Life From Dirt?

[Polymath257]

Mimicking consciousness is not consciousness any more than mimicking emotion is feeling them.

What we are calling AI is nowhere near achieving consciousness. No matter how well it can fool us.

It's the fooling us part that will be the problem.

How can you tell if another person is conscious? use exactly the same process to determine if a computer is conscious.

If the mimicry is good enough, it is silly to not allow the identity.

 

[Polymath257]

Siri was having none of it. The answer I got was, “I am a virtual assistant. I only know the things I’m programmed to understand.”

Alexa was more circumspect. She replied “I know a few things about myself, but I would not say I am self aware or conscious.” Which could I suppose, be interpreted to imply a modicum of self awareness.

Like I said, we are not there yet. At the very least, we need a system that interacts with the world in real time and needs to solve real world problems.

 

[Brian2]

No, I'm not. And your statement that what one misses another tells is baseless, and utterly misrepresents the individual texts.

I don't think I have misrepresented the texts. I actually admit that there may be some contradictions that are real contradictions but what I see is you wanting to misrepresent the individual texts.
Show me for example where one gospel says Jesus ascended from Galilee and another from Jerusalem.

Who went there? No agreement. What did they see? No agreement. What did they then do? No agreement. To whom did Jesus first appear? No agreement. Second appear? No agreement. Third appear? No agreement. Where did he say to meet the disciples? No agreement. Did he ascend from Jerusalem or from Galilee? No agreement.

You pick one and we can look at it in more detail.

 

[RestlessSoul]

Sure, you can start with a brain in a box and get nowhere. But you also find regularities in the senses and we can then model those. We find that the best models that can be used to predict new sensory information is to have an external world. THAT is the logic for assuming such exists.

Yes, we use our own conceptual schemes to help us model reality. But some of those schemes work better (at predicting new sensory experiences) than others. That is how we can judge between them. And yes, it *is* possible to ask what the world is like independently of how we concieve of it. That is, again, the difference between the moon and a finger pointing at the moon.

And, in fact, we *know* that there is a great deal of the universe that we cannot directly perceive or experience. We don't naturally experience radio waves, for example. Now do we hear ultrasound. But we know they are there because we can build devices that extend our perceptions and allow us to use these other sources of information about the world.

Philosophers like to get themselves tied up in knots about things like this. It can be fun over drinks with friends, but shouldn't be taken too seriously.

The “brain in a vat” theory was an exercise in reductio ad absurdum wasn’t it? But then so was Schrodinger’s Cat, and look how much mileage that’s received.

Questioning the assumptions underpinning every world view, especially our own, is valuable for two reasons imo. First, it’s always good practice to doubt, since certainty is a primary characteristic of prejudice, and prejudice impedes progress; and second, recognising that nothing in the universe is quite what it seems, and that our perceptions are merely approximations predicated on illusion, has the effect in Carlo Rovelli’s words of “rendering lighter, the bittersweet flowing of our lives.”

 

[Brian2]

My experience:
A while ago (several years ago) I did not believe in God. Any God. Hindu, Catholicism, Judaism, Protestant, I explored various religions but finally decided there was no God, based on what I learned and saw in the various religions and life around me. But then -- but then -- something happened and I "needed" God, a higher power. But I had no faith. I didn't pray because -- I didn't believe in God. Yet I asked a minister how can I believe in God? He said, "Faith is a gift of the spirit." I told him that I don't have faith. He said, "Faith is a gift of the spirit that only God can give." And I said, "But I don't believe in God." He again repeated that only God can give me this gift of faith. So I realized the conversation was over, and exited the conversation. But that night I prayed for the first time in a long time. Not for happiness but for faith, I prayed, "Oh, God, if you're there, give me this gift of faith." Things happened after that. I fought, i argued. But here I am with faith. Thankful. Did my life become better? Yes, indeed, just as Jesus said.

I had a similar thing happen to me when I had fallen away from faith. God is faithful for a seeker. We might not be able to see how God has done it but He does allow those who are seeking to find.

 

[Brian2]

Yes, they are concepts created by physical mechanism in brain.

Does that mean that beauty, love and consciousness are physical things or that they don't really exist?
Well we know a concept is not a physical thing so I guess you must be saying that they don't exist.
But you just described them as if they really exist.

 

[Brian2]

No "theistic scientist" appears to be able to do that. I know of some scientists that believe in God. They still tend to accept reality. Professor Kenneth Miller comes to mind. He is a Christian but I am very sure that he accepts abiogenesis as being factual. There is no doubt at all that he accepts the fact of evolution:

Kenneth R. Miller - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

He knows that his God beliefs are not testable.

And you can accept abiogenesis and evolution and see them as how God has done things.

 

[PureX]

How can you tell if another person is conscious? use exactly the same process to determine if a computer is conscious.

If the mimicry is good enough, it is silly to not allow the identity.

So if we build a machine that can mimic your personality well enough to fool people, has that machine become another you? This is why AI is going to be so dangerous ... because too many of us are not able to grasp the difference between artifice and the truth that the artifice represents.

 

[Polymath257]

So if we build a machine that can mimic your personality well enough to fool people, has that machine become another you? This is why AI is going to be so dangerous ... because too many of us are not able to grasp the difference between artifice and the truth that the artifice represents.

