Consciousness and the Paranormal — Part 8

[smcder]

Sent from my LGLS991 using Tapatalk

 

[mike]

I think the question of intelligent machine entity's having consciousness as we consider it might be moot.
A bit like the current "Do humans have a soul" debate.

Its likely we wont be able to tell the difference between SI (synthetic intellect) and BI (biological intellect) The question of consciousness will be like the question of soul.
Add to this mix Humanity 2.0 and the lines blur even further.

Technology Tuesday: A.I. result remains artificial

Anticipating the rise of the machine

The rise of robots and AI will see a net loss of 5.1 million jobs over five years in 15 of the world's leading economies, according to a projection by the World Economic Forum.

AI replacing human staff at Japanese insurance company

Children Born Today Will Never Ever Have To Drive A Car, Says Robotics Expert

 

[Randall]

I posted here some time ago a thinker still embedded in a stone block, only his head, arms, and lower legs emerging from the stone's boundaries. Wish I could find it again.

Here is an interesting example of an early thinker image:

Background here: Israeli scientists unearth extraordinary ‘thinker’ figurine from the Middle Bronze Age

Or maybe it's just a "boredom image" that has been likened to later works that were popularly labeled as "thinker" works, when in actual fact they were called something else. Personally I think the little fella looks more bored than anything else ( maybe a little stoned too with those big eyes ... lol ).

 

[smcder]

three by Strawson

Consciousness Isn’t a Mystery. It’s Matter.

"...the point that there is a fundamental respect in which ultimate intrinsic nature of the stuff of the universe is unknown to us except insofar as it is consciousness"

The consciousness myth 2015

Understanding-experience (cognitive phenomenology)

Philosophers will ask whether there is really such a thing as understanding-experience, over and above visual experience, auditory experience, and so on. Behind their questioning there may lie a familiar doubt as to whether there is anything going on, experientially, that either is or necessarily accompanies the understanding.

 

[Constance]

On Becoming Aware
A pragmatics of experiencing

Natalie Depraz, Université de la Sorbonne (Paris IV)

Francisco J. Varela, LENA, CNRS & CREA, Paris

Pierre Vermersch, CNRS, Paris

Extract:

"A practical approach to human experience
The spirit of this book is entirely pragmatic, for at least two related reasons. First of all, because of our approach: we will have to discover what pertains to our question as we go along; we will have to learn on the job, rather than give you ready-made results. Une dynamique d’amorçage in the french original. The verb amorcer means to bait, to entice, to start or begin, to prime. The intended meaning here is to help something get going by giving it a little help, like push- ing a car to jump-start it, running some fluid through a pump in order to let it begin working on its own, or picking up some tricks of the trade from your elders while an apprentice. We will use “jump-start,” “learning as we go along,” or “learning on the job,” and so on to translate une dynamique d’amorçage. In other words, we must keep things open in our exploration of this new field, a terra incognita of which we know almost nothing. We proceed armed only with a sketchy map and some surveyor’s tools, and so the progressive unfolding of the book follows the very emergence of conscious activity as it happens.

Secondly, because of our theme: since we are not trying to set forth a priori a new theory of experience as the neo-Kantians might have done, but instead want to describe an activity, a concrete praxis, we investigate conscious activity in so far as it perceives itself unfolding in an operative and immanent mode, at once habitual and pre-reflective.


What is at stake in becoming aware?
Briefly put, we wish to understand how we come to examine what we live through. That is, we wish to understand that most peculiar of human acts: becoming aware of our own mental life. Now the range of experience of which we can become aware is vast. It includes not only all the ordinary dimensions of human life, (perception, motion, memory, imagination, speech, everyday social interactions), as well as cognitive events that can be precisely defined as tasks in laboratory experiments, (for example, a protocol for visual attention), but also manifestations of mental life more fraught with meaning, (dreaming, intense emotions, social tensions, altered states of consciousness). Among all these acts of consciousness which remain in a condition of immanence, there lives, unperceived, a form of pre-reflexivity on the basis of which consciousness is able to perceive its very self at work.

