Thread: CS Lewis

Originally Posted by Bonsay

We know one is capable of becoming conscious. If you haven't noticed, it has a strict definition which we can obviously detect.


Don't you understand that the thing we call life is a complex set of interactions between matter?

And before you say what's complex... in this case a large number of various chemical reactions and interactions.

Yes, we do know that we become conscious. The debate is, why are we conscious? You seem to believe that we are conscious because our body is full of chemical reactions. I believe that the latter makes no sense, and that consciousness is due to the possession of, or as C.S Lewis said, being a soul.

SO what you are saying is that complexity is judged by the amount of chemical reactions something has?

I don't know why we are conscious or what it means. All I know is that science points to it being an emergent property of the functioning brain. You're the one asserting that there is a soul and that consciousness can't emerge by itself. How you know this, I have no idea. Maybe you're god?


I'm saying that complexity is judged by our understanding of some phenomena. If we make some super quantum computer which gives us a valid simulation of everything that's going on in the human body, the word complexity as you use it here wouldn't mean much more, would it?

Originally Posted by Noogah

Yes, we do know that we become conscious. The debate is, why are we conscious? You seem to believe that we are conscious because our body is full of chemical reactions. I believe that the latter makes no sense, and that consciousness is due to the possession of, or as C.S Lewis said, being a soul.

Oh my you know nothing about complex systems. How do you suppose Neural Networks are able to predict sequences of information 'intelligently'? A watered down version of a soul? Or a watered down version of the same principals at work in your brain?

SO what you are saying is that complexity is judged by the amount of chemical reactions something has?

Complexity is measured in the amount of non-redundant, active systems within a given system. At least, that's how I would measure it. It is still pretty arbitrary. Including a soul in the picture just makes a bad painting worse by like, setting the canvas on fire. We know how the brain works to a good extent, and we know that it is all of the neurons working together that allow us to 'experience' ourselves.

Originally Posted by Bonsay

How you know this, I have no idea.

Common sense!! I don't care how "complex" something is. It can have fifty times the chemical reactions per second than there have been sands on the ocean in the worlds history for all I care. Physical matter cannot bring forth something so complex as consciousness, which is not physical. Consciousness is not made of atoms, molecules, or any form of physical matter concievable. I don't care how many electronic connections are made between neurons, this brings forth thought. Ambient things can think. A computer can "think". It cannot be conscious.

Originally Posted by Bonsay

the word complexity as you use it here wouldn't mean much more, would it?

I don't recall using the word.

Originally Posted by A roxxor

How do you suppose Neural Networks are able to predict sequences of information 'intelligently'?

I believe you know the [vague] answer to that question. We are not discussing how we "think". We are discussing the origins of a conciouss human being.

Originally Posted by A roxxor

A watered down version of a soul?

More like a soupped up version of a computer.

Originally Posted by A roxxor

and we know that it is all of the neurons working together that allow us to 'experience' ourselves.

Don't kid yourself (or me). It isn't verry funny.

If we 'knew' that neurons provided conciousness, we would not be debating here. There is no evidence for your claim.

None.

Zilch.

Nada.

Zero.

Originally Posted by A Roxxor

Including a soul in the picture just makes a bad painting worse by like, setting the canvas on fire.

I never knew you were a poet!

Why did thing instantly get turned into a debate about souls? Why couldn't you have just made a thread about CS Lewis and left it at that?

Originally Posted by Noogah

Common sense!! I don't care how "complex" something is. It can have fifty times the chemical reactions per second than there have been sands on the ocean in the worlds history for all I care. Physical matter cannot bring forth something so complex as consciousness, which is not physical. Consciousness is not made of atoms, molecules, or any form of physical matter concievable. I don't care how many electronic connections are made between neurons, this brings forth thought. Ambient things can think. A computer can "think". It cannot be conscious.

Common sense? More like baseless assumptions brought forth by religious indoctrination.

Noogah, it is quite clear that the only reason you believe what you believe, is because you see no other explenation. We've seen similar reactions all the way throughout history, not just in connection with religion, but also much simpler things. For example, back when we were not aware of the existence of America, people assumed that there would be seamonsters swimming around out there.
Sure, you can say that this is different, but it is only a matter of time before we figure out what exactly is going on inside our brains, and when that time comes, will you stay in denial? What if we actually managed to simulate or construct a neural network, and we made it act just like a human being? I'm not talking about a scripted robot here, but a robot that has been trained from a state of infancy, into a conversational partner who can reflect and debate things, just like we can.
If and when we manage to do this, what will you do?

Originally Posted by Noogah

Common sense!! I don't care how "complex" something is. It can have fifty times the chemical reactions per second than there have been sands on the ocean in the worlds history for all I care. Physical matter cannot bring forth something so complex as consciousness, which is not physical. Consciousness is not made of atoms, molecules, or any form of physical matter concievable. I don't care how many electronic connections are made between neurons, this brings forth thought. Ambient things can think. A computer can "think". It cannot be conscious.

