From: Scott Roberts (jse885@earthlink.net)
Date: Sun Oct 17 2004 - 18:23:48 BST
Mark,
> I do have a comment re your rejection of the materialistic theory of
> consciousness (see below). Personally, I'm on the fence about this
> because I think that, so far, science has not managed to to come up
> with a configuration of matter that produces anything close to self-
> awareness. However, if AI scientists do, in time, produce computers
> (or more likely thousand or millions of computers running in
> parallel) that are able to demonstrate truly heuristic decision-
> making, not just super-sophisticated logic-tree or algorithmic type
> processing, this would probably convince me that consciousness can
> emerge from matter, especially if such a machine passed a rigorous
> Turing test with colors flying.
It's not going to happen within my lifetime, and I doubt it will happen at
all. I spent 5 years as a grad student of computer/cognitive science, but
quit after realizing that the whole enterprise was based on fallacious
premises (see below). So the possibility of a machine passing the Turing
test is, to me, irrelevant. I have to choose now whether to think about
consciousness in materialist terms or in non-materialist terms. For the
reasons given, I have chosen non-materialism. Build such a machine, and
then ask me again.
>
> My questions to you, and anyone else who wants to answer are: Would
> this scientific development convince you that awareness is
> fundamentally materialistic?
Probably not. There is no denying that consciousness is affected by the
workings of the brain. But that does not, and I don't see how anything can,
discriminate between the idea that the brain creates consciousness and the
idea that the brain channels consciousness. So if a machine could pass the
Turing test, how do we know it is not channelling, just as a human brain
does?
If not, is there any scientific or
> rational development that would?
Who's to say? "Any scientific or rational development" is meaningless. And
what do you have in mind of a rational development that is not scientific?
My choice on how to think about consciousness is based on applying reason
to current knowledge, both scientific and non-scientific. The latter
includes knowing what it is like to be conscious.
If not, would you then agree that
> your continued belief in the non-material nature of consciousness is
> irrational?
As long as there are non-materialist explanations for the same data,
choosing materialism or non-materialism is always a non-scientific choice.
Would you say that, based on current knowledge, including your knowledge of
what it is like to be conscious, a belief in a material nature of
consciousness is rational?
>
> Now, my one comment on Scott's reasoning for rejecting the
> materialistic theory of awareness...
>
> On 15 Oct 2004 at 17:06, Scott Roberts wrote:
> My reasoning on rejecting a materialist theory of consciousness is,
> briefly, that we are aware of big things, but materialism supposes
> that awareness comes about by the brain putting together a lot of
> little things (like photons or molecules). This is, in my view,
> impossible, since each little thing is separated in space and/or time
> from each other little thing. Since the brain is also composed of
> little things, there could be no awareness of anything bigger than
> the little things.
>
> msh comments:
> I think a nuerobiologist would say that a human brain and nervous
> system is considerably more than a mass of "little things" out of
> spatial and temporal contact with one another, or with the outside
> world. Jim might want to correct me on this, but my impression is
> that science regards the brain as an incredibly complex system of
> billions of nuerons and synapses that have evolved over billions of
> years to work together to provide, so far, unmatched parallel
> processing power.
Sure it is incredibly complex. But adding complexity and parallelism has no
effect on my argument. If one assumes that the brain is solely a
spatio-temporal mechanism, that is, one assumes that that which "makes
consciousness" does not require bringing in non-locality, then my argument
holds. If the whole thing reduces to electrons and photons, and if the only
channel from one electron to another is assumed to be a photon, then there
can be no gestalt bigger than one electron absorbing or emitting one
photon. And as I said, to be aware of even that requires memory. Now it
could be that this electron/photon business is inaccurate, that there may
be unknown physical laws that have a bearing. I would bet, though, that
these unknown physical laws will have no spatiotemporal model, as the
current ones do not. So it seems pretty silly to me try to build a
conscious machine based on spatiotemporal models, as all current work in AI
does.
A functionalist will argue that there is no merging, that perception "just
is" the highly organized multitude of lowest level events. This is just
arm-waving. One needs to bear in mind that it is a belief in materialism
that creates the problem of consciousness in the first place. Back in
Locke's day was born the idea that all explanations should be in terms of
what we perceive (empiricism). Locke assumed that space and time existed
independently of our minds, that in perceiving we add color, taste, and so
on to spatio-temporal things. But, staying in this scenario, we learn that
the channels from the things to our minds are photons, air vibrations, and
molecules, ultimately (according to present theory), photons, electrons,
and quarks, which we don't perceive, and which we cannot even picture as
spatio-temporal things (we need mathematics to describe their workings, or
more accurately, how to predict how they will appear to spatio-temporal
observation). So, now, what it matter? It is not the big things of our
perception, since that is all put together by our minds. But, illogically,
the materialist assumes that the process of perception can be described in
terms of the little things *as if the little things (electrons, photons)
exist in the same sort of reality that the big things do*. In other words,
the empirical dictum that works well with describing how big things work is
being illegitimately applied to the process that creates the big things in
the first place. This is an attempt to pick oneself up by pulling on one's
hair (the Baron Munchausen fallacy).
By the way, if you can't imagine that space and time are also added by the
process of perception, ask yourself where the space and time of your dreams
come from.
- Scott
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