Hence our central assertion in this work is that this immanent ability or capacity is habitually ignored or at best practiced unsystematically, that is to say, blindly, and that exploring human experience amounts to developing and cultivating this basic ability. What type of “reflexivity” is proper for exploring without disembodying this unreflected level of our life, traversed as it is by habitual patterns and sedimented experiences? In other words, how do we gain access to this pre-reflective and pre-given zone of our subjectivity in making it conscious? Other than what is merely on the fringe of consciousness, are there other levels of pre-noetic experience that become available when rigorously explored? These are open questions. Only a hands-on, non-dogmatic attitude can lead to progress, and that is what animates this book.


What do we mean by experience?
We mean the lived, first-hand acquaintance with, and account of, the entire span of our minds and actions, with the emphasis not on the context of the action but on the immediate and embodied, and thus inextricably personal, nature of the content of the action. Experience is always that which a singular subject is subjected to at any given time and place, that to which s/he has access “in the first person.”

The experience of a given subject is at once precise, concrete, and individuated. It is centered on particular spatio-temporal parameters, and is thus new and different each time: at the same time it covers the whole of the already lived and sedimented life of the experiencing subject. That is why it is very difficult to speak of subjective experience without being equally interested in the full range of lived conscious activity, a life that is lived both innerly and in relationship with the outside world (in phenomenological terms: immanently and intentionally), that is, a life related to itself and related to objects, be they perceptive, affective or indeed for that matter, apperceptive, self-reflective.

We will thus speak, in the terms of various disciplines, of “first-hand accounts”, “first-person access”, “introspection”, “phenomenal data”, or “lived ex- periences (vécus, Erlebnisse)”, but we will also – acknowledging the realm of embodied habits which the process of becoming aware is to reveal – speak of the unconscious, the preconscious, the pre-reflective, the self-present, the pre- noetic, the pre-predicative, or of one’s sedimented habitual life or habitus. As the book unfolds we hope the differences and articulations of these various terms will become apparent."

 

[Constance]

three by Strawson

Consciousness Isn’t a Mystery. It’s Matter.

"...the point that there is a fundamental respect in which ultimate intrinsic nature of the stuff of the universe is unknown to us except insofar as it is consciousness"

The consciousness myth 2015

Understanding-experience (cognitive phenomenology)

Philosophers will ask whether there is really such a thing as understanding-experience, over and above visual experience, auditory experience, and so on. Behind their questioning there may lie a familiar doubt as to whether there is anything going on, experientially, that either is or necessarily accompanies the understanding.

Earlier I linked a paper by Strawson entitled Cognitive Phenomomenology: Real Life. I think we should read that one again as well. Here is the philpapers bibliography for Strawson:

Works by Galen Strawson - PhilPapers

 

[Soupie]

Neural precursors of decisions that matter--an ERP study of deliberate and arbitrary choice | bioRxiv

Neural precursors of decisions that matter--an ERP study of deliberate and arbitrary choice

Abstract

The onset of the readiness potential (RP)--a key neural correlate of upcoming action--was repeatedly found to precede subjects' reports of having decided. This was famously taken as evidence against a causal role for consciousness in human decisions making and thus as an attack on free-will. Yet those studies focused on purposeless, unreasoned, arbitrary decisions, bereft of consequences. So, it remains unknown to what degree these neural precursors of action generalize to deliberate decisions, which are arguably more interesting, ecological, and relevant to real life. We therefore directly compared the neural correlates of deliberate and arbitrary decisions during a $1000-donation task to non-profit organizations. While we found the expected RPs for arbitrary decisions, they were strikingly absent for deliberate ones. Our results are congruent with the RP representing the accumulation of noisy, random fluctuations, which drive arbitrary--but not deliberate--decisions. In that they challenge the generalizability of studies that argue for no causal role for consciousness in decision making from arbitrary to deliberate decisions.