That is baseless and I see absolutely no reason why simulating a brain would no display this behavior. No, consciousness is NOT physical. But then, neither are economies, or computer applications. They are the abstractions of physical phenomenon.

I believe you know the [vague] answer to that question. We are not discussing how we "think". We are discussing the origins of a conciouss human being.

Consciousness is the result of thinking you idiot.

More like a soupped up version of a computer.

So a computer doesn't need a soul to become conscious, but humans do? God fails so much he has to force consciousness to exist while man can watch it form?

Don't kid yourself (or me). It isn't verry funny.

If we 'knew' that neurons provided conciousness, we would not be debating here. There is no evidence for your claim.

Noogah, you are the guy who doesn't accept thousands of scientific facts on the basis of personal incredulity. It is hardly surprising to me that you cannot reason at all when it comes to consciousness either.

Originally Posted by Marvo

Noogah, it is quite clear that the only reason you believe what you believe, is because you see no other explenation. We've seen similar reactions all the way throughout history, not just in connection with religion, but also much simpler things. For example, back when we were not aware of the existence of America, people assumed that there would be seamonsters swimming around out there.
Sure, you can say that this is different, but it is only a matter of time before we figure out what exactly is going on inside our brains, and when that time comes, will you stay in denial? What if we actually managed to simulate or construct a neural network, and we made it act just like a human being? I'm not talking about a scripted robot here, but a robot that has been trained from a state of infancy, into a conversational partner who can reflect and debate things, just like we can.
If and when we manage to do this, what will you do?

That last part. . . as you said, we will have trained it and thus it will still be a simulation of consciousness, not actual consciousness.

And Tars, it's funny, ain't it?

Originally Posted by InvisibleWoman

That last part. . . as you said, we will have trained it and thus it will still be a simulation of consciousness, not actual consciousness.

And Tars, it's funny, ain't it?

'Training' refers to 'learning' when talking about neural networks. It would still be conscious. Calling it a just a simulation of consciousness is untrue. What is inherently conscious about the human brain? Why can't that principle be applied to a virtual neuron?

Originally Posted by InvisibleWoman

That last part. . . as you said, we will have trained it and thus it will still be a simulation of consciousness, not actual consciousness.

And Tars, it's funny, ain't it?

What is the difference? If it's just like any other human, then what is the difference? Sure, maybe there's a difference in the composition, but it does exactly the same as what we do.

Oh and, as Roxxor pointed out, training a simulation of the human brain can also be called raising a simulation of a human brain, just like how you raise children.

Can someone explain to me where the concept of soul originates from?

The concept of the soul doesn't have a single origin as far as I know.

Originally Posted by A Roxxor

'Training' refers to 'learning' when talking about neural networks. It would still be conscious. Calling it a just a simulation of consciousness is untrue. What is inherently conscious about the human brain? Why can't that principle be applied to a virtual neuron?

I am capable of awareness--being conscious of my own stream of thoughts as well as of external things, like your comment. I see a gap between the idea of computers being trained to debate things and humans being aware of their awareness.

. . . A computer can compute amazing quantities of data which can vary qualitatively to an almost infinite degree. It can be programed to communicate its data with a person. It can give answers to questions about the quality of the data it stores based on systematic deduction.

However, the computer cannot have a mind because a computer does not interact with the world. What I mean by this is that a computer does not actually know anything. It functions the way it is programmed to. It doesn't know of the data it stores: it just interacts with it in the way it was programmed to. A computer does not relate to the world from which it received its data in any way other than being a receiver of data.

Oversimplified? Kinda, I know.
. . . Here's an example that might help explain my claim: I decide to program a computer to work with a foreign language. I'll use Chinese for this example. The computer will follow the instructions of the program and be able to read, write and speak in Chinese. In fact, the computer will speak so well that it convinces me of its understanding of the language.

Comprehending and understanding a language generally denotes intelligence, right? So this computer is showing some pretty convincing signs of AI.

Now, let's put a human in a room and give it a program that instructs him/her how to speak Chinese. Send the human some Chinese characters, and he/she can process them according to the program's instructions, and produce Chinese characters in response. It turns out this human is as convincing as the computer because he/she can give the same results.

In the end, the human admits he still doesn't know a word of Chinese. If this is the case, and both the human and the computer played the same role and succeeded equally, then the computer also doesn't know Chinese; it just followed a program, step-by-step, which simulated intelligent behavior.

Therefore, without understanding, the computer isn't thinking and thus has no mind, or rather consciousness.

Plus, words are arbitrary symbols. A computer can use them according to a system of rules, but never actually have knowledge or an understanding of what they mean.

