Connectionists: Physics and Psychology (and the C-word)

[Brian J Mingus]

Hi Richard,

> I can tell you that the quantum story isn't nearly enough clear in the
minds of physicists, yet, so how it can be applied to the C question is
beyond me.  Frankly, it does NOT apply:  saying anything about observers
and entanglement does not at any point touch the kind of statements that
involve talk about qualia etc.

I'm not sure I see the argument you're trying to make here. If you have an
outcome measure that you agree correlates with consciousness, then we have
a framework for scientifically studying it.

Here's my setup: If you create a society of models and do not expose them
to a corpus containing consciousness philosophy and they then, in a
reasonably short amount of time, independently rewrite it, they are almost
certainly conscious. This design explicitly rules out a generative model
that accidentally spits out consciousness philosophy.

Another approach is to accept that our brains are so similar that you and I
are almost certainly both conscious, and to then perform experiments on
each other and study our subjective reports.

Another approach is to perform experiments on your own brain and to write
first person reports about your experience.

These three approaches each have tradeoffs, and each provide unique
information. The first approach, in particular, might ultimately allow us
to draw some of the strongest possible conclusions. For example, it allows
for the scientific study of the extent to which quantum effects may or may
not be relevant.

I'm very interested in hearing any counterarguments as to why this general
approach won't work. If it *can't* work, then I would argue that perhaps we
should not create full models of ourselves, but should instead focus on
upgrading ourselves. From that perspective, getting this to work is
extremely important, despite however futuristic it may seem.

> So let's let that sleeping dog lie.... (?).

Not gonna' happen. :)

Brian Mingus
http://grey.colorado.edu

On Tue, Jan 28, 2014 at 7:32 AM, Richard Loosemore <rloosemore at susaro.com>wrote:

> On 1/27/14, 11:30 PM, Brian J Mingus wrote:
>
>> Consciousness is also such a bag of worms that we can't rule out that
>> qualia owes its totally non-obvious and a priori unpredicted existence to
>> concepts derived from quantum mechanics, such as nested observers, or
>> entanglement.
>>
>> As far as I know, my litmus test for a model is the only way to tell
>> whether low-level quantum effects are required: if the model, which has not
>> been exposed to a corpus containing consciousness philosophy, then goes on
>> to independently recreate consciousness philosophy, despite the fact that
>> it is composed of (for example) point neurons, then we can be sure that
>> low-level quantum mechanical details are not important.
>>
>> Note, however, that such a model might still rely on nested observers or
>> entanglement. I'll let a quantum physicist chime in on that - although I
>> will note that according to news articles I've read that we keep managing
>> to entangle larger and larger objects - up to the size of molecules at this
>> time, IIRC.
>>
>>
>> Brian Mingus
>> http://grey.colorado.edu/mingus
>>
>>  Speaking as someone is both a physicist and a cognitive scientist, AND
> someone who has written papers resolving that whole C-word issue, I can
> tell you that the quantum story isn't nearly enough clear in the minds of
> physicists, yet, so how it can be applied to the C question is beyond me.
>  Frankly, it does NOT apply:  saying anything about observers and
> entanglement does not at any point touch the kind of statements that
> involve talk about qualia etc.   So let's let that sleeping dog lie.... (?).
>
> As for using the methods/standards of physics over here in cog sci ..... I
> think it best to listen to George Bernard Shaw on this one:  "Never do unto
> others as you would they do unto you:  their tastes may not be the same."
>
> Our tastes (requirements/constraints/issues) are quite different, so what
> happens elsewhere cannot be directly, slavishly imported.
>
>
> Richard Loosemore
>
> Wells College
> Aurora NY
> USA
>
>
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