Cryonics and uploading are perfectly realistic.
Forgive me, but I am not entirely sure how uploading is perfectly realistic whereas the philosopher's zombie is a flying spaghetti monster!
Posted 14 November 2008 - 12:53 AM
Cryonics and uploading are perfectly realistic.
Posted 14 November 2008 - 01:08 AM
well... that's exactly the whole point of this thread, isn't it?Cryonics and uploading are perfectly realistic.That they are all still considered sci-fi? Interesting, compelling, but unrealistic?
My annoyance is the fact that...... and everything else said above by me and in the links to Yudkowsky, when this is such a fundamental philosophical hurdle to things that are so important like cryonics, and so philosophically basic like reductionism.The popular opinion is a very poorly defined, non-sensical philosophical position based on supernatural phenomena! It is accepted dogmatically without any basis in facts, physics, or any evidence at all!
It has no potential to advance the frontiers of science in any way. It offers no testable hypotheses, there is no associated evidence, or anything scientific about it at all. It is a purely philosophical construct exactly like flying spaghetti monsters.One thing about the Philosopher's Zombie I appreciate is that it is a thought experiment that is non-quantitative and yet it has become kind of well known in many circles and also has the potential to advance the frontiers of science. Pretty cool.
That's not true. Philosophy is integral in any field of science. Most fields have matured enough that the philosophical problems have been long settled. Other fields are still young enough that philosophy is unsettled to varying degrees, such as in evolution, or artificial intelligence.There is little reliance on philosophy in the post modern age to advance scientific knowledge
That's hilarious because it makes absolutely no sense, and it really further highlightes the absurdity of zombie-ism.Imagine, a genuine advance in applied science via pure philosophy!
from wikipedia: "Science"Science (from the Latin scientia, meaning "knowledge" or "knowing") is the effort to discover, and increase human understanding of how the physical world works. Through controlled methods, scientists use observable physical evidence of natural phenomena to collect data, and analyze this information to explain what and how things work...
You get nowhere with "pure philosophy" in science.--Eliezer Yudkowsky, Twelve Virtues of RationalityFor you cannot make a true map of a city by sitting in your bedroom with your eyes shut and drawing lines upon paper according to impulse. You must walk through the city and draw lines on paper that correspond to what you see. If, seeing the city unclearly, you think that you can shift a line just a little to the right, just a little to the left, according to your caprice, this is just the same mistake.
Forgive me, but I am not entirely sure how uploading is perfectly realistic whereas the philosopher's zombie is a flying spaghetti monster!
Edited by Savage, 14 November 2008 - 01:14 AM.
Posted 14 November 2008 - 01:10 AM
I can see that I deeply and fundamentally disagree with this person, and I have a real life example to demonstrate it!- A rarity in my rarefied, false-happy mindscape:For you cannot make a true map of a city by sitting in your bedroom with your eyes shut and drawing lines upon paper according to impulse. You must walk through the city and draw lines on paper that correspond to what you see. If, seeing the city unclearly, you think that you can shift a line just a little to the right, just a little to the left, according to your caprice, this is just the same mistake.
Edited by paulthekind, 14 November 2008 - 01:10 AM.
Posted 14 November 2008 - 01:19 AM
The point is that if you must draw lines that correspond to physical realityNote: astral travel, psychic journey, and similar phrasings are not meant to imply a new-age, mysticism or gullibility.For you cannot make a true map of a city by sitting in your bedroom with your eyes shut and drawing lines upon paper according to impulse. You must walk through the city and draw lines on paper that correspond to what you see. If, seeing the city unclearly, you think that you can shift a line just a little to the right, just a little to the left, according to your caprice, this is just the same mistake.
They are just convenient ways to express learning from within only that does not involve deduction, logic, or anything more exact.
Edited by Savage, 14 November 2008 - 01:24 AM.
