Fascinating, and the best summary of the question that I've yet seen in this series of videos. It strikes me that we do not merely experience "red" or "blue" in response to discrete wavelengths of light, but we also experience the colour spectrum as a continuous gradation of colour. So, even though our mapping does not necessarily represent the out-there quality of the wavelengths, our multi-stage process is tuned to experience the underlying "logic" of those wavelengths.
Even if computers aren't conscious, they're still destined for human intelligence before mid-century. And then still exponentially going from there. I'm pretty optimistic about everything, except immortality. Even if an immortality is plausible, the fact that we are currently (and have always been) mortal is unspeakably grim. Even if immortality is 100% going to happen tomorrow, we should still live our lives with the mortality in mind, because not doing so could be robbing ourselves to live.
@Lenny. §1 Yeah, you are right. He doesn't say explicitly that experiences don't have qualitative character. But what he says in the very first part of video is hard to understand if that is not what he means. When talking about "the eight stages" of the processing of vidual stimuli he is merely suggesting that philosophers are sloppy about the details about physiology and prefer to concentrate on an inner realm of phenomena when, really, the physiology gives us the whole story.
3.35 How is prediction of another person's reaction the same as experience something in the first person? We can emphasize with other people and put ourselves in others shoes but the quality of a first person experience is not dependent on if the experience is "valid" or can be predicted or emphasized...
Andreas Ljungström So his point is that there is no such thing as "direct" self-experience; we MODEL our own experience as much as we model another persons experience. A phenomenon like "self-experience" seems to be immediate and therefore essentially private, but the computational approach would say it's in fact a matter of higher order information processing. And the way little John models his own self-experience may be trumped by his close relative who can sense e.g. how an emotion of a past event intermingles with his current behavior. Now normally, obviously the self-model of a grown-up is vastly superior to the models that other persons have of them while interacting with them. But the absolute Cartesian gulf is unwarranted.
Filosofisch voer "So his point is that there is no such thing as "direct" self-experience" On the phenomenal level there is the direct subjective experience. That´s the explanandum for many philosophers of mind and/or researchers into the modern study of consciousness. How it´s caused or constituted, that we don´t know yet. And that´s where the so-called explanatory gap is wide open. By subjective experience I don´t mean the different "me-selves", that different branches of psychology has addressed for years - in this clip Minsky seem to confuse these two. I mean, your subjective experience is yours and only yours from moment to moment, no matter what you identify with. And no one else, experiences you subjectively, even though they could make predictions. "we MODEL our own experience as much as we model another persons experience." Who models? So, what I mean by consciousness is basically subjective experience as a being. By qualia I mean, that something feels like something - has a quality to it.
@daleshankins (1) The term qualia is simply supposed to refer to the way it feels like to be in a certain mental state. When, for instance, you see a red tomato, light of a wave length of 680 nm strikes your retina, and this causes certain cells in the occipital lobe of your brain to fire. At the same time, you have an experience of Red, which feels quite different from, say, the experience of Blue.
Robert Lanza (quantum theories), Sam Parnia, PEter Fenwick, Ebben Alexander III and Pim Vam Lommel say that conscious does not depend of the brain...... that looks pretty intereseting, is there any natural mechanism that allow the process of HOW and WHY a mind must to express itself ?..
@setnoset I'm afraid you have a reading of Kant that goes against his main ideas. His conception of space (which relativity does not negate) is that it is not a measurable substance that we can know, but is part of our cognition of the world and its objects. The thing-in-itself is completely unknown to us, and will always remain so (in Kant), the thing that makes us perceive time and space is because that is the way we are "wired" so to say. An easy intro to Kant is his Prolegomena, highly recom
@setnoset What in QM leaves room for undeterminism? The fact that there are probabilities for a particle/wave in the patterns of movement does not mean it is not deterministic. The particle/wave takes the route it takes not by choice or a random process, it's just for us as observes it is undecidable as to which route it will take. We can only make probabilistic models. Most likely there are problems with the models.
RIP Prof - I'll bet he's loving the fact that now he knows everything and is omnipotent : ) It would have been so amazing to sit and speak with him : ) Much Peace and Love to All : )
@LennyBound i saw the closer to truth reference in the video and went there. i already watched some videos there and bookmarked it so, the point is, the website is getting traffic through youtube so imo it would be wise for them to let the vids stay up.
I don't know if the parallel with the "God of the Gaps" argument is completely justified, however (much like in atheist/theist debates) the issue of who has the burden of proof is constantly shifted. The "qualophiles" (i.e. qualia believers) will argue that we know of the existence of qualia more immediately than knowledge of the external world, while the "qualophobes" (i.e. non-believers) will argue that the concept is incoherent and contrary to everything science tells us about the world.
@0Fear Qualia is a word that is not well-defined. What Minsky is stating is that our understanding, feelings, sense-perceptions are based on computational processes.
@astroboomboy oh I like Kant's metaphysics. and yes relativity tells us that we can make sense of spacetime without talking about the observer. The only absolute quantities are said to be the lorentz invariants. It is them that would give rise to some order to the world. Kant's philosophy has also some absolute aspects. The thing-in-itself is that existance which is the tool by which we can perceive space and time. but for each of us the way this tool is used is different.
(2) In the above story, it would appear that not only do we have a correlation between the wave length and the firing, but also a second corelation between the firing and the subjective experience. This second correlation, though, seems to be something we cannot account for if we confine ourselves to the physics of what is going on. Why? Well, simply because neither the wave-length, nor the brain state, have anything reddish about them.
@DSBrekus [cont.] So it seems that consciousness is either a different property or substance to matter. Look up Brentano for a thorough differentiation. Of course the brain is correlated to consciousness (e.g. pain corresponds to c-fibres firing), but correlation does not mean identity, the cause is not the effect. We cannot verify that other people have consciousness as a result. We only presume it from analogy to ourselves. Hence we could not verify an AI to have consciousness either.
john searle has the best position: consciousness is causally reducible to the brain but not ontologically reducible to the brain..... this does not imply property dualism or any other supernaturalism with regard to consciousness - it merely acknowledges the extraordinarily unique 1st person phenomenon of consciousness which is nonetheless reducible to higher order brain functioning..
@astroboomboy taking notice of your determinism. Bell's theorem tell us this cannot be local. If we take the pilot-wave theory which is a known succeseful determinitic model, we realise that the state or configuration of the particle is not what determines its motion. hence the hidden variables appear not to be physical. so there is determinism but what determines is not physical. perhaps is choice. id welcome a theory that does not allow for this possibility, please tell me if you know any.
@setnoset That's an interesting and bold thought, and it's a view commonly held by neo-confucian philosophers (an interesting read is Mou Zongsan). Mou has written that if Kant is right then the entire field of Chinese philosophy (since it is based on intuition) is a false conception of reality. I'm skeptical but interested in such ideas, although I've found that Hume is my favorite philosopher, and the only philosopher that is completely consistent. But I am of course open to all knowledge!
Firstly, Minsky doesn't say that experiences don't have qualitative character. Secondly, Minsky is merely arguing that we are much less unified than we commonly believe. If we are defining a "person" or a "self" as consisting of a singular unity entity, then (as Minsky states) cognitive science is showing that that pre-scientific notion is non-referential.
