What is consciousness?
Inspired by the discussion towards the end of last night's chat thread, it made me think about what consciousness is. I'm a firm believer in science, and believe that the human body is a complex biological machine that evolved purely by chance. Everything can be explained by comparing us to a robot made out of meat - well, everything except for one thing...

This one thing that goes beyond all of this - beyond science even - the 'magic' that makes us alive and self aware and not just a biological robot - the thing that is consciousness.

One of the challenges of Artificial Intelligence is to create artificial sentience. Personally, I don't think this can be achieved (at least not on a purely artificial level anyway). Just about every computation that can be done with computers as we know them today (computers based on logic-gates) can be abstracted to a Turing machine. If you know how a Turing machine works, you will realise that while theoretically it can perform any possible computation, it can never become aware of what it's doing - it just does what it's supposed to do.

If artificial sentience isn't possible, I believe it's possible to create an artificial extension to a natural consciousness. A good example of this is a human using a calculator. This way, they can solve mathematical problems much quicker. So one could say that this is a type of brain-extension. While a rabbit would not have a clue how to use a calculator of for that matter even understand the concept of a calculator, if science progresses to the point where brains can be grafted with electronic components or artificial brain extensions, it may be possible to expand the rabbit's mental capabilities this way. Taken to the extreme, it might even be possible to add a whole machine to a bacterium that interfaces the bacterium's sentience with the computational power to process perception from external stimuli and feed it to the bacterium’s own consciousness.

This of course leaves the question "What is consciousness?" open.

One belief I have about that is that our consciousnesses are an additional supernatural entity that is bolted onto our brains. I also believe that these consciousnesses all form part of the same supernatural entity, and that all consciousnesses are somehow interlinked. Our body's materialistic desires repress that part of our consciousness that makes it interlinked with everyone else's. I have absolutely nothing to back this up, but I believe in it. This could be likened to the Gaian supermind where every living thing is in fact the same organism (although this is more on a biological level than on a spiritual level). I've also read a bit on Taoism and they also believe that all souls form part of the same entity.

While science has answered many questions, "What is consciousness?" is still left to the realm of metaphysics. There's much possibility for debate, but as far as I know, there's no solid scientific foundation. I could of course be wrong. Truly, what consciousness is is something that's unexplained.
( mistaspakkaman and the inedible shifting caterpillars, Wed 9 Jul 2008, 14:55, 14 replies)

*click*
Great post, combining Alan Turing and Taoism, made me scratch my chin pensively ...
(Eds Meds Mathskillz=1,Socialskillz=0, Wed 9 Jul 2008, 15:18, closed)

I'm not going to get too far into this
because that's Enzyme's territory, and I'd be a bit out of my depth, but surely it all depends on how you define sentience?

It's a bit difficult to do that with a bacterium.
( K2k6 has a proper job these days, Wed 9 Jul 2008, 15:36, closed)

Defining sentience
Loads of words with a full stop at the end, innit?
(Vice Admiral Sir Charles Cockbrush KCB MBE DSO, who is finding it increasingly difficult to log into b3ta.com wants to duck your aunt and kick your puppy, Wed 9 Jul 2008, 15:49, closed)

Sorry to be picky, but we didn't evolve purely by chance. Evolution is somewhat more complex than that.
(Mr. Partyhat, Wed 9 Jul 2008, 16:14, closed)

By chance
depends on who you ask. There are those who say that we evolved purely by chance, because they insist that there was nothing guiding evolution. These people are the diehard atheists. They laugh at people who claim that there was a guiding force to evolution, and are impervious to any other viewpoint.

What's really fun, of course, is to point out to them that since the existence of God can neither be proven or disproven, their atheism is a matter of faith just as much as that which sustains the Pope. You can see them start to fizz as they prepare to tell you how wrong you are.

But then, I really enjoy winding them up on occasion...
( The Resident Loon Not a demographic. Do not measure., Wed 9 Jul 2008, 16:23, closed)

Hmmm
'a rabbit would not have a clue how to use a calculator of for that matter even understand the concept of a calculator'


And what's out there that we don't understand?

What's on the other side of all the universes and space? It's circular(ish) spherical I believe...and was expanding (or still is maybe)...expanding into what?
Where is it?

Personally I think we're in a giant snow-globe - us, the Earth, all our galaxy, universe, the whole caboodle.

All in a giant snow-globe probably sitting on someone's desk.
( chickenlady b3ta's very own Elizabeth Taylor, Wed 9 Jul 2008, 16:24, closed)

I think
We are too thick to understand. And probably too thick to ever understand.

