Emergent properties are properties of a thing that
1) posess casual power independent of the thing
2) are nevertheless somehow dependent upon the underlying "thing" in order to "emerge"
3) the effects of that casual power the emergent properties posess are not reducible in any deterministic way to the effects of the underlying "thing" from which the emergent property emerges.
(regarding 3 above, if 3 were NOT being claimed by the "emergent crowd" then just everything at the next higher level of composition would qualify as an "emergent property" - heat from a fire, light from the burning of a tungsten filament etc etc. )
So it's a break in the reductive chain of causal linkage which otherwise exists between different "levels" of material substance. That reductive chain and causal linkage you know very well- the behavior and properties of atoms cause and determine the behavior and properties of molecules which cause and determine the behavior and properties or organic compounds and so on up the chain of causal linkage and deterministic causality all the way to brains.. aka "reductionism").
So to be clear, emergent properties are said to be dependent upon (in some way, so they can emerge from) a lower level in the causal chain but their effects are NOT reducible or determined by, even in theory, those lower level's properties. The way everything else is in the known universe.
This kind of thing just doesn't exist and anyway would be magical.
Emergent properties sound good -until you think about what's actually being implied by the concept. Then the concept just falls apart.
It is possible that thought is the stuff of which the universe is made,...But...there's no clear rationale for going that way.
OK I do have a clear rationale. It is that "experience" (consciousness) is 100% superfluous to the working ofthe brain. It's a concept we don't need, like we don't need "life force" to explain the difference between live things and non-live things. Yet there it is.
To see how this state of affairs amounts to a real genuine quandry for science, I answered another debater with a fuller explanation which is clear enough (given the hour I am typing) as it is:
but I will shorten and clarify it into this: We can imagine a brain working and causing all the effects it does without a shred of conscious experience.
The interaction of molecules which control and completely determine both the structure and the functioning of the brain don't need jack shit from "experience", are not thought to have it, and the functioning of these experience-free parts can completely and deterministically explain the functioning not just of brains generally, but any given event in any brain there ever has been or ever will be.
If we let the quinessential deterministic mechanism be a clockworks then we can express this idea of mechanisitic determinism governing all phenomena both organic and inorganic, alive and inert, all biological systems included with all their parts -including brains - a clockwork universe,. Clocks dont' need experience and we dont' assign it to them because Occam's Razor and all that and "experience" is entirely superfluous to the clockwork.
Experience is an phenomena the universe just doesn't need . I could create a parallel, stone cold dead no-experince universe with animals and people and everything and it would ru
OK so I see you as mixing up the concept of "abstract concept about a thing" with "emergent property".
The top speed of a car is a concept about the car, not a property. This is seen by seeing how many other emergent properties - as you're using the term- the car might have. The answer, in short is an infinite number. Here are some of them:
The chick magnet strength of the car.
The most miles the car will go without needing a repair of its transmission if I drive it only to church on Sundays.
The best price the car will fetch under any circumstances whatsoever.
and on and on.
What these are are not properties of the car, but descriptions of how the car will interact with other parts of the world in a potentially infiniite number of artificial circumstances.
These are not emergent properties as that term is usually meant. Emergent properties are properties of a thing that 1) posess casual power independent of the thing 2) are nevertheless somehow dependent upon the underlying "thing" in order to emerge 3) the effects of that casual power are not reducible to the the determiistic effects of the underlyig thing upon the emergent thing (as is the case everywhere else i the universe).
So it's a break in the reductive chain of causal linkage which otherwise exists between different "levels" of material substance. (I. e. the behavior and properties of atoms cause and determine the behavior and properties of molecules which cause and determine the behavior and properties or organic compounds and so on up the chain of causal linkage to brains.. aka "reductionism").
So to be clear, emergent properties are said to be dependent upon (in some way, so they can emerge from) a lower level of in the causal chain but their effects are NOT reducible or determined, even in theory, by those lower level's properties.
This kind of thing just doesn't exist and anyway would be magical.
So all that's really going on is that we do not know how to map e.g. insight, or knowledge through the various layers of brain architecture , function, chemical processes, neuron count, connectedness
OK this is something different than the above now. Your problem here is how do you account for the fact of experience if you dno't need experience to account for the behavior of brains - and you absolutely don't - see here:
OK some people are not familiar with the philosophical problem called the mind-brain duality. It goes like this.
Even if brains are necessary for minds (experience, consciousness some how needs them to manifest- not something I myself believe ) they are not sufficient.
They are not sufficient because we can imagine a brain working and causing all the effects it does without a shred of conscious experience. The reason this is not just plausible, but the preferred explanation is because the atoms and molecules which constitute the brain and cause it to do what it does don't NEED conscious experience to react with each other in any other system and there is no plausible reason they should in this one. Brains are not a special form of matter to the laws of physics. They operate in brains and to make brains the same way they operate everywhere else, and that is without "experience".
No other physical system created and governened by the forces of physics and atomic particles NEEDS this new TYPE of thing -conscious experience -to function.
Put baldly, the laws of physics control the atomic (and sub-atomic) particles which in turn control and determine the interaction of molecules which control and completely determine both the structure and the functioning of the brain don't need jack shit from "experience", are not thought to have it, and the functioning of these experience-free parts can completely and deterministically explain the functioning not just of brains generally, but any given event in any brain there ever has been or ever will be.
Those same laws of physics don't make any other system- no matter how complex- "conscious" or causeit to have "experience".
If we let the quinessential deterministic mechanism be a clockworks then we can express this idea of mechanisitic determinism governing all phenomena both organic and inorganic, alive and inert, all biological systems included with all their parts -including brains - a clockwork universe,. Clocks dont' need experience and we dont' assign it to them because Occam's Razor and all that and "experience" is entirely superfluous to the clockwork.
BTW this idea is where the title of A Clockwork Orange comes from. The seemingly friendly biological thing is really just a mechanism at it's core and nothing more.
