You are.

Ever heard that Metallica song One?

cut to Message 12This message has been edited by Catholic Scientist, 11-01-2005 05:10 PM

I don't think you can get consciousness from a bunch of particles like you wrote about. But I believe in the soul......If you look close enough then nothing is going to make sense.For example, someone brough up a chair earlier. The chair is made up of atoms and atoms are mostly empty space. So how can the chair be solid if its made up of mostly empty space? This seems to be how your looking at consciousness in the brain and you just can't look that close, there is more involved.

Well, aside from being one of the most kick-ass songs ever, the concept is horrifying and somewhat on this topic. When I read this: It made me think of the song. You can read the lyrics here, but in order to get the whole idea you have to watch the video. Here’s the gist of it:Its about a guy who steps on a land mine in WWII. He loses his arms and legs, his sight, his hearing and his speech but he lives. Then he awakes in a hospital without any senses and wishes he was dead. So he starts banging in morse code, on the back of his bed with his head, for the doctors to kill him. But the doctors think they would be murdering him if they do kill him so they keep him a live and he is just One.It touches on the idea of a brain that is alive in a body that is void of senses. For this man, he does have consciousness, though he’s having trouble telling what is true or dream. You said that you think that you need the whole person to have the consciousness and not just a brain, I was just wondering what you thought about the situation presented in the song. Not that the song proves it is even possible for this situation to arise but on the hypothetical level, what do you think?

I didn't realize you meant, literally, a brain alone. I was thinkin along a brain without senses. A brain alone, literally, is a dead lump of flesh and obviously wouldn't have a consciousness.But anyways, you said So, in the song the guy was a person before the landmine and is not literally a brain alone.My point is that I think there is some point where you could loose your personhood and be left as a brain alone (not literally) in a senseless body and still be conscious even though you we're hardly a person, if at all.I guess I'm saying that consciousness doesn't need the body any more than to keep the brain alive. So this 'person' part you are talking about really does sound like some sort of a soul or something.... This seems like such a pointless and obvious statement if you are talking about literally a brain alone, a lump of flesh. What do you mean here? How many parts are there? We have the brain alone, and the body to sustain it, what else do you need if not the soul?

Why do you think the body is neccessary for consciousness? I see you wrote 'could not' instead of 'would not' be conscious. Why do you think it is not possible for: Do you believe in the soul?I realize you said: but you seem to not believe in the soul. So I will rewrite the question I'm interested in about your opinion on consciousness.

quote:

---

We have the brain alone, and the body to sustain it, what else do you need if not the soul?

---

But with unconscious entities, all you need is the sensor to detect the info, i mean, the information is cheap. Why, in your opinion, does consciousness somehow make this different? What about unwanted info and info that is received without prodding? Ever felt something you didn't want to or been startled because you didn't know it was comming?, now I realize the body is needed for these, I'm not talkin about that, but I'm saying that the brain does passively receive some info, i.e. some info is cheap. No, not as much. Wouldn't you agree that it is easier have a body in a vat versus a brain in a vat? We have artificial respiration and circulation and can keep 'brain dead' people alive. The body doesn't have to have the brain to be kept alive.What is it about our consciousness that requires the whole package, body and brain, to be sustained?I'd say our consciousness is tied to our soul. It (consciousness) is some non-physical part of our being undetectable through objective observation that everone subjectively experiences. It seems, to me, to come from the brain, and that the body is not neccessary for it to exist, like the brain is not neccessary for the body to exist.

Not necessarily and in some cases the information is the data. So I stick my hand in the air and go “that air is hot”. Being conscious doesn’t mean the information has to be gathered like this: You can make the knowledge as expensive as you want it to be but it can easily be cheap and still be experienced by consciousness. I don’t see the affect of the price on the requirements of consciousness. But the information of the world can be really cheap and you don’t have to have consciousness to gather it. You can make a robot hand with a thermometer in it that will move the hand away from hot air after it reaches some temperature. We both agree that this robot is not conscious.We have people that have hands that do the same thing that are conscious, its just that the person goes “wow that air is hot I should move my hand” (if it isn’t a reflex moving the hand) and the robot goes ” . .”, the robot doesn’t go anything because its not conscious.Now, I think that your opinion is that this ”expensive’ interpretation of the data and turning it into knowledge is what consciousness is composed of, right? Or do you think this causes consciousness? I’m not completely clear on your view. So now we can get into what is a person and what is a world.Do you think animals have consciousness? (obviously they are not unconscious, I hope you know what I mean) I don’t think they do. With the hand in hot air example, I think the animals are more like the robot.What about a really young infant? It’ll move its hand out of the hot air but it too is acting more like the robot.Do you think an artificial world could support consciousness? What if everything is the same but you are wearing a virtual reality helmet and all you vision comes from that? You could still be conscious but you’d have a skewed view of the world. Only one sense is being lied to so it seems it could work. Now hook up fake smells and I think you’d still be conscious. Soon enough we get to all the senses being faked and we’re well on the way to the brain in the vat.Why does it have to be the real world for consciousness to work? Can’t it be any world?

well then I think your gonna have to accept the brain in the vatbut don't skip my previous message please