And lastly, I imagine what he really meant when he said that he has "no respect" for those philosophers was that he had "no respect" for their ideas and arguments.
Even if we make a machine as he describes we won't be able to know whether it's really conscious (as we perceive consciousness) or it's just doing many complex processes emulating human beings.
@shredftw That may be the case--though I doubt it on both count--but it does not strike me as apparent from the video; the interview is as cogent as can be in reporting the controversies regarding consciousness. In fact, as I call it, Minksy is the only one in this video who can be said to make some statements that appear to miss the point. (Don't get me wrong; I respect Minsky greatly).
(5) And it is precisely at this point that Nagel, Jackson and others have given a new twist to the mind-body problem - the twist that motivates their use of the new terminology of „Qualia" (in place of the old term „secondary qualities"). They grant that the color experience is a brain state, and ask: So what exactly is it about that brain state that makes it an experience „of redness"?
@setnoset I also get what you mean by the modern scientific view. It seems to have a disregard for thought in general and considers speculation to be of no interest. It seems to me that the most brilliant thinkers, like Newton, Hume, Mach, Einstein, where all open minds with speculative tendencies, not boring academic types more concerned with tenure and grants. Keep an open mind!
@daleshankins (1) I think the example of redness could be used nicely to show how the dualists talk about „Qualia", even though it is not strictly grounded in physical evidence, is really nothing but an outgrowth of the scientific world view. Ever since Galileo, physicists have assured us that the so-called secondary qualities - such as colors, tastes and smells - do not, strictly speaking, exist in the material objects we perceive.
@0Fear I have to totally agree with you and also add something - the regress argument for mechanistic explanations. Evidence require explanations. explanations require assumptions. assumptions require justifications. justifications require other assumptions. Ad Infinitum. If we are able to describe the full physical system that means that alhough we have assumptions, we are able to maximising our understanding of the processes by our ability to determine events, given a system. this is a myth.
@setnoset One theory is that all things in space are connected, so nothing is local: every single movement on the tiniest scale has repercussions throughout the entire universe (or at least our part of the universe, as our part of the universe might be local). But yes, the hidden variable theory of Bell is very strange, but there might be extra dimensions on the quantum level that has a causal relationship with what we can observe.
@setnoset That's very interesting. These kind of theories always remind me of Kant's conception of space and time; that they are necessary parts of OUR cognition, meaning that objects conform to our conception of them, so it is impossible in a sense for us to define objects as they are without us observing. Space might indeed be something completely different than how we perceive it.
(10) Sometimes this specific brand of dualism is called „aspect dualism" - since it invites us to imagine the brain state as something akin to a circular arc, which appears convex (=objective) when seen from the outside, and concave (=subjective) when seen from the inside. This double aspect theory is roughly the view of Thomas Nagel. I dont know enough about what the other two champions of Qualia, Frank Jackson and David Chalmers, really think.
@Lenny §2 With the other point you raise, you are right as well. His argument against the existence of persons or selves in the second part of the video is quite independent of what he had to say about qualia before. Rather, it rests on a denial of the unity of the mental, in two different senses: First, the electrochemical activity in the brain doesnt show any spatial convergence in a Cartesian center, ready to be seen by a Mental Eye.
@ Lenny §5 It is as if you wanted to say "I have found out that there are no banks - since, according to my research, the word 'bank' has two meanings". That's silly, isnt it? Actually, Minsky would STILL be right about the concept of a person if the people employing this term used it as what philosophers following Putnam and Lewis call a "theoretical term".
(8) The brain state were talking about can be viewed from two perspectives. From a third-person perspective, you can establish objective facts about it such as the fact that it is caused by light of a wave length of 680 nm. And from a first-person perspective (i.e., when you are in that brain state yourself) you are aware of subjective facts about it, such as the fact that it is an experience of redness.
@Lenny §4 Regarding the first point, the Cartesian idea that persons (if there is such a thing) are not located in space is, after all, rather extravagant. If THAT is all hes arguing against, hell have a great time. Regarding the second point, the fact that the term person is ambiguous seems to be no evidence whatsoever that there is no such thing as a person.
My point was not that it was conscious but that it was complex and it is difficult to imagine that complexity being reduced to its simple form, despite the fact we know it is. I don't think it is generalizing from the particular since it is not a particular but rather EVERYTHING, sorry for the caps but really , everything that has ever been observed has a physical explanation. You are assuming it is not a physical explanation, or agreeing with those who do, based on nothing but intuition.
@ElasticGiraffe He's not a behaviorist, he is closer to what is called nativist (a kind of Kantian approach to the mind as an entity with a priori knowledge of the world). Do you really understand what behaviorism is?
(4) However, if this is just supposed to suggest that redness is not really out there in material objects, it wont count as an objection yet, since this was the very idea that the dualist got so enthusiastic about. The real point of the objection, of course, is the perfectly sensible remark that color experience is a brain state.
@Lenny §3 Second, there is no unity in that there is a multitude of different conceptions of a person or self: the self as subject of sense-experience, self as bearer of moral responsibility, self as the unity of consciousness, self as a connected stream of memory, and so on. He claims that he can enumerate 20 of such conceptions. Now, neither of these two points seems to undermine the existence of persons in any way.
@astroboomboy no ive never said the thing-in-itself is a substance. I just wasnt confident to say that space is only a concept... In this age people see science as an objective thing and space as very real. I dont actually think that is true. about the thing-in-itself being unknown, I have my own view. I think it can be felt, understood by intuition, without words, at a fundamental level beyond the physical. but it can never be 'experienced' by our cognition. but thanks for the recomendation.
I don't see why we couldn't verify that an AI has consciousness, the reason we can't in other people is because we don't know what other people are thinking, but we could have a direct link to the thoughts of the AI. Besides we both know the solipsism argument is rather weak, its silly to think that despite all your experiences with other people that somehow you are the only one with consciousness. As far as my reasons well since everything else ever seen is explained by physical means.. (cont)
you are right on the notion that people do place a very atheist/theist view on discussions and debates that are centred around science and philosophy. Certainly, we do need to lessen this, so that debates can happen at all levels of communication. Yet, I was trying to respond to Mr. Minsky's possible muddling up the concepts between atheists' critical scientific exploration and that of evoking one's imagination. I sometimes am not as clear as I would love to be. Forgive me.
@MrBtorb I don't agree at all; I think the interviewer's points are clear, well-expressed, and central to the mind-body problem. If only all interviewers were this cogent. Minsky's points approach but, to me, do not really answer satisfyingly the challenges of the hard problem of consciousness. (Of course, he only has a few minutes to try). It's a good attempt on both men's parts.
Quantum Physics is the continuing culmination of a lot of scientific work, based on evidence. Things like qualia and the hard problem of consciousness are just examples of the ways people try to argue for their entirely unsupported intuitions. When I said it was muddled garbage I wasn't implying that I didn't understand the meaning of the arguments, I was just shocked that such seemingly intelligent people would argue or support something so obviously false, or even worse, unfalsifiable.
(3) This might seem like a pretty lame trick, on the face of it, and the most natural (and plausible) reaction is the one you gave: "Feelings such as redness may seem very real to the one having them but do they exist separately from the physical brain?"