Experience is an phenomena the universe just doesn't need . I could create a parallel, stone cold dead no-experince universe with animals and people and everything and it would run just like our own. The only difference is, ours has experience and the other one doesn't.
When we dispose of the dead weight of uneeded concepts in science- like "life force" or "elan vital" or all forms of immaterial vitalism and spirtualism in all its guises, it's always a process of showing that what we took for evidence of the (ontological ) existence of some unseen and inferred "thing" was not evidence for this things existence at all, and the thing could be done away with with no loss of explanatory power to our theories.
In the case with experience, it's just the opposite. I can show that we don't need it, it's just fucking dead weight , I can acount for allphenomena without including it as a concept and yet...unlike with every other dead weight concept, we're not "inferring it's existence from evidence; we know it exists. In fact, it's the only thing in the entire universe we can truly say we are absolutely, positively out-Descarting Descartes, full on skeptical-unto- pathology certain of, without harboring even a shread of doubt no matter how small. There is experience.
If I can account for the all the workings of brains without experience then how are you, asa good scientist going to add it back in? Where are you going to do this in the process? Anywhere you try, I can say "and here you come with your ghost in the machine". I will be scientifcally rigorous and you will be injecting mystical entities into biochemical, or molecular or electrical events governed and account for 100% by the
This is what's being assumed: A brain is a machine with consciousness and experience.
And that's a problem because "consciousness" or it's more precise definition "experience" even if you allow that it is dependent on brains or complex machines to manifest (and I am not saying I do) is a phenomena which nevertheless is not a brain or complex machine and is has no credible reductionist (scientific) pathway from either of those things.
We don't assign experience to a watch; it "knows" nothing even though it "tells" time- a complex task. And so also with any even more complicated machines. At some undefined point of complexity, you claim a ghost enters the machine, and lo, the machine is having experience. But do one computation differently and no experience is being had.
It's just enough that any computer you can build, I can match the functioning of given a long tape and a scanner , a Turing machine. That is enough to give any impartial person pause at what exactly it is being claimed by Strong AI. Consciousness and experience "comes out of" Turning machines. Why not go all the way then and just say the universe, the grandest Turing machine of all is conscious and has experience? Some distinguished physicists actually DO say this. No one scoffs at them. Really, looked at in this context, your claim that consciousness is found only in brains and computers looks like a piece of special pleading. Maybe the whole universe is conscious, given your criteria for consciousness.
The ideas espoused by Strong AI really depend on the enforcement of a kind of incurious parochialism with respect to science at large and a certain overhwelming of the credulous by complexity and the magic of seeing something done (the Jeopardy! computer comes to mind here) which previously would have required a human.
>>What you consider experience is just memories of the past.
Yeah, actually that's not true. You are having an experience right NOW. At any given instance you care to check it you are having an experience. You don't need to refer to past time or memory or any othersuch thing. Just look NOW and see for yourself.
It's amazing and a measure of the dogmaticism and rigidity that abounds in some circles that in the course of this debate you've actually now tended an argument which rejects the reality of experience.
I also enjoy it when people act bewildered about what this crazy thing "experience" is I speak of. Because that's all it is, an act.
In a very strong sense, since they have a physical representation as knowledge in your brain.
What I am obviously saying is they do not correlate to the things in the external world I thought they did. They are real the way illusions are real illusions. They're real (an illusion is a real phenomena), but their designated referents are not real.
Sure I have a reason. For the same reason no other phenomena has ever had an "emergent" property which also posessed ontological independence. Because reductionism is how things ARE. Things are made up of their parts, and how those parts interact with the world and other parts determine completely how the thing behaves.
Your second point is related to what I am saying, but not a direct attack on it (which is what you think). What I am saying is the claim that consciousness arises from brains or complex systems is wrong. Whether there can be a brain imitating computer is another matter. If the computer imitates the brain perfectly and is not forced into being an exact replica of the brain down to its constituent parts- ion channels , physical neurons etc, then that would be interesting. But experience isn't going to magically issue from that brain anymore than it does from our own. The brain is not the seat of experience. I am claiming that experience exists independently of brains and gives rise to the perception that there are brains.
You're doing a lot of interrogating and accusing but sliding by without answering the troubling questions which issue directly from your own theory. Can a Turing tape machine be conscious and if not then why not? Are some suitably complex machines already conscious to some degree and if not, then why not? Start there.
That's not quite solipsism. Observer bias is a benign problem which can and does still admit of an objective, shared reality. Even an inescapable observer bias, even an inescapable, undetected and undetect-able observer bias still admits of a real, if never-to-be-known objective reality. So that's still not solipsism.
I too admit of an objective reality which exists independently of myself. It is the reality that experience reveals, the reality that experience is. I simply doubt the reality of the existence of things and all the other stuff of thought.
If I do bad math and come to bad conclusions, in what sense are my beliefs real (about the things of my bad-math universe) ? I am totally convinced of them because of the way I used my mind. But I used my mind wrongly. They don't exist except as figments of my wayward thinking, and then in some sense, OK they exist.
I claim the same thing for notjust the products of my bad mathematical musings but all thought-things. They have a kind of existence, but that existence is not what it appears to be by my mis-thinking mind.
So again if you read my rebuttal to solipsism you'll see I am explicitly not saying that.
Lelt me turn the tables on you for a second and examine YOUR beliefs (or someone who accepts that consciousness can arise from brains or computers) and let's see how weird they are.
First you have to admit that basis of consciousness is not tied to any particular material- biological or silicon or anything else- it's an issue of systems and computation and any suitable substrate capable of doing the computation, even if the computation is entirely in a chip, will do. Given the *right* computation, consciousness is created.
So if I just run the right program with the right simulated inputs I can and will produce a thing having experience on a chip. That's what you believe.
I am not mocking this idea since every road we take from here for any distance goes to a strange place, including mine. I just want you to see how strange your own landscape becomes, because I don't think you are aware of it.
