Substrate-independent minds

[Constance]

It may very well turn out that consciousness is dependent on engineering identical to a human brain in every respect, however we just don't know the answer to that yet.

By 'engineering' do you mean engineering of the 'data-processing' system itself without the downloading or uploading of informational data to the system? In other words, the production of an AI data processing system without data, yielding a kind of tabula rasa? Aren't AI engineers currently laying down data (about the world as they interpret it) at the same time as they are engineering the artificial processor? Wouldn't they have to do so to provide the AI with an informational basis from which to operate?

In either case I think there is bound to be an immense difference between the 'database' of any AI construction and the human brain since nature has engineered brains to evolve through the interactive experiences of individuals and species from primitive cells to ourselves in the physically evolving world.

How we contemporary humans variously conceive of the undefined term 'information' likewise seems to depend on how we variously conceive of 'reality', i.e., what is real. Tononi and Koch seem to have come back to a concept of reality long recognized by our species as the actual temporally changing world that we and other animals experience consciously and subconsciously. Nature has endowed us with an enormous store of information held subconsciously, by virtue of which we function much of the time. We do not yet know much about the subconscious mind and its influences on conscious experience and thus its contributions to mind as expressed in human thought. This is another major question impinging on the idea (I'm tempted to say 'notion') that we can engineer an artificial intelligence that possesses consciousness and mind remotely like our own.

Rightly or wrongly, IIT suggests that consciousness arises from information processed/organized/integrated in a particular manner.

The 'particular manner' is the question being begged. I think we have to take IIT as a work in progress and wait to see what ultimate form it takes in the thinking of Tononi, Koch, and their research group.

 

[Randall]

By 'engineering' do you mean engineering of the 'data-processing' system itself without the downloading or uploading of informational data to the system? In other words, the production of an AI data processing system without data, yielding a kind of tabula rasa?

I like your posts Constance because you introduce interesting research and phrases I've not heard before, even if I may have contemplated the ideas behind them separately. In this case, you mention the phrase "tabula rasa". I don't think the human brain is a blank slate. Certain functions are "hard-wired". For example the ability to take-in perceptual stimuli and commit elements of it to memory. We can certainly become better at doing that with practice, but it happens all on its own as well. An engineered brain might very well be able to include predetermined information within the regions used for memory.

We have no reason to think that two identical brains wouldn't possess identical memory, and assuming the recollection of memory is a type of experience, that means both brains would have virtually identical experiences. Yet each brain would also be its own individual self. That is why I don't think the type of reincarnation that most people imagine is possible ( e.g. Because of reincarnation living Sally is actually dead Peter because living Sally has memories that seem to correspond to those dead Peter may have had ). Memories, even if it were possible to somehow replicate them perfectly within a new brain doesn't make the owner of the new brain into anyone else ( e.g. living Sally would still be living Sally, but with some anomalous memories present in the cells responsible for memory. )

 

[boomerang]

A small faction of theorists, such as Roger Penrose and Stuart Hameroff, devote a great deal of effort in putting forth the view that consciousness must be more than just a problem solving algorithm executed by "switches". Hence, according to Penrose and others, consciousness is not substrate independent, but is somehow reliant on (brace yourself) quantum processes involving phenomena such as superposition and wave function collapse that originate within
structures of the brain known as microtubules.

This view has more than its fair share of critics. I attempted to read one of Penrose's books on the subject and found myself without enough mental bandwidth to follow his arguments, starting with things such as variations on the original Turing Test, the "Chinese Room", Goedel's Theorem and more.

I have to say I'm a bit surprised we are not hearing more about success with experiments that model the biological brain by use of electronically simulated neural nets. I keep waiting for something like an artificial cockroach running on a modeled neural net as opposed to classic binary algorithmic programming.

Or--maybe researchers are indeed having success and I am just missing it.

 

[Constance]

I don't think the human brain is a blank slate. Certain functions are "hard-wired". For example the ability to take-in perceptual stimuli and commit elements of it to memory. We can certainly become better at doing that with practice, but it happens all on its own as well. An engineered brain might very well be able to include predetermined information within the regions used for memory.