(2) They are merely „subjective" features of our perceptions. We cannot expect physics to give us any account of them, as they are not really „out there". Now, the dualist wholeheartedly embraces this view and feels that he is entitled, even compelled, to appropriate those homeless properties, which have been banned from the material world, into his alleged world of the mind.
@matchbox555 Qualia is not necessarily something supernatural. For many it is simply the qualitative state that is you in any given moment, the feeling of being. If a physicalist approach can explain that, then great, but if not, we need to start thinking in a different manner. There is simply no answer, although the physicalists like to think they have an answer and publish books with titles like "consciousness explained."
To back up my claim that physical determinism is a myth I will add not only the possibility of quantum determinism but the fact that recent theories of Physics leaves room for a lot of undeterminism, since many are based on principles of Quantum mechanics. a notable example is string theory.
(4) Along such lines, people are indeed tempted to argue that there is some explanatory gap between brain states and subjective experiences. The association with the God of the gaps is unfounded, though. Theists and Atheists argue about whether some explanatory gap, percieved or real, can be bridged by natural causes, or by supernatural causes only. In the case of Qualia, on the other hand, the debate is about whether or not there is any gap to begin with.
(6) The brain state itself, to be sure, is not red at all. And we agreed that the light rays which caused it are, strictly speaking, not red either. Nor are the objects that those light rays were reflected from. Therefore, we have to conclude, a physiologist who assembled all the physical information available about the brain state could never arrive at the fact in question: namely, the fact that the brain state is an experience „of redness".
(3) If a scientist wanted to grasp this peculiar property (this quale) of Redness at all, he would have no other choice than to experience Redness for himself. Thus, this quality is something that is present only from what in the video they call the first-person perspective. It can be found, as it were, only inside the mind, not outside the mind: neither in wave lengths, nor brain states.
@thedeelicious: There is a recent tendency in the United States of America (and almost nowhere else in the world) to assume that all discussions about philosophical or scientific topics must ultimately be about Theism and Atheism: The one big, all-embracing divide which is the only intellectual issue under the sun that really matters. It is understandable that Americans think that way since they have is a strong current of fundamentalism there. But hey, isn't that a little far-fetched here?
@ Lenny §6 In that latter case, what they really meant with the word „person" would be something like: "Whatever in the world it is that satisfies Minskys conditions 1-20". I bet there is no single thing in the world that satisfies all those conditions. But then there is also no philosopher - or ordinary man - in the world who held such a straw man view, or used the word in that sense. "Person" is an ambiguous term, thats true. But what is the big deal about that?
i think. what they're dealing it is awareness and not counsciousness wich according to them it's a representation of experienciable reality (aka phenomenology) On the other hand wether blueness or blue qualia it is more an intersubjectivity dealing with the process counsciousness of itself like the "differentiated process of" it's more like the becoming aware of certain of a certain property, wich in opposittion the counsciousness tries (i.e. when i say a big three i mean all the threes i had met in my life wether aware of them or not, in a practical way or nonpractical - object subject intersubjectivity an so on - or not and all the bigness in the same fashion) or pretend to messeasure according to that "differentiated moment" totally in a "threshold"of counsciousness or more or to be more precise awareness. And for "atheistic philosphers" means some kind of idealism. Or how did Beethoven was able to write so sensitive music in total deafness, only because of his total experience of music and his gradual reduction of sound threshold but at the end not "being aware" of what he was compising but also gradually becoming aware of the effect of the sound waves on all his body as he become deaf integrating this new awarenes to this whole experience of music and his harmonic sensitiveness(phenomenological)
I think Minsky is correct in that "consciousness", in this context (science), is a basket in which we put many different as yet poorly understood brain processes. Does that imply that there is nothing beyond what we think of as physical reality - that materialism reigns supreme ? No, of course not. It might imply, however, that "consciousness" as a scientific concept is of limited value.
"I think Minsky is correct in that "consciousness", in this context (science), is a basket in which we put many different as yet poorly understood brain processes." Isn't it more the case than many of these brain processes occur with consciousness? Thus it's not necessarily a case of people putting disparate phenomena in the same suitcase. Some brain processes, of course, aren't accompanied by consciousness. Thus it could be that Minsky himself is putting non-consciousness brain processes in the same suitcase as brain processes which we are conscious of. "Does that imply that there is nothing beyond what we think of as physical reality - that materialism reigns supreme ? No, of course not. It might imply, however, that "consciousness" as a scientific concept is of limited value." It's been said that even though almost everything can be described in terms of fundamental physical particles, forces, laws, etc., that doesn't mean that physics has all there is to say on physical reality. Take that silly phrase - "the theory of everything". It's not a theory of everything at all - even if it were true. It's a theory of all the fundamental particles, forces, etc - which is not everything. It's not everything even when such particles, forces, etc. provide the basis of much or much or all else.
I don't think there is something called "consciousness" that can be separated from what we think of as its contents. In other words, we have to be conscious OF something in order for what we call consciousness to occur. My hunch is that Minsky is right, and that "consciousness"is just an abstraction that really refers to a certain class (classes?) of brain processes. But this is very like, "which came first the chicken or the egg?" Is there something called "consciousness" which somehow allows certain brain processes to function, or is it the functioning of certain brain processes that, taken together, somehow gives rise to what we call "consciousness"? (Notice "somehow" appears on both sides of the equation.) And, further, even if what we call consciousness arises from the functioning of certain brain processes, could it be an "emergent" property that "somehow" then stands on its own? Even if that is in any sense true, I have to come back to the idea that "consciousness" still would be of questionable meaning apart from its contents. (Conscious of what?) I think what we have here is a snake swallowing its own tail. As to your second paragraph, we totally agree.
@ Lenny §7 Finally, you say that what Minsky means by "I have no respect for philosophers ..." really means sth like "I don't have respect for their arguments". That, again, might be true. But it doesn't matter. What remains is: He expresses disrespect. And that's quite a powerful thing to do if you are a professor who founds a school of thought and appears Online. Although you'll have a lot of disciples, it also means that their views will in part be based on attitude, rather than arguments.
hmmm...just on the opening argument of Martin Minsky's claim that atheists are in some way expressing that there "is more to the world than the physical world" can be quite misleading and not very thoughtful. Though, any person can enable/evoke their imagination, Martin Minsky may wish to be mindful to denote the differences between an atheist who is communicating science and of an atheist who has simply engaged their imagination as a way to express a thought and/or idea.
Ya can't see how a computer is going to become self aware or even aware that it's aware that it's aware, Processing power alone won't cut it me thinks.
Well first of all I would argue that it is in fact falsifiable, we would just need to create an artificial intelligence that has consciousness. To do that we would need to understand the mechanisms that lead to such consciousness in us, proving consciousness to be an entirely mechanical process. Perhaps you could explain where this "explanatory gap" is precisely. What I'm really interested in is why you want to believe in these theories, what is it in you that wants them to be true?
So the brain state underlying visual experience is complex -- why does that show that the experience doesn't have a qualitative character? There can be isolated lesions in the brain, impairing different perceptual capacities -- why does that show that there is not such a thing as a person who's having the experience? Finally: Minsky makes it clear that he has "no respect" for philosophers talking about qualia -- what does this lack of respect have to do with anything?
@astroboomboy I actually subscribe to this theory of interconnectness =). it explains entanglement, but causes problems to the reality of space. It causes us to question what space really is. This interconnectness is also shown by the holographic principle, where the information content of a region is said to be in the 2D surface that bounds this region.
