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Artificial intelligence?


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And at least higher animals - anyone with a dog will tell you that it has a "personality".
I think it seems the most natural conclusion with higher (pet) mammals. Of course, I couldn't resist trying to train my Cats - Albeit with variable success. But even identical siblings seem to come with significantly different personalities, from the start. :D

A consciousness of both self and "other" seems manifest. The latter strongly, when my 18 y.o. ex-tom cat lost a litter-mate sister, who pre-decease him. There then appeared a variety of... grieving, mimicry, a STRONG response to (accidental!) calling of the deceased cat's name. Of course such can have a more mundane explanation, but... ;)

I believe, for a significant fee, you can now have a deceased Feline cloned? However, not only does colouration vary - A likely environmental effect, but the personality is alleged to be significantly different. Who knows? But I would derive a wry amusement over the latter... :D

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Then we can't play science and it's boring.

Devil's Advocate here as I believe the theory is tosh ... but "creating" a universe and then discovering the "physics" that governs it would appear to be pretty much what a lot of people are doing when they're playing computer games ... the only difference here is that "World of Warcraft" is obviously a product of "intelligent design".

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The self is an illusion.

But that's completely crazy! You can't be serious????? We need to sit down over a pint - or a gallon... For me it is the one certainty in the Universe. For old Rene, too.

Olly

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We need to sit down over a pint - or a gallon...

... and discuss whether his self is your illusion, or vice versa, or both. If he doesn't really exist then the drinks should be cheap :D

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... and discuss whether his self is your illusion, or vice versa, or both. If he doesn't really exist then the drinks should be cheap :D

Heh heh, but not if you turn up; something tells me you will have excellent taste in single malts...

Olly

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If the self is an illusion, whom does it deceive?

The organism deceives itself. Robert Trivers has thought about the evolutionary advantages of doing so. His ideas are in this transcript (there are some political comments in there that you may not like, too)

Robert Trivers on deceit, self-deception, and warfare

If there is no 'i' then the statement 'I think therefore I think that I am' has no meaning.

In that sense, it is no different to the original.

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This thread is going to run and run......very interesting though and great fun to follow.

If an organism decieves itself into thinking that it has an 'I' or a 'self'....then surely that's just semantics? Its like saying 'you only think you feel warm'....its sort of a meaningless circular statement.

So I can't see that an organism can be said to 'decieve' itself into believing it has a self.....If you want to call it decieving, then that's just another word for 'thinking'....i.e. an organism thinks it has a self. Again this just seems a bit circular. The actual 'thinking it has a self' seems to be the same as 'it has a self'.

Then again there's some clever guys/gals on this thread and some deep input....so I could be missing something!

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The difficulty here is that what you perceive is NOT the physical universe, it's a collection of inputs received from your sense organs and interpreted by bits of the brain which are working unconsciously - hence optical illusions, which arise because your perception of the universe is inaccurate. It's possible to argue that what you are experiencing is not the real universe, but a working model of the universe derived from your sensory inputs but seen through the "filter" of the brain. This model at least allows the explanation of the "realistic" nature of events which you experience but never actually happened e.g. dreams.

The interesting thing here is that you can react to events in the "real universe" without being conscious of them - for instance, you don't have to be aware of a physical model of your body's skeletal & muscular structure in order to maintain your balance; you can so that automatically, unless you've drunk enough "falling down water" to seriously interfere with the reflex mechanisms which do the job for you.

My suspicion is that "consciousness" is the difference between reflex response to actual events and forming a model of the local part of the universe and seeing yourself in relationship to it. If I'm right then the "self" is a feature of the model, not a physical object i.e. it is a software component not a hardware component.

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If I'm right then the "self" is a feature of the model, not a physical object i.e. it is a software component not a hardware component.

100% agreed....there is no 'self' in the sence of a physical thing...I hope it didn't come across that I was suggesting that.

What I was trying to say is that is difficult (IMHO) to describe the 'self' as just an illusion and therefore say it is not real. Here I mean real in the same way that I really did have a dream last night. The events of the dream were not real but the fact that I had a dream was real...not an illusion. If you had wired me up you could have detected the fact that I was having a dream....and maybe in the future we will be able to increase the 'resolution' and get an idea of what I am dreaming about.

(Then again, maybe people won't be able to do that in the future...maybe I'm just dreaming.)

And it could be thought of as real in the same way that a hologram is real. Maybe a hologram is a useful analogy?????

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What I was trying to say is that is difficult (IMHO) to describe the 'self' as just an illusion and therefore say it is not real.

Suppose it was typical that we each had 3 "selves" and three different words for "I". Would the idea that all 3 were illusions be more palatable?

The events of the dream were not real but the fact that I had a dream was real...not an illusion.

I'm not arguing that mental events are an illusion. Yes, there were certain synapses firing during your dream. It's that intangible sense of "I" that is the illusion and it's one that we can't escape without going insane.

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My suspicion is that "consciousness" is the difference between reflex response to actual events and forming a model of the local part of the universe and seeing yourself in relationship to it.

That's pretty close to what I said earlier that "self" comes from a biochemical process of marking which bits of brain are simulating externals and which are dealing with sensory data. Isn't it true that one sign of insanity is "hearing voices"? That's the marking going bad and confusing the simulation-part with the senses-part.

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Isn't it true that one sign of insanity is "hearing voices"? That's the marking going bad and confusing the simulation-part with the senses-part.