Posted 14 November 2008 - 01:25 AM
Posted 14 November 2008 - 01:27 AM
And what separates the evidence for uploading from this dustbin?The point is that if you must draw lines that correspond to physical realityNote: astral travel, psychic journey, and similar phrasings are not meant to imply a new-age, mysticism or gullibility.For you cannot make a true map of a city by sitting in your bedroom with your eyes shut and drawing lines upon paper according to impulse. You must walk through the city and draw lines on paper that correspond to what you see. If, seeing the city unclearly, you think that you can shift a line just a little to the right, just a little to the left, according to your caprice, this is just the same mistake.
They are just convenient ways to express learning from within only that does not involve deduction, logic, or anything more exact.
What you said was not a deep or fundamental disagreement, unless you actually are implying new-age mysticism or other supernatural/psychic phenomena.
When you draw lines that have no correspondence to any physical reality, you are creating a flying spaghetti monster. So when you assert that zombies are possible without having any basis in facts, physics, or any evidence at all, you are drawing lines with no correspondence to any physical reality, and thus I assert that zombies are exactly like flying spaghetti monsters.
Posted 14 November 2008 - 01:29 AM
Employing the lengthy thought example of replacing one neuron at a time as a means of 'proving' uploading hardly seems more convincing than utilizing the zombie example as a means of 'proving' epiphenomenalism.
What am I failing to see? They seem equally likely or unlikely, equally persuasive or unpersuasive.
And what separates the evidence for uploading from this dustbin?
Edited by Savage, 14 November 2008 - 01:29 AM.
Posted 14 November 2008 - 01:34 AM
I don't know what you are asking.
I may be missing something, but from what I know thus far, there is the same lack of any basis in fact and physics whatsoever for uploading as there is for zombies, the same lack of any correspondence to physical reality.So when you assert that zombies are possible without having any basis in facts, physics, or any evidence at all, you are drawing lines with no correspondence to any physical reality, and thus I assert that zombies are exactly like flying spaghetti monsters.
Posted 14 November 2008 - 01:43 AM
Brains, neurons, and all of biology exists within physics. If you don't buy into the quantum mind theories, then uploading is perfectly possibly within physical reality, and not speculative (in the sense of supernatural zombies) or purely philosophical at all.I don't know what you are asking.
I may be missing something, but from what I know thus far, there is the same lack of any basis in fact and physics whatsoever for uploading as there is for zombies, the same lack of any correspondence to physical reality.So when you assert that zombies are possible without having any basis in facts, physics, or any evidence at all, you are drawing lines with no correspondence to any physical reality, and thus I assert that zombies are exactly like flying spaghetti monsters.
Where is the quantitative difference?
What actual evidence of any sort exists for uploading?
It seems as purely speculative as the zombie, as purely philosophical, with perhaps a tinge of sci-fi added for good measure, mostly due to Star Trek and Isaac Asimov, I would suppose.
Table 2: Levels of emulation
Level
1 Computational
module
“Classic AI”, high level representations of information and information
processing.
2 Brain region
connectivity
Each area represents a functional module, connected to others according
to a (species universal) “connectome” (Sporns, Tononi et al., 2005).
3 Analog network
population model
Neurons populations and their connectivity. Activity and states of
neurons or groups of neurons are represented as their time‐averages. This
is similar to connectionist models using ANNs, rate‐model neural
simulations and cascade models.
4 Spiking neural
network
As above, plus firing properties, firing state and dynamical synaptic states.
Integrate and fire models, reduced single compartment models (but also
some minicolumn models, e.g. (Johansson and Lansner, 2007)).
5 Electrophysiology As above, plus membrane states (ion channel types, properties, state), ion
concentrations, currents and voltages. Compartment model simulations.
6 Metabolome As above, plus concentrations of metabolites in compartments.
7 Proteome As above, plus concentrations of proteins and gene expression levels.
8 States of protein
complexes
As above, plus quaternary protein structure.
9 Distribution of
complexes
As above, plus “locome” information and internal cellular geometry.
10 Stochastic behaviour
of single molecules
As above plus molecule positions, or a molecular mechanics model of the
entire brain.