 

[smcder]

On Becoming Aware
A pragmatics of experiencing

Natalie Depraz, Université de la Sorbonne (Paris IV)

Francisco J. Varela, LENA, CNRS & CREA, Paris

Pierre Vermersch, CNRS, Paris

Extract:

"A practical approach to human experience
The spirit of this book is entirely pragmatic, for at least two related reasons. First of all, because of our approach: we will have to discover what pertains to our question as we go along; we will have to learn on the job, rather than give you ready-made results. Une dynamique d’amorçage in the french original. The verb amorcer means to bait, to entice, to start or begin, to prime. The intended meaning here is to help something get going by giving it a little help, like push- ing a car to jump-start it, running some fluid through a pump in order to let it begin working on its own, or picking up some tricks of the trade from your elders while an apprentice. We will use “jump-start,” “learning as we go along,” or “learning on the job,” and so on to translate une dynamique d’amorçage. In other words, we must keep things open in our exploration of this new field, a terra incognita of which we know almost nothing. We proceed armed only with a sketchy map and some surveyor’s tools, and so the progressive unfolding of the book follows the very emergence of conscious activity as it happens.

Secondly, because of our theme: since we are not trying to set forth a priori a new theory of experience as the neo-Kantians might have done, but instead want to describe an activity, a concrete praxis, we investigate conscious activity in so far as it perceives itself unfolding in an operative and immanent mode, at once habitual and pre-reflective.


What is at stake in becoming aware?
Briefly put, we wish to understand how we come to examine what we live through. That is, we wish to understand that most peculiar of human acts: becoming aware of our own mental life. Now the range of experience of which we can become aware is vast. It includes not only all the ordinary dimensions of human life, (perception, motion, memory, imagination, speech, everyday social interactions), as well as cognitive events that can be precisely defined as tasks in laboratory experiments, (for example, a protocol for visual attention), but also manifestations of mental life more fraught with meaning, (dreaming, intense emotions, social tensions, altered states of consciousness). Among all these acts of consciousness which remain in a condition of immanence, there lives, unperceived, a form of pre-reflexivity on the basis of which consciousness is able to perceive its very self at work.

Hence our central assertion in this work is that this immanent ability or capacity is habitually ignored or at best practiced unsystematically, that is to say, blindly, and that exploring human experience amounts to developing and cultivating this basic ability. What type of “reflexivity” is proper for exploring without disembodying this unreflected level of our life, traversed as it is by habitual patterns and sedimented experiences? In other words, how do we gain access to this pre-reflective and pre-given zone of our subjectivity in making it conscious? Other than what is merely on the fringe of consciousness, are there other levels of pre-noetic experience that become available when rigorously explored? These are open questions. Only a hands-on, non-dogmatic attitude can lead to progress, and that is what animates this book.


What do we mean by experience?
We mean the lived, first-hand acquaintance with, and account of, the entire span of our minds and actions, with the emphasis not on the context of the action but on the immediate and embodied, and thus inextricably personal, nature of the content of the action. Experience is always that which a singular subject is subjected to at any given time and place, that to which s/he has access “in the first person.”

The experience of a given subject is at once precise, concrete, and individuated. It is centered on particular spatio-temporal parameters, and is thus new and different each time: at the same time it covers the whole of the already lived and sedimented life of the experiencing subject. That is why it is very difficult to speak of subjective experience without being equally interested in the full range of lived conscious activity, a life that is lived both innerly and in relationship with the outside world (in phenomenological terms: immanently and intentionally), that is, a life related to itself and related to objects, be they perceptive, affective or indeed for that matter, apperceptive, self-reflective.

We will thus speak, in the terms of various disciplines, of “first-hand accounts”, “first-person access”, “introspection”, “phenomenal data”, or “lived ex- periences (vécus, Erlebnisse)”, but we will also – acknowledging the realm of embodied habits which the process of becoming aware is to reveal – speak of the unconscious, the preconscious, the pre-reflective, the self-present, the pre- noetic, the pre-predicative, or of one’s sedimented habitual life or habitus. As the book unfolds we hope the differences and articulations of these various terms will become apparent."

introspection, phenomenology and contemplative tradition

What an interesting book! I found this interview with Varela by searching on the book's title:

https://www.presencing.com/sites/default/files/page-files/Varela-2000.pdf

This is a conversation with Varela, one of 25 interviews on knowledge and leadership www.dialogonleadership.org.

