The mechanism of self-awareness

[EdEarl]

 

Wikipedia

 

The many-worlds interpretation is an interpretation of quantum mechanics that asserts the objective reality of the universal wavefunction and denies the actuality of wavefunction collapse. Many-worlds implies that all possible alternate histories and futures are real, each representing an actual "world" (or "universe"). In layman's terms, the hypothesis states there is a very large—perhaps infinite[2]—number of universes, and everything that could possibly have happened in our past, but did not, has occurred in the past of some other universe or universes. The theory is also referred to as MWI, the relative state formulation, the Everett interpretation, the theory of the universal wavefunction, many-universes interpretation, or just many-worlds.

If the Many Worlds Interpretation is correct, in one universe you make some decision and in another universe you make another; all possible choices are made, always. Thus, the idea of determinism or free will is moot; alternatively, you might consider it all inclusive determinism.

[KipIngram]

Yes, very true. The free will discussion has been a bit of a digression, though - my original post was more about perception of self-awareness. Even if many worlds is correct, there's still no explanation for how any of those myriad entities would experience awareness (or "experience" anything, for that matter).

[Eise]

The free will discussion has been a bit of a digression, though - my original post was more about perception of self-awareness.

 

Hmm. I am a bit disappointed by your reaction. You wrote extensively about free will, I reacted on it, and now you simply drop the topic.

 

Of course the topics of consciousness and free will are related. For both you claim that the traditional scientific attitude is bankrupt. And for both you propose solutions with QM, that have a strong odour of dualism.

 

And besides, my last posting was not just about free will... Let me know when you are not interested anymore. But I think my arguments have earned a reaction.

Edited April 16, 2017 by Eise

[KipIngram]

I didn't mean to be dropping it. I'm happy to discuss it further. But I do agree with EdEarl's comment that if you want to work with the Many World's interpretation then free will becomes sort of a non-issue; everything happens, so nothing unique happens, so there's nothing for the free will to "do." It's one of the reasons MWI has never really appealed to me very much, whereas the Copenhagen Interpretation's assertion that no real result appears until observation is more up my alley.

 

Said another way, CI proposes that there is a collapse, without really explaining what it is (at least not in the same rigorous way that it explains the deterministic evolution of the unobserved state via the Schrodinger equation. I've always felt that Many Worlds popped up in the first place via a line of thought a la "Hey, this 'collapse' thing has no rigorous explanation, so let's just get rid of it. What then?"

 

I was in sort of a hurry the last time and only noticed EdEarl's response; I'm going to go back and study yours now and try to give you a better reply.

Eise: "QM predicts probabilities. EPR experiments show that underneath the determined probability distribution do not lie local causes. And that is exactly what you seem to suggest: that QM-events allow room for the will to interfere with nature."

 

So I'm going to go out on a bit of a limb here - I'm not really well-heeled in this stuff yet. But I'll give it a go. The EPR related experiments deal with correlations re: ensembles of systems. These are artificial systems constructed in labs, so I think it's safe to say that no consciousness is connected to those quantum events. Even if you grant me my premise (that free will acts via quantum uncertainty), we still have to discuss what happens in systems un-connected to any consciousness. I think any one event would then have to be random - we make an observation and so a result is required, but no consciousness has any ability to choose results in that system. So random, and the Bell's Theorem correlations follow. By definition each action of a consciousness would occur only once - there'd be no way to create ensembles of identical events.

 

Eise: "Well, we might get in a discussion about terms"

 

Yes, I think that there's a lot of energy we could pour into that and not get very far. But let me kick around your definition a little. So "free will means not coerced." To define what is coerced and what is not, you have to draw a boundary, and "coercion" would be physical causes from outside that boundary. I think if we draw the boundary just outside my skin, we'd have the situation you're referring to - as long as nothing outside of me was the primal cause of an action, I wasn't coerced and thus had free will.

 

But that definition doesn't fully capture what I'm talking about. Even if no "out of boundary" force causes me to act a certain way, if my action is pre-determined by my own internal state then I'm not really choosing that action. It was just inertia. Maybe a rough analogy would be if I'm driving fast down the highway and crest a small rise to discover there's a brick wall just beyond it. I really don't want to run into that wall, but I might have no choice. And nothing pushed me into the wall; it was my own internal inertia that made me unable to avoid it. No one should say that I chose to run into the wall - rather they should say that I chose to drive too fast over a blind hill.

