X-Message-Number: 7962
From:  (Thomas Donaldson)
Subject: Re: CryoNet #7945 - #7956
Date: Thu, 27 Mar 1997 22:57:19 -0800 (PST)

Hi everyone!

Apologies to Mr. Lynch AND Mr. Clark. I used the names without thinking about
what I was saying when I did so. And in a later message, which seems not to
have reached Cryonet in the confusion, I did apologize for the sharp comment.

And now for Mr. Clark:
About chaos: the universe, of which we are a part, will proceed regardless of
whatever differential equations or computer devices we use to model it. One
major problem with any computer program which might simulate me is simply
that it will necessarily have to omit information, and therefore will have
errors, not just when it starts but at every step thereafter. This makes it
much more liable to differ from me, even, than if I were stored digitally in
a computer and recreated as a real person in the world at some later time.
THEN the errors would be damped out. In the simulation they would continue,
and get worse and worse as the simulation continued.

If you identify reasoning with computation, then no, we cannot reason very
well. I do not believe that either Lewis Carroll or I made such an 
identification. In real life, reasoning is not nearly so well defined as
in a computer --- that's one of the problems of computers. As for whether
computers must somehow touch reality, I find that a strange statement. 
All their computations and behavior was planned by us and has no meaning
(or any connection with reality, either) except so far as WE give it meaning
and connect it with reality.

As for the Turing Test, you seem to automatically assume that it measures
consciousness. As an argument rather than a statement of faith, you would
need to do more than assert that. In fact, in this particular version
of Cryonet I set up a test which I think WOULD establish consciousness. And
the activities I describe there were actually chosen deliberately: the
computer/machine/device/object is not just playing linguistic games but
interacting with the world INDEPENDENTLY OF ME.

As for the Chinese room, I myself pointed out that a computer could do
what was required much better than a human being. Hence your comments about
a big book and barrels of ink are irrelevant. And I am saying that the
game with ideographs which that computer had been programmed to play simply
could not imply consciousness.

Finally, on the issue of how we evolved consciousness, I will make a 
suggestion. As animals, everything that we do depends not only on what we
can see in the world but our drives and wants. These all involve choices,
not just choices of what we try to get, but even choices of what we see.
Note that our consciousness, quite unlike most of our brain, is SERIAL
rather than parallel. At some point these drives and our perceptions must
come together; I see no way to do that without a serial process to guide
both what we see and what we do. One further point: perception involves
interpretation, too, which is a kind of choice. We somewhere have circuits
which make such choices.

And finally, you ask me to run a statement by you again. If that will help,
I will do so: you raised Lewis Carroll's story as an argument AGAINST
what I was saying. I was saying that I thought it had caught exactly what
I was saying, that I agreed with the Tortoise. So how then could you give
me that argument without there somehow being a misunderstanding of what
my argument was? 

That is why I asked you to tell me how you read my argument? And please
don't leave passages out of what I say. Sometimes I put them in because 
they affect the sense of what I'm saying. It is true that I do not think
reasoning is the same as computation; if that is the source of our 
misunderstanding, can you tell me so? 

To Mr. Strout:
I hope your doctorate comes soon. You are a PhD student, aren't you? Of
course, PhDs don't really make anybody deeper or more knowledgeable, they
just stamp them as such. But given the world as it is, they remain useful.

And now to business: As the very first point, one problem which needs to
be worked out in discussing consciousness is to make some distinctions.
Without an auditory cortex, we will not be able to hear. This does not
make us unconscious, just unconscious of one kind of event. 

I too have followed work on our wiring with much interest, as you would
know if you subscribed to PERIASTRON. One major problem I have with the
notion that we can find circuits related to consciousness in our cortex
(rather than in other areas) is simply that loss of cortical areas does
not seem to make those who lose them unconscious. A second issue: if we
are to argue that consciousness comes simply from the interactions in
our brain, we must also explain how it happens that many of these
interactions happen WITHOUT us being conscious of them... not in any
Freudian sense, but as you probably already know, impulses from our
retina pass through several different brain areas and can be changed
by that, all without us being in the least conscious of what is happening
to them. This seems to me a problem with Dennett's ideas.

I will make a distinction. There is consciousness of an object and 
also consciousness independent of the object. If we are conscious, we
must always be conscious of SOMETHING, but the circuits involved must
somehow not be limited to any particular thing. This tells me that we
need to look for some very general process, and will not simply find
it by looking at particular regions of our cortex --- including our
forebrain. Whether injuries to our brain cortex cause deficits in 
consciousness distinct from the particular deficit in one kind of
consciousness seems to me very much an open question. 

Yes, I too know about the circuits running between the thalamus and
our cortex, also. One problem with a model of our brain which says that
it processes "information" is that there are two very different kinds
of information which should not be confused: our drives, wants, etc,
and our perceptions. That is what makes me think the thalamus plays
a role somewhere in consciousness. (I say a bit more about this to
Mr. Clark). We may actually be closer in our ideas here than either
of us first thought.

Finally, about simulations: the problem is that they will (if digital,
in any practical terms) not follow the actual behavior of our neurons
or brain in detail. And as they continue, they will do this less and
less well. This is NOT a criticism of the use of simulations to try to
work out how our brain works, but we should never confuse the simulation
with the actual neurons or brain we try to simulate. I suspect that we
will also find, if we try to do as accurate a simulation as we can,
that it will diverge over time --- just as even the largest computers
cannot predict the weather very well. Too much going on, too many
outside influences (and of course any simulation of a brain will
be quite false if we don't provide it with senses etc to connect
with the world).

Finally, to Mike:
While languages have patterns, those patterns have no obvious relation to
how the universe itself works. You propose the existence of one universal
language. Why just one, rather than many? Certainly every human group on
the planet has (or had) a language fully capable of expressing anything 
its users wanted about the world. Theoretically, they too could have added
the vocabulary and understanding so that users could discuss relativistic 
cosmology and quantum mechanics. That this did not happen is an accident of
history.

You also provide me with some patterns. Fine. First point: if I am to
continue them, I can continue them in many ways. Second point: our brains
are adapted to see patterns, and yes, they do that well and help us by
doing so. But if we really want to think about it, we note that the 
patterns found in Roman and Greek times aren't quite the same as those
we see now. One of the most fascinating things I personally hope to see
if I am revived is just what was made of quantum mechanics and relativity,
which still need some kind of reconciliation... one more pattern. That we
look for patterns is a good thing, but the patterns themselves remain only
approximations. Is there only one possible choice of pattern? If someday
humans split into two separate groups, not in communication for thousands
of years, and both groups continue to do science, we will learn whether
or not our choice of pattern is unique. Whatever else, these patterns 
consist of symbols to which WE attach meaning. They have no meaning 
independent of us.

As for Tipler's ideas, given that quantum mechanics turns out to be at all
an accurate perception of the world, our description of it simply is NOT
the world. To believe that is basically to believe that we need do no 
more than computation forever into the future, and we have theories which
will never be found false --- even in circumstances that we have not now
experimentally checked because we cannot (say, the surface of a neutron
star). I find that implausible simply from past history. Any theory is
something we set up with our symbols. And our symbols and the patterns
we make of them BY THEIR NATURE cannot ever fit the world itself.

			Long long life to all,

				Thomas Donaldson

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