[Wittrs] Is Homeostasis the Answer? (Re: Variations in the Idea of Consciousness)
- From: "iro3isdx" <xznwrjnk-evca@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: wittrsamr@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Sat, 06 Feb 2010 14:20:10 -0000
--- In Wittrs@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx, "SWM" <SWMirsky@...> wrote:
> You have indicated that you believe that it takes something that
> is unique to entities like us to get to consciousness and that
> computers simply lack this.
More accurate would be that I don't know how to do it with computers.
> What I have sought from you is a more specific account of just
> how each thing in the string of things you've sketched out leads
> to the next and, further, that you explain what the mechanism is
> that produces consciousness according to this scenario.
What is needed, is to fill in the gaps in the AI approach. The
difficulty is that you don't recognize that there are gaps, and
communication breaks down when I try to point them out.
> If physical processes cannot produce consciousness in a computer,
> why should we think they can do it in brains? But if they can do
> it in brains (and they manifestly cane), why doubt they can do it
> in computers?
It's not the internal processing; it's the inadequacy of the external
interaction.
> When I speak of measuring, I think of comparing something to a
> standard and determining degrees of similarity or dimension to
> the standard.
Okay. That's part of it. But there is also the need to invent a
standard in the first place, and to test out tentative standards to see
if they work. There's an example where pragmatic judgement comes in,
and where I think AI will have a problem.
> So what are perceptions then? Previously you have asserted that they
> are what we do with the raw data of the signals we get. That is,
> you have said such signals carry no information for us, we impose
> the information on them according to our needs.
Wow! That is garbled. I have disagreed with the whole idea of getting
raw signals. That's what my example of measuring with a ruler was
supposed to illustrate. Rather than just getting a raw signal that
happens to be around, we carry out a procedure that yields intentional
information for us. And sure, that procedure makes use of raw signals,
but it doesn't just take them as they come - it finds was of using them
to our benefit.
> But now we have the same problem. How do we get to the point where
> we can consciously impose anything?
In your previous paragraph you mentioned imposing information. I have
never suggested that. What I did say is that we impose order. That
does not necessarily require much in the way of consciousness. When you
see a snow flake with geometric patterns, thats a case of an ordering
being imposed by inanimate matter. When a biological cell replicates
its DNA, that's an orderly procedure but we don't assume that the cell
is conscious.
> But above you just wrote: "I did not mention 'intentional signals',
> yet you ask what I mean". So you want to say there ARE "intentional
> signals" after all?
Your posts to this discussion group would seem to be an intentional
signal.
> Now you want to say that we give meaning to signals.
It is more that we create signals that are meaningful from the time of
their creation, because we created them that way.
> Why don't some signals, generated entirely unintentionally, have
> meaning to us that we discover rather than impose on them?
When that bird chirps outside my window early on a spring morning, I
find that meaningful. But I think that's an entirely different meaning
for "meaningful".
When I was young, there was a shed door attached to the house with a
picture of a tricycle on the inside of the door. It had handle bars, a
front wheel, two rear wheels, and a carrier ledge at the back. Several
years later, after I had learned to read, I finally realized that it
was actually the word "door". The serif at the top of the "d" was the
handlebar. The loop at the bottom was the front wheel, the "o" were
the two rear wheels, and the "r" was the carrier ledge at the back.
"Intentionality" has to do not just with meaning, but with intended
meaning. And "door" was the intended meaning, not that tricycle.
> I am trying to follow but am not getting this. Are you saying that
> the conscious entity already starts with understanding (it's symbols
> are grounded to begin with)?
Yes. I am saying that intentionality is not an add-on; it's a
built-in. We do things in ways that are intentional. We don't start
with meaninglessness and somehow add some intentionality.
Look at that measurement example. If I want to measure, I place the
ruler against the desk (or other item), and line it up. I am following
intentional rules. If we program a computer to do that, it's
instructions will be more like "operate the vertical motor for 300
milliseconds, etc". That is, it will be following mechanical rules.
Its rules will be about the mechanism, while our rules are about the
thing to be measured and the equipment we use.
Regards,
Neil
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