'Predetermined capabilities' might be a more exact way to express the capabilities involved in sensing the environment (even in the womb) that I think you're referring to. I, with others, think there's more than such capability involved, that there is also motivation, something like desire to explore the environment, to make contact with that which surrounds the living organism and in higher organisms with the 'others' of one's species with whom the organism lives closely. Nature has engineered us and all successful species very well indeed, so that the newly born or hatched life is 'ready for' its environing world in significant ways. All of this might be 'information' in some sense, but it seems to be more accurately a state or condition of being informed, having been informed, behaviorally, not only in the brain but in the body, in the organism as a whole. It seems to me that an engineered artificial brain would lack the orientations and aptitudes for connecting with the world outside itself that living organisms have as their natural foundation.

We have no reason to think that two identical brains wouldn't possess identical memory, and assuming the recollection of memory is a type of experience, that means both brains would have virtually identical experiences. Yet each brain would also be its own individual self.

Do you mean come into the world having 'identical memory'? An interesting question given the species (and possibly trans-species) memory carried in the individual subconscious mind and in the collective unconscious. But two identical twins would have comparatively little personal memory in common at birth, other than that of their shared foetal environment. And thereafter each would have his or her own unique set of experiences out of which personal memory would be vivid and not identical with that of the other twin. Other than the case of identical twins, I don't know where we might find what you call 'identical brains', if we'd find them even there.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but you seem to think that a perfect simulacrum of a human brain would automatically function in the same way a human brain does from its 'birth day' onward, and that this simulacrum would already contain at its birth [when the power is turned on] an orientation to the world of some sort that would parallel our own species' orientation. Can you explain why you, or perhaps some theorist(s) you follow, believe this?

 

[Constance]

I'm a bit surprised we are not hearing more about success with experiments that model the biological brain by use of electronically simulated neural nets. I keep waiting for something like an artificial cockroach running on a modeled neural net as opposed to classic binary algorithmic programming.

I'm pretty sure there have been such attempts to produce artificial insects and other simpler species of life, and Tononi and Koch advise more experiments with 'animats'. I know there are robot vacuum cleaners engineered to take care of the floors of people who purchase them. I'll all for that kind of thing on principle, and they likely clear out the cockroaches as well.

 

[smcder]

We found several Roomba robots in the garage and outbuilding of our new house, they specialized - some vacuumed and some mopped. I never could get them to work right - batteries ran down and they got stuck in corners. Our six dogs had fun for a while.

Meanwhile, all sorts of insect and higher animal life thrives in and around our place including 6 million ants.

I did the math and allowing a gram per ant (heavy) and 150 pounds per person (light) - there are about 66,385 pounds worth of ants on our five acres - and 30,941lbs of people on the same land area in New York.

 

[smcder]

To Cross Over ...

a prefix occurring in loanwords from Latin ( transcend; transfix); on this model, used with the meanings “across,” “beyond,” “through,” “changing thoroughly,” “transverse,” in combination with elements of any origin:

transisthmian; trans-Siberian; transempirical; transvalue.

word-forming element meaning "across, beyond, through, on the other side of, to go beyond," from Latin trans-, from trans (prep.) "across, over, beyond," perhaps originally present participle of a verb *trare-, meaning "to cross," from PIE *tra-, variant of root *tere- (2) "to cross over"

In chemical use indicating "a compound in which two characteristic groups are situated on opposite sides of an axis of a molecule"

 

[smcder]

The use of the term "transhuman" goes back to French philosopher

Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

who wrote in his 1949 book The Future of Mankind:
Liberty: that is to say, the chance offered to every man (by removing obstacles and placing the appropriate means at his disposal) of 'trans-humanizing' himself by developing his potentialities to the fullest extent.
And in a 1951 unpublished revision of the same book:
In consequence one is the less disposed to reject as unscientific the idea that the critical point of planetary Reflection, the fruit of socialization, far from being a mere spark in the darkness, represents our passage, by Translation or dematerialization, to another sphere of the Universe: not an ending of the ultra-human but its accession to some sort of trans-humanity at the ultimate heart of things.

