Consciousness
Consciousness
In Beat Your Addiction we emphasize the problems caused by dichotomous thinking. Dichotomous thinking not only causes problems in addictions and mental illness, but also in philosophical and scientific areas. One of these is the problem of consciousness. How does the machinery of the brain create awareness, consciousness, self-awareness, etc.? It seems mysterious, and people search for the answer in mysticism, vital forces, quantum theory, and neuronal structures. The difficulty is that in dichotomous thinking, a being is either conscious or not. Plants don't have awareness, humans do. Worms, we don't know, and people argue about that in the same way that biologists argue about whether viruses are or are not alive.
But if we think in shades of gray rather than black or white, the mystery fades. If we think of levels of consciousness from primitive bare awareness to high level self-consciousness there is less mystery because there is no sudden emergence of this wonderful phenomenon from out of some mysterious mechanism. The problem is clarified still further if the levels of consciousness are seen as a series embedded in a continuum of responsivity from the simplest response, the deflection of two subatomic particles which collide, to the most complex, human self-consciousness.
We'll have more to say about this issue from time to time. What do you think? Let us know.
Thought question: can a computer become conscious? Can it have self awareness?
In Beat Your Addiction we emphasize the problems caused by dichotomous thinking. Dichotomous thinking not only causes problems in addictions and mental illness, but also in philosophical and scientific areas. One of these is the problem of consciousness. How does the machinery of the brain create awareness, consciousness, self-awareness, etc.? It seems mysterious, and people search for the answer in mysticism, vital forces, quantum theory, and neuronal structures. The difficulty is that in dichotomous thinking, a being is either conscious or not. Plants don't have awareness, humans do. Worms, we don't know, and people argue about that in the same way that biologists argue about whether viruses are or are not alive.
But if we think in shades of gray rather than black or white, the mystery fades. If we think of levels of consciousness from primitive bare awareness to high level self-consciousness there is less mystery because there is no sudden emergence of this wonderful phenomenon from out of some mysterious mechanism. The problem is clarified still further if the levels of consciousness are seen as a series embedded in a continuum of responsivity from the simplest response, the deflection of two subatomic particles which collide, to the most complex, human self-consciousness.
We'll have more to say about this issue from time to time. What do you think? Let us know.
Thought question: can a computer become conscious? Can it have self awareness?
posted by
PsychologicalSolutions | 3:59 PM
12 Comments:
Many people have spent a lot of energey speculating about what it would mean for a computer to become conscious. The "shades of gray" theme is particularly important to apply here as well. Because some of the base needs (what would "thirst" mean to a computer) would be different, it's not obvious that we would recognize consciousness in a computer if we tripped on it. There's also no obvious reason it should be all that different. In short, we don't know. This is a new type of gray: the all-shades gray, where lack of information blocks sound inference or judgement.
BTW, Doc, nice site!
oriel
Oriel,I will get back to you on this soon.Ken
Oriel,
I wrote a long response to your brilliant comment but it vanished; I suspect my computer does not want the world to know the truth about computres and consciousness. So I will try to do this in stages.
First: One thing that makes it difficult to know whether a computer is conscious or not is the absense of behavioral cues which we associate with emotions, feelings, or motives. Although such behaviors can possibly exist as reflexes in the absence of what we recognize as consciousness, they are subjectively convincing. In future comments I will try to design a computer that has such bahaviors, one step at a time.
Ken
Oriel,
First step: Suppose we attach a projection to the computer-a metal bar with heat sensors that the computer is programmed to respond to on screen. We put an ice cube on the bar and the computer says "25 degrees Fafenheit". Do we think the computer is conscious? No, we would probably say it's just a machine no more conscious than a thermostat,just acting automatically as it has been programmed to do. It doesn't feel anything and doesn't even know that it is registering the temperature.
Now let's add some programming that causes the computer to say "You have applied a stimulus to my heat sensors and I read the temperature at 25 degrees F." Also, at other times it says "My sensors tell me it's 70 degrees F. right now". Is it conscious yet? No,that's clever but no sale. O.K., we'll think a bit more about this-more to come shortly.
