Connectionists: Weird beliefs about consciousness

[Juyang Weng]

Dear Tsvi:

You wrote: "I believe scientists not seeing eye-to-eye with each other and
other members of the community is in no small part due to these terms."

I agree.  This is a HUGE problem, as the attached figure "Blind Men and an
Elephant"  indicates.   What should this multidisciplinary community do?
 Senior people do not want to get a PhD in all 6 disciplines in the
attached figure: biology, neuroscience, psychology, computer science,
electrical engineering, mathematics.

Best regards,
-John

On Tue, Feb 15, 2022 at 10:00 PM Tsvi Achler <achler at gmail.com> wrote:

> After studying the brain from a multidisciplinary perspective I am well
> aware of the difficulties speaking and understanding each other across
> disciplines.  There are many terms that are defined differently in
> different fields... and unfortunately things are not as simple as looking
> them up in a dictionary.
>
> For example the term recurrent connections have different meanings in the
> computational neuroscience, neural networks, and cognitive psychology
> communities.
> In neural networks recurrent means an output used back as an input within
> a paradigm of delayed inputs.  It is a method of representing time or
> sequences.  Often recurrent connections in neural networks are confused
> with feedback back to the same inputs which are actually never used in
> neural networks because it forms an infinite loop and is not possible to
> rewind in order to generate an error signal.
> In computational neuroscience recurrent connections are used to describe
> lateral connections.
> In cognitive psychology the term re-entrant connections are used to
> describe feedback back to the same inputs.
>
> I believe in order to truly appreciate "brain-like" ideas, members of this
> group need to familiarize themselves with these brain-focused fields.   For
> example in cognitive psychology there is a rich literature on salience
> (which again is a bit different from salience in the neural network
> community).  Salience is a dynamic process which determines how well a
> certain input or input feature is processed. Salience changes in the brain
> depending on what other inputs or features are concurrently present or what
> the person is instructed to focus on.  There is very little appreciation,
> integration or implementation of these findings in feedforward networks,
> yet salience plays a factor in every recognition decision and modality
> including smell and touch.
>
> Consciousness is a particularly problematic minefield which also adds in
> philosophy, metaphysics and subjectivity into the mix.
>
> Juyang, I think we both agree about the basics: the need for more
> realistic real world recognition and to move beyond the rehearsal
> limitations of neural networks.  I believe scientists not seeing eye-to-eye
> with each other and other members of the community is in no small part due
> to these terms.
>
> Sincerely,
> -Tsvi
>
>
>
> On Tue, Feb 15, 2022 at 9:54 AM Juyang Weng <juyang.weng at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> Dear Tsvi,
>> You wrote "A huge part of the problem in any discussion about
>> consciousness is there isn't even a clear definition of consciousness".
>> Look at the 5 level definition of consciousness:
>> https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/consciousness
>>
>> You wrote: "So consciousness is not necessary or sufficient for complex
>> thoughts or behavior."
>> I was thinking that way too, until recently.
>> I found consciousness IS REQUIRED for even learning basic intelligence.
>> To put it in a short way so that people on this list can benefit:
>> The motors (as context/actions) in the brain require consciousness in
>> order to learn correctly in the physical world.   Please read the first
>> model about conscious learning:
>> J. Weng, "3D-to-2D-to-3D Conscious Learning", in Proc. IEEE 40th
>> International Conference on Consumer Electronics, pp. 1-6, Las Vegas NV,
>> USA, Jan.7-9, 2022. PDF file
>> <http://www.cse.msu.edu/%7eweng/research/ConsciousLearning-ICCE-2022-rvsd-cite.pdf>
>> .
>>
>> Best regards,
>> -John
>> ----
>> From: Tsvi Achler <achler at gmail.com>
>> To: Iam Palatnik <iam.palat at gmail.com>
>> Cc: Connectionists <connectionists at cs.cmu.edu>
>> Subject: Re: Connectionists: Weird beliefs about consciousness
>>
>> --
>> Juyang (John) Weng
>>
>

-- 
Juyang (John) Weng
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