@DSBrekus I could ask you why you want materially-reducible theories to be true. I should point out that I am an atheist. The psychological motives go both ways. The explanatory gap is how consciousness can emerge from purely physical activity (brain activity). E.g. how can billions, even trillions, of molecules and electrons interacting create 'hope'. You cannot 'zoom into' the brain to find hope, like you can zoom into a cloud to find water molecules. [cont.]
Minsky is apparently a devout behaviorist. He avoided the topic of qualia altogether, and seems to think that subjectivity either doesn't exist or is reducible to objectivity. *bangs head on desk*
(7) How then could he possibly arrive at this knowledge? The answer is obvious: He himself would have to BE in that state. Only then would he know what it is like to see red. If he were color blind, he would never know - even though he could still be perfectly omniscient about the physical facts of vision. From these reflections, dualists say, something like the following picture emerges.
(9) It is important to note that this philosophical view is dualistic only in an extremely weak sense. According to the view, there is no such thing as a mysterious mental state that exists over and above the brain state. There is only the brain state, and nothing more. However, not all of the facts about the brain state are physical facts - since not all the facts about the state can be established from a third-person perspective.
I remember when I first heard about "qualia" and, what was it, the "hard problem of conciousness". My only thought was "what muddled garbage are these people talking about". After looking it up and reading about it my opinion hasn't changed in the least, I have no clue why people think there is something special about consciousness. Just another intuitive mistake people have I guess, not that it is intuitive at all to me lol
EclecticSceptic You read my mind haha. It seems to me that people that focus on AI tend to have a more behaviourist approach, mainly because machines can only, so far, mock human behaviour. Some sort of consciousness in an artificial agent is still far from what the field can achieve. I did find Dennett's view on this subject (from the same interviewer) quite enlightening and actually helpful in having artificial agents develop a sort of consciousness (a consciousness under Dennett's interpretation). I highly recommend that interview. watch?v=CPGvu8lT8HY
Yeah true, and it would be very handy for AI researchers, wouldn't it? If consciousness doesn't exist, problem solved! I think Dennett is a great philosopher, and I have a lot of respect for him (and I think there's lots to learn from him on the philosophy of mind) but I'm fairly opposed to his views on the mind - which are tantamount to eliminativist physicalism (consciousness is an 'illusion'). Personally I agree pretty strongly with panpsychism. I recommend you check out David Chalmers if you haven't already.
EclecticSceptic Dennett is not eliminativist; he specifies the meaning of the word consciousness is in ways that you may disapprove of. (It would be very similar to say that he is "eliminativist" with regard to free will.) I think fruitful philosophical discussion begin with a sharp look at definitions. Please give your definition of consciousness (or qualia) and we can be more concrete about the differences.
(cont) ...there is no reason to assume that consciousness is any different or in any way special. As far as how billions even trillions of molecules and electrons interacting not being able to produce "hope", that's just a failure of imagination on your part. Looking at the huge stream of ones and zeros that produced this webpage, indeed everything on youtube, side by side with the site itself, it would be just as difficult to imagine that one produced the other, but we know it did and does.
His argument is cyclical. He says that that our minds are the result of computation and one day AI will become conscious similarly, but he fails to realize that this wont happen without the interference a "qualia" in the first place. The result of computation doesn't have meaning. "Meaning" can only be applied after the fact with a codex. We see without codex. Plus he doesn't explain how we'll be able to tell when an AI becomes conscious when we can only assume other humans are.
@DSBrekus You there commit the fallacy of generalising from the particular, an error Hume identifies as the problem of induction: you have perceived physical means explain things before, therefore assume all things are in that way explainable. But you have not perceived that the unexplained resembles the explained. What you accuse as failure of imagination on my part, is in fact failure of conceptualisation on your part. The webpage is not conscious! Terrible analogy.
(11) Anyway, sorry for these embarrassingly long ramblings. Im just surprised how defensible this position looks when one tries to explain it. Maybe this is just the kind of funny philosophical theory that no hard physical data could confirm or refute. In that respect, its a bit like the view that there is no external world. But I guess this is not a recommendation.
@DSBrekus Do you not realise the limitations of falsifiability? The 'explanatory gap' of mind and matter is necessarily immune to falsifiability as it concerns the metaphysical. Read up on Popper's falsifiability epistemology. Moreover, the whole point is that consciousness is not 3rd-person verifiable - so your implication that the theory is not verifiable, of verifiably false is the height of stupidity.
i don't remember the video that well, but one example: he says something like "philosophers say they know how color vision works functionally but not how it could produce the sensation of blueness in experience" and then he jabs philosophers because they don't actually know how it works functionally and this supposedly makes them look "silly" or some such disparaging term. Now, that's a dumb point by MM because what philosophers mean isn't necessarily that they literally know how vision works functionally (although many do), but that they understand the general fact that a mechanistic chain of events could cleverly be configured to produce the function of seeing, but that conceptually there is a gap between this and experience that NO amount of specific knowledge about actual functionality could mitigate. One little example off the dome. Basically everything he says is dismissive, smug, and off-point.
MrPortraitsofpast Thx for clarifying. Altho I don't share his optimism about the possibility of "thinking" machines, I found him to be quite on point. Personally I'm not sure this conceptual gap you're talking about is not just a result of preconceptions that vanishes once you admit your current experience aka consciousness might be caused by a joint evaluation of your experience by multiple, discreet entities. Cuz then you can think that maybe the experience of anything duzn't lie in sensory input, but on it's interpretation. Like the Epictetus quote goes: "Men are not disturbed by things, but by the views they take of them."
Yes, that's possible re Epictetus. And i'm not saying there is a gap, although i bounce back and forth on that issue. leaving minsky aside, it seems there's a causal chain that starts with sensory input and leads to our being able to do and say and think all the things we do, say, think. Why that ever includes full-fledged experience isn't clear to me. Altho, the possibility you mentioned seems to say: we don't have full-fledged experience the way we think about it---that's just the way we think about it. And that's certainly possible
MrPortraitsofpast I agree with you as to there beeing a causal chain, but considering how our senses are limited in so many ways, I disagree with you that this entails us having full-fledged experience. To be more precise, I think there're things we cannot know and what we can know is subject to interpretation which should be subject to rigorous testing.
Minsky was a true friend of humanity
Rest in Peace, guy. May there be a computational simulation that reproduces your awesomeness with minimal errors.
Fascinating, and the best summary of the question that I've yet seen in this series of videos.
It strikes me that we do not merely experience "red" or "blue" in response to discrete wavelengths of light, but we also experience the colour spectrum as a continuous gradation of colour. So, even though our mapping does not necessarily represent the out-there quality of the wavelengths, our multi-stage process is tuned to experience the underlying "logic" of those wavelengths.
Even if computers aren't conscious, they're still destined for human intelligence before mid-century. And then still exponentially going from there.
I'm pretty optimistic about everything, except immortality. Even if an immortality is plausible, the fact that we are currently (and have always been) mortal is unspeakably grim. Even if immortality is 100% going to happen tomorrow, we should still live our lives with the mortality in mind, because not doing so could be robbing ourselves to live.
Thanks for that beautiful comment.
Thanks Lenny.
