Timeline for Is it possible that non-living systems possess consciousness?
Current License: CC BY-SA 4.0
15 events
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| Oct 27, 2023 at 4:32 | comment | added | NotThatGuy | @Dcleve 'what was unclear in my comment" - a lot of it, actually. I was also still trying to figure out whether you mean there's a "near universal consensus" of non-reducible emergence. You didn't really clarify anything just now. I'm still no closer to knowing what you mean by "weak emergence". Does weak emergence imply reducibility, or not? If yes, then I'm very confused by your "very minority view" claim (because that would be the thing you just agreed to). If no, then your near-universal consensus claim is false (and I certainly didn't "note" something I think is false). | |
| Oct 27, 2023 at 4:11 | comment | added | Dcleve | @NotThatGuy -- what was unclear in my comment? The vast majority of people who accept emergence consider weak emergence to only describe a subset of the phenomenon, and that includes the vast majority of physicalists. You seem to understand my usage, which is the same as yours. Also "when have neural nets exhibited consciousness" is addressed in my review of Churchland, who claims that recursive neural nets ARE conscious by definition. | |
| Oct 27, 2023 at 4:04 | history | edited | Dcleve | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
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| Oct 27, 2023 at 4:03 | comment | added | NotThatGuy | @Dcleve Not sure what you mean by "your weak emergence as a stand in for future reduction". What's weak emergence, if not defined in terms of reducibility? I'll accept that an unqualified "emergence" doesn't typically include weak emergence, but that doesn't stop "weak emergence" from meaning what it does (if it helps, you can think of "weak" like "fake": "fake X" is not a subset of "X"). And that's not (just) my definition, it's the accepted definition of the term (regardless of how common the term itself is). | |
| Oct 27, 2023 at 1:13 | comment | added | Dcleve | @NotThatGuy As you noted there is a near universal consensus that emergence of one sort or another happens. And your weak emergence as a stand in for future reduction is — a very minority view today. Including among physicalists. All other views suffer from the predictive vacuity I noted, but they can at least treat emergence as a phenomenon to explore. But strong emergent physicalists have denied themselves any avenue to do that exploration, at least relative to consciousness, by the doctrine of causal closure. | |
| Oct 26, 2023 at 21:29 | comment | added | NotThatGuy | @Dcleve Sorry, my mistake. I was confusing (strongly) emergent physicalism for the weakly-emergent physicalism of e.g. functionalism. But it seems emergent dualism has a similar problem of when emergence occurs: it suggests there's some specific point of emergence, when what emerged can no longer be reduced to components, yet we have no idea where that point is and many things we once thought irreducible have been reduced. Supernatural dualist claims at least have other evidence too (even if it's all bad evidence) and strong emergence is contrary to how we understand the physical world. | |
| Oct 25, 2023 at 21:19 | comment | added | Dcleve | @NotThatGuy -- I don't know if you have thought thru the problems for emergence. There is currently no general theory of when emergence occurs, nor what will emerge when it operates. This makes emergence claims non-predictive, how can they be tested? For Popperian emergent dualism, Popper at least allows for both-way causal interaction between mind and matter, so the principles of interaction can be characterized. But in emergent physicalism, mind is prohibited from being causal on matter, making testing nearly impossible. How would you advise I phrase these concerns? | |
| Oct 25, 2023 at 12:08 | comment | added | NotThatGuy | "recursive neural nets do not always exhibit consciousness" - When have NNs exhibited consciousness? We haven't made a full artificial replica of the brain, and artificial NNs haven't achieved consciousness, so calling such a hypothetical future classification ad hoc at this stage would make about as much sense as saying "yeah, well, rocks aren't conscious, therefore calling humans conscious is ad hoc and unpredicted". You're ignoring the possibility of there being some non-ad-hoc differentiating criteria. Also, if consciousness is a spectrum, your argument fails much harder. | |
| Oct 24, 2023 at 22:25 | comment | added | J D | lol It's been a while. I do have some annotations in my copy a la Boden's AI philosophy compendium, but I'll review to sharpen the focus. No one may address the question directly if neural functional equivalence crosses the claims that neurons are necessary for consciousness and that there are functional equivalences that are circumscribed with the notion of "neuron". Maybe Searle's work on philosophy and neurology (or was it a dialog edited between Searle and Dennett.) | |
| Oct 24, 2023 at 22:01 | comment | added | Dcleve | @JD I would rate the concept that artificial neural nets are conscious as a mechanical identity theory, however neural nets are currently primarily emulated, making their use in modern AI an algorithmic identity theory. Could you point to where Pitts and McCulloch make any identity theory claim though? cs.cmu.edu/~./epxing/Class/10715/reading/… | |
| Oct 24, 2023 at 20:53 | history | edited | J D | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
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| Oct 24, 2023 at 20:39 | comment | added | J D | Is it true that a neurological-centric theory wouldn't presume that the functional equivalency is the important property, and not the possession of neurons proper? The ANN of Pitts and McCulloch presumes that the model in some way captures the essence. | |
| Oct 24, 2023 at 19:41 | history | edited | Dcleve | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
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| Oct 24, 2023 at 19:38 | comment | added | J D | +1 This answer addresses the question with a broad metaphysical flexibility. | |
| Oct 24, 2023 at 19:32 | history | answered | Dcleve | CC BY-SA 4.0 |