Then you have to admit, because we all agree it's true and it is true, that that said same experience-having chip-creature could be reproduced completely, including the experience-having part, in a very long tape and a tape mover and tape reader, i.e. a Turning machine.
Now this really sounds like I am making fun of you, but I am not deliberately doing that. I am just a passive passenger looking out the window and commenting on the passing scenery in the car you're driving down the road you chose.
In addition to this your idea of consciousness coming from computation has some curious properties. For one, it admits of degrees. This is Minsky's thermostat but realize also you have the unenviable task of deciding when the blessed event arises in arbitrary machines. Even if your philosphical opponent doesn't make you explicitly define what is and is not to qualify as experience-bearing, still you ought to be able to give a thumbs up thumbs down (although how you would do that without an explicit checklist is anyone's guess) to a given set of machines. Just how conscious is my calculator and is there any truly principled reason to assume the answer is zero? It needs a bucnh of feedback loops? It needs to do something fancier than calculate integrals? Then experience will blossom forth or slowwwwly starts to accrue or how does that work exactly?
These are just some of the things implied by the computation-as-consciousness Strong AI claims.
Really the quandry that the existence of experience puts us in is not one we can extricate ourselves from casually. Your road is plenty weird. Mine is weird also. I own that weirdness with the claim that the essential incoporealness and ontological primacy of consciousness and experience is not very much weirder and in fact is much closer to the ontological weirdness that the things of physics has become and moreover,it's consistent and doesn't hypothesize the existence of things we don'tknow with 100% certainity actually exist.
. Physicists publish papers all the time wondering if we're all in a hologram and such like things and no one gets out the woo-woo cannon and points it at them. By making the claims String AI makes, researchers have to accept that those claims come with huge unresolved issues that they can't just handwave their way past.
Stay focused on the thing to be proved. Thething to be proced is not "can we build a clever machine" or "can we model how the brain learns or reacts ina computer" (I assume this is possible). It's not even - can we learn something true and new about actual brains from models we create in computers. None of that is what's in question.
What's in question is- can consciousness arise from computers (of any type, wet, vacuum tubes Turing tapes it's all the same thing) or, equivalently is consciousness a byproduct of brains (alone).
Lots of interesting things to do and contemplate in this space. We're talking about one of them.
Come on, you hear me ranting because you want to hear it that way. There is no rant here.
Regarding emergent properties, you're not getting clear in your own mind what they refer to. Either they refer to a property which is reducible to the thing which subtends them- like the heat of a fire or the color of the grass, or (it is claimed that) they don't.
The first "kind" are unremarkable- this is just straighforward material reductionism.
The second kind are magical, as in unicorns- i.e. they don't exist. These would be emergent properties which are physically dependent on the thing which subtends them but ontologically independent (for some reason). What THAT kind of emergent property requires is a break in causality between the necessary substance which "gives rise to" the "emergent property" and the emergent property itself. That's a joke. The only reason anyone even entertains that idea is because they're either not thinking clearly or think material things can be deepely related in a non-causal (however indirect that linkage is) relationship, i.e. related but not related, which is just voodoo.
We won't build strong AI by accident, though;
You don't know what Strong AI is. Strong AI isn't "very effective AI" or "big project AI" or "amazing results AI". It's the specific assertion that computation IS consciousness and visa-versa. This is not my personal defiinition, this is THE definition. It's helps if we're talking about the same thing.
When someone says that consciousness is an emergent property of the brain (Strong AI- this paper) or of a computer or of a Turing machine they should know they're not saying anything more than "I don't know how experience falls out of material substance, but have some bullshit instead".
Should also say "bring into being through sheer computation" because sometmes you are arguing with eople who justike to argue ad win instead of argue in a proper, disinterested way.
Muy claims are not about intelligence per se (whatever thatis) but about experience. My TI -80 is intelligent by a lot of measures. More elaborate TI-80s are not going to save the empty assertion that consciousness arises from complexity of any sort, unless you strip consciousness of it's defining characteristic- a thing having experience - and reduce it to "clever compuation which would have formerly required a human being to do". A calculator qualifies for that, as does a chess playing program.
Your side slides greasily between A) consciousness-meaning-clever-computation and B) consciousness-meaning-a-thing-posessing-experience.
You like to achieve things from column A and use them to imply victories in column B.
Note that victories from A are interesting enough, I have some of my own, but not Interesting in a metaphysical or deep way. There are no basic mysteries being resolved here.
So if you claim I am claiming we cannot model intelligent activity, you're wrong. if you're claiming we cannot model or bring into being a thing posessed of experience, you're right.
Yeah they hae that already. And all that info you cite would have to have been captured as a result of some cybersecurity threat. So how would that go down? You included all that info as data in a DDOS campaign against someone?
is that only info "known at the time it was shared to be innocent PI" must be stripped . This is supposedly some sort of gigantic loophole. Well it's a true fact (damn those!) that in a DDOS the vicitm has small chance of sorting out the innocent from the guilty, so they therefore can't share that information? Makes no sense.
The working assumption is the NSA will use this is some cynical manner to just grab everyone's data. People, the NSA already HAS everyone's data. All the times we connect, to where for how long etc etc etc. Ditto DHS and who knows who else whether you're behind a VPN or what (according to the bragging going on in leaked documents).. so.. they want more of what they already have? Seems to me this just highlights for them what to look at (which they already collected and had stuffed away somewhere). So no, I am not seeing the uptick in the privacy threat. But I stand to be corrected by anyone who knows better.
OK so there are a few more mentions of PI in the bill reagarding he govt's duty to report to the public the number of times cyberthreat info was shared and how many times PI was shared but it doens't seem to be the privacy disaster it's being made out to be by some. Maybe I need the bill explained to me by someone who understands its implications better.
in a manner that protects from 1 unauthorized use or disclosure any cyber 2 threat indicators that may containâ" 3 (I) personal information of a spe-4 cific individual; or 5 (II) information that identifies a 6 specific individual; and 7 (iii) in a manner that protects the 8 confidentiality of cyber threat indicators 9 containingâ" 10 (I) personal information of a spe-11 cific individual; or 12 (II) information that identifies a 13 specific individual.