 

Eise: "If my choice were completely uninfluenced, then my actions would have nothing to do with the circumstances I am in, and also with who I am: my character, the things I learned in my life, my self-knowledge. That kind of free will is a chimera."

 

The situation isn't black and white. I absolutely agree we are influenced by our experiences, memories, and so on. All of those things are a very important part of who we are. I just don't think that those things are the totality of what determines our actions. I think we are capable of "surprising the universe." Capable of injecting an "additional input" to the action determination.

 

I think it's important to note that awareness goes hand in hand with the type of free will I am claiming. If nothing in us is "aware," then I don't see how it's possible to go beyond the automaton behavior that would have free will limited to your version. It did occur to me yesterday that combining the presumed existence of self-awareness as a fundamental thing with the Many Worlds interpretation leads to a rather clean model. "Free will" as a physically effective thing goes away. Like I said earlier, there's nothing for it to do. The physical universe unfolds via MWI, and awareness would just choose which path to ride along with. With that perspective, neither awareness nor free will would have any effect on the physical world whatsoever. And yet awareness would feel that it was exercising free will.

 

I didn't particularly like where that thought process led - in it's cleanest form you wound up with a multiverse populated with every existing awareness, but the chances of any two of them being in the same branch would rapidly become nil. Each awareness would have it's own private universe within the multiverse. But it did strike me as the most non-invasive way to add "presumed awareness" onto a physical model.

 

Eise: "Now you are suggesting that there must be something (mind, soul), that sits in the control room, using the controls, getting information via the senses, but not subject of causality. But now you have only moved the problem to some subentity."

 

Yes, you're right. My leanings do precisely invoke a subentity; the reason being that I haven't figured out how to consider the original entity (a purely material body) capable of generating awareness. I feel that emergence theories do more or less the same thing - they posit awareness as an emergent property, but without offering any real explanation of how that happens. I'm posting a subentity, without offering any real explanation of how it exists. I am attempting to explain how the subentity and the physical entity could be connected, but not what the subentity is. So I guess to some extent it's just two flavors of the same maneuver.

 

Eise: "No. Determinism and fatalism are two very different things..."

 

Ok, I'll try to address that by working backward in time. Start at birth. All of the things you mention shortly after the quote (beliefs, feelings, etc.) are just accumulated effects of external stimuli experienced starting at birth, in your model. So the adults "choice" still isn't really a choice. Unless you invoke, at some point in the process, an independent external input from something outside the physical. Somewhere in the process there has to be an opportunity for a real, fully independent choice, for me to feel justified in making moral judgment.

 

Eise: "No! Exactly the opposite..."

 

Well, I totally agree with you. I also accept that others are aware. And yet I still cannot see any way to ascribe awareness to an array of transistor voltages, neuron chemical states, and so on. If I built a robot out of conventional computer parts, no matter how much it seemed to behave as if it were aware, I just wouldn't have the same belief that it was aware that I have of other human beings.

 

And that really brings us full circle back to my original post - I feel that "emergent awareness" is a claim that has been given absolutely no validation. Imagine a whole in the the ceiling - a ceiling that you have no ability whatsoever to see beyond. If an object is hanging on a string that's coming through that hole, and is moving up and down, it's easy to conclude that "something is up there pulling that string." We see the object experiencing a force, and we see a mechanism for that force to connect to something above the ceiling, but we have zero information on what that something is. That's how I see the "consciousness is fundamental" argument. The fundamental consciousness is the thing above the ceiling, and quantum uncertainty is "the string." I can accept that I don't know everything much more readily than I can accept an array of physical states magically acquiring awareness.

 

Said another way, it's easier for me to assume an unexplained effect arises from an unknown entity, rather than try to shoehorn it into known entities with no theoretical basis whatsoever.

 

 

Whew. Sorry to be so long-winded, but you provided a lot of food for thought. Hope your weekend is going well!

Quick extra thought. I see similarities between this and the step to quantum physics back around the beginning of the 20th century. Take black body radiation as an example. We had these great theories that we thought were complete, or at least very close to complete. Then here comes black body radiation and it just doesn't fit. So of course we wound up with quantum theory. I feel like "emergent consciousness" is the same sort of thing. It just doesn't fit in our existing theories of physics. Absolutely no indication at all of how it should suddenly pop up. Maybe someone will come up with something new that brings it into the fold. That's the sort of thing that would make me instantly accept the idea. Even a promising glimmer of such an idea would really affect my opinion of the whole matter. That's sort of what I was fishing for when I made the original post - some aspect of emergent phenomena theory that I hadn't discovered yet that I could go read up on.