I would say that it does, and if its gonna allow consciousness its gonna have to. I think it would function and be conscious in its alternate world but with respect to our world it would be 'damaged', unless the artificial system is really good, then it'd be no different from reality.Which is what I'm getting at. I don't think this specific world, the real one, is required. I agree with you that some world is required but I don't get why the brain in a vat is so impossible, if the artificial world was good enough. But data doesn't exist without consciousness. The temperature of the air is only a number because we've assigned it one. Whether or not it is hot or cold is what matters to our consciousness, it is more 'expensive' to turn it into data. Seems your looking at it backwards or you've confused me. Well not if your gonna define data as not information. I don't think there's degrees of consciousness. Either you are or you aren't, IMO. Animals are not, persons are.Do you think the brain in the vat could have a lesser degree of consciousness or just no at all?

yes No. They are basically biological robots.

quote:

---

Computer scientist Marco Dorigo of the Free University of Brussels in Belgium and his coworkers have devised a path-optimization method that mimics in software the pheromone-trail building of an ant swarm.

---

sourceAs for the fish, I'd say they ran from your sister too...until she started dropping breadballs into the water. And they'd prolly come up to you after you dropped a few in too. I don't think they could tell one person from another, but those details aren't in your story.I think people anthropomorphize the behavior of animals too much. We see what we wanna see. People who love their dogs are always seeing human characteristics in them. Not because they are there, but because they want to see them.Of course we could also say that about my view on spirituality

Yeah, and I don't think we're even close to the technology required. But, in contemplating the possibility, I would say that it is possible. You seemed to just wholly disagree with the idea. That's a very safe guess. (and to be a smartass...how could I be aware of the assumptions of all of the people in the AI community?) But seriously, I haven't delved very deeply in AI. What are you getting at here? Maybe you could further the discussion. Understood. At this point I think its a matter of opinion. We don't have the enough knowledge about consciousness, heck...we've hardly defined it, for me to know exactly how I feel about animal consciousnees. Its just that when I observe animals or are around them, it doesn't like very much, if anything, is going on in there heads, so to speak. But if the artificial world was not too impoverished to allow appropriate cognitive development you would accept it as a possibility?

You've got me totally confuse and it seems you are contradicting yourself. Lets look at the whole conversation. So you think that this AI research is going to fail, right? Or do you think ANN will be conscious?I don't see how you could support that as a possibiliy when you think the brain has to seek knowledge to be conscious, or did you put it there because you disagree with it? Maybe you've contradicted yourself twice now. See, I thought you were totally against the brain in a vat idea, not just in practice but in theoretical possibility, when you said: together with this: Like I said, I totally confused now. I don't know where you position is and it seems, to me, that you have changed it.

Hello, No.I saw my friend's dog arrive at home after it got shaved and I laughed at it. It was funny how embarressed it looked before it hid behind the couch. I don't think the dog felt the emotion like I did that time when...well, I won't get into that Actually, I don't thing the dog feels emotion at all, I think it has instinctual behavior reactions that look like its feeling emotion after we apply what we feel during similiar behavior to the observation. Dogs are kinda a bad example though because we've kinda artificailly evolved them to display the traits and behaviors that we can easily anthropomorhize.I don't think we'll know any time soon, if ever, what's going on in an animal's head and I just don't see them as being conscious.Sure, you can watch the crows laugh at your neighbors dog but I think that you're deluding yourself into observing these behaviors in the same way that I've deluded myself in to observing god.It comes down to the way you're looking at the world. I don't really like discussing various people's interactions with animals that have convinced them an animal is conscious any more than an atheist likes to hear people's stories about feeling Jesus, or whatever. Its just not convincing. Now, I'm not so set in my view that I cannot be convinced, I just don't think other people's subjective experiences are helping.Thanks for sharing the story though. I'm sure, like you said: but I still don't think I'd see it that way.

Ok...it seemed, at first, that you we're going the other way with it. It wasn't until I read the whole conversation over again that I thought you might have put it there because you disagreed with it. But I don't see the point in that or what you're trying to say. It seemed irrelevant to our discussion if you didn't agree with it and agreeing with it makes you contradict yourself. So I hope you can understand the confusion. I'll write another message to further the discussion if I can figure out where we were going. I know, I know. I'm not trying to set you up. I don't think I've changed anything. Lets look at it: The whole time I was talking about a brain in a vat that could be conscious I was assuming that the brain was supplied with the necessities for consciousness, them being fewer necessities than you, yourself, think are required.This is why I asked: to which you replied (not answered) I’m saying that if you give the brain a world it will be conscious of it. The brain in a vat would have to be givin a world to be conscious, I thought that was implied.So I think we disagree on the minimum requirements for consciousness. What do you think they are?And keep in mind that I'm arguing from the position that the soul does not exist to keep us on the same page. In actuality, I don't think the brain in a vat would be conscious because it wouldn't have a soul. Now, if I take the soul out of the equation I don't see why the brain in the vat couldn't be conscious.You position is that there is no soul and the brain in the vat could not be conscious. This is the position that I disagree with and the one that I would like to continue discussing because I don't see why you believe this.