11 Quantum Quantum interactions in and between molecules.
WBE assumptions
Philosophical assumptions
Physicalism (everything supervenes on the physical) is a convenient but not necessary
assumption, since some non‐physicalist theories of mental properties could allow them to
appear in the case of WBE. Success criterion 6b emulation assumes multiple realizability
(that the same mental property, state, or event can be implemented by different physical
properties, states, and events). Sufficient apparent success with WBE would provide
persuasive evidence for multiple realizability. Generally, emulation up to and including level
6a does not appear to depend on any strong metaphysical assumptions.
Computational assumptions
Computability: brain activity is Turing‐computable, or if it is uncomputable, the
uncomputable aspects have no functionally relevant effects on actual behaviour.
Non‐organicism: total understanding of the brain is not required, just component parts and
their functional interactions.
Scale separation: at some intermediary level of simulation resolution between the atomic and
the macroscopic there exists one (or more) cut‐offs such that meeting criterion 2 at this level is
sufficient for meeting one or more of the higher criteria.
Component tractability: the actual brain components at the lowest emulated level can be
understood well enough to enable accurate simulation.
Simulation tractability: simulation of the lowest emulated level is computationally tractable
with a practically realizable computer.
Neuroscience assumptions
Brain‐centeredness: in order to produce accurate behaviour only the brain and some parts of
the body need to be simulated, not the entire body.
WBE appears to be a way of testing many of these assumptions experimentally. In acquiring
accurate data about the structure and function of the brain and representing it as emulations
it should be possible to find major discrepancies if, for example, Computability is not true.
Edited by Savage, 14 November 2008 - 01:57 AM.
Posted 14 November 2008 - 02:09 AM
Posted 14 November 2008 - 02:15 AM
Edited by Savage, 14 November 2008 - 02:20 AM.
Posted 14 November 2008 - 02:17 AM
Posted 14 November 2008 - 02:28 AM
I see.You asked whether uploading had any basis in physical reality, and I'm telling you it does.
Zombies have no basis in physical reality, by definition.
The whole point of zombies is that you can have a person who is exactly the same in all physical respects, yet does not have some specific supernatural quality, and thus they are a zombie.
Posted 14 November 2008 - 03:05 AM
If consciousness is not produced by the brain, then by what? The toes?I see.You asked whether uploading had any basis in physical reality, and I'm telling you it does.
Zombies have no basis in physical reality, by definition.
The whole point of zombies is that you can have a person who is exactly the same in all physical respects, yet does not have some specific supernatural quality, and thus they are a zombie.
Then I am in agreement.
Uploading is possible if described thus.
But, I would like to say: please do not too easily give in to those monists and materialists who try to diminish the importance of consciousness: saying it is not a mystery, that it is obviously a brain byproduct.
They are in well over their heads and have nothing to support their claims. They just sound skeptical and, therefore, convincing to some.
But, in truth, they are as clueless and uncertain as any fortune teller.
Consciousness is THE mystery. Anyone who proposes to take the mystery out of it with dismissive, devaluing remarks just does not get it.
It has so many perturbations that dwelling on any too long can cause one to doubt all.
...
But, to reassert: I believe I am seeing eye to eye at the moment in some respects.
To worship a phenomenon because it seems so wonderfully mysterious, is to worship your own ignorance.
Edited by Savage, 14 November 2008 - 03:55 AM.
Posted 14 November 2008 - 06:24 AM
Possibly. I think that what consciousness directly experiences is somehow brain-field generated, and not the physical universe, which I do not think consciousness experiences directly at all.If consciousness is not produced by the brain, then by what? The toes?
Or are you just throwing an unspecified, unobservable, supernatural quality back into this mix, in exactly the same manner as zombie-ism and flying spaghetti monsters?
I think you are putting too much value in "Grand Mysteries".
True, but some realities are so far removed from our ability to grasp that they are grand mysteries: relatively speaking, of course.Mysteriousness exists in your mind, not out in reality.
I never heard of this person before today, but it appears that he is a rock star in the Uploading and consciousness areas.read Yudkowsky on Mysterious Answers to Mysterious Questions
Tell that to John Keats, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Tesla and Goya...but, that might not sway Mr. Yudkowsky who probably says on his own self-perceived intelligence: 'let me put it to you this way. ever hear of plato, aristotle, socrates?...morons.' (Princess Bride quote, btw!)To worship a phenomenon because it seems so wonderfully mysterious, is to worship your own ignorance.