 

[smcder]

In 1957 book New Bottles for New Wine, English evolutionary biologist

Julian Huxley

wrote:
The human species can, if it wishes, transcend itself —not just sporadically, an individual here in one way, an individual there in another way, but in its entirety, as humanity. We need a name for this new belief.

Perhaps transhumanism will serve: man remaining man, but transcending himself, by realizing new possibilities of and for his human nature. "I BELIEVE IN TRANSHUMANISM": once there are enough people who can truly say that, the human species will be on the threshold of a new kind of existence, as different from ours as ours is from that of

Peking Man

It will at last be consciously fulfilling its real destiny.

 

[smcder]

One of the first professors of futurology

FM-2030

who taught "new concepts of the Human" at The New School of New York City in the 1960s, used "transhuman" as shorthand for "transitional human".

Calling transhumans the "earliest manifestation of new evolutionary beings", FM argued that signs of transhumans included physical and mental augmentations including

prostheses
reconstructive surgery
intensive use of telecommunications
a cosmopolitan outlook
a globetrotting lifestyle
androgyny
mediated reproduction (in vitro fertilization)
absence of religious beliefs
and a rejection of traditional family values

FM-2030 - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Ahl be bak

All bee bahk

Owl B. Bach

 

[smcder]

Is anyone else (wandering about) those facial scars ... ?

 

[Randall]

'Predetermined capabilities' might be a more exact way to express the capabilities involved in sensing the environment (even in the womb) that I think you're referring to. I, with others, think there's more than such capability involved, that there is also motivation, something like desire to explore the environment, to make contact with that which surrounds the living organism and in higher organisms with the 'others' of one's species with whom the organism lives closely. Nature has engineered us and all successful species very well indeed, so that the newly born or hatched life is 'ready for' its environing world in significant ways. All of this might be 'information' in some sense, but it seems to be more accurately a state or condition of being informed, having been informed, behaviorally, not only in the brain but in the body, in the organism as a whole. It seems to me that an engineered artificial brain would lack the orientations and aptitudes for connecting with the world outside itself that living organisms have as their natural foundation.

What we're talking about at this point is something hypothetical. It isn't possible ( yet ) for us to engineer a brain that is identical in every respect to a human biological brain, and as you seem to suggest, even if we could, such a brain would by design also be configured to interface with a human body so that it could connect with the world outside itself. This serves ( again ) to illustrate how important bodies are to our personal sense of self and identity.

Do you mean come into the world having 'identical memory'? An interesting question given the species (and possibly trans-species) memory carried in the individual subconscious mind and in the collective unconscious. But two identical twins would have comparatively little personal memory in common at birth, other than that of their shared foetal environment. And thereafter each would have his or her own unique set of experiences out of which personal memory would be vivid and not identical with that of the other twin. Other than the case of identical twins, I don't know where we might find what you call 'identical brains', if we'd find them even there.

What I mean is that if we had the technology to engineer two identical human brains, we should expect them both to perform identically given identical situations, and if that includes memory, we should expect both of them to recall exactly the same memories as if each one were the same individual, yet obviously they wouldn't be.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but you seem to think that a perfect simulacrum of a human brain would automatically function in the same way a human brain does from its 'birth day' onward, and that this simulacrum would already contain at its birth [when the power is turned on] an orientation to the world of some sort that would parallel our own species' orientation. Can you explain why you, or perhaps some theorist(s) you follow, believe this?

With respect to the kind of engineered brain we've been talking about in the last few posts, we're not talking about a digital or electronic version, but a biologically engineered brain made of the same materials as our own brains, hypothetically capable of being transplanted into a human body, or possibly grown along with it in a clone like manner.

 

[smcder]

Where is all of this that a Catholic priest started ...

The Transubstantiation of the Human

... going?

What is a day (or other appropriate time period) in the life of a Transhuman?

I'd love to hear each person's personal vision.