1756 (3) (longish one) consistent with the 12 need to protect information systems from 13 cybersecurity threats and mitigate cybersecurity 14 threatsâ" 15 (A) limit the effect on privacy and civil lib-16 erties of activities by the Federal Government 17 under this title; 18 (B) limit the receipt, retention, use, and 19 dissemination of cyber threat indicators con-20 taining personal information of specific individ-21 uals or information that identifies specific indi-22 viduals, including by establishingâ" 23 (i) a process for the timely destruction 24 of such information that is known not to 25 December 16, 2015 (1:04 a.m.) U:\2016REPT\OMNI\FinalOmni\CPRT-114-HPRT-RU00-SAHR2029-AMNT1.xml 1757 be directly related to uses authorized under 1 this title; and 2 (ii) specific limitations on the length 3 of any period in which a cyber threat indi-4 cator may be retained; 5 (C) include requirements to safeguard 6 cyber threat indicators containing personal in-7 formation of specific individuals or information 8 that identifies specific individuals from unau-9 thorized access or acquisition, including appro-10 priate sanctions for activities by officers, em-11 ployees, or agents of the Federal Government in 12 contravention of such guidelines; 13 (D) consistent with this title, any other ap-14 plicable provisions of law, and the fair informa-15 tion practice principles set forth in appendix A 16 of the document entitled ââNational Strategy for 17 Trusted Identities in Cyberspaceâ(TM)â(TM) and pub-18 lished by the President in April 2011, govern 19 the retention, use, and dissemination by the 20 Federal Government of cyber threat indicators 21 shared with the Federal Government under this 22 title, including the extent, if any, to which such 23 cyber threat indicators may be used by the Fed-24 eral Government; 25 December 16, 2015 (1:04 a.m.) U:\2016REPT\OMNI\FinalOmni\CPRT-114-HPRT-RU00-SAHR2029-AMNT1.xml 1758 (E) include procedures for notifying enti-1 ties and Federal entities if information received 2 pursuant to this section is known or determined 3 by a Federal entity receiving such information 4 not to constitute a cyber threat indicator; 5 (F) protect the confidentiality of cyber 6 threat indicators containing personal informa-7 tion of specific individuals or information that 8 identifies specific individuals to the greatest ex-9 tent practicable and require recipients to be in-10 formed that such indicators may only be used 11 for purposes authorized under this title; and 12 (G) include steps that may be needed so 13 that dissemination of cyber threat indicators is 14 consistent with the protection of classified and 15 other sensitive national security information.
Section 1754: (A) shall include guidance on the fol-1 lowing: 2 (i) Identification of types of informa-3 tion that would qualify as a cyber threat 4 indicator under this title that would be un-5 likely to include information thatâ" 6 (I) is not directly related to a 7 cybersecurity threat; and 8 (II) is personal information of a 9 specific individual or information that 10 identifies a specific individual. 11 (ii) Identification of types of informa-12 tion protected under otherwise applicable 13 privacy laws that are unlikely to be directly 14 related to a cybersecurity threat. 15 (iii) Such other matters as the Attor-16 ney General and the Secretary of Home-17 land Security consider appropriate for enti-18 ties sharing cyber threat indicators with 19 Federal entities under this title.
1746 (2) REMOVAL OF CERTAIN PERSONAL INFORMA-9 TION.â"A non-Federal entity sharing a cyber threat 10 indicator pursuant to this title shall, prior to such 11 sharingâ" 12 (A) review such cyber threat indicator to 13 assess whether such cyber threat indicator con-14 tains any information not directly related to a 15 cybersecurity threat that the non-Federal entity 16 knows at the time of sharing to be personal in-17 formation of a specific individual or information 18 that identifies a specific individual and remove 19 such information; or 20 (B) implement and utilize a technical capa-21 bility configured to remove any information not 22 directly related to a cybersecurity threat that 23 the non-Federal entity knows at the time of 24 sharing to be personal information of a specific 25 individual or information that identifies a spe-1 cific individual.
(F) include procedures for notifying, in a timely manner, any United States person whose personal information is known or determined to have been shared by a Federal entity in viola- tion of this title.
Cut and paste line numbers (unfortunately) included.
1740 section E: ... include procedures that require a Fed-5 eral entity, prior to the sharing of a cyber 6 threat indicatorâ" 7 (i) to review such cyber threat indi-8 cator to assess whether such cyber threat 9 indicator contains any information not di-10 rectly related to a cybersecurity threat that 11 such Federal entity knows at the time of 12 sharing to be personal information of a 13 specific individual or information that 14 identifies a specific individual and remove 15 such information; or 16 (ii) to implement and utilize a tech-17 nical capability configured to remove any 18 information not directly related to a 19 cybersecurity threat that the Federal entity 20 knows at the time of sharing to be per-21 sonal information of a specific individual or 22 information that identifies a specific indi-23 vidual; and 24 (F) include procedures for notifying, in a 1 timely manner, any United States person whose 2 personal information is known or determined to 3 have been shared by a Federal entity in viola-4 tion of this title.
So far it appears that personal information will not be strippedout andthereis immunity for any collateral damage the passing of the PI may be responsible for and further useage of the PI for any reason (criminal investigation) by the receiving party is fair game even if unrelated to the original intent or if the PI was included by mistake or whatever. Gleaned my info from techdirt, so you may want to double check it.
Slashdot Mirror
OK I will answer this post again since I missed parts of it in my reply.
I did read and re-read GEB a long long time ago and everyone would benefit from your recommendation. + ! on GEB.