Either someone or something designed us with this limitation in mind

or

If we came to be by chance it's a damn shame we'll never understand how or why.
( whenanimalsattackhumans clad in global hypercolour, Wed 9 Jul 2008, 16:40, closed)

Are you an a-tepot-ist? It's just a matter of faith.
"since the existence of God can neither be proven or disproven, their atheism is a matter of faith"

Russell's Teapot.
( Amish Information Systems hates misplaced, commas, Wed 9 Jul 2008, 17:17, closed)

I don't think we're really concious
I just think our brains think we are and make us act as if we were. I'm pretty sure it would be possible to build an AI (or certainly in the future) that to the outside observer looks as if it is fully concious and understanding of what goes on around it. How is that different to us?
(Cuthbert Annihilator, Wed 9 Jul 2008, 17:45, closed)

@AIS
Pretty much, only without the inherent condescension of the Teapot. I prefer to let people believe as they like, as long as they harm no one else in the process. Harassing, intimidating or otherwise abusing people for not sharing your beliefs is where I draw the line- whether your faith calls for a god or for no god. And I leave it at that.

About the only time I ever start really messing with people is when they insist that theirs is the only sensible view and start proselytizing. Atheists are often worse about that than Jehovah's Witnesses, especially when they fanatically deny that their beliefs are the result of a leap of faith. It is a leap of faith, just in the opposite direction from the deists.

Me, I do have my own faith and opinions- but they're mine, and I don't expect others to follow them.
( The Resident Loon Not a demographic. Do not measure., Wed 9 Jul 2008, 18:14, closed)

@Loon
Yes, the teapot example is condescending, but deliberately so. The teapot analogy is designed to act as an example that is uncontroversial, in that very very few people already have entrenched views about the existence of said teapot.

Anyone can come up with hundreds of similar undecidable statements (that are nonetheless of very low a priori probability, so I would contend that it is not necessarily a "leap of faith" every time someone else disbelieves them due to lack of evidence.

But I'm falling into the proselyt... proselitaz.. preaching trap, so I'll sign off now.
( Amish Information Systems hates misplaced, commas, Wed 9 Jul 2008, 18:53, closed)

@various
"how you define sentience? It's a bit difficult to do that with a bacterium."

This is a tricky one. On the one hand, you could assume that all life forms are sentient, but on the other hand, you could go as far as to believe that you're the only sentient life-form because you're only aware of your own sentience, in which case, everyone else in the universe may exist solely for your own entertainment.

"but we didn't evolve purely by chance. Evolution is somewhat more complex than that."

There's survival of the fittest which eliminates evolutional dead-ends.

"What's really fun, of course, is to point out to them that since the existence of God can neither be proven or disproven, their atheism is a matter of faith just as much as that which sustains the Pope. You can see them start to fizz as they prepare to tell you how wrong you are."

Science and religion may be like apples and oranges, but faith in science is sort of like a religion. Unless you know everything there is to know about each and every branch of science, you just have to have faith that scientists aren't trying to pull a fast one on you. Atheists may really have a religion that's basically faith in science. One thing that they hope for is that the secret of biological immortality will be discovered before they die. There's no set timetable for innovations in biology - they just hope this one Holy Grail will be reached before they die.

"I don't think we're really concious I just think our brains think we are and make us act as if we were."

But how can you trick yourself into believing you think you're not really conscious. I'm pretty sure self-awareness does not come from an algorithm or a pattern in a neural network.

"I'm pretty sure it would be possible to build an AI (or certainly in the future) that to the outside observer looks as if it is fully concious and understanding of what goes on around it. How is that different to us?"

There's a difference to appearing to be conscious and actually being conscious. A computer is just a machine that follows a set of rules. As far as we know, in humans, there are no rules of thinking. If you study computer science, one of the things you learn about is what the theoretical limits of computation are. You can never achieve self-awareness by computation, but you can make a machine act like it's very aware of what's going on - it just needs external stimuli and a complex set of rules.

@chickenlady:
Or maybe we're actually living on the inside of a concave hollow Earth as described in Martin Gardner's book On the Wild Side?
( mistaspakkaman and the inedible shifting caterpillars, Wed 9 Jul 2008, 22:08, closed)

But Occum's Razor rules that out
I'm still for the Snow Globe.

I think it was proved by a Guinness Advert some years ago.

;)
( chickenlady b3ta's very own Elizabeth Taylor, Wed 9 Jul 2008, 22:17, closed)

a little dissapointing...
I was hoping that this Gaian supermind was a reference to the "foundation" series by Isaac Asimov...
But, an interesting question nonetheless. perhaps this conciousness is an extra-dimensional extension of the physical human body?
(Freeman163, Thu 10 Jul 2008, 3:28, closed)