@mike

has shared some about sharing birthday party experiences for example (sure to be a popular option among Males 1.0 ... Homo Absentis) - that's the kind of thing as well as the grand plan, the vision.

The Ordinary Future - the kind we've had up until now has always paid out such that we can say:

"You know, I didn't see it exactly like that - but now that it's happened, yeah - that makes sense." and two seconds later we go on

This future might not be like that and some would argue that recent past-futures already haven't been like that.

We might all get exactly what we want. We might be utterly dumboozled. We might now know it ever happened and It may have already happened.

 

[smcder]

Remarkably, consciousness does not seem to require many of the things we associate most deeply with being human: emotions, memory, self-reflection, language, sensing the world, and acting in it. Let's start with sensory input and motor output: being conscious requires neither . We humans are generally aware of what goes on around us and occasionally of what goes on within our own bodies. It's only natural to infer that consciousness is linked to our interaction with the world and with ourselves.

Yet when we dream, for instance, we are virtually disconnected from the environment--we acknowledge almost nothing of what happens around us, and our muscles are largely paralyzed. Nevertheless, we are conscious, sometimes vividly and grippingly so. This mental activity is reflected in electrical recordings of the dreaming brain showing that the corticothalamic system, intimately involved with sensory perception, continues to function more or less as it does in wakefulness.

Neurological evidence points to the same conclusion. People who have lost their eyesight can both imagine and dream in images, provided they had sight earlier in their lives. Patients with locked-in syndrome, which renders them almost completely paralyzed, are just as conscious as healthy subjects. Following a debilitating stroke, the French editor Jean-Dominique Bauby dictated his memoir, The Diving Bell and the Butterfly , by blinking his left eye. Stephen Hawking is a world-renowned physicist, best-selling author, and occasional guest star on ”The Simpsons,” despite being immobilized from a degenerative neurological disorder.

So although being conscious depends on brain activity, it does not require any interaction with the environment.

Can Machines Be Conscious? - IEEE Spectrum

The point has probably been made already - but I don't find these examples challenging:

Yet when we dream, for instance, we are virtually disconnected from the environment--we acknowledge almost nothing of what happens around us, and our muscles are largely paralyzed.

People who have lost their eyesight can both imagine and dream in images, provided they had sight earlier in their lives.

Patients with locked-in syndrome, which renders them almost completely paralyzed, are just as conscious as healthy subjects.

Following a debilitating stroke, the French editor Jean-Dominique Bauby dictated his memoir, The Diving Bell and the Butterfly , by blinking his left eye.

Stephen Hawking is a world-renowned physicist, best-selling author, and occasional guest star on ”The Simpsons,” despite being immobilized from a degenerative neurological disorder.

because they presuppose a mind that evolved with/from:

emotions, memory, self-reflection, language, sensing the world, and acting in it

so such a mind's ability to continue for a limited time in dreams and a longer time in a paralyzed but once healthy body isn't surprising ...now, lock Stephen Hawking in a nursing home at age 25 and I believe he'd be dead by now. He is a remarkable person but he had a lot of support from a lot of people.

So, several questions to extend this:

could a mind evolve in the first place - without these conditions? emotions, memory, self-reflection, language - being in the world ... and finitude?

do all of these examples really belong together?

I'm not challenged by the cases of paralysis that occurred to a formerly healthy, adult body or imagination and dreams in formerly sighted individuals ... but could a mind that dreamt for thirty years be sane?

And a mind plugged into a simulation for an extended period of time ... dump it back into the real world and what happens?

In Robocop - part two I think - the first several volunteers go insane and or commit suicide - the hero is shown to be of a very strong mind and commitment to make the change to a cyborg body

Here is a relatively minor example: I have restless legs syndrome and I am out of meds tonight so I'm experiencing the full force for the first time in a while ... whatever the "inputs" are that are scrambled - it's pretty uncomfortable ... it's very uncomfortable ... it's like having bugs crawling around on the inside of your legs ... what happens is that as you relax, the misfirings increase - so it's insidious, like REM deprivation forms of torture ... I've been in the floor pounding on my legs before because I'm exhausted but the exhaustion feeds into the RLS ---> there is no adapting to this ... I'm not better at tolerating RLS than when it developed several years ago. But physical pain related to another illness I have ... barely slows me down now when it doubled me over just a year ago.