 

The closest anyone has come so far was over in that other thread when they mentioned GEB. That really did make me think. It's not fully satisfactory to me, because it seems it could be used as an argument for almost anything, but on the other hand I can't really claim that "consciousness is fundamental" is really any better - both ideas require that you accept something without any hope of a proof.

[EdEarl]

The De Broglie–Bohm theory is a deterministic interpretation of QM that explains all the observations also leading to the Copenhagen interpretation, meaning no free will. Moreover, Heisenberg Uncertainty only means we cannot measure accurately or predict the future, it does not imply free will, IMO.

[KipIngram]

EdEarl: I understand. I think this is a somewhat fuzzy area. I think it's fair to say that there's no PROOF there's not something "conscious" behind uncertainty, but on the other hand I also see that that flies in the face of Occam's Razor if you're looking purely at explaining experimental results. I just feel like my self awareness is something that bears explaining, and I'm not comfortable (yet) with the soundness of the emergence explanation. Someone else might feel like it doesn't need explaining, or may be completely comfortable with emergence. Hence discussions like this.

 

I do want to emphasize, though that while I find the free will discussion very interesting, I do regard self-awareness as a more fundamental puzzle. You have to have awareness before you can have free will (since free will is choices made by the awareness), and I already saw at least one way you could invoke awareness and awareness-perceived free will without actually having that free will affect the material world (I outlined it yesterday - the many worlds interpretation with awareness able to choose the multiverse path).

 

I regard my self-awareness as an experimental result. It doesn't really pass the "community test," since I can't prove it in any way, but it passes my own personal test as something that is real.

frankglennjacobs: I don't even know how to respond to that. I think several people in this discussion disagree with me, but we're still managing to have at least a marginally scientific discussion.

 

Hoffman proposes that space is just something we perceive when we process information exchanged with other conscious agents. Whether one agrees with his theories or not, he's got at least some mathematical rigor behind them, so yes, it is possible to consider the non-existence of space. Time is a little more delicate - his conscious agents have internal "counters" that tick off the number of information exchange operations. Perceived times isn't that exactly (i.e., time wouldn't have to flow proportionally to those counters"), but it's certainly at least related. So it might be fair to say that "something like time" is fundamental in his theory.

 

I think that it's fair to say that I'm basically proposing that we have something like spirits or souls - whatever you want to call the "consciousness on the other side of uncertainty." We could call them conscious agents too. But even if call those things souls, I see absolutely no strong implication that there's a "super entity" we'd call God. I mean, there could be - I don't think it can be disproven. But nothing gives a strong reason to start invoking an entity of that caliber in this discussion. I'd very much prefer to keep this conversation out of those areas. I observe my own self-awareness, and I can't see how to explain it within the confines of physical theory. So I can take the step to "something else" producing it, until I feel there's a better explanation. But that's as far as I see any reason to go.

 

One of my biggest concerns in bringing this topic up to begin with was that people would presume I was trying to sneak God in the back door. So I tried to be very careful about how I presented my thoughts. I think there may be more to us than our material bodies. But I don't go to church, don't believe that any existing organized religion has any serious credence, and don't feel that a God or gods is required to explain anything I see happening in the world, including my own self-awareness. So please let's keep the conversation completely clear of religion, if you don't mind.

Edited April 17, 2017 by KipIngram

[EdEarl]

 

So please let's keep the conversation completely clear of religion, if you don't mind.

No problem

 

We can agree to disagree; I believe we are biological machines and our brain makes us aware.

[KipIngram]

Oh, that wasn't directed at you at all, EdEarl - your comments were fantastic. Honestly I am entirely open-minded to emergence. Before I can go there, though, I just need some more substance to the claim, that's all. Maybe the GEB perspective is sound - I've read the book, but it was long ago. I need to re-read it with this particular line of thought in mind.

This looks very interesting. I'm not quite willing to pay $40 to read it, though, so I'll note it down and keep looking.

 

http://www.medical-hypotheses.com/article/S0306-9877(04)00255-5/abstract

[MonDie]

My personal opinion is that there is no "hard problem" of consciousness, the problem which asks how mental states can arise from physical states. The problem of mental-from-physical is similar to the problem of something-from-nothing—people are asking "why?" rather than "why not?". Science looks at how things are composed, at emergence. Science breaks things down, or else it adds things up. It reduces causes into smaller causes, or else it adds causes together. What causes there to be causes may be an invalid question altogether, so why do we see problems with causes that connect physical phenomena to mental phenomena?