There aren't *nearly* enough videos of Minsky on TH-cam.
It is fascinating to watch a genious like Minsky showing that clearly he has absolutely no idea of what the hard problem of consciousness is.
@Lenny. §1 Yeah, you are right. He doesn't say explicitly that experiences don't have qualitative character. But what he says in the very first part of video is hard to understand if that is not what he means. When talking about "the eight stages" of the processing of vidual stimuli he is merely suggesting that philosophers are sloppy about the details about physiology and prefer to concentrate on an inner realm of phenomena when, really, the physiology gives us the whole story.
3.35 How is prediction of another person's reaction the same as experience something in the first person? We can emphasize with other people and put ourselves in others shoes but the quality of a first person experience is not dependent on if the experience is "valid" or can be predicted or emphasized...
Exactly, that was nonsense.
Andreas Ljungström So his point is that there is no such thing as "direct" self-experience; we MODEL our own experience as much as we model another persons experience. A phenomenon like "self-experience" seems to be immediate and therefore essentially private, but the computational approach would say it's in fact a matter of higher order information processing. And the way little John models his own self-experience may be trumped by his close relative who can sense e.g. how an emotion of a past event intermingles with his current behavior. Now normally, obviously the self-model of a grown-up is vastly superior to the models that other persons have of them while interacting with them. But the absolute Cartesian gulf is unwarranted.
Filosofisch voer "So his point is that there is no such thing as "direct" self-experience"
On the phenomenal level there is the direct subjective experience. That´s the explanandum for many philosophers of mind and/or researchers into the modern study of consciousness.
How it´s caused or constituted, that we don´t know yet. And that´s where the so-called explanatory gap is wide open.
By subjective experience I don´t mean the different "me-selves", that different branches of psychology has addressed for years - in this clip Minsky seem to confuse these two. I mean, your subjective experience is yours and only yours from moment to moment, no matter what you identify with. And no one else, experiences you subjectively, even though they could make predictions.
"we MODEL our own experience as much as we model another persons experience."
Who models?
So, what I mean by consciousness is basically subjective experience as a being. By qualia I mean, that something feels like something - has a quality to it.
@daleshankins
(1) The term qualia is simply supposed to refer to the way it feels like to be in a certain mental state. When, for instance, you see a red tomato, light of a wave length of 680 nm strikes your retina, and this causes certain cells in the occipital lobe of your brain to fire. At the same time, you have an experience of Red, which feels quite different from, say, the experience of Blue.
Robert Lanza (quantum theories), Sam Parnia, PEter Fenwick, Ebben Alexander III and Pim Vam Lommel say that conscious does not depend of the brain...... that looks pretty intereseting, is there any natural mechanism that allow the process of HOW and WHY a mind must to express itself ?..
@setnoset I'm afraid you have a reading of Kant that goes against his main ideas. His conception of space (which relativity does not negate) is that it is not a measurable substance that we can know, but is part of our cognition of the world and its objects. The thing-in-itself is completely unknown to us, and will always remain so (in Kant), the thing that makes us perceive time and space is because that is the way we are "wired" so to say. An easy intro to Kant is his Prolegomena, highly recom
@setnoset What in QM leaves room for undeterminism? The fact that there are probabilities for a particle/wave in the patterns of movement does not mean it is not deterministic. The particle/wave takes the route it takes not by choice or a random process, it's just for us as observes it is undecidable as to which route it will take. We can only make probabilistic models. Most likely there are problems with the models.
RIP Prof - I'll bet he's loving the fact that now he knows everything and is omnipotent : ) It would have been so amazing to sit and speak with him : ) Much Peace and Love to All : )
@LennyBound i saw the closer to truth reference in the video and went there. i already watched some videos there and bookmarked it so, the point is, the website is getting traffic through youtube so imo it would be wise for them to let the vids stay up.
I don't know if the parallel with the "God of the Gaps" argument is completely justified, however (much like in atheist/theist debates) the issue of who has the burden of proof is constantly shifted.
The "qualophiles" (i.e. qualia believers) will argue that we know of the existence of qualia more immediately than knowledge of the external world, while the "qualophobes" (i.e. non-believers) will argue that the concept is incoherent and contrary to everything science tells us about the world.
Beautiful.
@0Fear Qualia is a word that is not well-defined. What Minsky is stating is that our understanding, feelings, sense-perceptions are based on computational processes.
@astroboomboy oh I like Kant's metaphysics. and yes relativity tells us that we can make sense of spacetime without talking about the observer. The only absolute quantities are said to be the lorentz invariants. It is them that would give rise to some order to the world.
Kant's philosophy has also some absolute aspects. The thing-in-itself is that existance which is the tool by which we can perceive space and time. but for each of us the way this tool is used is different.
(2) In the above story, it would appear that not only do we have a correlation between the wave length and the firing, but also a second corelation between the firing and the subjective experience. This second correlation, though, seems to be something we cannot account for if we confine ourselves to the physics of what is going on. Why? Well, simply because neither the wave-length, nor the brain state, have anything reddish about them.
@DSBrekus
[cont.]
So it seems that consciousness is either a different property or substance to matter. Look up Brentano for a thorough differentiation.
Of course the brain is correlated to consciousness (e.g. pain corresponds to c-fibres firing), but correlation does not mean identity, the cause is not the effect.
We cannot verify that other people have consciousness as a result. We only presume it from analogy to ourselves. Hence we could not verify an AI to have consciousness either.
excellent video! thanks lenny.. love the closer to truth website - i'll be surprised if they let you keep this up very long though!
john searle has the best position: consciousness is causally reducible to the brain but not ontologically reducible to the brain..... this does not imply property dualism or any other supernaturalism with regard to consciousness - it merely acknowledges the extraordinarily unique 1st person phenomenon of consciousness which is nonetheless reducible to higher order brain functioning..
@astroboomboy taking notice of your determinism. Bell's theorem tell us this cannot be local. If we take the pilot-wave theory which is a known succeseful determinitic model, we realise that the state or configuration of the particle is not what determines its motion. hence the hidden variables appear not to be physical. so there is determinism but what determines is not physical. perhaps is choice.
id welcome a theory that does not allow for this possibility, please tell me if you know any.
@setnoset That's an interesting and bold thought, and it's a view commonly held by neo-confucian philosophers (an interesting read is Mou Zongsan). Mou has written that if Kant is right then the entire field of Chinese philosophy (since it is based on intuition) is a false conception of reality.
I'm skeptical but interested in such ideas, although I've found that Hume is my favorite philosopher, and the only philosopher that is completely consistent. But I am of course open to all knowledge!
Firstly, Minsky doesn't say that experiences don't have qualitative character.
Secondly, Minsky is merely arguing that we are much less unified than we commonly believe. If we are defining a "person" or a "self" as consisting of a singular unity entity, then (as Minsky states) cognitive science is showing that that pre-scientific notion is non-referential.
And lastly, I imagine what he really meant when he said that he has "no respect" for those philosophers was that he had "no respect" for their ideas and arguments.
Even if we make a machine as he describes we won't be able to know whether it's really conscious (as we perceive consciousness) or it's just doing many complex processes emulating human beings.
Prove me you are conscious.
