Consciousness and Dreams

[Brian Peacock]

I know that some of them have the horn.

[JimC]

A cow isn't conscious then?

Definitely sentient, of course, but not conscious in the way that humans are, or the way in which some expect AI to reach at some point in the future.

Some other mammals, mostly primates, may have the dim beginnings of consciousness in the way I think it should be defined, but only humans, IMO, have made the very significant leap into being aware (at least in part) of their own stream of thought, and having the ability to both reflect on this, and use symbolic language to discuss their world view with other conscious beings.

[Brian Peacock]

Then perhaps I've been confusing sentience for sapience?

[JimC]

Labels for these rather fluid concepts (sentience, sapience, consciousness) are difficult to define, in my experience. However, it does seem evident to me that human mentation is significantly different to any other animal mentation, to the point where it falls into a whole different category.

[pErvinalia]

But still a continuum?

[JimC]

But still a continuum?

It has to be a continuum in an evolutionary sense. However, the "slope" (for want of a better word) of the continuum doesn't have to be constant. I'm imagining, in hominim history, a time where the gradient of the changing mental complexity of our ancestors got much steeper, relatively quickly in evolutionary terms. Whether that was when early Homo sapiens was appearing, or earlier, is anyone's guess. But certainly no completely sudden magic spark...

[pErvinalia]

The problem is that we can never know whether another being/entity is conscious. We just assume other humans are, as they look like ourself and communicate about things like ourself. Other animals don't fit that, aside from some rudimentary communication with the other great apes.

Regarding AI, again we can't know, as it would be possible to program the AI to act like it is conscious. Or have it learn about consciousness itself by reading everything ever written on the subject. Or just be "human-like".

[JimC]

The problem is that we can never know whether another being/entity is conscious. We just assume other humans are, as they look like ourself and communicate about things like ourself. Other animals don't fit that, aside from some rudimentary communication with the other great apes.

Regarding AI, again we can't know, as it would be possible to program the AI to act like it is conscious. Or have it learn about consciousness itself by reading everything ever written on the subject. Or just be "human-like".

In the end, whether it's other humans or a putative conscious AI, it comes down to having a long social interaction. If, at the end of that process, one decides that one is interacting with a person who is as conscious as one imagines one's self to be, then pragmatically, we work under that assumption. I mean, we all do that when interacting with other humans over a period of time...

[pErvinalia]

But it gets hard when we might want to switch an AI off. "Damn thing has started acting conscious. Can we still shut it off?? "

[JimC]

Depends if its name is Dave...

[L'Emmerdeur]

They do have a point. All consciousness we're aware of is the product of organisms interacting with their environment. A body that senses and responds to stimuli. I question whether that's the only route. While I would agree that stimuli from the environment (and more or less involuntary response to those stimuli) appear to be essential to consciousness, it seems a leap to then say that consciousness needs to exist in a distinct body. I agree with laklak that it's more likely to be emergent in a system with sufficient complexity.

Couple of points. Perception is the means of modelling an environment. Behaviours are responses to the environment. Emotions are preparations for behaviour. Consciousness is the term we apply to an amalgam of perception, behaviour, and emotion. What we call reason or rationality is something we apply atop of that to explain us and the world by narrative means.

I wouldn't split off reason/rationality. I think the inner narrative is inherent in consciousness as humans experience it. Rationality is only one flavour of that narrative, not even the dominant one in all instances. On the other hand I question whether emotion as we understand it is a requirement for consciousness.

If an inner narrative is an essential component, it seems premature to tie it down with concepts like rationality and emotion. Those are qualities that the developer of a thinking AI would aspire to achieve, but perhaps first there must be something along the lines of an instinct-driven proto-consciousness, even as basic as your amoeba example below. I wonder whether something like DeepMind could be considered as 'conscious' as an amoeba.

Often we think and talk of consciousness in terms of neural capacity. An amoeba is not conscious as it follows a nutrient stream but simply acting on instinct, for example. The more neurons an organism has the higher up the consciousness scale it seems to sit until we apparently arrive at humans - the most conscious beings we know. The blue whale has far more neurons that we do, but we don't think of it as being more conscious that us do we? This, I think, highlights a confusion of consciousness with sentience.

Agreed: if this topic were to move forward, nailing down working definitions would be required.

I checked; humans apparently have somewhat more neurons than blue whales, but orcas definitely have more than humans. I wouldn't assert that they are 'more conscious' than humans, but neither would I deny the possibility that their consciousness may be equivalent in its depth.

Neurology is the means by which organisms gather info about the environment as well as comprising structures for regulating biological function. One can argue that behaviour and emotion are biological functions in the same way that things like blood pressure or osmosis across the membrane of a blood cell is. As such neurology is as attached or embedded in the environment as much as it is attached or embedded within the body of an organism. If this wasn't so why would our hearts race when we are suddenly startled by a loud noise?

Again, my point here is to say that consciousness is an amalgam of an organism's perception, behaviour, and emotion within an environment. By this reading the amoeba following a nutrient stream is conscious, just not sentient. So, again, when we talk about this should we not be discussing sentience, because it seems to me that's where our interests lie in relation to the OP.

When we're talking about Artificial Intelligence we're generally concerned with the 'I' in 'AI'. The computer in a modern car is aware of its environment (albeit in a limited, human-defined kind of way) and acts and is prepared to act based on the info it has and the info it's processing in the moment (perception). but we don't call it conscious do we?

Of course, this might not be right, but it's a view.

It could be that by defining consciousness in terms of living organisms, we would rule out the possibility that any construct we build can ever be conscious. Perhaps I'm not understanding your point, but the central question here is whether biological evolution is the only route to consciousness, and I don't think it's been answered.

If the spontaneous synchronized fluctuations in neuron activity are a sort of wave (95% of activity) on which consciousness (5% of activity) surfs, that does pose a challenge to builders of AI. Assuming for the moment that they want it to think like we do, they're going to have to figure out how to make a lot of just the right sort of background noise. On the other hand that ratio could be a measurement failure (not recognizing signals that that don't conform to current understanding of what constitutes a signal).

How spontaneous are 'the spontaneous synchronized fluctuations in neuron activity' exactly? The term 'spontaneous' makes it sound like the 'background noise' of neural activity is somehow disordered or unregulated - a happenstance, a coincidence, extraneous, incidental etc - which sits in stark contrast to the term 'synchronized' don't you think(?). Isn't that 'background noise' doing things like regulating the ph of your blood, monitoring your saliva production, stopping you falling over sideways, and placing you in a perpetual ready-state in the event that you hear a twig snap in the bushes? Aren't terms like 'spontaneous' and 'background noise' just stand ins for 'whatever the fuck mysterious thing is going on in there'?

The article notes evidence pointing to the idea that the spontaneous synchronized fluctuations may be at least in part the nervous system carrying out tasks of which we are not conscious. That doesn't seem to affect Dehaene's hypothesis that consciousness arises from the interactions of those fluctuations.