[StringJunky]

Oh, that wasn't directed at you at all, EdEarl - your comments were fantastic. Honestly I am entirely open-minded to emergence. Before I can go there, though, I just need some more substance to the claim, that's all. Maybe the GEB perspective is sound - I've read the book, but it was long ago. I need to re-read it with this particular line of thought in mind.

This looks very interesting. I'm not quite willing to pay $40 to read it, though, so I'll note it down and keep looking.

 

http://www.medical-hypotheses.com/article/S0306-9877(04)00255-5/abstract

Would it help to say that consciousness/awareness results from a contiguous set of functions that , subjectively, gives us the impression that we are a continuum because we can't sense the 'joints' between all our functions; we feel as one piece.

 

 

Contiguous

sharing a common border; touching.

"the Southern Ocean is contiguous with the Atlantic"

synonyms: adjacent, neighbouring, adjoining, bordering, next-door; More

next or together in sequence.

 

"five hundred contiguous dictionary entries"

Edited April 19, 2017 by StringJunky

[KipIngram]

No, that doesn't help me much. My core issue here is that all of the transistors in the computer are still just transistors. Each one still just has a charge distribution in it, and still just has two potential differences (Vgs and Vds) as inputs. They just have no "global" interconnectivity to fuel some mysterious emergence. If you can't look at one transistor and recognize a vehicle for awareness, having 100, or 1000, or 10^10^10 doesn't help.

 

On the other hand, we can see how algorithmic behavior emerges - we have excellent theoretical and engineering understanding of how to get arrays of transistors to do fancy, organized things. But in none of those cases does the computer "know" what it's doing - each transistor is still just doing its transistor thing.

 

I don't mean to sound close-minded. I don't want to be close-minded. I'm just leaning toward what I consider to be the more believable explanation. As I said somewhere earlier, it's easier for me to accept that there may be aspects to the universe that we have no clue about than to accept that a system we purport to 100% understand the physics of can achieve something that that physics in no way predicts.

 

On the other hand, I'm not just jumping for joy at the idea of invoking the unknown. If I could encounter a presentation of consciousness emergence that actually seemed to have any rigorous traction whatsoever (even a hint), I'd reconsider - I agree with the general notion of not introducing extraneous unproven things into the model when the model already provides a plausible explanation. I like understanding things - I get a bigger kick out of that than I can put into words. But I've never seen anyone explain the how of emergence. Every presentation of it I've ever seen pretty much just says "It just does emerge." No explanation - just the claim.

[StringJunky]

No, that doesn't help me much. My core issue here is that all of the transistors in the computer are still just transistors. Each one still just has a charge distribution in it, and still just has two potential differences (Vgs and Vds) as inputs. They just have no "global" interconnectivity to fuel some mysterious emergence. If you can't look at one transistor and recognize a vehicle for awareness, having 100, or 1000, or 10^10^10 doesn't help.

 

On the other hand, we can see how algorithmic behavior emerges - we have excellent theoretical and engineering understanding of how to get arrays of transistors to do fancy, organized things. But in none of those cases does the computer "know" what it's doing - each transistor is still just doing its transistor thing.

 

I don't mean to sound close-minded. I don't want to be close-minded. I'm just leaning toward what I consider to be the more believable explanation. As I said somewhere earlier, it's easier for me to accept that there may be aspects to the universe that we have no clue about than to accept that a system we purport to 100% understand the physics of can achieve something that that physics in no way predicts.

 

On the other hand, I'm not just jumping for joy at the idea of invoking the unknown. If I could encounter a presentation of consciousness emergence that actually seemed to have any rigorous traction whatsoever (even a hint), I'd reconsider - I agree with the general notion of not introducing extraneous unproven things into the model when the model already provides a plausible explanation. I like understanding things - I get a bigger kick out of that than I can put into words. But I've never seen anyone explain the how of emergence. Every presentation of it I've ever seen pretty much just says "It just does emerge." No explanation - just the claim.

I'm fascinated by emergence and would love to give you a clear explanation but I can't; it's a work in progress for me. I ask myself really simple questions like "When does a chair become a chair, when constructing it?", in the process of my learning.

 

Emergence is an observable fact that is not so easily defined. I think, in order to get a grip on complex, self-organising systems, like our minds, we need to understand simpler systems, like termite mounds and slime moulds, first.