@shredftw That may be the case--though I doubt it on both count--but it does not strike me as apparent from the video; the interview is as cogent as can be in reporting the controversies regarding consciousness. In fact, as I call it, Minksy is the only one in this video who can be said to make some statements that appear to miss the point. (Don't get me wrong; I respect Minsky greatly).
(5) And it is precisely at this point that Nagel, Jackson and others have given a new twist to the mind-body problem - the twist that motivates their use of the new terminology of „Qualia" (in place of the old term „secondary qualities"). They grant that the color experience is a brain state, and ask: So what exactly is it about that brain state that makes it an experience „of redness"?
@setnoset I also get what you mean by the modern scientific view. It seems to have a disregard for thought in general and considers speculation to be of no interest. It seems to me that the most brilliant thinkers, like Newton, Hume, Mach, Einstein, where all open minds with speculative tendencies, not boring academic types more concerned with tenure and grants. Keep an open mind!
I'm still waiting for biologists to solve the hard problem of the élan vital and bridge the explanatory gap between organic and inorganic matter.
@daleshankins
(1) I think the example of redness could be used nicely to show how the dualists talk about „Qualia", even though it is not strictly grounded in physical evidence, is really nothing but an outgrowth of the scientific world view. Ever since Galileo, physicists have assured us that the so-called secondary qualities - such as colors, tastes and smells - do not, strictly speaking, exist in the material objects we perceive.
@0Fear I have to totally agree with you and also add something - the regress argument for mechanistic explanations.
Evidence require explanations. explanations require assumptions. assumptions require justifications. justifications require other assumptions. Ad Infinitum.
If we are able to describe the full physical system that means that alhough we have assumptions, we are able to maximising our understanding of the processes by our ability to determine events, given a system. this is a myth.
@setnoset One theory is that all things in space are connected, so nothing is local: every single movement on the tiniest scale has repercussions throughout the entire universe (or at least our part of the universe, as our part of the universe might be local). But yes, the hidden variable theory of Bell is very strange, but there might be extra dimensions on the quantum level that has a causal relationship with what we can observe.
@setnoset That's very interesting. These kind of theories always remind me of Kant's conception of space and time; that they are necessary parts of OUR cognition, meaning that objects conform to our conception of them, so it is impossible in a sense for us to define objects as they are without us observing. Space might indeed be something completely different than how we perceive it.
(10) Sometimes this specific brand of dualism is called „aspect dualism" - since it invites us to imagine the brain state as something akin to a circular arc, which appears convex (=objective) when seen from the outside, and concave (=subjective) when seen from the inside. This double aspect theory is roughly the view of Thomas Nagel. I dont know enough about what the other two champions of Qualia, Frank Jackson and David Chalmers, really think.
@Lenny §2 With the other point you raise, you are right as well. His argument against the existence of persons or selves in the second part of the video is quite independent of what he had to say about qualia before. Rather, it rests on a denial of the unity of the mental, in two different senses: First, the electrochemical activity in the brain doesnt show any spatial convergence in a Cartesian center, ready to be seen by a Mental Eye.
@ Lenny §5 It is as if you wanted to say "I have found out that there are no banks - since, according to my research, the word 'bank' has two meanings". That's silly, isnt it? Actually, Minsky would STILL be right about the concept of a person if the people employing this term used it as what philosophers following Putnam and Lewis call a "theoretical term".
(8) The brain state were talking about can be viewed from two perspectives. From a third-person perspective, you can establish objective facts about it such as the fact that it is caused by light of a wave length of 680 nm. And from a first-person perspective (i.e., when you are in that brain state yourself) you are aware of subjective facts about it, such as the fact that it is an experience of redness.
@Lenny §4 Regarding the first point, the Cartesian idea that persons (if there is such a thing) are not located in space is, after all, rather extravagant. If THAT is all hes arguing against, hell have a great time. Regarding the second point, the fact that the term person is ambiguous seems to be no evidence whatsoever that there is no such thing as a person.
My point was not that it was conscious but that it was complex and it is difficult to imagine that complexity being reduced to its simple form, despite the fact we know it is.
I don't think it is generalizing from the particular since it is not a particular but rather EVERYTHING, sorry for the caps but really , everything that has ever been observed has a physical explanation.
You are assuming it is not a physical explanation, or agreeing with those who do, based on nothing but intuition.
@ElasticGiraffe He's not a behaviorist, he is closer to what is called nativist (a kind of Kantian approach to the mind as an entity with a priori knowledge of the world). Do you really understand what behaviorism is?
Isn't he big on cryonics and drexler's nanomagic?
is he signing while he talks
(4) However, if this is just supposed to suggest that redness is not really out there in material objects, it wont count as an objection yet, since this was the very idea that the dualist got so enthusiastic about. The real point of the objection, of course, is the perfectly sensible remark that color experience is a brain state.
@Lenny §3 Second, there is no unity in that there is a multitude of different conceptions of a person or self: the self as subject of sense-experience, self as bearer of moral responsibility, self as the unity of consciousness, self as a connected stream of memory, and so on. He claims that he can enumerate 20 of such conceptions. Now, neither of these two points seems to undermine the existence of persons in any way.
@astroboomboy no ive never said the thing-in-itself is a substance. I just wasnt confident to say that space is only a concept... In this age people see science as an objective thing and space as very real. I dont actually think that is true.
about the thing-in-itself being unknown, I have my own view. I think it can be felt, understood by intuition, without words, at a fundamental level beyond the physical. but it can never be 'experienced' by our cognition.
but thanks for the recomendation.
I don't see why we couldn't verify that an AI has consciousness, the reason we can't in other people is because we don't know what other people are thinking, but we could have a direct link to the thoughts of the AI. Besides we both know the solipsism argument is rather weak, its silly to think that despite all your experiences with other people that somehow you are the only one with consciousness.
As far as my reasons well since everything else ever seen is explained by physical means.. (cont)
you are right on the notion that people do place a very atheist/theist view on discussions and debates that are centred around science and philosophy. Certainly, we do need to lessen this, so that debates can happen at all levels of communication. Yet, I was trying to respond to Mr. Minsky's possible muddling up the concepts between atheists' critical scientific exploration and that of evoking one's imagination. I sometimes am not as clear as I would love to be. Forgive me.
@MrBtorb I don't agree at all; I think the interviewer's points are clear, well-expressed, and central to the mind-body problem. If only all interviewers were this cogent. Minsky's points approach but, to me, do not really answer satisfyingly the challenges of the hard problem of consciousness. (Of course, he only has a few minutes to try). It's a good attempt on both men's parts.
Quantum Physics is the continuing culmination of a lot of scientific work, based on evidence.
Things like qualia and the hard problem of consciousness are just examples of the ways people try to argue for their entirely unsupported intuitions.
When I said it was muddled garbage I wasn't implying that I didn't understand the meaning of the arguments, I was just shocked that such seemingly intelligent people would argue or support something so obviously false, or even worse, unfalsifiable.
(3) This might seem like a pretty lame trick, on the face of it, and the most natural (and plausible) reaction is the one you gave: "Feelings such as redness may seem very real to the one having them but do they exist separately from the physical brain?"
(2) They are merely „subjective" features of our perceptions. We cannot expect physics to give us any account of them, as they are not really „out there". Now, the dualist wholeheartedly embraces this view and feels that he is entitled, even compelled, to appropriate those homeless properties, which have been banned from the material world, into his alleged world of the mind.