Not sure about that. You need to "split personality" in order to make decisions - part of you is arguing for one course of action, part for a different one - you're not always conscious of this and you're probably not aware of "voices in the head" but the line here is pretty thin. The "insanity" aspect is not the "hearing of the voice" but the fact that you act "irrationally" on the "advice" given by the "voice".

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I certainly have no objection to the self being described as a 'software' entity. (Except that I feel that if we insist on using human terms to describe computers and, here, computer terms to describe humans then we can only expect to confuse ourselves and make a discussion of the similarities and differences nigh on impossible. This linguistic habit plays into the hands of those who would like to argue for a close correletaion between computers and humans so don't thnk I'm not onto you!)

Olly

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My suspicion is that "consciousness" is the difference between reflex response to actual events and forming a model of the local part of the universe and seeing yourself in relationship to it. If I'm right then the "self" is a feature of the model, not a physical object i.e. it is a software component not a hardware component.

The sub-conscious reflexs are basic servo systems which can be done in hardware, my cnc servo system does a good job at this between motor and encoder to keep position and it's all done in hardware.

Most of our functions can be seen this way, though I agree that the "self" is a feature of the model ( I like that..).

Iv'e always seen dreams as a way the brain re-sorts memories whilst you are asleep maybe to change the storage location because of needed repair and/or to reinforce the value of the memory which may go some ways to explain why we forget distant ones or even recent memories that are regarded not as important.

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The sub-conscious reflexs are basic servo systems which can be done in hardware...
(Hopefully) not to overplay pet animal anthropomorphisation, but dog/cat itch scratching seems surprisingly to be mostly a reflex. We humans (at least while awake!) seem to exert far greater conscious choice or control over such things. Yet often one sees animals expressing (apparent) "frustration" with... restless limbs, and errant tails. When my cats wanted to, more effectively feign sleep, they were eventually wont to place a PAW firmly over a (voice-activated!) twitching tail. :D

As another probable irrelevancy the thread reminded me of TV "Late night discussion" - or rather the frustrating format of the latter. Unlike SGL, it seems standard, when philosophy or ethics of science is discussed, to have ample representation of world religions, of politicians, of alumnii oxbridge philosophers (teasing) etc. The token or optional "scientist" is usually deemed at the outset (by collective prejudice or SELF condemnation?) to be unqualified to contribute beyond basic input... :D

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(Hopefully) not to overplay pet animal anthropomorphisation, but dog/cat itch scratching seems surprisingly to be mostly a reflex. We humans (at least while awake!) seem to exert far greater conscious choice or control over such things. Yet often one sees animals expressing (apparent) "frustration" with... restless limbs, and errant tails. When my cats wanted to, more effectively feign sleep, they were eventually wont to place a PAW firmly over a (voice-activated!) twitching tail. :D

As another probable irrelevancy the thread reminded me of TV "Late night discussion" - or rather the frustrating format of the latter. Unlike SGL, it seems standard, when philosophy or ethics of science is discussed, to have ample representation of world religions, of politicians, of alumnii oxbridge philosophers (teasing) etc. The token or optional "scientist" is usually deemed at the outset (by collective prejudice or SELF condemnation?) to be unqualified to contribute beyond basic input... :D

If this is so it is deplorable on the part of TV producers. But I always expect TV to be deplorable and am rarely disappointed!

All through this thread I have felt that a 'scientific' approach has been working backwards, though. The advocates of AI (who are also more or less the advocates of 'no self') seem to start from the premise that they can't see why a brain should be different from a computer so it isn't. But that's not what you do in science. In science you start from either an hypothesis or an observation and you seek (respectively) to destruction test it or explain it. 'I can't see a difference between a brain and a computer' is not an hypothesis. 'There is no difference' is a negative and science can't prove a negative. 'Brains and computers are indisinguishable' is an observation, but it can be readily dismissed by other observations, as it seems to me. Most human brains can engage in autonomous communication with other humans. No computer can do this.

Olly

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Most human brains can engage in autonomous communication with other humans. No computer can do this.

I'm sorry but computer viruses operate by forcing their host to "communicate autonomously" with other computers for the purpose of replicating the virus code. There is no difference in principle between this and biological viruses. The fact that one is a product (at least originally) of "intelligent design" and the other is a naturally evolved "life form" is, so far as I am concerned, immaterial - they exist and exploit their hosts, but have no life outside their host.

I believe that the human brain is a machine but I do not believe it is analagous to what we call a computer - it's more analagous to a network of independently operating computers, with a great deal of redundancy built in. We build computers which have more memory capacity than the human brain, and we build computers that operate a great deal faster, but we do not build computers that continue to operate when half their components fail and which can discover how to operate peripheral devices without device drivers or at least a detailed hardware specification. IMO the "devil" is in the communication across the neural network; electronic analogues don't really get us close to what goes on in something as simple as e.g. a fish embryo learning to swim. I think we need at least one more level of abstraction in order to build a machine which could learn to swim - and in developing that level of abstraction, we probably would be building a hardware system with genuinely independent "intelligence" and "self awareness".

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I believe that the human brain is a machine but I do not believe it is analagous to what we call a computer - it's more analagous to a network of independently operating computers, with a great deal of redundancy built in.

Good point, I suppose one could say the brain is more like the internet in that respect, if a few servers go down the rest carry on regardless.

Keeping with the theme, could one say that users of the internet are the neurons of the WWW doing basic input/output?

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I suppose one could say the brain is more like the internet in that respect,

Ummm ... I suppose so ... but that doesn't mean you can assume the internet is "intelligent" or "conscious", any more than you can build an airliner by tossing the parts into a box, shaking it and hoping the parts jiggle themselves into the right places.

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