 

[smcder]

I'm hopelessly behind in tracking the voluminous flow of ideas here. Scanning posts has triggered a sort of tongue in cheek anecdote from one of Pickover's speculative books on the subject of the mind body problem and substrate independence. To paraphrase: Scientists of the future have finally succeeded in transferring a human mind into a highly advanced computer. The computer's first comment was to the effect of: "Get me out of here ! I feel like I'm drowning !"

Cognitive dissonance caused by awareness of the mind-body problem would seem an unavoidable aspect of higher cognitive function. Perhaps awareness by all humans that they will one day die drives us, in subtle and sometimes not so subtle ways, to live a kind of functional insanity.

Re the hive mind: Who's to say we are not already a part of such? This subject has been broached here before. But humans interact, like neurons, according to sets of both innate and socially learned (and like neurons--changeable) rules as they constantly interact in pairs and in groups of varied sizes. Memes are generated and dissolved, promoted and suppressed by a kind of dynamic consensus that goes largely unseen from the individual viewpoint. Some may flash and circulate, like electrical signals between neurons, throughout societies, until a kind of social action potential is achieved and collective action taken. If consciousness is an emergence arising from the interaction of neurons, might it also emerge unseen from the rule bound interactions of individual humans? Would the larger consciousness be aware of the human individual, but not individuals aware of the conscious emergence they unwittingly produce?

Even putting the question of self-awareness aside, we can at least say with confidence that complex processes not achievable by any one person are achieved by the collective. IMO, It would not be a stretch to say that human populations comprise a kind of hive intelligence.

Cognitive dissonance caused by awareness of the mind-body problem would seem an unavoidable aspect of higher cognitive function. Perhaps awareness by all humans that they will one day die drives us, in subtle and sometimes not so subtle ways, to live a kind of functional insanity.

Cognitive dissonance ... I'm not sure I follow completely. Cognitive dissonance is rationalizing something irrational you are doing, resolving a conflict with "reasons" and the mind-body problem is getting smart-stuff from dumb-matter (thanks @Soupie!) ... I do see the issue of awareness of our mortality driving us to a kind of functional insanity - I think that narrative is the Western tradition, beginning with the Garden of Eden, or if you prefer, the Odyssey (remember Calypso?). And there is some contemporary thought on death that examines this ... I can't find the key word - something like catastrophism ... arguing that pretty much everything we do is as a result of denying and suppressing death.

Is that the idea?

Then there's also the reference to the idea of drowing in a computer body and some do feel a kind of claustrophobia in their own physical bodies. I've seen this referred to as pink bars or a prison of flesh. Being locked into an aging body that has grown sick and will die is the motivation behind Kurzweill's work.

So ... is that pretty much the idea here?

 

[Randall]

Here is a relatively minor example: I have restless legs syndrome and I am out of meds tonight so I'm experiencing the full force for the first time in a while ... whatever the "inputs" are that are scrambled - it's pretty uncomfortable ... it's very uncomfortable ... it's like having bugs crawling around on the inside of your legs ... what happens is that as you relax, the misfirings increase - so it's insidious, like REM deprivation forms of torture ... I've been in the floor pounding on my legs before because I'm exhausted but the exhaustion feeds into the RLS ---> there is no adapting to this ... I'm not better at tolerating RLS than when it developed several years ago. But physical pain related to another illness I have ... barely slows me down now when it doubled me over just a year ago.

That doesn't sound like very much fun at all and I hope they find some kind of relief for you that's not to drastic. Now and then I get muscle twitches, usually in one of my arms. Someone suggested it was a magnesium deficiency, so I tried a powdered form of magnesium supplement ( Mag-Sense I think ) and it seemed to work really good, so every time it starts I go on it for a couple of days and I'm fine for weeks, even months. Relief happens within a few hours and I've done it about a dozen times so far, so I think coincidences can be ruled out. Your condition sounds much more serious, but who knows, both problems seem to involve involuntary muscle movement so maybe it might help reduce the symptoms. I dunno. Can't think of anything else at the moment. Wish I knew a way to help.