The interview is from the perspective of business/leadership but it's focused on how do we know our own experience? what methods do we use? In the interview three methods are laid out: introspection, phenomenology and the contemplative traditions.

introspection - radical in its day, Varela says it got watered down as protocols for verbal reports and that this doesn't get at the richness of experience. To get at the richness of experience requires training. "how-to" do this comes from the other two methods phenomenology and contemplative traditions

 

[smcder]

.

 

[smcder]

Neural precursors of decisions that matter--an ERP study of deliberate and arbitrary choice | bioRxiv

Neural precursors of decisions that matter--an ERP study of deliberate and arbitrary choice

Abstract

The onset of the readiness potential (RP)--a key neural correlate of upcoming action--was repeatedly found to precede subjects' reports of having decided. This was famously taken as evidence against a causal role for consciousness in human decisions making and thus as an attack on free-will. Yet those studies focused on purposeless, unreasoned, arbitrary decisions, bereft of consequences. So, it remains unknown to what degree these neural precursors of action generalize to deliberate decisions, which are arguably more interesting, ecological, and relevant to real life. We therefore directly compared the neural correlates of deliberate and arbitrary decisions during a $1000-donation task to non-profit organizations. While we found the expected RPs for arbitrary decisions, they were strikingly absent for deliberate ones. Our results are congruent with the RP representing the accumulation of noisy, random fluctuations, which drive arbitrary--but not deliberate--decisions. In that they challenge the generalizability of studies that argue for no causal role for consciousness in decision making from arbitrary to deliberate decisions.

great find! seems to agree with previous discussions of this limitation ... and with the role of consciousness in deliberation

 

[smcder]

So the question follows: does all self-awareness involve irrational numbers? Indeed, does any?

Again, I'm not suggesting man can artificially create minds as broad, deep, and rich as human minds. I'm not even suggesting we can create minds that are like ours in any narrow sense.

But can we create minds that have intelligence, self-awareness, memory, perceptions, and conceptions? (Given p consciousness as fundamental.)

It may turn out that all of these things are fundamental, although I don't think so.

It may turn out that these things can only emerge from organic, human brains for some reason. But I don't know that reason.

Or it may turn out that these things are substrate independent and can arise within computational systems, albeit on a primativevlevel compared to the human brain.

As noted, some AI researchers are arguing that artificial systems have already achieved some of these things.

But until we gives these systems of a voice, they can't report their inner experiences. If indeed they have them.

Of course we'll never know for certain.

consciousness being computable means that an algorithm could be written that could be run on a computer and produce a "what it is like" ...

Strawson's discussion of material and consciousness being an implicit knowledge of matter could also go into the substrate dependence argument ... what you are made of could really matter ... from a brain point of view, it may matter how fast signals are conducted, make a giant brain and it could be that neuronal integration is too slow to yield consciousness or thought or anything else - without some breakthrough in computing ... quantum computing? ... this could put a physical limit on intelligence ... that's not to say we have reached it, but we might be in the ballpark ... left to its own devices and the time scales given - is something more than human intelligence likely? or it could mean that more intelligence comes at the expense of consciousness, either the total expense of ... or relative, an extremely intelligent machine might be relatively unconscious ... as others have argued ... right now it feels to me like you couldn't make "something it is like" strictly on the basis of the organization of materials - unless that comes out to mean that when you make a brain it looks a whole LOT like the ones we have ...

 

[smcder]

consciousness being computable means that an algorithm could be written that could be run on a computer and produce a "what it is like" ...