Nice! An implied appreciation of qualia here, of the experience of redness as opposed to its description. This person sounds like a dualist fully aware of the hard problem. He sees the experience of a star's brightness as a constancy, as beauty, separate from quantitative knowledge: pure dualism.Ah.. there is another terrific quote here that I have forgotten. It says something to the effect of "Do the stars shine less brightly because we now understand nuclear physics?" (yes I butchered that one, but that's the idea. I wish I could find the real quote here...)
This may be one of those fields of study that turns quacks into meaningful contributors, because such a field really needs the wild, playful, ridiculous stuff that only quacks come up with to jar the it into forward motion.But I do agree that consciousness is quite possibly the greatest intellectual challenge humanity will ever face. More have been driven insane than have produced something of use on the subject.
Posted 14 November 2008 - 01:06 PM
Ok, so we are right back where we started:Possibly. I think that what consciousness directly experiences is somehow brain-field generated, and not the physical universe, which I do not think consciousness experiences directly at all.
just throwing an unspecified, unobservable, supernatural quality back into this mix, in exactly the same manner as zombie-ism and flying spaghetti monsters
Posted 14 November 2008 - 01:55 PM
Wouldn't have it any other way!Ok, so we are right back where we started:
Posted 20 November 2008 - 03:57 PM
Posted 01 December 2008 - 10:02 AM
Posted 01 December 2008 - 02:20 PM
I think that a fundamental assumption in mind uploading is that the mind is an information system, and preservation of information is what counts in the preservation of the person.
What is missed is the significance of sentience to a person’s identity.
I see sentience as a most profound phenomenon that is associated with and yet distinct from the data processes of the mind. There is a great diversity of information processes in a person’s mind, but I see sentience as possessing a fundamental unity throughout all of its associations with that diversity of information processes. This is analogous to a universe having the same physical constants throughout its spacetime despite its vast diversity of processes. Just as two different universes, with two different sets of physical constants, could have some similar physical processes going on in them, so could two different persons have some similar data processes going on in their minds but have a fundamental difference in their sentient identity.
Unity of sentience within a person is not something I can prove but is something that I perceive through strong intuition, like I perceive myself as a sentient being through strong intuition. If all the information in a mind is uploaded, but the identity of the person’s sentience is not preserved, then the person is lost. If the identity of a person’s sentience is preserved, then the person is preserved, even if a great deal of information is changed.
Edited by Lazarus Long, 01 December 2008 - 04:52 PM.
clarification and some added ideas
Posted 01 December 2008 - 07:33 PM
Edited by squ1d, 01 December 2008 - 07:38 PM.
Posted 01 December 2008 - 08:20 PM
Posted 08 December 2008 - 12:31 AM
It is you that is missing the significance by addressing the issue of information as limited to memory and what amounts to *data*.
The real debate is how much of the biology (DNA and brain) is essential to that sentience as opposed to what part is merely wetware versus software. That is unless what you are trying to appeal to is the third option of an immaterial *soul* as the core of identity. That is a debate I am not sure would be fruitful.
I also want to add how good it is too see you contributing here again Clifford. It has been a log time since your last visit.
Posted 08 December 2008 - 02:24 AM
It is you that is missing the significance by addressing the issue of information as limited to memory and what amounts to *data*.
When writing my opinion that mind uploading assumes the mind is an information system, I did not mean that the mind is just a memory bank, but I meant the system as a whole, including system architecture, firmware, software, operating system, peripherals, configuration, and provision for continual self-reconfiguration. A computer could be made so plastic as to fit Daniel Dennett's Joycean Machine model for consciousness, but this would still fail to address the issue of sentience. Much progress is being made in AI, but science is still very much in the dark about sentience.