@matchbox555 Qualia is not necessarily something supernatural. For many it is simply the qualitative state that is you in any given moment, the feeling of being. If a physicalist approach can explain that, then great, but if not, we need to start thinking in a different manner. There is simply no answer, although the physicalists like to think they have an answer and publish books with titles like "consciousness explained."
To back up my claim that physical determinism is a myth I will add not only the possibility of quantum determinism but the fact that recent theories of Physics leaves room for a lot of undeterminism, since many are based on principles of Quantum mechanics. a notable example is string theory.
(4) Along such lines, people are indeed tempted to argue that there is some explanatory gap between brain states and subjective experiences. The association with the God of the gaps is unfounded, though. Theists and Atheists argue about whether some explanatory gap, percieved or real, can be bridged by natural causes, or by supernatural causes only. In the case of Qualia, on the other hand, the debate is about whether or not there is any gap to begin with.
(6) The brain state itself, to be sure, is not red at all. And we agreed that the light rays which caused it are, strictly speaking, not red either. Nor are the objects that those light rays were reflected from. Therefore, we have to conclude, a physiologist who assembled all the physical information available about the brain state could never arrive at the fact in question: namely, the fact that the brain state is an experience „of redness".
(3) If a scientist wanted to grasp this peculiar property (this quale) of Redness at all, he would have no other choice than to experience Redness for himself. Thus, this quality is something that is present only from what in the video they call the first-person perspective. It can be found, as it were, only inside the mind, not outside the mind: neither in wave lengths, nor brain states.
@thedeelicious: There is a recent tendency in the United States of America (and almost nowhere else in the world) to assume that all discussions about philosophical or scientific topics must ultimately be about Theism and Atheism: The one big, all-embracing divide which is the only intellectual issue under the sun that really matters. It is understandable that Americans think that way since they have is a strong current of fundamentalism there. But hey, isn't that a little far-fetched here?
@ Lenny §6 In that latter case, what they really meant with the word „person" would be something like: "Whatever in the world it is that satisfies Minskys conditions 1-20". I bet there is no single thing in the world that satisfies all those conditions. But then there is also no philosopher - or ordinary man - in the world who held such a straw man view, or used the word in that sense. "Person" is an ambiguous term, thats true. But what is the big deal about that?
i think. what they're dealing it is awareness and not counsciousness wich according to them it's a representation of experienciable reality (aka phenomenology) On the other hand wether blueness or blue qualia it is more an intersubjectivity dealing with the process counsciousness of itself like the "differentiated process of" it's more like the becoming aware of certain of a certain property, wich in opposittion the counsciousness tries (i.e. when i say a big three i mean all the threes i had met in my life wether aware of them or not, in a practical way or nonpractical - object subject intersubjectivity an so on - or not and all the bigness in the same fashion) or pretend to messeasure according to that "differentiated moment" totally in a "threshold"of counsciousness or more or to be more precise awareness.
And for "atheistic philosphers" means some kind of idealism.
Or how did Beethoven was able to write so sensitive music in total deafness, only because of his total experience of music and his gradual reduction of sound threshold but at the end not "being aware" of what he was compising but also gradually becoming aware of the effect of the sound waves on all his body as he become deaf integrating this new awarenes to this whole experience of music and his harmonic sensitiveness(phenomenological)
I think Minsky is correct in that "consciousness", in this context (science), is a basket in which we put many different as yet poorly understood brain processes. Does that imply that there is nothing beyond what we think of as physical reality - that materialism reigns supreme ? No, of course not. It might imply, however, that "consciousness" as a scientific concept is of limited value.
"I think Minsky is correct in that "consciousness", in this context (science), is a basket in which we put many different as yet poorly understood brain processes."
Isn't it more the case than many of these brain processes occur with consciousness? Thus it's not necessarily a case of people putting disparate phenomena in the same suitcase. Some brain processes, of course, aren't accompanied by consciousness. Thus it could be that Minsky himself is putting non-consciousness brain processes in the same suitcase as brain processes which we are conscious of.
"Does that imply that there is nothing beyond what we think of as physical reality - that materialism reigns supreme ? No, of course not. It might imply, however, that "consciousness" as a scientific concept is of limited value."
It's been said that even though almost everything can be described in terms of fundamental physical particles, forces, laws, etc., that doesn't mean that physics has all there is to say on physical reality. Take that silly phrase - "the theory of everything". It's not a theory of everything at all - even if it were true. It's a theory of all the fundamental particles, forces, etc - which is not everything. It's not everything even when such particles, forces, etc. provide the basis of much or much or all else.
I don't think there is something called "consciousness" that can be separated from what we think of as its contents. In other words, we have to be conscious OF something in order for what we call consciousness to occur. My hunch is that Minsky is right, and that "consciousness"is just an abstraction that really refers to a certain class (classes?) of brain processes. But this is very like, "which came first the chicken or the egg?" Is there something called "consciousness" which somehow allows certain brain processes to function, or is it the functioning of certain brain processes that, taken together, somehow gives rise to what we call "consciousness"? (Notice "somehow" appears on both sides of the equation.) And, further, even if what we call consciousness arises from the functioning of certain brain processes, could it be an "emergent" property that "somehow" then stands on its own? Even if that is in any sense true, I have to come back to the idea that "consciousness" still would be of questionable meaning apart from its contents. (Conscious of what?) I think what we have here is a snake swallowing its own tail.
As to your second paragraph, we totally agree.
@ Lenny §7 Finally, you say that what Minsky means by "I have no respect for philosophers ..." really means sth like "I don't have respect for their arguments". That, again, might be true. But it doesn't matter. What remains is: He expresses disrespect. And that's quite a powerful thing to do if you are a professor who founds a school of thought and appears Online. Although you'll have a lot of disciples, it also means that their views will in part be based on attitude, rather than arguments.
hmmm...just on the opening argument of Martin Minsky's claim that atheists are in some way expressing that there "is more to the world than the physical world" can be quite misleading and not very thoughtful. Though, any person can enable/evoke their imagination, Martin Minsky may wish to be mindful to denote the differences between an atheist who is communicating science and of an atheist who has simply engaged their imagination as a way to express a thought and/or idea.
Ya can't see how a computer is going to become self aware or even aware that it's aware that it's aware, Processing power alone won't cut it me thinks.
Well first of all I would argue that it is in fact falsifiable, we would just need to create an artificial intelligence that has consciousness. To do that we would need to understand the mechanisms that lead to such consciousness in us, proving consciousness to be an entirely mechanical process.
Perhaps you could explain where this "explanatory gap" is precisely.
What I'm really interested in is why you want to believe in these theories, what is it in you that wants them to be true?
So the brain state underlying visual experience is complex -- why does that show that the experience doesn't have a qualitative character?
There can be isolated lesions in the brain, impairing different perceptual capacities -- why does that show that there is not such a thing as a person who's having the experience?
Finally: Minsky makes it clear that he has "no respect" for philosophers talking about qualia -- what does this lack of respect have to do with anything?
@astroboomboy I actually subscribe to this theory of interconnectness =). it explains entanglement, but causes problems to the reality of space. It causes us to question what space really is. This interconnectness is also shown by the holographic principle, where the information content of a region is said to be in the 2D surface that bounds this region.
