You are.

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

I was just taking my time replying.

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?

Have you ever stuck a stick in a fireant mound? The ants swarm out, literally thousands of them, and attack whatever is threatening the mound.Are they concious?Once my folk lived in a pre-Civil War, fieldstone house that sat on one of the Catoctin Mountains just north of Camp David. We lived off an old dirt (at the time) road that wandered up one side of the mountain and down the other.About 500 yards from the house was Turkey Run, a clear little stream that had it's origin in a spring loacted near the peak of the mountain, and was home to some of the best tasting Native Trout I've ever had the pleasure of meeting.That is, they tasted great until my sister decided they were pets and started hand feeding them bread balls from the overhanging rock that fronted one side of the pool just below the little falls. From then on they were inviolate, not to be touched, only fed and admired.They would come up for her and nibble dough from her hand, but when any of the others of us showed up, they darted into the deep shadows below the rock.Were they concious?

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Aslan is not a Tame Lion

yes No. They are basically biological robots.

quote:

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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.

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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

I agree that this specific world is not required. My concern would be that the artificial world might be too impoverished to allow appropriate cognitive development. I used the expression "or other marks" to be clear that it does not have to be numbers.I can only guess that you are not aware of the assumptions of some of the people in the Artificial Intelligence community. I strongly disagree with you on that. I would expect no consciousness at all.

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?

Hi, CS.One of my favorite remarks from the field of animal intelligence studies came from a researcher (can't recall the name) who simply said, "Anyone who thinks animals have no consciousness has never owned a dog."Probably not true, but it makes the point well; might be truer if he had said, "loved a dog."Have you ever seen a dog mourn the death of its owner? It is a very powerful demonstration of consciousness. I suppose one can posit social organization/behavior (ants, termites) without consciousness, but sorrow is another matter.Some summer afternoons I sit in the shade and watch crows tease the neighbor's dog. He is tethered, and they know to the inch how far he can reach. Several will sit in the surrounding trees and "laugh " while another struts by the dog's perimeter, just out of reach. When the dog grows weary of the torment and flounces into his house, they steal his food. Here I see both consciousness and intelligence in the crows--and their awareness of the dog's consciousness--at work.

Some of them are expecting a robot like system with various sensors that feed pulses (meaningless marks) to a central ANN (artificial neural network). The expectation is that the ANN will somehow be able to find patterns in these pulses, and discover what kind of world the robot resides in.This is one of the models used by the machine learning researchers. Yes, I accept it as a theoretical possibility. But it is not what I would expect in practice.

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.

Right, I expect it to fail to produce consciousness.The researchers may have less ambitious goals, and it could succeed in those. Sigh!If the question changes, the answer can change. Yes, I opposed the "brain in the vat" idea. But you have changed that to a brain in a vat connected to a virtual reality system that provides a rich virtual environment with all the feedback needed for learning. That's where I consider consciousness a theoretical possibility, but unlikely in practice.

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.

Consciousness in itself is supernatural. Don't you find anything weird about matter becoming conscious?

They may or may not be, since consciousness is not based on anything physical. If God allowed for bees to have consciousness then they will.

Why do you think that?

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Aslan is not a Tame Lion