pile of matter. When you get below a certain level, it becomes impossible to know EVERYTHING about each particle involved. So the idea that we could plot the exact position and momentum of every atom in the brain, and from there predict exactly the position of all of those atoms at some time in the future, won't work. The uncertainty principle states that we CAN'T know all that information exactly. Therefore, at a certain VERY low level, the behavior of the brain is fundamentally unpredictable. IF the changes we are looking for are below that threshold, then no experiment could "prove" free will, because any such external affect on the brain would be indistinguishable from random, unpredictable, quantum behavior (quantum noise).

[Isaac]

I talked to this girl the other day, who believes in spirit stuff, and is a major pot head. She believes our self-awareness is a soul because science can't prove it, yet we can feel it.

[Jeff250]

The Chinese Room duplicates the organization of the brain, it's pattern. But if the ORGANIZATION of the brain is NOT the key element in self-awareness, then the Chinese Room doesn't apply.

Really? You think that you understand the organization of the brain, even such that you can duplicate its entire organization with a simplistic thought experiment, which would actually involve people running around, breaking characters down into pixels, and then performing index look-ups to arrive at responses such as these?

edit:
Assuming that these people running around are supposed to be representative of neurons, as I've already pointed out, no modern theory of consciousness (even if they are premature) thinks that consciousness can be explained entirely by neurons (or people running around).

[Kilarin]

Really? You think that you understand the organization of the brain, even such that you can duplicate its entire organization with a simplistic thought experiment,

The brain is a Turing machine. Any Turing machine that accomplishes the same task is essentially identical.

Assuming that these people running around are supposed to be representative of neurons, as I've already pointed out, no modern theory of consciousness (even if they are premature) thinks that consciousness can be explained entirely by neurons (or people running around).

The problem is, that what I am EXPERIANCING is the "thoughts", the patterns. So whatever else is involved in consciousness MUST be tied very directly to the patterns in our brain.

As for modern "naturalist" theories of self-awareness. Hofstadter is the BEST of them in my opinion. And Hofstadter believes that self-awarness arrives directly from extremely complex self referential loops within a program. ANY PROGRAM. I HIGHLY recommend "Godel Escher Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid". I disagree with his conclusion, but it is an absolutely REMARKABLE book.

[Jeff250]

The Chinese Room duplicates the organization of the brain, it's pattern.

The brain is a Turing machine. Any Turing machine that accomplishes the same task is essentially identical.

Whether or not the brain is a Turing Machine has yet to be determined.

Besides, at best (assuming the brain is a Turing Machine), you're only guaranteed that the Chinese Room duplicates the function of the brain vis-a-vis how it speaks Chinese. After all, you would be mistaken to expect the Chinese Room to duplicate the brain's function in baking cookies, because there is no reason to think that the Chinese Room can even bake cookies, much less duplicate the brain's function in it. As far as we know, its only capacity is in speaking Chinese. In the same respect, there is no reason to expect that the Chinese Room duplicates the brain's function in how it is conscious. There is no reason to think that the Chinese Room can even become conscious, much less duplicate the brain's function in it.

This doesn't mean that we should conclude that the key element of baking cookies is not in its organization, or whatever it was that you were getting at. It just means that the Chinese Room isn't a suitable thought experiment for baking cookies. Along the same line, it's possible to believe that the Chinese Room does not duplicate the brain's function of consciousness, yet still believe that the brain has a natural explanation for consciousness, regardless of whether or not "organization is the key element in self-awareness." It's possible that the Chinese Room just isn't a suitable thought experiment for consciousness (or self-awareness).

[Kilarin]

Whether or not the brain is a Turing Machine has yet to be determined.

What else do you propose? Unless you are getting mystical on me.

you're only guaranteed that the Chinese Room duplicates the function of the brain vis-a-vis how it speaks Chinese. After all, you would be mistaken to expect the Chinese Room to duplicate the brain's function in baking cookies

Here we combine the Turing machine and the Turing test. Dang I like Turing!
I don't consider people who can't bake to be non-sentient. If something (human or machine) can communicate in Chinese well enough to pass a Turing test, specific areas of knowledge will hardly be significant. It's thinking process will be, by definition, indistinguishable from a human thinking process.

Now I don't think the Turing test is the end all be all, it is much to narrow in that the average person would clearly recognize as sentient creatures/devices that could not emulate a human. And in other ways it is to broad, since sometimes fairly simple programs can fool humans for quite some time. But overall the Turing test is still a valid starting point for determining sentience in thought experiments.

Unless the brain has some unknown "magical" method of processing information, it's just a Turing machine. And if it's just a Turing machine, any Universal Turing machine can emulate/duplicate its processes. Consciousness/Self Awareness is about EXPERIENCING that information processing that we call "thought". If consciousness is tied to the patterns/organization/algorithms of thought, than ANY Turing machine that duplicates the same patterns should experience the same self awareness. If consciousness is NOT tied to the patterns/organization/algorithms of thought, then we have a difficult time explaining why the THOUGHTS are the things being experienced.

Which is why I say that matter alone is not sufficient to account for consciousness. And again, NO, I do NOT have a provable answer for what is responsible for self awareness. Just that matter doesn't seem to be capable of this.

[TIGERassault]

Unless the brain has some unknown "magical" method of processing information, it's just a Turing machine.

The problem here is that it's method of processing information is unique.

[Kilarin]

The problem here is that it's method of processing information is unique.

I agree with you, but how?

[Lothar]

I agree with Jeff. The Chinese Room doesn't show anything about self-awareness. All it shows is that a Turing Test is not a conclusive way to measure \"thinking\". An algorithm can mimic an actual thought process well enough to pass a Turing Test of a given complexity / level of rigor, as long as the algorithm is sufficiently complex and time is not an issue. Turing Tests are a good way to eliminate obviously non-thinking entities, but not necessarily good ways to conclusively show that other entities ARE thinking.

Unless the brain has some unknown \"magical\" method of processing information, it's just a Turing machine.

Why would the unknown method have to be \" \"magical\" \"?

Your argument seems to be that, since the brain has properties NOT shared by a specific other TM, it must be something more. Perhaps so -- but that doesn't necessarily mean it must be something \"magical\", \"spiritual\", or anything else -- perhaps it just isn't properly represented as purely a state machine.