There may be some confusion here caused by different meanings of the term sentience in the literature. What I have in mind is what David Chalmers calls the hard problem of consciousness. Both David Chalmers and Daniel Dennett speculate that sentience is associated with just any information system, including something as simple as a thermostat. Such speculation is just a matter of hand waving, not being based on any scientific evidence about sentience. I suspect that sentience is associated only with certain organic systems that meet rather strict requirements.
To a large extent, the operation of the mind can be explained as an information system. Sentience is very much associated with that information system, but it is definitely distinct from it. The association between sentience and the information system of the mind is so mysterious that some think that sentience is an effect that does not in turn affect anything. This cannot be true, because we could never talk or write about sentience if it were without effect. Sentience does have very real physical effects, but the mechanics of those effects continue to be invisible to scientific inquiry. I do not claim that it is impossible to do a scientific investigation of sentience, but to this day there has been nothing but speculation.The real debate is how much of the biology (DNA and brain) is essential to that sentience as opposed to what part is merely wetware versus software. That is unless what you are trying to appeal to is the third option of an immaterial *soul* as the core of identity. That is a debate I am not sure would be fruitful.
I am not making any claims about whether sentience is material or immaterial. However, I do claim that it continues to be a deep mystery to science. The failure of contemporary science to explain sentience may be analogous to the problem of classical science being unable to explain quantum phenomena. If sentience were not such a profound phenomenon, we might have no need to bother viewing the mind as anything more than an information system. However, sentience is such a profound phenomenon that it would be terribly negligent to ignore its importance. Analogously, classical physics may have been fine for nineteenth century science and technology, but we would never have the solid-state electronics we have today if we never moved on to quantum physics. If science ever advances to the point of being able to explain sentience, then there could be a discovery that the sentience of each person has some unifying intrinsic properties that distinguish one person from another. I do not present this as a theory, but as a hypothesis. My reason for making this hypothesis is that it is consistent with my intuition that I have one, unique, personal sentience that is associated with a wide variety of information processes in my mind, including hearing, vision, smelling, feeling, emotion, and etc.
I will now illustrate my hypothesis with an analogy. One of Victor Stenger's pet theories is his multiverse theory. He claims that the intrinsic physical constants of our universe froze out about one microsecond from its beginning. He also claims that our universe is part of a whole multiverse of universes. Each universe in the multiverse has its own set of intrinsic physical constants that froze out extremely early in its history. Whether multiverse theory is correct or not, it does provide for an excellent analogy to my hypothesis about sentience. I place the intrinsic physical constants of a universe in analogy with the intrinsic properties of sentience within a person.
Just as the intrinsic physical constants of a universe are associated with a vast variety of processes within it, so would sentience of particular intrinsic properties be associated with a vast variety of information processes in the mind. Just as different universes in the multiverse have different intrinsic physical constants, so would sentience in a different person have different intrinsic properties. In universe U1, there may be a process X1 in some place/time and there may be another process Y1 in some other place/time. In universe U2 there may be a process X2 in some place/time. Process X1 may be very similar to X2 and very different from Y1. However, the same intrinsic physical constants that are associated with X1 are also associated with X2 and they are different from the intrinsic physical constants that are associated with Y1. Likewise, sentience may be associated with information process V1 at some place/time in person P1 and with information process W1 in another place/time in person P1. Sentience may be associated with information process V2 in some place/time in person P2. Information process V1 may be very similar to information process V2 but very different from W1. With my hypothesis, sentience in person P1 has exactly the same intrinsic properties in its association with V1 that it has in its association with W1. However, the intrinsic sentience properties of person P1 associated with information process V1 is definitely different from the intrinsic sentience properties of person P2 associated with V2. This difference is of profound importance because sentience is the most profound of all phenomena.
For purposes of argument and debate, I could present a rival hypothesis, which I do not accept, but which is consistent with the views of reductionists, such as Derek Parfit. In the rival hypothesis, sentience has no intrinsic properties that differ from one person to another. With this rival hypothesis, the key to personal survival is found in the particular details of the information system, not in any sentience associated with it. With my hypothesis, the key to survival is found not in the particular details of the information system, but in particular intrinsic properties of a person's sentience. This does not mean that a person's sentience can exist apart from an information system, but it does mean that personal survival depends on particular intrinsic properties of sentience rather than on details of the information system with which sentience is associated.I also want to add how good it is too see you contributing here again Clifford. It has been a log time since your last visit.