Edited April 20, 2017 by StringJunky

[KipIngram]

Yes, I have to agree with that. You're basically saying that we don't understand emergence well enough to satisfy my desire, and that may well be true. As I said, my mind is subject to change on this. I'm eager to study anything I can about emergence - what I'm seeking is rigor. I don't really know about termite mounds, but another example is snowflakes. I'm assuming that we could suss out something about the how the water molecules orient themselves with one another in solid form that would lead to the six-fold symmetry, and so on. The harder question is why are the six arms always the same. Maybe there are multiple ways the crystal can "start out," and then that leads to six-fold symmetry every time, but in different ways.

 

But that isn't as mystifying to me as trying to get consciousness out of emergence. The structure of a snowflake is still just a structure, and we know that the crystal will have some structure. Awareness seems so far afield from what transistors (for example) do, that I can't see the bridge.

 

Anyway, I'm pointedly trying to avoid making sure and certain claims here. I just observe my awareness, and it looks like their are two ways I can explain it: 1) it "just is" - i.e., it has to do with something new that appears nowhere in our current theories, or 2) it does somehow "just happen" when physical systems become sufficiently complex. It's easier, today, for me, to accept #1. But #1 comes at a cost - it's a full-on admission that we are missing at least one entire chunk of reality from our theories. It would certainly be more satisfying to be able to feel good about #2 (like I said, I like understanding things - it's why I keep pounding my brain against all these areas of science that do not and never will be important to my career). I'd love to avoid the cost of #1 and embrace #2, but my own personal standard of believability hasn't been met. #1 asks me to swallow more "on faith" than I'm able to. But I will keep poking at it.

 

I did chase down my copy of GEB, but I haven't started reading it again yet. Work's been sort of hectic this week. Maybe over the weekend.

[MonDie]

On the other hand, I'm not just jumping for joy at the idea of invoking the unknown. If I could encounter a presentation of consciousness emergence that actually seemed to have any rigorous traction whatsoever (even a hint), I'd reconsider - I agree with the general notion of not introducing extraneous unproven things into the model when the model already provides a plausible explanation. I like understanding things - I get a bigger kick out of that than I can put into words. But I've never seen anyone explain the how of emergence. Every presentation of it I've ever seen pretty much just says "It just does emerge." No explanation - just the claim.

 

To reiterate my original point, it is okay to say that mental phenomena arise from physical phenomena "just because" in the same way that it is okay to say that anything exists at all "just because". If a second moon suddenly materialized in orbit around Earth, the "why not" would be obvious: we have never seen moons materialize out of nothing; it is a violation of the law of conservation of mass. Each of us sees mental activity emerge from brain activity day after day, so it is not clear "why not."

No, that doesn't help me much. My core issue here is that all of the transistors in the computer are still just transistors. Each one still just has a charge distribution in it, and still just has two potential differences (Vgs and Vds) as inputs. They just have no "global" interconnectivity to fuel some mysterious emergence. If you can't look at one transistor and recognize a vehicle for awareness, having 100, or 1000, or 10^10^10 doesn't help.

 

On the other hand, we can see how algorithmic behavior emerges - we have excellent theoretical and engineering understanding of how to get arrays of transistors to do fancy, organized things. But in none of those cases does the computer "know" what it's doing - each transistor is still just doing its transistor thing.

 

You might have a point if all of the transistors had the same open/closed state and the same spatial orientation, but it is their configuration that causes something to emerge.

[KipIngram]

Wait - that sounds like you're positing that the fields within the transistors, if you arrange them in ever so perfect the right way, create some new, higher level field. Am I reading that right? What would the nature of that field be? Does it involve one of the four known forces? When this field appears, would it react on the transistors such that they no longer observed the same equations of operation that they do now?

 

I don't think that's the sort of "emergence" the emergence guys are talking about - I don't think they're invoking any new physics. Just patterns in the operation of the old physics. What you just described (unless I interpreted it wrong) sounds like something just as far outside of existing physics as "fundamental consciousness" would be.

[KipIngram]

MonDie: When I think of emergence in connection with computer applications, the first thing that pops to mind as an example is Conway's Game of Life. The whole thing is driven by those dead-simple little rules, and yet if you watch it go for a while you start to see interesting patterns and so forth. It would be really hard to predict those patterns from the rules themselves (other than by running examples and observing).

[quickquestion]

Hi KipIngram.

 

Self-awareness is a poor choice of words. Sentience is what's relevant.