 

[Constance]

With respect to the kind of engineered brain we've been talking about in the last few posts, we're not talking about a digital or electronic version, but a biologically engineered brain made of the same materials as our own brains, hypothetically capable of being transplanted into a human body, or possibly grown along with it in a clone like manner.

I guess I missed that turn. Where can I read about that proposal/those proposals?

 

[smcder]

That doesn't sound like very much fun at all and I hope they find some kind of relief for you that's not to drastic. Now and then I get muscle twitches, usually in one of my arms. Someone suggested it was a magnesium deficiency, so I tried a powdered form of magnesium supplement ( Mag-Sense I think ) and it seemed to work really good, so every time it starts I go on it for a couple of days and I'm fine for weeks, even months. Relief happens within a few hours and I've done it about a dozen times so far, so I think coincidences can be ruled out. Your condition sounds much more serious, but who knows, both problems seem to involve involuntary muscle movement so maybe it might help reduce the symptoms. I dunno. Can't think of anything else at the moment. Wish I knew a way to help.

I appreciate that kindness!

I loaded up on Calcium and Magnesium earlier in the evening and I have Vick's Vapor Rub on my feet per OWT. Unfortunately the other stuff I've got going on interferes with proper digestion so I've not seen any results from this ... but I still take it.

There are a few things that do work ... one is simply get up and move. That works until you sit down again. The other is massage the legs - take a warm bath. But in my experience these will buy you the thirty - 45 minutes for the dopamine agonists to kick in. Since there is no kicking in tonight because I'm out of meds, I'm kicking up and out ... I took some caffeine and will just stay up. RLS usually abates in the early morning hours - for me, that's about 4am.

My whole odyssey with several illnesses over the past decade have rendered me, not skeptical, but appreciative of the concept of practicing medicine and questioning the idea that technology will save us. So for example the primary treatment for my condition is steroid therapy. After a year of high doses my primary condition now is steroid dependence - the treatment is now worse than the illness. In the meantime I've tried synthetic anti-bodies and will likely try two more very powerful medications that suppress the immune system. These drugs aren't used in Europe (American medicine is usually more aggressive and risk tolerant than European) and they require blood tests several times a week.

If they work, they put me in remission and I don't have to have surgery.

 

[Constance]

So, several questions to extend this:

could a mind evolve in the first place - without these conditions? emotions, memory, self-reflection, language - being in the world ... and finitude?

My gut feeling is no, not a mind that would care about its existence and the existences of others and the continued existence of its world. It might not suffer, but nor would it likely experience the satisfactions of living as we live, in temporality.

[/quote]do all of these examples really belong together?[/QUOTE]

I think so. I think Panksepp would agree. He begins, as you'll recall, with 'affectivity' even in primitive organisms, the germinal sense of an organism's relatedness to its ecological niche, its world. The bridge between 'self' and 'other', self and world, eventually mind and world is the critical difference that life brings into the otherwise trackless, unlit depths of physical being.

 

[smcder]

My gut feeling is no, not a mind that would care about its existence and the existences of others and the continued existence of its world. It might not suffer, but nor would it likely experience the satisfactions of living as we live, in temporality.

do all of these examples really belong together?[/QUOTE]

I think so. I think Panksepp would agree. He begins, as you'll recall, with 'affectivity' even in primitive organisms, the germinal sense of an organism's relatedness to its ecological niche, its world. The bridge between 'self' and 'other', self and world, eventually mind and world is the critical difference that life brings into the otherwise trackless, unlit depths of physical being.[/QUOTE]

I meant the examples of sleep, blindness and paralysis ... @mike seems to be suggesting they indicate consciousness doesn't need the prerequisites listed ... I'm not challenged by the other cases ... but I think a mind permanently unplugged from the body wouldn't be sane by our standards ...