@DSBrekus
I could ask you why you want materially-reducible theories to be true. I should point out that I am an atheist. The psychological motives go both ways.
The explanatory gap is how consciousness can emerge from purely physical activity (brain activity). E.g. how can billions, even trillions, of molecules and electrons interacting create 'hope'. You cannot 'zoom into' the brain to find hope, like you can zoom into a cloud to find water molecules.
[cont.]
Minsky is apparently a devout behaviorist. He avoided the topic of qualia altogether, and seems to think that subjectivity either doesn't exist or is reducible to objectivity. *bangs head on desk*
(7) How then could he possibly arrive at this knowledge? The answer is obvious: He himself would have to BE in that state. Only then would he know what it is like to see red. If he were color blind, he would never know - even though he could still be perfectly omniscient about the physical facts of vision. From these reflections, dualists say, something like the following picture emerges.
@DSBrekus
It's 'muddled garbage' to you as you seem to not understand it at all. Quantum Physics would seem 'muddled garbage' to an eskimo.
All of the others are still up, so we'll see what happens.
*crosses fingers*
(9) It is important to note that this philosophical view is dualistic only in an extremely weak sense. According to the view, there is no such thing as a mysterious mental state that exists over and above the brain state. There is only the brain state, and nothing more. However, not all of the facts about the brain state are physical facts - since not all the facts about the state can be established from a third-person perspective.
I remember when I first heard about "qualia" and, what was it, the "hard problem of conciousness".
My only thought was "what muddled garbage are these people talking about".
After looking it up and reading about it my opinion hasn't changed in the least, I have no clue why people think there is something special about consciousness.
Just another intuitive mistake people have I guess, not that it is intuitive at all to me lol
I came here expecting to be enlightened, instead I just heard several minutes of behaviourist folly.
EclecticSceptic You read my mind haha. It seems to me that people that focus on AI tend to have a more behaviourist approach, mainly because machines can only, so far, mock human behaviour. Some sort of consciousness in an artificial agent is still far from what the field can achieve. I did find Dennett's view on this subject (from the same interviewer) quite enlightening and actually helpful in having artificial agents develop a sort of consciousness (a consciousness under Dennett's interpretation). I highly recommend that interview. watch?v=CPGvu8lT8HY
Yeah true, and it would be very handy for AI researchers, wouldn't it? If consciousness doesn't exist, problem solved!
I think Dennett is a great philosopher, and I have a lot of respect for him (and I think there's lots to learn from him on the philosophy of mind) but I'm fairly opposed to his views on the mind - which are tantamount to eliminativist physicalism (consciousness is an 'illusion').
Personally I agree pretty strongly with panpsychism. I recommend you check out David Chalmers if you haven't already.
EclecticSceptic Dennett is not eliminativist; he specifies the meaning of the word consciousness is in ways that you may disapprove of. (It would be very similar to say that he is "eliminativist" with regard to free will.) I think fruitful philosophical discussion begin with a sharp look at definitions. Please give your definition of consciousness (or qualia) and we can be more concrete about the differences.
***** Could you give a definition? (Compare: it's never safe to say one is an atheist as long as God hasn't been defined.)
EclecticSceptic Minsky >> > > Chalmers
Lol he didn't give any answer whatsover, just says 'once we find all the information it will make sense'.
(cont)
...there is no reason to assume that consciousness is any different or in any way special.
As far as how billions even trillions of molecules and electrons interacting not being able to produce "hope", that's just a failure of imagination on your part.
Looking at the huge stream of ones and zeros that produced this webpage, indeed everything on youtube, side by side with the site itself, it would be just as difficult to imagine that one produced the other, but we know it did and does.
His argument is cyclical. He says that that our minds are the result of computation and one day AI will become conscious similarly, but he fails to realize that this wont happen without the interference a "qualia" in the first place. The result of computation doesn't have meaning. "Meaning" can only be applied after the fact with a codex. We see without codex. Plus he doesn't explain how we'll be able to tell when an AI becomes conscious when we can only assume other humans are.
@DSBrekus
You there commit the fallacy of generalising from the particular, an error Hume identifies as the problem of induction: you have perceived physical means explain things before, therefore assume all things are in that way explainable. But you have not perceived that the unexplained resembles the explained.
What you accuse as failure of imagination on my part, is in fact failure of conceptualisation on your part. The webpage is not conscious! Terrible analogy.
(11) Anyway, sorry for these embarrassingly long ramblings. Im just surprised how defensible this position looks when one tries to explain it. Maybe this is just the kind of funny philosophical theory that no hard physical data could confirm or refute. In that respect, its a bit like the view that there is no external world. But I guess this is not a recommendation.
@DSBrekus
Do you not realise the limitations of falsifiability? The 'explanatory gap' of mind and matter is necessarily immune to falsifiability as it concerns the metaphysical. Read up on Popper's falsifiability epistemology.
Moreover, the whole point is that consciousness is not 3rd-person verifiable - so your implication that the theory is not verifiable, of verifiably false is the height of stupidity.
It's disappointing to watch such a brilliant man engaging in straw man arguments.
well that was just another example of someone saying alot,,,and telling you nothing,,,,he might as well be a politition
The interviewer has one of the creepiest laughs I've heard in a while. Wtf is laughing at anyway? 0:56 1:00 1:44 2:24 2:42 4:32
Minsky cannot even recognise the problem conceptually, from his answers here. What a fool.
very very smart guy, but idiotic philosophically. He's making logical mistakes everywhere here.
+MrPortraitsofpast For example?
i don't remember the video that well, but one example: he says something like "philosophers say they know how color vision works functionally but not how it could produce the sensation of blueness in experience" and then he jabs philosophers because they don't actually know how it works functionally and this supposedly makes them look "silly" or some such disparaging term. Now, that's a dumb point by MM because what philosophers mean isn't necessarily that they literally know how vision works functionally (although many do), but that they understand the general fact that a mechanistic chain of events could cleverly be configured to produce the function of seeing, but that conceptually there is a gap between this and experience that NO amount of specific knowledge about actual functionality could mitigate. One little example off the dome. Basically everything he says is dismissive, smug, and off-point.
MrPortraitsofpast
Thx for clarifying.
Altho I don't share his optimism about the possibility of "thinking" machines, I found him to be quite on point.
Personally I'm not sure this conceptual gap you're talking about is not just a result of preconceptions that vanishes once you admit your current experience aka consciousness might be caused by a joint evaluation of your experience by multiple, discreet entities. Cuz then you can think that maybe the experience of anything duzn't lie in sensory input, but on it's interpretation. Like the Epictetus quote goes: "Men are not disturbed by things, but by the views they take of them."
Yes, that's possible re Epictetus. And i'm not saying there is a gap, although i bounce back and forth on that issue. leaving minsky aside, it seems there's a causal chain that starts with sensory input and leads to our being able to do and say and think all the things we do, say, think. Why that ever includes full-fledged experience isn't clear to me. Altho, the possibility you mentioned seems to say: we don't have full-fledged experience the way we think about it---that's just the way we think about it. And that's certainly possible
MrPortraitsofpast
I agree with you as to there beeing a causal chain, but considering how our senses are limited in so many ways, I disagree with you that this entails us having full-fledged experience. To be more precise, I think there're things we cannot know and what we can know is subject to interpretation which should be subject to rigorous testing.