Strawson's discussion of material and consciousness being an implicit knowledge of matter could also go into the substrate dependence argument ... what you are made of could really matter ... from a brain point of view, it may matter how fast signals are conducted, make a giant brain and it could be that neuronal integration is too slow to yield consciousness or thought or anything else - without some breakthrough in computing ... quantum computing? ... this could put a physical limit on intelligence ... that's not to say we have reached it, but we might be in the ballpark ... left to its own devices and the time scales given - is something more than human intelligence likely? or it could mean that more intelligence comes at the expense of consciousness, either the total expense of ... or relative, an extremely intelligent machine might be relatively unconscious ... as others have argued ... right now it feels to me like you couldn't make "something it is like" strictly on the basis of the organization of materials - unless that comes out to mean that when you make a brain it looks a whole LOT like the ones we have ...

the game-changer, again, being if we take evidence for non-locality of mind/experience seriously

 

[smcder]

Earlier I linked a paper by Strawson entitled Cognitive Phenomomenology: Real Life. I think we should read that one again as well. Here is the philpapers bibliography for Strawson:

Works by Galen Strawson - PhilPapers

Cognitive Phenomenology: Real Life

 

[Soupie]

consciousness being computable means that an algorithm could be written that could be run on a computer and produce a "what it is like" ...

Asking whether phenomenal consciousness is computable is quite different than asking whether self-awareness is computable.

It's the difference between What charmers has categorized as the hard problem and the easy problems.

Said differently, if we take "awareness" as fundamentally given, then self-awareness is something that might emerge in nature. And it might be substrate independent.

 

[Soupie]

right now it feels to me like you couldn't make "something it is like" strictly on the basis of the organization of materials - unless that comes out to mean that when you make a brain it looks a whole LOT like the ones we have ...

I dont think we would get "something it is like" from organizing materials, whether they are organized like brains or not.

However, given "something it is like" as a fundamental feature of what-is, I think there is a nexus between the organization of (what we perceive to be) matter and experience.

 

[Soupie]

And as far as substrate dependence for the "easy" problems, I think it depends on the level of supervenience. (I know that's not the right term.)

Given "something it's like" as fundamental:

For example, if, say, the emergence of self-awareness supervenes on neural occilations, then self-awareness should be substrate independent as we can make artificial neurons.

However, if, say, self awareness supervenes at the level of ion interactions, perhaps we can't make artificial ions and therefore it wouldn't be substrate independent.

 

[smcder]

@Soupie I should probably mark all these as "thinking out loud" its part of my process ... and I'm not writing very clearly I know. Let me see if I can find a more clear way of writing about substrate dependence.

 

[Constance]

right now it feels to me like you couldn't make "something it is like" strictly on the basis of the organization of materials - unless that comes out to mean that when you make a brain it looks a whole LOT like the ones we have ...

I don't see how a technologically constructed brain could function in the ways in which our naturally evolved embodied brains do -- i.e., in facilitating the achievement of our personal sense/knowledge of being-in-the-world preconsciously and consciously from the grounds of our own lived experience.

 

[Randall]

I don't see how a technologically constructed brain could function in the ways in which our naturally evolved embodied brains do -- i.e., in facilitating the achievement of our personal sense/knowledge of being-in-the-world preconsciously and consciously from the grounds of our own lived experience.

Me neither, at least to the extent that a technologically constructed brain would not be identical to ours, and therefore would logically have to be different. However that doesn't mean that it may not be possible to create an intelligent and conscious being using technology. Remember bio-technology is still technology. There may also be ways of reproducing the physical environment for consciousness by means other than biology. Then again there may not be. We just don't know enough about it yet to be sure.

​

 

[mike]

Once we get to the point where its impossible to tell the difference between biological and machine intellect, i don't think consciousness will be relevant.
When i interact with other minds I'm more concerned with the quality of the information and its exchange. Whether or not that entity can be shown to have consciousness or a soul isn't really a factor for me.

I'm sure for the workers at the Japanese insurance company who's jobs are being replaced with AI its low on their list of concerns too. The company concerned doesn't care either as long as the new employees can do the job with increased efficiency.

The lines get blurrier with Humanity 2.0

Welcome to posthumanity | Human 2.0

Nanobot implants could soon connect our brains to internet and make us super-intelligent | Daily Mail Online