The idea is to mimic the brains function as software, and give that software input from hardware.

You missed the point. A human brain is not inherently conscious.

. . . Here's an example that might help explain my claim: I decide to program a computer to work with a foreign language. I'll use Chinese for this example. The computer will follow the instructions of the program and be able to read, write and speak in Chinese. In fact, the computer will speak so well that it convinces me of its understanding of the language.

Comprehending and understanding a language generally denotes intelligence, right? So this computer is showing some pretty convincing signs of AI.

Now, let's put a human in a room and give it a program that instructs him/her how to speak Chinese. Send the human some Chinese characters, and he/she can process them according to the program's instructions, and produce Chinese characters in response. It turns out this human is as convincing as the computer because he/she can give the same results.

In the end, the human admits he still doesn't know a word of Chinese. If this is the case, and both the human and the computer played the same role and succeeded equally, then the computer also doesn't know Chinese; it just followed a program, step-by-step, which simulated intelligent behavior.

I am making a program that does this so I will tell you straight up: That is not how it works. At all. You cannot script a computer to speak human language like that. It is extremely tedious and basically impossible. What you would do it use a neural network which would actually figure out grammar rules and determine semantic meaning of characters and words and sentences, which would allow it to interact and know language as much as a person does, minus the self awareness bit [Most likely as I am talking about neural net used solely for language learning]

You cannot simulate intelligent behavior. You can create the illusion of it, but either the program knows or it doesn't. In your scenario, the program [Albeit a highly improbable one] would be the equivalent of a crystal structure, it creates an immensely complex pattern without any knowledge at all.

Now, throw in an actual neural network, and you will see what I am talking about. A neural network represents knowledge and association between symbols. That's why you can learn and why you can train an animal. Similarly, if you simulated this system on a computer, you could 'train' it to recognize itself. However that calls for real time simulation and lots of low-level functions that take a very long time to produce anything interesting with.

Originally Posted by A Roxxor

The idea is to mimic the brains function as software, and give that software input from hardware.

You missed the point. A human brain is not inherently conscious.

Are you saying we have a dualistic nature then?

No. What?

I am saying consciousness is not an inherent property of anything; it's an abstraction basically. An emergent property.

Continually and habitually reverting to seeing oneself as something separate from the totality of the experience, - or seeing oneself as an individual component within the whole of the picture- is a major hinderance to becoming aware of the reality of oneself.

Originally Posted by NonDualistic

Continually and habitually reverting to seeing oneself as something separate from the totality of the experience, - or seeing oneself as an individual component within the whole of the picture- is a major hinderance to becoming aware of the reality of oneself.

Man, you, Tao and Cyclic have gotta be bffs or something.

Originally Posted by Marvo

If and when we manage to do this, what will you do?

I'll do the Hokey Pokey and I'll turn myself around and say that's what it's all about !

A simulation is not the real thing. I'll clap my hands and sing hay ho!

Originally Posted by A roxxor

No, consciousness is NOT physical. But then, neither are economies, or computer applications.

The economy is a concept which is made up of thought.

A computer application is magnetic engraving of memory on a slab of metal being run by electric patterns, all of which are physical.

Originally Posted by A roxxor

Consciousness is the result of thinking you idiot.

I am not an idiot. Thinking, and being conciouss are entirely seperate things. Until you can understand that, it is useless to debate.

Originally Posted by A roxxor

So a computer doesn't need a soul to become conscious, but humans do?

Computers are not conciouss.

Originally Posted by A roxxor

Noogah, you are the guy who doesn't accept thousands of scientific facts on the basis of personal incredulity.

1.There are few scientific facts on this topic, and they don't prove your viewpoint, or mine.
2.Don't get personal. I never got personal with you. You don't know my reasons.

You have a very crude understanding of how the entire world functions. Staying in this debate is ultimately pointless, since you don't seem particularly intelligent, you're just arguing the same thing over and over again, and it is very clear that the only reason you think you can do this, is because there's no scientific explenation yet. If you wanna live like this, go ahead. I do not understanding how anybody can be so willfully ignorant.
It's nice that you have an opinion, but that's ultimately all you've got. This debate should be in philosophy.

Originally Posted by Noogah

The economy is a concept which is made up of thought.

A computer application is magnetic engraving of memory on a slab of metal being run by electric patterns, all of which are physical.

Saying that's a computer application is like saying that consciousness is a bunch of connections on a network of cells being run by electric patterns, all of which are physical.

Originally Posted by Noogah

No, I'm afraid that I would not.

LOGIC says that we are both the same. A doorknob is a lump of matter, a human body is a lump of matter. No matter how "complex" (and who's to say what is complex and what is not?) one is, it is not capable of becoming conscious.

When do you draw the boundary between human body and doorknob? When does one cease to be dead, and become alive?

You get stupider by the day.