SENTIENCE

Mmkay, is sentience/consiousness/ect quantum, chemical/electrical, or SPIRITUALLL?

definitely the first three, if by quantum you mean that it obeys qm laws.

Well, what I meant was, is the "mind" an aspect of the quantum realm (schrodinger's cat and the like), instead of solely a set of chemical reactions?

If we could even understand out own sentinence, it would be because we were too simple to understand it.

>>3

what the fuck are you smoking and where can i buy some?

i was sober when i said that, but my usual bagload comes from chris on the corner of clapham common.

Sentience, like everything else, is physically materialistic.  If amino acids can be formed in the right conditions, it is not unreasonable to suppose that sentience can be formed in the right conditions.  Nor does this make us 'not special'; that is a mistake of the theologian. 

I would like to take this time to say that the view above is not properly scientific.  It's just as much a belief/hope as any religion.  But it's a lot more attractive if you're in the right frame of mind.

I read some crank's site a few years back, said the brain was quantum in that it tapped into other quantum realities or something, because it was such a complex system that it existed above this reality or something. 

>>8
do you know what quantum means

the study of elementary quantities, quanta

now, in what way is a brain quantum?
besides being composed of many elementary particles

>>8
lol stoned.

We don't know. Insufficient data. There are many books on the subject, about critical thought, the differences betwee nbrain cells and computers etc... But we don't know.

>>some crank's site

you should have stopped writing there and deleted the internet off ur desktoppe just in case.

Consciousness (and sentience) is an emergent property of the connections between the neurons in our brain.

human's arent made of some special matter.  you can disassemble and reassemble a human as easily as you could any other complex object, and that person would be as alive and sentient as the same person born naturally.  this doesnt mean that people are cold and dead, but rather that everything in the universe is or has the potentual to be alive.

>>14
IF MAN COULD ARTIFICIALLY CREATE A BRAIN ATOM FOR ATOM THERE IS NO PROOF THAT IT WOULD SPONTANEOUSLY BECOME CONSCIOUS

>>15
Proof is impossible outside of formal systems ("maths" for the uninitiated). It's approximations and guesses all the way down baby.

>>15

If someone just created a brain atom by atom and neuron by neuron, it wouldn't become conscious.  Our brains and our consciousnesses don't just spring into existence.  They grow and learn by reacting to stimuli.

>>16
I WAS WAITING FOR "THERE IS NO PROOF THAT IT WOULDN'T"

A MORE DEBATABLE PHRASEOLOGY FOR THE ORIGINAL POST WOULD HAVE BEEN  "THERE IS NO _EVIDENCE_ THAT IT WOULD SPONTANEOUSLY BECOME CONSCIOUS" (BECAUSE THERE ISN'T)

YOU ARE RIGHT SOLID PROOFS EXIST SOLELY IN THE MATH SCIENCES AND WITH REGARDS TO REPRODUCIBLE PHYSICAL DEMONSTRATIONS, THOUGH THE PROCESS OF EMPIRICAL THEORY AND EXPERIMENTATION CAN BE FRACTIONALIZED TO ELUCIDATE CORE PROCESSES AND EXTRAPOLATE THEM UP TO IMPOSSIBLY COMPLEX SYSTEMS, THOUGH MAGNITUDES OF SCALE CAN FUNDAMENTALLY ALTER THE FRACTIONAL DYNAMIC SO, AS YOU SAY, GUESSES ALL THE WAY DOWN (UNTIL WE EVENTUALLY REACH ALL THE WAY DOWN AND KNOW IT DIRECTLY.... SUCKS WE'LL ALL BE LONG DEAD BY THEN)

>>17

Wrong.  If you had created a certain human brain atom by atom, and patterned it after a typical adult human brain, certain thoughts or experiences would be implied in its structure.

Just my opinion though.

>>18

Why that caps lock, why!? T.T

so the broin whould be shocked to not be in its body suddenly after a life that whaould probably not be on earth or make sence as we cant possibly control it wit that detail.
Everything comes back to infinity

There is no essence called consciousness. There is only a definition. You use the ocean of thought to dilineate a subset which you cling to and call consciousness.

When AI reaches a sufficient level of complexity, it will reach "consciousness," which is just a definition.

>>19

Hmm.  I suppose you would be correct.  If you knew beforehand what connections between neurons to make, you could create a fully functioning sentient brain.

Consciousness is an emergent property of the biological functions of the Brain. I'm sure there's more than enough proof of this with aphasia and phantom limbs.

If you could somehow magically reconstruct a brain atom for atom, neuron for neuron and shoot electricity through it, it will have the mental states we consider "conscious". It’s the whole brain-in-the-vat, Matrix, Descartes thing people.

If AI could be considered intelligent, it would never be to the point we consider intelligent like a human being. As Searle has mentioned in his Chinese Room Parable that difference with a computer is that it processes information through syntax, not semantics. If we take that to account, I'm not sure how practical it is. A Turing-compatible machine still seems consciousness, even if we know otherwise.

Now, my whole beef with this Searlian-Physicalism is how the hell is there volition based mental causation?

And for God’s sake, don’t bring in Kant-axiom crap or Nihilism BS. Most sane people ignore that crap now.

If consciousness is just physical interaction, then why am I myself and not you?

>>25

only because of your physical distinctness, and the different physical structure of your body and brain.  Why should it be otherwise?

Person = "body" + "mind" = features + state

Your DNA determines how you operate. Everything you see and do determines your state. Your brain's structure and your current state determine your personality. If I cloned you and managed to export your state to it, or make him/her live through everything you did in the exact same way, the clone would behave exactly as you do. Of course, the later is impossible, exporting is probably impossible, and cloning is still imperfect.