If it mimics my personality sufficiently well, it would certainly be conscious. Whether it is 'another me' is a more philosophical question. Would a clone be 'another me'?

What is it that makes something conscious? And why is it impossible for a machine to meet those requirements?

 

[Polymath257]

Does that mean that beauty, love and consciousness are physical things or that they don't really exist?
Well we know a concept is not a physical thing so I guess you must be saying that they don't exist.
But you just described them as if they really exist.

Concepts are real physical processes in our brains. The perception of beauty is a real, physical process in our brains. Love and consciousness are real physical processes in our brains.

 

[Polymath257]

And you can accept abiogenesis and evolution and see them as how God has done things.

Yes, and the good theistic scientists do exactly that.

But it does bring in the question of why one would want to add on such an unnecessary assumption to a system that works without it.

 

[Audie]

And you can accept abiogenesis and evolution and see them as how God has done things.

A number of people thunk that.

Of course there is zero evidence that its true.

But they don't, like a creationist, have to deny
facts.

 

[mikkel_the_dane]

And, like I said, it simply means 'reality'. As opposed to imagination.

But that God means the creator of the universe doesn't mean that is a fact.

And now comes the problem for your folk doxa and not knowledge dualism. If imagination is not a part of reality, how can you talk about it if it is not a part of reality?
How can a process in reality cause the effect of imagination not being a part of reality? Answer that as positive or learn that you are doing philosophy.

 

[Polymath257]

But that God means the creator of the universe doesn't mean that is a fact.

And now comes the problem for your folk doxa and not knowledge dualism. If imagination is not a part of reality, how can you talk about it if it is not a part of reality?

Imagination is one of the brain processes and is thereby a thing in reality. But the 'virtual objects' that the imagination works with may not correspond to actual objects in the real world.

How can a process in reality cause the effect of imagination not being a part of reality? Answer that as positive or learn that you are doing philosophy.

Seems easy enough. Consider a computer program that creates a model of an artificial reality. The running program is a physical process. The artificial reality doesn't correspond to external reality.

The internal model is a real process but the model may or may not correspond to reality.

 

[Valjean]

Does that mean that beauty, love and consciousness are physical things or that they don't really exist?
Well we know a concept is not a physical thing so I guess you must be saying that they don't exist.
But you just described them as if they really exist.

I appreciate, therefore I am.

 

[blü 2]

Show me for example where one gospel says Jesus ascended from Galilee and another from Jerusalem.

You could have looked these up yourself, but you're steadily convincing me you don't actually read the bible ─
Jesus ascends from Bethany (on the Mount of Olives close to Jerusalem) Luke 24:50.
Jesus ascends from Jerusalem ─ Acts 1:4, 1:9.
Jesus ascends from Galilee ─ Mark 16:7, 16:19; Matthew 28:16.

You pick one and we can look at it in more detail.

All the detail you need is set out above.

 

[blü 2]

And you can accept abiogenesis and evolution and see them as how God has done things.

Except that evolution had been happening on planet Earth for more than three billion years before God was around.

 

[mikkel_the_dane]

Imagination is one of the brain processes and is thereby a thing in reality. But the 'virtual objects' that the imagination works with may not correspond to actual objects in the real world.


Seems easy enough. Consider a computer program that creates a model of an artificial reality. The running program is a physical process. The artificial reality doesn't correspond to external reality.

The internal model is a real process but the model may or may not correspond to reality.

Now point to the real world and tell me how you observe that the world has the property of being real.
You are doing the fallacy of concreteness.

You are good at natural and formal science, but you make rookie mistakes when it comes to philosophy.
The real world for the word real has no objective referent. That is how simple that is. It is standard philosophy for the concept of a property.
If the cat is multicolored, you can observe that. If the world is real, you can observe that.

I am not your teacher, but you have to learn when you leave science and start doing philosophy. The real word is a cognitive abstract in your imagination, because you can't point to it.

 

[It Aint Necessarily So]

You have acknowledged a distinction between brain and mind, which is a reasonable starting point if we are to consider the relationship between the stuff of the mind, and the stuff of mind-independent reality. That’s something at least, which many naive materialists either struggle to grasp, or refuse to recognise.

Starting point? Thanks for acknowledging my progress however modest. We materialists are always thrilled when you who see further using your special ways of knowing throw us a bone like this. I actually got an inkling of an insight that brain and mind might be different when I noticed that it's possible to possess only one of them.

I have no idea who he is btw, this character who you continually refer to as “the theist”.

He's the guy who writes things like this to promote idealism over alternate formulations: "Is it not an issue in quantum mechanics, that the object, the act of observation, and the observer cannot be separated without affecting the result of an observation? Causing theoretical physicists such as David Bohm and Roger Penrose, to speculate that no description of a physical system can ever be complete without giving a full account of the consciousness of the observer." His agenda is the promotion of his religious belief that the fundamental reality is the mind of God. Empiricism and its methodological materialism have been wildly successful as epistemological tools, and so, he feels the need to attempt to undermine its authority.

We have to take it on faith, that the world exists as it is without us being there to observe it.

I rebutted this once already, but you didn't see fit to address that rebuttal. Not surprisingly, that argument stands unchanged.

 

[Subduction Zone]

And you can accept abiogenesis and evolution and see them as how God has done things.

Yes, but to be rational one has to realize that there is no evidence for that belief.