Regarding so called "emergent properties" I wrote to another poster here
http://slashdot.org/comments.p...
but I'll clean it up a little more:
Emergent properties are properties of a thing that
1) posess casual power independent of the thing
2) are nevertheless somehow dependent upon the underlying "thing" in order to "emerge"
3) the effects of that casual power the emergent properties posess are not reducible in any deterministic way to the effects of the underlying "thing" from which the emergent property emerges.
(regarding 3 above, if 3 were NOT being claimed by the "emergent crowd" then just everything at the next higher level of composition would qualify as an "emergent property" - heat from a fire, light from the burning of a tungsten filament etc etc. )
So it's a break in the reductive chain of causal linkage which otherwise exists between different "levels" of material substance. That reductive chain and causal linkage you know very well- the behavior and properties of atoms cause and determine the behavior and properties of molecules which cause and determine the behavior and properties or organic compounds and so on up the chain of causal linkage and deterministic causality all the way to brains.. aka "reductionism").
So to be clear, emergent properties are said to be dependent upon (in some way, so they can emerge from) a lower level in the causal chain but their effects are NOT reducible or determined by, even in theory, those lower level's properties. The way everything else is in the known universe.
This kind of thing just doesn't exist and anyway would be magical.
Emergent properties sound good -until you think about what's actually being implied by the concept. Then the concept just falls apart.
It is possible that thought is the stuff of which the universe is made,
OK I do have a clear rationale. It is that "experience" (consciousness) is 100% superfluous to the working ofthe brain. It's a concept we don't need, like we don't need "life force" to explain the difference between live things and non-live things. Yet there it is.
To see how this state of affairs amounts to a real genuine quandry for science, I answered another debater with a fuller explanation which is clear enough (given the hour I am typing) as it is:
http://slashdot.org/comments.p...
but I will shorten and clarify it into this:
We can imagine a brain working and causing all the effects it does without a shred of conscious experience.
The interaction of molecules which control and completely determine both the structure and the functioning of the brain don't need jack shit from "experience", are not thought to have it, and the functioning of these experience-free parts can completely and deterministically explain the functioning not just of brains generally, but any given event in any brain there ever has been or ever will be.
If we let the quinessential deterministic mechanism be a clockworks then we can express this idea of mechanisitic determinism governing all phenomena both organic and inorganic, alive and inert, all biological systems included with all their parts -including brains - a clockwork universe,. Clocks dont' need experience and we dont' assign it to them because Occam's Razor and all that and "experience" is entirely superfluous to the clockwork.
Experience is an phenomena the universe just doesn't need . I could create a parallel, stone cold dead no-experince universe with animals and people and everything and it would ru
OK so I see you as mixing up the concept of "abstract concept about a thing" with "emergent property".
The top speed of a car is a concept about the car, not a property. This is seen by seeing how many other emergent properties - as you're using the term- the car might have. The answer, in short is an infinite number. Here are some of them:
The chick magnet strength of the car.
The most miles the car will go without needing a repair of its transmission if I drive it only to church on Sundays.
The best price the car will fetch under any circumstances whatsoever.
and on and on.
What these are are not properties of the car, but descriptions of how the car will interact with other parts of the world in a potentially infiniite number of artificial circumstances.
These are not emergent properties as that term is usually meant. Emergent properties are properties of a thing that
1) posess casual power independent of the thing
2) are nevertheless somehow dependent upon the underlying "thing" in order to emerge
3) the effects of that casual power are not reducible to the the determiistic effects of the underlyig thing upon the emergent thing (as is the case everywhere else i the universe).
So it's a break in the reductive chain of causal linkage which otherwise exists between different "levels" of material substance. (I. e. the behavior and properties of atoms cause and determine the behavior and properties of molecules which cause and determine the behavior and properties or organic compounds and so on up the chain of causal linkage to brains.. aka "reductionism").
So to be clear, emergent properties are said to be dependent upon (in some way, so they can emerge from) a lower level of in the causal chain but their effects are NOT reducible or determined, even in theory, by those lower level's properties.
This kind of thing just doesn't exist and anyway would be magical.
So all that's really going on is that we do not know how to map e.g. insight, or knowledge through the various layers of brain architecture , function, chemical processes, neuron count, connectedness
OK this is something different than the above now. Your problem here is how do you account for the fact of experience if you dno't need experience to account for the behavior of brains - and you absolutely don't - see here:
http://slashdot.org/comments.p...
OK some people are not familiar with the philosophical problem called the mind-brain duality. It goes like this.
Even if brains are necessary for minds (experience, consciousness some how needs them to manifest- not something I myself believe ) they are not sufficient.
They are not sufficient because we can imagine a brain working and causing all the effects it does without a shred of conscious experience. The reason this is not just plausible, but the preferred explanation is because the atoms and molecules which constitute the brain and cause it to do what it does don't NEED conscious experience to react with each other in any other system and there is no plausible reason they should in this one. Brains are not a special form of matter to the laws of physics. They operate in brains and to make brains the same way they operate everywhere else, and that is without "experience".
No other physical system created and governened by the forces of physics and atomic particles NEEDS this new TYPE of thing -conscious experience -to function.
Put baldly, the laws of physics control the atomic (and sub-atomic) particles which in turn control and determine the interaction of molecules which control and completely determine both the structure and the functioning of the brain don't need jack shit from "experience", are not thought to have it, and the functioning of these experience-free parts can completely and deterministically explain the functioning not just of brains generally, but any given event in any brain there ever has been or ever will be.
Those same laws of physics don't make any other system- no matter how complex- "conscious" or causeit to have "experience".
If we let the quinessential deterministic mechanism be a clockworks then we can express this idea of mechanisitic determinism governing all phenomena both organic and inorganic, alive and inert, all biological systems included with all their parts -including brains - a clockwork universe,. Clocks dont' need experience and we dont' assign it to them because Occam's Razor and all that and "experience" is entirely superfluous to the clockwork.
BTW this idea is where the title of A Clockwork Orange comes from. The seemingly friendly biological thing is really just a mechanism at it's core and nothing more.