AI would not have organic tissue or chemicals, so the question is if it could feel geniune sensations like organic entities.

 

Another thing is the sampling entities. It almost appears as if there is only "one" consciousness...simply trying out and sampling the sensation of being inside different brains. If you were in a different brain, you'd think you are a different person, but are actually the same person but with a different set of memories.

[KipIngram]

Ok. We can use whatever word you like, but if we then (in further discussion) start to talk about a formal definition for that word that doesn't include what I'm talking about, then I might change my mind about whether that word applies. It was just the best phrase I could come up with to capture the meaning.

 

I don't see any more reason to believe that organic tissue (cells, etc.) would be any more able to "be aware" or "experience sensation" than silicon transistors. Basically my whole consternation over all of this is that NONE of the laws of physics, at the fundamental level, lead to anything more than a mechanism. The attribute of awareness, or whatever we're calling it, appears absent across the board.

 

I've had that same thought myself (sampling entities). But I don't think we know enough about consciousness to know whether there is one or many. Surface layer observations seem to say "many," but without any notion of the internals of consciousness I don't think it's possible to be sure.

 

I just looked up sentience and found this: "Sentience is the capacity to feel, perceive, or experience subjectively." That seems fine - it more or less captures what I'm talking about. Provided that "feel," "perceive," and "experience" actually mean something other than "register" or "record," because computers can register and record just fine. But I don't think that makes them "aware" per se. So we may have just pushed the discussion down to the meaning of those words (feel, perceive, etc.)

Edited April 22, 2017 by KipIngram

[quickquestion]

Due to the nature of Time, there can be only One consciousness because anything else is a paradox.

[StringJunky]

Due to the nature of Time, there can be only One consciousness because anything else is a paradox.

I wondered how long it would take before someone vandalised the conversation with metaphysical woo.

[quickquestion]

I wondered how long it would take before someone vandalised the conversation with metaphysical woo.

It has very much to do with direct physicality.

We say the Now exists because it feels very physical.

Thus upon our deaths we (hopefully) forget our lives.

This is the nature of physical space...It feels real then we forget it.

But first, it must feel real.

Thus We (Me, I, You, I am You)

must experience it, then forget it.

Thus I am You and I forget your life.

But if I had never forgotten your life, then your life is a paradox in my reality, and does not exist in Block Time.

Edited April 22, 2017 by quickquestion

[KipIngram]

StringJunkie: Yes, before I even started I worried about that. But we got all the way to page 5...

 

quickquestion: I feel awareness. I observe it, and seek to explain it. I haven't been able to do so via straight physics. So in that sense I'm speculating that perhaps awareness represents something not present in our theories. But that's all - it doesn't lead me to presume any "grand structure" to what that missing part might be. My experience gives me no reason to believe that my awareness and anyone else's are connected, just as it gives me no reason to believe there exists one particular "almighty" Awareness.

 

I feel sure about my sensation of my own awareness. One way or another, I feel it. Maybe it's emergence - maybe it's its own fundamental thing. But even if it turns out to be fundamental, I have no basis on which to concoct a theology around it.

Edited April 22, 2017 by KipIngram

[StringJunky]

StringJunkie: Yes, before I even started I worried about that. But we got all the way to page 5...

 

quickquestion: I feel awareness. I observe it, and seek to explain it. I haven't been able to do so via straight physics. So in that sense I'm speculating that perhaps awareness represents something not present in our theories. But that's all - it doesn't lead me to presume any "grand structure" to what that missing part might be. My experience gives me no reason to believe that my awareness and anyone else's are connected, just as it gives me no reason to believe there exists one particular "almighty" Awareness.

 

I feel sure about my sensation of my own awareness. One way or another, I feel it. Maybe it's emergence - maybe it's its own fundamental thing. But even if it turns out to be fundamental, I have no basis on which to concoct a theology around it.

It's a breath of fresh air to see someone trying keep it within the realms of science, especially something as fuzzy and elusive in definition and mechanics as this subject.

[EdEarl]

 

Life is really simple, but we insist on making it complicated. -- Confucius

IMO some here think that making a sentient AI will be more difficult than it will actually be, merely because we currently don't know how to do it.

[StringJunky]

IMO some here think that making a sentient AI will be more difficult than it will actually be, merely because we currently don't know how to do it.

We will probably walk backwards into it without seeing it happening. The nature of emergence is such that we can't predict the result beforehand and may miss it at the time it happens.

Edited April 23, 2017 by StringJunky