Ken
Oriel,
O.K. so now we make the arm retractible-we have created a simple robot that pulls the arm back when the stimulus is below the freezing point of water or above the boiling point, temperatures that damage living tissue and, I presume, electronic circuitry. We also make the computer's language more "human", that is more emotive. Apply, for variety, a flame: arm retracts and computer says "Ouch! Stop it you bastard; that could damage my sensors.That was 300 degrees F.! Are you nut's?" We say "Extend your arm". Computer, now equipped with a delayed response mechanism, says "Not until you promise not to hurt me again. Click on Y if you promise, N if you don't promise". We click on Y and the arm is extended. Are we convinced yet? I'm getting closer to thinking-damn, this thing is like live, know what I mean? And all we've done is increase the complexity of the program and the associated mechanics. Have you ever boiled a live lobster? Some people, Julia Child perhaps, would say it's too primitive, too dumb to even know it's being hurt; others would say we're doing something cruel and barbaric. Are we at the lobster level of consciousness yet with our computer? I think so far we're not talking about any exotic technology. It seems to me that any highschool science fair winner would find this easy to do. More to come.
Ken
Oriel,
I just lost another long comment. I swear this damn computer is dicking with me! The essence of the next step was to add more memory so the computer can track changes in temperature and to adjust the arm so that it can withdraw at varying rates depending on the potential threat to it's well being. Well, I'll try that again when I feel more patient.
Ken
Oriel,
Next step: we add more memory to the system so that it can track changes in temperature and tell us "It feels 90 degrees and has gone up 20 degrees in the last 2 minutes---now it feels 110 degrees and has gone up another 20 degrees in the last 2 minutes; it's getting uncomfortably hot; please reduce the temperature back to a normal range of 50 to 90 degrees.
Oh, when you weren't watching I rigged the arm to withdraw at different rates depending on how extreme the temperature is and, perhaps, how fast it is changing.
In the next installment of our serial we'll see how that works out.
Ken
Oriel,
Next episode. We continue to raise the temperature of the stimulus; the arm starts to slowly withdraw and the computer says "Now it feels like 130 degrees and has gone up 20 degrees in the last 2 minutesz. I'm feeling really hot; remember, you promised not to hurt me. Please reduce the temperature back to a normal range of 50 to 90 degrees." Then a bit later, "Hey, it's 150 degrees (arm retracts more rapidly); I know what your'e up to you S.O.B. One more degree and I'm gone. Your'e breaking your promise!" To be continued.
Ken
Oriel,
So, are we up to dog consciousness yet? Is your dog that smart? Are we convinced yet? Remember,these are just preprogrammed responses triggered by specific tenperatures and temperature changes with only a modicum of learning. But how much different is our lobster, our dog-how much different are we?
One objection that could be raised to the idea that our computer is conscious is that consciousness trandscends any one sensory modality and so our computer is still just a fancy, albeit chatty, thermostat.
No problem, see next comment.
Ken
Oriel,
So now we add similar systems for visual brightness, pattern recognition (a tough one but it's being done), sound and chemoreception plus subroutines that respond to combinations of different kinds of stimuli. Now the computer is saying things like "It's getting too hot and noisy", or "I'm getting confused; I'm being overstimulated-there's too much going on here; I can't process it all." Interestingly, this latter limitation of the machine's ability to be aware of many things at once makes it seem all the more human like. If a friend of ours says "Hold on, I can't talk on the phone and pay attention to you at the same time" that seems quite normal and we would never see that as evidence of less than human consciousness. If he were to hold both conversations simultaneously while working on a crossword puzzle we could be forgiven for wondering whether he had been replaced by a machine! More to come on this but eventually we will have to address the issue of whether the computer experiences the different stimuli differently. Can a computer have "qualia"? Does it sense pain and blue differently and the way that we do? But we're getting ahead of ourselves. To be continued.
Ken
Well, after more than a year during which I read a lot of consciousness literature and during which Marty was diagnosed with cancer and died, let me return to my comments to Oriel; my example of a possibly conscious computer. Here's another example of limitation looking like evidence of consciousness. "It's getting too dark in here and I can't see the pattern clearly. Ah, that's better, it's the circles or the hexagons, not the sqquares. Ah, that's better yet, it's the hexagons." To be continued.
Now read the new post "Consciousness continued".
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