Experience is an phenomena the universe just doesn't need . I could create a parallel, stone cold dead no-experince universe with animals and people and everything and it would run just like our own. The only difference is, ours has experience and the other one doesn't.
When we dispose of the dead weight of uneeded concepts in science- like "life force" or "elan vital" or all forms of immaterial vitalism and spirtualism in all its guises, it's always a process of showing that what we took for evidence of the (ontological ) existence of some unseen and inferred "thing" was not evidence for this things existence at all, and the thing could be done away with with no loss of explanatory power to our theories.
In the case with experience, it's just the opposite. I can show that we don't need it, it's just fucking dead weight , I can acount for allphenomena without including it as a concept and yet ...unlike with every other dead weight concept, we're not "inferring it's existence from evidence; we know it exists. In fact, it's the only thing in the entire universe we can truly say we are absolutely, positively out-Descarting Descartes, full on skeptical-unto- pathology certain of, without harboring even a shread of doubt no matter how small. There is experience.
If I can account for the all the workings of brains without experience then how are you, asa good scientist going to add it back in? Where are you going to do this in the process? Anywhere you try, I can say "and here you come with your ghost in the machine". I will be scientifcally rigorous and you will be injecting mystical entities into biochemical, or molecular or electrical events governed and account for 100% by the
This is what's being assumed:
A brain is a machine with consciousness and experience.
And that's a problem because "consciousness" or it's more precise definition "experience" even if you allow that it is dependent on brains or complex machines to manifest (and I am not saying I do) is a phenomena which nevertheless is not a brain or complex machine and is has no credible reductionist (scientific) pathway from either of those things.
We don't assign experience to a watch; it "knows" nothing even though it "tells" time- a complex task. And so also with any even more complicated machines. At some undefined point of complexity, you claim a ghost enters the machine, and lo, the machine is having experience. But do one computation differently and no experience is being had.
It's just enough that any computer you can build, I can match the functioning of given a long tape and a scanner , a Turing machine. That is enough to give any impartial person pause at what exactly it is being claimed by Strong AI. Consciousness and experience "comes out of" Turning machines. Why not go all the way then and just say the universe, the grandest Turing machine of all is conscious and has experience? Some distinguished physicists actually DO say this. No one scoffs at them. Really, looked at in this context, your claim that consciousness is found only in brains and computers looks like a piece of special pleading. Maybe the whole universe is conscious, given your criteria for consciousness.
The ideas espoused by Strong AI really depend on the enforcement of a kind of incurious parochialism with respect to science at large and a certain overhwelming of the credulous by complexity and the magic of seeing something done (the Jeopardy! computer comes to mind here) which previously would have required a human.
>>What you consider experience is just memories of the past.
Yeah, actually that's not true. You are having an experience right NOW. At any given instance you care to check it you are having an experience. You don't need to refer to past time or memory or any othersuch thing. Just look NOW and see for yourself.
It's amazing and a measure of the dogmaticism and rigidity that abounds in some circles that in the course of this debate you've actually now tended an argument which rejects the reality of experience.
I also enjoy it when people act bewildered about what this crazy thing "experience" is I speak of. Because that's all it is, an act.
In a very strong sense, since they have a physical representation as knowledge in your brain.
What I am obviously saying is they do not correlate to the things in the external world I thought they did. They are real the way illusions are real illusions. They're real (an illusion is a real phenomena), but their designated referents are not real.
Sure I have a reason. For the same reason no other phenomena has ever had an "emergent" property which also posessed ontological independence. Because reductionism is how things ARE. Things are made up of their parts, and how those parts interact with the world and other parts determine completely how the thing behaves.
Your second point is related to what I am saying, but not a direct attack on it (which is what you think). What I am saying is the claim that consciousness arises from brains or complex systems is wrong. Whether there can be a brain imitating computer is another matter. If the computer imitates the brain perfectly and is not forced into being an exact replica of the brain down to its constituent parts- ion channels , physical neurons etc, then that would be interesting. But experience isn't going to magically issue from that brain anymore than it does from our own. The brain is not the seat of experience. I am claiming that experience exists independently of brains and gives rise to the perception that there are brains.
You're doing a lot of interrogating and accusing but sliding by without answering the troubling questions which issue directly from your own theory. Can a Turing tape machine be conscious and if not then why not? Are some suitably complex machines already conscious to some degree and if not, then why not? Start there.
Obama is a life-changing disappointment to me.
That's not quite solipsism. Observer bias is a benign problem which can and does still admit of an objective, shared reality. Even an inescapable observer bias, even an inescapable, undetected and undetect-able observer bias still admits of a real, if never-to-be-known objective reality. So that's still not solipsism.
I too admit of an objective reality which exists independently of myself. It is the reality that experience reveals, the reality that experience is. I simply doubt the reality of the existence of things and all the other stuff of thought.
If I do bad math and come to bad conclusions, in what sense are my beliefs real (about the things of my bad-math universe) ? I am totally convinced of them because of the way I used my mind. But I used my mind wrongly. They don't exist except as figments of my wayward thinking, and then in some sense, OK they exist.
I claim the same thing for notjust the products of my bad mathematical musings but all thought-things. They have a kind of existence, but that existence is not what it appears to be by my mis-thinking mind.
So again if you read my rebuttal to solipsism you'll see I am explicitly not saying that.
Lelt me turn the tables on you for a second and examine YOUR beliefs (or someone who accepts that consciousness can arise from brains or computers) and let's see how weird they are.
First you have to admit that basis of consciousness is not tied to any particular material- biological or silicon or anything else- it's an issue of systems and computation and any suitable substrate capable of doing the computation, even if the computation is entirely in a chip, will do. Given the *right* computation, consciousness is created.
So if I just run the right program with the right simulated inputs I can and will produce a thing having experience on a chip. That's what you believe.
I am not mocking this idea since every road we take from here for any distance goes to a strange place, including mine. I just want you to see how strange your own landscape becomes, because I don't think you are aware of it.