>>25

I am my consciousness.  My consciousness is an emergent property of the neurons that compose my brain.  The states of my neurons are results of my DNA plus my experiences.  Nature plus nuture.

You have different DNA and different experiences.  Thus you are not me.

>>24

in theory, if you had a computer powerful enough, you could estimate all the inter-particle reactions on the quantum level, by doing this in real-time, and feeding into it interactions from the envyronment, you could in theory, make a totally artificial human that would develop, act, etc.  like any other human.

for that matter, it would be possible at some point in the future when we more fully understand why and how the brain works to make a "person" that is more intelegent than our current system allows using this method.

there is already some talk about doing this.  it may happen in our lifetimes, for the young people here.
http://www.transhumanist.com/volume1/moravec.htm

Well whatever we discover in the future, the theories here are innocent until proven guilty. Most likely we do have free will, we can be predicted, for instance we will scream in agony if soeone shoots us in the gut, but generally we can choose what to think etc and we have properties that a transistor cannot achieve.

So what we know so far is that we apparently have free will, but there are still questions. It's not as if we are suddenly going to go OMG IM NOT SENTIENT IM A ROBOT, then suddenly poof we turn into robots.

>>30

free will is a linguistic trick purported by old philosophy.

>>22
The human brain contains more than 100,000,000,000 nerv cells, all of which are assumed to contain non-binary information (meaning a cell can contain more information than a 1 or 0). Assume that you'll need at least the same amount of transistors to reach that kind of processing power. Also consider that the nerv cells re-wire themselves according to our thinking habits and can communicate using different transmittor substances (such as amino acids). I'm suspecting that we won't see a computer with this capability in the humankind's lifespan. I hate it when people underestimate the human brain. They seem to think it's some simple thing and all our "consciousness of being" is in the soul. gb2/school/ I say.

>>32
It's a thought experiment really, so happening sooner or later is beyond the point. The point is- can it ever happen? (and Searle saids no!)

The Right Casual Powers argument has always bugged me so I think this deserves elaboration. My (limited) knowledge of neurons is that they ARE binary. They are either inhibited or excited, ie 0 or 1. Neurotransmitters really just tell a neuron to fire more or less. Neurons in groups are more than binary.
The plasticity of the brain has been some-what simulated in Neural Networks, where "weights" are redistributed constantly to simulate learning.
The problem is, with current computing power, it is impossible to simulate 100,000,000,000 neurons, but really my question is this then: Current AI is syntax based. It's all just IF cases and look up tables and algorithms. And really good programmers can create algorithms that modify themselves.
Can computers ever reach a point where the information is semantic based? Is sematnic based processing achievable through syntax? Is semantic based processing a necessary condition for sentience?  (though I suppose it is for human-esque sentinince)

Oh, just denying that free will exists suggests free will to me. Epiphenomenalists, go to hell!

neurons is that they ARE binary

Not really. They only exhibit some binary behaviour once they pass the firing threshold. Even when they do, there is a complex interaction across the synaptic gap. Then there are the myriad axons attached to dendrites, each with different influence strengths.

And don't forget that neurons can also fire at different rates. They usually don't fire at the fastest rate they're capable of, and this too also has an effect of recovery periods of the receiving neuron.

The brain isn't binary. Simulating it on a digital machine would be bloody hard. I suspect (but cannot be certain) that a digital representation of a human brain would have exponential or combinatorial time complexity.

>>33
syntax vs. semantics based

you mean programming languages that uses macros as opposed to something else?

>>35

By syntax, I just mean rule based. Computers just follow rules vis a vis humans, who when processing information, have intentionality and meaning. (ie, semantics)

So, for example, take a Turing compatible machine. It has all the behaviors to 'trick' us into thinking it is intelligent. But it is all just formal processing with no "meaning". If I kick the Turing Machine and it gives an output "Ouch!", we can infer that it really isn't "feeling" pain but just spitting an output.
Read up on the Chinese Room Argument for a better explaination!:http://www.macrovu.com/CCTWeb/CCT4/CCTMap4.html

I'm sure there are a lot of follow-up disputes to my example. Behaviorists wouldn't care for the difference. The Right Casual Powers is all murky and confusing. An internalized Chinese Room is equally confusing.

>>34
I secede that Neurons aren't binary! Thanks for the information. But I still think Neurons can be simulated. Here is a more accurate representation on how Neurons are simulated in computers:http://www.macrovu.com/CCTWeb/CCT5A/CCT5APostulates.html

Ignoring plausibility for now ( it’s just a thought experiment), Connectionist would argue if the brain's Neurons are simulated, is the computer now considered a conscious, semantic, intentional, self-referencing being? I mean, it's simulating what I think are responsible for the Right Casual Powers.

And is a simulation in virtual space valid? If we simulate a hurricane on a computer, nobody believes that it's a real hurricane. Just more to chew on.

Consider an extreme thougth experiment. You simulate earth and it's environment and population fully. Everybody's neurons, everything. You then proceed to burn a city and it's inhabitants. Are they conscious, have you been "cruel" for real?

I say yes.

>>36
Thanks for the urls. There's a lot of info here. Good, fun, reading.

>>37
Yes

>>37
>>39

I can only agree to that thought experiment If I believed the mind can be produced by a set of formal systems.
If "The Right Casual Powers" can be simulated by formal processes, then I agree with the conclusion of the thought experiment. (though I'm still hesitant to believe that things that happen in a virtual space really matter, since there's the simple metaphysical distinction. And wouldn't it suck to have to keep the simulation on indefinitely!?)

But seeing as I'm yet to be convinced of that, the thought experiment is moot to me. (it's like asking me to think that if humans could fly by just flapping their arms a lot, could they do a barrel role?)

Bad Analogies Abound!