Nature of consciousness

[Bill the Piper]

(10-27-2018, 02:29 PM)Eric the Green Wrote: I would say no, consciousness is not perception of information. Those who are excessively intellectual may think so. Those who are excessively anti-intellectual may not even know what "information" is, since they never seem to absorb any of it.

A Papuan hunter-gatherer doesn't know what neurons and receptors are, but still feels pleasure and pain because he has them without realizing it.

Information is not only intellectual knowledge. Bodily sensations and emotional experiences are also information processed in the brain. If an alien uploaded appropriate data packets to my brain, I would feel pain in my feet, sexual delight, or hope. It wouldn't be possible for me to distinguish between artificial and real sensations.

Quote:Machines are the opposite of consciousness, by their very nature. They are mechanical. They are pushed and used by outside forces and beings. They are not self-reflective, they are not spontaneous, they are not creative, they are not sources of will. Consciousness is self-reflective, spontaneous, creative sources of will. Living, conscious beings move around under their own power. Machines have to be plugged in and batteries are not included.

I don't doubt that AI can go pretty far, and since nothing is devoid of consciousness, I can't say never. But as you say, they have no sense of self, so that AI consciousness can't be very "complex." The only real progress there is, is not progress in machines. It is progress in consciousness. That's what evolution was all about, and it's what human potential is all about. Machines are just tools; living beings USE the tools for THEIR purposes. NOT THE SAME.

Yes, noone really knows how to give an AI consciousness and autonomy, and this might be the main obstacle for AI. Mere speed and number of microchips aren't enough. You cannot construct a human by juxtaposing a quintillion microbes. Special structure is needed to have intelligence and personality. We don't know which structures result in a sense of self. So we cannot rule out that the source of selfhood is something supernatural (or some natural thing we still don't understand, like dark energy). But it doesn't seem likely, because of Ockham's razor. Simplest explanations are the best.

Quote:And even if you replace all the neurons in your brain with circuits, you still have not changed your consciousness, because consciousness is not in your brain; your brain is in your consciousness. For much the same reason, no-one can ever construct a living human being by copying and pasting all their atoms.

It is practically not feasible, but in theory the new entity would be a human like any other. A 3D-printed human, like the girl in the movie Repli-Kate.

If consciousness is not in the brain, why do we need one? If its only job is doing things already done by the immaterial soul, why did Nature bother?