Then you have to admit, because we all agree it's true and it is true, that that said same experience-having chip-creature could be reproduced completely, including the experience-having part, in a very long tape and a tape mover and tape reader, i.e. a Turning machine.
Now this really sounds like I am making fun of you, but I am not deliberately doing that. I am just a passive passenger looking out the window and commenting on the passing scenery in the car you're driving down the road you chose.
In addition to this your idea of consciousness coming from computation has some curious properties. For one, it admits of degrees. This is Minsky's thermostat but realize also you have the unenviable task of deciding when the blessed event arises in arbitrary machines. Even if your philosphical opponent doesn't make you explicitly define what is and is not to qualify as experience-bearing, still you ought to be able to give a thumbs up thumbs down (although how you would do that without an explicit checklist is anyone's guess) to a given set of machines. Just how conscious is my calculator and is there any truly principled reason to assume the answer is zero? It needs a bucnh of feedback loops? It needs to do something fancier than calculate integrals? Then experience will blossom forth or slowwwwly starts to accrue or how does that work exactly?
These are just some of the things implied by the computation-as-consciousness Strong AI claims.
Really the quandry that the existence of experience puts us in is not one we can extricate ourselves from casually. Your road is plenty weird. Mine is weird also. I own that weirdness with the claim that the essential incoporealness and ontological primacy of consciousness and experience is not very much weirder and in fact is much closer to the ontological weirdness that the things of physics has become and moreover ,it's consistent and doesn't hypothesize the existence of things we don'tknow with 100% certainity actually exist.
. Physicists publish papers all the time wondering if we're all in a hologram and such like things and no one gets out the woo-woo cannon and points it at them. By making the claims String AI makes, researchers have to accept that those claims come with huge unresolved issues that they can't just handwave their way past.
Stay focused on the thing to be proved. Thething to be proced is not "can we build a clever machine" or "can we model how the brain learns or reacts ina computer" (I assume this is possible). It's not even - can we learn something true and new about actual brains from models we create in computers. None of that is what's in question.
What's in question is- can consciousness arise from computers (of any type, wet, vacuum tubes Turing tapes it's all the same thing) or, equivalently is consciousness a byproduct of brains (alone).
Lots of interesting things to do and contemplate in this space. We're talking about one of them.
OK in the context of this conversation that qualifies as "assuming the consequent".
Come on, you hear me ranting because you want to hear it that way. There is no rant here.
Regarding emergent properties, you're not getting clear in your own mind what they refer to. Either they refer to a property which is reducible to the thing which subtends them- like the heat of a fire or the color of the grass, or (it is claimed that) they don't.
The first "kind" are unremarkable- this is just straighforward material reductionism.
The second kind are magical, as in unicorns- i.e. they don't exist. These would be emergent properties which are physically dependent on the thing which subtends them but ontologically independent (for some reason). What THAT kind of emergent property requires is a break in causality between the necessary substance which "gives rise to" the "emergent property" and the emergent property itself. That's a joke. The only reason anyone even entertains that idea is because they're either not thinking clearly or think material things can be deepely related in a non-causal (however indirect that linkage is) relationship, i.e. related but not related, which is just voodoo.
We won't build strong AI by accident, though;
You don't know what Strong AI is. Strong AI isn't "very effective AI" or "big project AI" or "amazing results AI". It's the specific assertion that computation IS consciousness and visa-versa. This is not my personal defiinition, this is THE definition. It's helps if we're talking about the same thing.
When someone says that consciousness is an emergent property of the brain (Strong AI- this paper) or of a computer or of a Turing machine they should know they're not saying anything more than "I don't know how experience falls out of material substance, but have some bullshit instead".
Should also say "bring into being through sheer computation" because sometmes you are arguing with eople who justike to argue ad win instead of argue in a proper, disinterested way.
Muy claims are not about intelligence per se (whatever thatis) but about experience. My TI -80 is intelligent by a lot of measures. More elaborate TI-80s are not going to save the empty assertion that consciousness arises from complexity of any sort, unless you strip consciousness of it's defining characteristic- a thing having experience - and reduce it to "clever compuation which would have formerly required a human being to do". A calculator qualifies for that, as does a chess playing program.
Your side slides greasily between A) consciousness-meaning-clever-computation and B) consciousness-meaning-a-thing-posessing-experience.
You like to achieve things from column A and use them to imply victories in column B.
Note that victories from A are interesting enough, I have some of my own, but not Interesting in a metaphysical or deep way. There are no basic mysteries being resolved here.
So if you claim I am claiming we cannot model intelligent activity, you're wrong. if you're claiming we cannot model or bring into being a thing posessed of experience, you're right.
Yeah they hae that already. And all that info you cite would have to have been captured as a result of some cybersecurity threat. So how would that go down? You included all that info as data in a DDOS campaign against someone?
I am not arguing, I am asking.
Sorry still dont' get what is so bad. It doesn't compel sharing. THe objection I read here:
http://www.wired.com/2015/03/c...
is that only info "known at the time it was shared to be innocent PI" must be stripped . This is supposedly some sort of gigantic loophole. Well it's a true fact (damn those!) that in a DDOS the vicitm has small chance of sorting out the innocent from the guilty, so they therefore can't share that information? Makes no sense.
The working assumption is the NSA will use this is some cynical manner to just grab everyone's data. People, the NSA already HAS everyone's data. All the times we connect, to where for how long etc etc etc. Ditto DHS and who knows who else whether you're behind a VPN or what (according to the bragging going on in leaked documents).. so.. they want more of what they already have? Seems to me this just highlights for them what to look at (which they already collected and had stuffed away somewhere). So no, I am not seeing the uptick in the privacy threat. But I stand to be corrected by anyone who knows better.
OK so there are a few more mentions of PI in the bill reagarding he govt's duty to report to the public the number of times cyberthreat info was shared and how many times PI was shared but it doens't seem to be the privacy disaster it's being made out to be by some. Maybe I need the bill explained to me by someone who understands its implications better.