I am happy to get back into the Immortality Institute forums. My long absence was due to time management issues. I desire to continue in the forums, but I will have to limit myself to threads that can tolerate long delays between responses.
Posted 08 December 2008 - 04:05 AM
It is you that is missing the significance by addressing the issue of information as limited to memory and what amounts to *data*.
When writing my opinion that mind uploading assumes the mind is an information system, I did not mean that the mind is just a memory bank, but I meant the system as a whole, including system architecture, firmware, software, operating system, peripherals, configuration, and provision for continual self-reconfiguration. A computer could be made so plastic as to fit Daniel Dennett's Joycean Machine model for consciousness, but this would still fail to address the issue of sentience. Much progress is being made in AI, but science is still very much in the dark about sentience.
There may be some confusion here caused by different meanings of the term sentience in the literature. What I have in mind is what David Chalmers calls the hard problem of consciousness. Both David Chalmers and Daniel Dennett speculate that sentience is associated with just any information system, including something as simple as a thermostat. Such speculation is just a matter of hand waving, not being based on any scientific evidence about sentience. I suspect that sentience is associated only with certain organic systems that meet rather strict requirements.
To a large extent, the operation of the mind can be explained as an information system. Sentience is very much associated with that information system, but it is definitely distinct from it. The association between sentience and the information system of the mind is so mysterious that some think that sentience is an effect that does not in turn affect anything. This cannot be true, because we could never talk or write about sentience if it were without effect. Sentience does have very real physical effects, but the mechanics of those effects continue to be invisible to scientific inquiry. I do not claim that it is impossible to do a scientific investigation of sentience, but to this day there has been nothing but speculation.
Clifford Greenblatt
The real debate is how much of the biology (DNA and brain) is essential to that sentience as opposed to what part is merely wetware versus software. That is unless what you are trying to appeal to is the third option of an immaterial *soul* as the core of identity. That is a debate I am not sure would be fruitful.
I am not making any claims about whether sentience is material or immaterial. However, I do claim that it continues to be a deep mystery to science. The failure of contemporary science to explain sentience may be analogous to the problem of classical science being unable to explain quantum phenomena. If sentience were not such a profound phenomenon, we might have no need to bother viewing the mind as anything more than an information system.
Clifford Greenblatt
However, sentience is such a profound phenomenon that it would be terribly negligent to ignore its importance.
Posted 22 December 2008 - 05:18 AM
I am certainly not defining sentience as self-awareness. I can imagine a nonsentient information system with more coherent self-awareness than some sentient persons. Daniel Dennet wrote that sentience was never given a proper definition. The problem with defining sentience is that any definition takes on the risk of confusing sentience with properties that could possibly be possessed by a nonsentient system. I have a very strong intuitive sense of what sentience is, but defining it in a way that avoids confusion is quite difficult. I will avoid using the word ineffable (as some do in defining qualia), because use of such a word in a definition shuts out inquiry. I will attempt to define sentience as follows. Sentience is a most profound phenomenon that is associated with but distinct from information processes of the mind.You appear to be presuming a quality of sentience predicated on being 'self aware,' a factor that is not inherently beyond the ability of a complex synthetic consciousness. You know yourself and hence that is distinct from all other sentient beings that 'know' themselves to be distinct from you. This a machine can do.
If you are not describing 'self awareness' then could you better describe this distinct characteristic of sentience that cannot be incorporated into a synthetic substrate?
In one sense, sentience is so simple that even a child can perceive it. On the other hand, it has so far eluded scientific inquiry. I am not making a point about how simple or complex sentience may be, but I am making a point about how it has eluded scientific inquiry to this day.I think the problem is that sentience is both more complex AND simpler than we are granting the meaning to be. Its most extreme complexity is rooted in human semantics and memetics and how we have imbued the idea with notions of uniqueness that come from a 'selfish genetic' perspective AND from a religious one (souls). We mix ideas of mythical merit in to explain the unknown and we have done so for tens of thousands of years. It is not just a hard habit to break, it is even intertwined with our immune system through our brains.
