Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Path: utzoo!mnetor!seismo!rutgers!princeton!mind!harnad From: harnad@mind.UUCP (Stevan Harnad) Newsgroups: comp.ai,comp.cog-eng Subject: Re: Minsky on Mind(s) Message-ID: <464@mind.UUCP> Date: Fri, 23-Jan-87 11:10:53 EST Article-I.D.: mind.464 Posted: Fri Jan 23 11:10:53 1987 Date-Received: Sat, 24-Jan-87 00:37:28 EST References: <463@mind.UUCP> Organization: Cognitive Science, Princeton University Lines: 143 Keywords: processes, consciousness, epiphenomenalism Summary: A corporation is not conscious. Consciousness is not a matter of degree. There's a lot of question-begging on the M/B problem. Xref: mnetor comp.ai:176 comp.cog-eng:37 Ken Laws wrote on mod.ai: > Given that the dog >>is<< conscious, > the evolutionary or teleological role of the pain stimulus seems > straightforward. It is a way for bodily tissues to get the attention > of the reasoning centers. Unfortunately, this is no reply at all. It is completely steeped in the anthropomorphic interpretation to begin with, whereas the burden is to JUSTIFY that interpretation: Why do tissues need to get the "attention" of reasoning centers? Why can't this happen by brute cuasality, like everything else, simple or complicated? Nor is the problem of explaining the evolutionary function of consciousness any easier to solve than justifying a conscious interpretation of machine processes. For every natural-selectional scenario -- every nondualistic one, that is, i.e., one that doesn't give consciousness an independent, nonphysical causal force -- is faced with the problem that the scenario is turing-indistinguishable from the exact same ecological conditions, with the organisms only behaving AS IF they were conscious, while in reality being insentient automata. The very same survival/advantage story would apply to them (just as the very same internal mechanistic story would apply to a conscious device and a turing-indistinguishable as-if surrogate). No, evolution won't help. (And "teleology" of course begs the question.) Consciousness is just as much of an epiphenomenal fellow-traveller in the Darwinian picture as in the cognitive one. (And saying "it" was a chance mutation is again to beg the what/why question.) > Why (or, more importantly, how) the dog is conscious in the first place, > and hence >>experiences<< the pain, is the problem you are pointing out. That's right. And the two questions are intimately related. For when one is attempting to justify a conscious interpretation of HOW a device is working, one has to answer WHY the conscious interpretation is justified, and why the device can't do exactly the same thing (objectively speaking, i.e., behaviorally, functionally, physically) without the conscious interpretation. > an analogy between the brain and a corporation, > ...the natural tendency of everyone to view the CEO as the > center of corporate conscious was evidence for emergent consciousness > in any sufficiently complex hierarchical system. I'm afraid that this is mere analogy. Everyone knows that there's no AT&T to stick a pin into, and to correspondingly feel pain. You can do that to the CEO, but we already know (modulo the TTT) that he's conscious. You can speak figuratively, and even functionally, of a corporation as if it were conscious, but that still doesn't make it so. > my previous argument that Searle's Chinese Room > understands Chinese even though neither the occupant nor his printed > instructions do. Your argument is of course the familiar "Systems Reply." Unfortunately, it is open to (likewise familiar) rebuttals -- rebuttals I consider decisive, but that's another story. To telescope the intuitive sense of the rebuttals: Do you believe rooms or corporations feel pain, as we do? > I believe that consciousness is a quantitative > phenomenon, so the difference between my consciousness and that of > one of my neurons is simply one of degree. I am not willing to ascribe > consciousness to the atoms in the neuron, though, so there is a bottom > end to the scale. There are serious problems with the quantitative view of consciousness. No doubt my alertness, my sensory capacity and my knowledge admit of degrees. I may feel more pain or less pain, more or less often, under more or fewer conditions. But THAT I feel pain, or experience anything at all, seems an all-or-none matter, and that's what's at issue in the mind/body problem. It also seems arbitrary to be "willing" to ascribe consciousness to neurons and not to atoms. Sure, neurons are alive. And they may even be conscious. (So might atoms, for that matter.) But the issue here is: what justifies interpreting something/someone as conscious? The Total Turing Test has been proposed as our only criterion. What criterion are you using with neurons? And even if single cells are conscious -- do feel pain, etc. -- what evidence is there that this is RELEVANT to their collective function in a superordinate organism? Organs can be replaced by synthetic substances with the relevant functional properties without disturbing the consciousness of the superordinate organism. It's a matter of time before this can be done with the nervous system. It can already be done with minor parts of the nervous system. Why doesn't replacing conscious nerve cells with synthetic molecules matter? (To reply that synthetic substances with the same functional properties must be conscious under these conditions is to beg the question.) [If I sound like I'm calling an awful lot of gambits "question-begging," it's because the mind/body problem is devilishly subtle, and the temptation to capitulate by slipping consciousness back into one's premises is always there. I'm just trying to make these potential pitfalls conscious... There have been postings in this discussion to which I have given up on replying because they've fallen so deeply into these pits.] > What fraction of a neuron (or of its functionality) > is required for consciousness is below the resolving power of my > instruments, but I suggest that memory (influenced by external > conditions) or learning is required. I will even grant a bit of > consciousness to a flip-flop :-). > The consciousness only exists in situ, however: a > bit of memory is only part of an entity's consciousness if it is used > to interpret the entity's environment. What instruments are you using? I know only the TTT. You (like Minsky and others) are placing a lot of faith in "memory" and "learning." But we already have systems that have remember and learn, and the whole point of this discussion concerns whether and why this is sufficient to justify interpreting them as conscious. To reply that it's again a matter of degree is again to obfuscate. [The only "natural" threshold is the TTT, and that's not just a cognitive increment in learning/memory, but complete functional robotics. And of course even that is merely a functional goal for the theorist and an intuitive sop for the amateur (who is doing informal turing testing). The philosopher knows that it's no solution to the other-minds problem.] What you say about flip-flops of course again prejudges or begs the question. > Fortunately, I don't have my heart set on creating conscious systems. > I will settle for creating intelligent ones, or even systems that are > just a little less unintelligent than the current crop. If I'm right, this is the ONLY way to converge on a system that passes the TTT (and therefore might be conscious). The modeling must be ambitious, taking on increasingly life-size chunks of organisms' performance capacity (a more concrete and specific concept than "intelligence"). But attempting to model conscious phenomenology, or interpreting toy performance and its underlying function as if it were doing so, can only retard and mask progress. Methodological Epiphenomenalism. -- Stevan Harnad (609) - 921 7771 {allegra, bellcore, seismo, rutgers, packard} !princeton!mind!harnad harnad%mind@princeton.csnet