1768 c (ii)
in a manner that protects from 1
unauthorized use or disclosure any cyber 2
threat indicators that may containâ" 3
(I) personal information of a spe-4
cific individual; or 5
(II) information that identifies a 6
specific individual; and 7
(iii) in a manner that protects the 8
confidentiality of cyber threat indicators 9
containingâ" 10
(I) personal information of a spe-11
cific individual; or 12
(II) information that identifies a 13
specific individual.
1756 (3) (longish one)
consistent with the 12
need to protect information systems from 13
cybersecurity threats and mitigate cybersecurity 14
threatsâ" 15
(A) limit the effect on privacy and civil lib-16
erties of activities by the Federal Government 17
under this title; 18
(B) limit the receipt, retention, use, and 19
dissemination of cyber threat indicators con-20
taining personal information of specific individ-21
uals or information that identifies specific indi-22
viduals, including by establishingâ" 23
(i) a process for the timely destruction 24
of such information that is known not to 25
December 16, 2015 (1:04 a.m.)
U:\2016REPT\OMNI\FinalOmni\CPRT-114-HPRT-RU00-SAHR2029-AMNT1.xml
1757
be directly related to uses authorized under 1
this title; and 2
(ii) specific limitations on the length 3
of any period in which a cyber threat indi-4
cator may be retained; 5
(C) include requirements to safeguard 6
cyber threat indicators containing personal in-7
formation of specific individuals or information 8
that identifies specific individuals from unau-9
thorized access or acquisition, including appro-10
priate sanctions for activities by officers, em-11
ployees, or agents of the Federal Government in 12
contravention of such guidelines; 13
(D) consistent with this title, any other ap-14
plicable provisions of law, and the fair informa-15
tion practice principles set forth in appendix A 16
of the document entitled ââNational Strategy for 17
Trusted Identities in Cyberspaceâ(TM)â(TM) and pub-18
lished by the President in April 2011, govern 19
the retention, use, and dissemination by the 20
Federal Government of cyber threat indicators 21
shared with the Federal Government under this 22
title, including the extent, if any, to which such 23
cyber threat indicators may be used by the Fed-24
eral Government; 25
December 16, 2015 (1:04 a.m.)
U:\2016REPT\OMNI\FinalOmni\CPRT-114-HPRT-RU00-SAHR2029-AMNT1.xml
1758
(E) include procedures for notifying enti-1
ties and Federal entities if information received 2
pursuant to this section is known or determined 3
by a Federal entity receiving such information 4
not to constitute a cyber threat indicator; 5
(F) protect the confidentiality of cyber 6
threat indicators containing personal informa-7
tion of specific individuals or information that 8
identifies specific individuals to the greatest ex-9
tent practicable and require recipients to be in-10
formed that such indicators may only be used 11
for purposes authorized under this title; and 12
(G) include steps that may be needed so 13
that dissemination of cyber threat indicators is 14
consistent with the protection of classified and 15
other sensitive national security information.
Section 1754:
(A) shall include guidance on the fol-1
lowing: 2
(i) Identification of types of informa-3
tion that would qualify as a cyber threat 4
indicator under this title that would be un-5
likely to include information thatâ" 6
(I) is not directly related to a 7
cybersecurity threat; and 8
(II) is personal information of a 9
specific individual or information that 10
identifies a specific individual. 11
(ii) Identification of types of informa-12
tion protected under otherwise applicable 13
privacy laws that are unlikely to be directly 14
related to a cybersecurity threat. 15
(iii) Such other matters as the Attor-16
ney General and the Secretary of Home-17
land Security consider appropriate for enti-18
ties sharing cyber threat indicators with 19
Federal entities under this title.
1746 (2)
REMOVAL OF CERTAIN PERSONAL INFORMA-9
TION.â"A non-Federal entity sharing a cyber threat 10
indicator pursuant to this title shall, prior to such 11
sharingâ" 12
(A) review such cyber threat indicator to 13
assess whether such cyber threat indicator con-14
tains any information not directly related to a 15
cybersecurity threat that the non-Federal entity 16
knows at the time of sharing to be personal in-17
formation of a specific individual or information 18
that identifies a specific individual and remove 19
such information; or 20
(B) implement and utilize a technical capa-21
bility configured to remove any information not 22
directly related to a cybersecurity threat that 23
the non-Federal entity knows at the time of 24
sharing to be personal information of a specific 25
individual or information that identifies a spe-1
cific individual.
Section 1741 F:
(F) include procedures for notifying, in a timely manner, any United States person whose
personal information is known or determined to have been shared by a Federal entity in viola-
tion of this title.
Cut and paste line numbers (unfortunately) included.
1740 section E: . .. include procedures that require a Fed-5
eral entity, prior to the sharing of a cyber 6
threat indicatorâ" 7
(i) to review such cyber threat indi-8
cator to assess whether such cyber threat 9
indicator contains any information not di-10
rectly related to a cybersecurity threat that 11
such Federal entity knows at the time of 12
sharing to be personal information of a 13
specific individual or information that 14
identifies a specific individual and remove 15
such information; or 16
(ii) to implement and utilize a tech-17
nical capability configured to remove any 18
information not directly related to a 19
cybersecurity threat that the Federal entity 20
knows at the time of sharing to be per-21
sonal information of a specific individual or 22
information that identifies a specific indi-23
vidual; and 24
(F) include procedures for notifying, in a 1
timely manner, any United States person whose 2
personal information is known or determined to 3
have been shared by a Federal entity in viola-4
tion of this title.
So far it appears that personal information will not be strippedout andthereis immunity for any collateral damage the passing of the PI may be responsible for and further useage of the PI for any reason (criminal investigation) by the receiving party is fair game even if unrelated to the original intent or if the PI was included by mistake or whatever. Gleaned my info from techdirt, so you may want to double check it.