I can imagine a nonsentient machine that could invent reasons and act on an ocean of fuzzy data with greater power that some sentient persons can. I think sentience in a person whose thought process is crippled by a preoccupation with some intense pain is much greater in its intensity than that of a highly gifted person who is solving an advanced problem with ease.Rigid machine type information systems cannot invent answers that determine behavioral choices without sufficient data to work with even though they will work with incorrect data and produce GI-GO (garbage in garbage out). Sentient minds however will invent a reason, and act. Being able to do that enhances survival probability; hence intelligence and more importantly sentience, forms a survival advantage in the competition for resources described by Natural Selection.
How do we know which organisms are sentient and which are not? Is there a continuum of sentience from the simplest of organisms to the most complex or is there a threshold that must be crossed before there is any sentience at all? Both David Chalmers and Daniel Dennett speculate that sentience is present in even the simplest of information systems, such as a thermostat. David Chalmers views sentience as another property of matter, like magnetic, electric, and mass properties. He describes his view as follows.The simple part is that the evolution of organic intelligence didn't just make humans sentient, it makes all such creatures sentient so long as they achieve sufficient complexity of neurological function. Clearly when addressing the self awareness test of sentience we share this characteristic with many of our primate cousins and other mammalian species like dolphin and orca.
He also wrote the following, which can be found on page19 of Explaining Consciousness- the 'Hard Problem', The MIT press, edited by Jonathan Shear, 1997.In particular, a nonreductive theory of experience will specify basic principles telling us how experience depends on physical features of the world. These psychophysical principles will not interfere with physical laws, as it seems that physical laws already form a closed system. Rather, they will be a supplement to a physical theory. A physical theory gives a theory of physical processes, and a psychophysical theory tells us how those processes give rise to experience. We know that experience depends on physical processes, but we also know that this dependence cannot be derived from physical laws alone. The new basic principles postulated by a nonreductive theory give us the extra ingredient that we need to build an explanatory bridge.
We can measure electrical, magnetic, and mass properties, but I am unaware of any mainstream scientific methods for measuring sentience. If we do not have the ability to measure sentience, how can we make claims as to what is sentient and what is not? In my view, sentience is not associated with all information processes but only with certain processes under certain conditions. I do not present this view as a claim but as a hypothesis.Although a remarkable number of phenomena have turned out to be explicable wholly in terms of entities simpler than themselves, this is not universal. In physics, it occasionally happens that an entity has to be taken as fundamental. Fundamental entities are not explained in terms of anything simpler. Instead, one takes them as basic, and gives a theory of how they relate to everything else in the world. For example, in the nineteenth century it turned out that the electromagnetic process could not be explained in terms of the wholly mechanical processes that previous physical theories appealed to, so Maxwell and others introduced electromagnetic charge and electromagnetic forces as new fundamental components of a physical theory.
I do not identify sentience with self-awareness. I view self-awareness as a function that could possibly be realised in a nonsentient system with greater coherence that is found in some sentient persons.They too can recognize themselves as distinct from others and identify in social groups. In fact I would be willing to include social behavior as a quality of sentience, although that can get difficult too.
The problem with identifying sentience with qualia is that qualia, as Daniel Dennett has shown, can simply be identified with our reactive dispositions. We perceive the redness of a red colour because viewing of certain visual inputs trigger certain information processes in our minds. I can imagine such reactive dispositions in a nonsentient information system. In this way, I could imagine a nonsentient information system having qualia.You and I are reflecting the Dennett-Chalmers debate and I hope you don't mind if we just get past the preliminaries and I refer to this unique quality of consciousness you identify as sentience a “qualia”?
