"Not only are we incapable of building a conscious AI, but we don't even understand the underlying physiological mechanisms behind human consciousness." (p. 437)
I think that this is a much more realistic assessment than the apparent assumption that we find elsewhere, including in some of Poul Anderson's sf, that conscious AI is almost upon us. Lee thinks that many more scientific breakthroughs will be necessary before there is artificial consciousness which will then be very different from any organic consciousness just as current machine "intelligence" is very different from human intelligence.
Any "mechanism" is an empirically observable and measurable objective process. Scientists understand objective processes. A sensory input causes a neural interaction which causes a sensation. The input and the interaction are objective but the sensation is subjective. The sensation happens while scientists detect and observe the neural interaction but they cannot detect or observe the sensation. Sensations are part of the concrete reality from which an objective account is abstracted.
18 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
The Technic series has AIs, but they play a surprisingly small role in the stories, when you think of that. I would put that down largely to Anderson and everybody else needing time to think thru the implications and possibilities of what might happen if AI became a reality. We see Anderson's speculations about AIs in the HARVEST OF STARS books and GENESIS.
Still, the Technic stories gives us some intriguing glimpses about AIs in "The Troubletwisters" and A CIRCUS OF HELLS.
Ad astra! Sean
Paul: I agree. We don't understand how our brains give rise to our minds, which makes it highly unlikely we'll be manufacturing conscious minds any time soon.
I question whether we CAN understand the brain-mind relationship. But I am not an obscurantist. Neurologists, psychologists and philosophers should keep trying.
Kaor, to Both!
Or it might be the other way about: you need a mind to make use of the brain.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
But where did the mind come from if not from organisms responding to and starting to think about their environments?
Some people think that consciousness will emerge in computers just as it did in organisms. Complex sensitivity became sensation in mobile marine organisms, then perception in animals and self-consciousness in human beings. Will complex computation move directly to self-consciousness? Will simulation become duplication? Why should it?
Paul.
Kaor, Paul!
I am not the least sure what you outlined is right. I lean more to Stirling's view: merely philosophical arguments will never lead to satisfactory answers on how minds can arise from brains.
Time I reread Mortimer Adler's book.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
Mr Stirling said merely that we do not understand how brains give rise to minds. We do not - yet. All that scientists can do is to keep trying. I do not see how an explanation is even possible but there is only one way to find out. Keep trying.
Paul.
Paul: we're far smarter than we need to be to deal with the physical environment our hunter-gatherer ancestors lived in.
I think the evolutionary driver for the emergence of what we think of as consciousness was social -- dealing with each other and social interactions within and between kin-groups.
I deffo agree. My younger life was blighted by anticipations, apprehensions etc about how other people were seeing me.
Sean,
Some of us want to learn and find out. Others want to defend an entrenched position. Surely consciousness is a mystery? By "mystery," I do not necessarily mean a permanently insoluble problem but I certainly do mean a massive problem at our present stage of knowledge and understanding.
Paul.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling and Paul!
Mr. Stirling: I agree, with the proviso that at some point in the distant past mankind also Fell. One of the characters in Anderson's "The Little Monster" sort of touches on that.
Paul: And I remain skeptical that the merely empirical, material sciences can find definite answers to such questions. But, by all means, let them study them.
Ad astra! Sean
Then there is: if our minds were simple enough for us to understand them, we would be too simple to understand our minds.
I think that is plausible but not proven.
The 1947 story "Answer" by Hal Clement uses that for the plot.
Kaor, Jim!
Alas, I've read only two of Hal Clement's novels. His works deserve to be "rediscovered."
Btw, IIRC, Clement was also a science teacher for middle or high school, like Ryland Grace in PROJECT HAIL MARY, by Andy Weir.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
Well, I don't know how we can find out about the universe except by "the merely empirical, material sciences."
Socrates and Plato thought that all that they needed to do was to think, reason and argue. Manual interaction with the material universe was the work of slaves, not of seekers after truth. Socrates wanted to analyse general concepts like goodness, not to concern himself with how many material substances there are. Thus, pre-Socratic natural philosophy, the beginning of what we call empirical science, parted company with Socratic-Platonic analytic conceptual philosophy which we call "philosophy."
Look how much the scientists have learned about cosmogony, cosmology, the size of the universe, the periodic table, the nature and structure of matter, its relationship to energy, the forces of nature, evolution, all the particular sciences. What have philosophers contributed?
My suggestion is not that neurologists try to understand mind but that neurologists, psychologists and philosophers try to understand the relationship between brain and mind.
Paul.
Kaor, Paul!
First sentence, I agree. I was trying to say those empirical sciences are not the same, cannot be used as philosophy is.
It was during the Middle Ages, as Anderson discussed in IS THERE LIFE ON OTHER WORLDS?, that philosophers became empirical engineers and scientists, founding many new sciences as time passed. Before the so called Reformation they were not thought to be mutually opposed. Seeking truth via different methods.
Correct, philosophers of all schools can only arrive at tentative conclusions.
I agree with your last sentence, while remaining skeptical that definite conclusions are going to be likely.
Ad astra! Sean
It's demonstrable that, eg., cats and dogs have minds; they love and hate, they remember, and so forth. Less capable minds than ours, but the same basic phenomenon.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
Good examples, and I agree with you. Still, Catholic theologians hold that animals have qualitatively different souls from those of humans, lacking both knowledge of good and evil and immortality.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean:
The Hal Clement story I mentioned is a short story in a collection I own.
Re: Philosophy and Science
Something that is a bit of a quip is
"Science is philosophy with good data"
Kaor, Jim!
Ha! Or measurable/testable data!
I'm fond of two stories by Anthony Boucher: "The Quest for St. Aquin" and "Balaam," which happens to touch on these questions. What are rational beings? What distinguishes them from everything else?
Ad astra! Sean
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