There are properties that emerge from processes. The same statistical distribution can emerge from a variety of processes, both physical and simulated. If sentience emerges from an organic information system, then any properties that sentience may have would supervene on properties of the organic information system. This would be contrary to my hypothesis and would be consistent with the rival hypothesis I mentioned in my last post. However, we must keep in mind that a property being associated with a structure or process does not necessarily mean that the property is emergent from the structure or process. Since sentience has so far eluded all scientific means of measurement, there is no scientific basis to make a claim for or against sentience being emergent from either organic or inorganic processes.I do not consider sentience as 'distinct from that organic based information system' nearly so much as an emergent property of that process. In essence I am describing a biological behavior that is analogous to quantum behavior but not based on quantum mechanics.
11
If we can create a self aware “sentient”machine is it alive?
2
Is the definition of “life”strictly organic or is the concept of a “being” also predicted on “sentience”?
3
Are consciousness and sentience synonymous for this discussion?
4
Are you falling into a tautological trap of presuming sentience dependent on an organic substrate because that is how it has evolved and is currently found?
5
Is sentience a unique property or characteristic apart from the utility of the information system known as the mind/brain and a separate product of that same organ in partnership with the body or is it a function that the mind/body serves to create and operate?
Posted 22 December 2008 - 05:07 PM
I think that a fundamental assumption in mind uploading is that the mind is an information system, and preservation of information is what counts in the preservation of the person.
I agree with this observation but I suggest that when you say:What is missed is the significance of sentience to a person’s identity.
It is you that is missing the significance by addressing the issue of information as limited to memory and what amounts to *data*.
Software is a form of information, which is not only determined by its content (form) but by its function as well. Identity and *sentience* are more analogous to an operating system than just memory alone. It is not the preservation of just the memory of experience but how that memory has contributed to the organization of a *being* in the form of its *OS* that is organized uniquely based on its specific memory.I see sentience as a most profound phenomenon that is associated with and yet distinct from the data processes of the mind. There is a great diversity of information processes in a person’s mind, but I see sentience as possessing a fundamental unity throughout all of its associations with that diversity of information processes. This is analogous to a universe having the same physical constants throughout its spacetime despite its vast diversity of processes. Just as two different universes, with two different sets of physical constants, could have some similar physical processes going on in them, so could two different persons have some similar data processes going on in their minds but have a fundamental difference in their sentient identity.
DNA for example is not as deterministic as most view it and as such forms a biological equivalent of a *plastic* OS that continues its organization as it grows and assimilates experience, hence the view of sentience as information for both these aspects (function and form of information) and perhaps more that are not yet fully understood. The difficult issue for many strict materialists is that it introduces a new form of duality they philosophically reject or it forces strict materialists to develop a new definition of material that better addresses the paradigm of information.Unity of sentience within a person is not something I can prove but is something that I perceive through strong intuition, like I perceive myself as a sentient being through strong intuition. If all the information in a mind is uploaded, but the identity of the person’s sentience is not preserved, then the person is lost. If the identity of a person’s sentience is preserved, then the person is preserved, even if a great deal of information is changed.
I think we are in basic accord with respect to what you identify as a "unity of sentience" but what we may yet disagree on is what defines the different aspects of that *unity*. The perspective I present above also depends on such a unity but can still be defined as sufficiently about information alone to make uploading possible in theory. The issue then becomes one of transcription methodology more than fundamental impossibility.
The real debate is how much of the biology (DNA and brain) is essential to that sentience as opposed to what part is merely wetware versus software. That is unless what you are trying to appeal to is the third option of an immaterial *soul* as the core of identity. That is a debate I am not sure would be fruitful.
I also want to add how good it is too see you contributing here again Clifford. It has been a log time since your last visit.
Posted 05 February 2009 - 12:11 AM
Posted 21 February 2009 - 08:30 PM
The trick is the gradual replacement, to allow the transition of information that is the consciousness time to properly propagate across the new media. It hypothetically works because it has been proven through such oddities as alien hand syndrome, split-brain syndrome, etc that consciousness is not centralized, it's a asynchronous, decentralized effect of the structure and activity of our brains, and so replacing parts over time, allows the transition of our consciousness between media.
Posted 14 June 2009 - 02:48 AM
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