Searching for GOD...

[Shaker]

That was Descartes' position, wasn't it?  Dogs have no soul, therefore they are machines, therefore it is OK to torture them.   It's said that he tortured his wife's dog to death, maybe a rumour.

Not heard that one. Certainly the Cartesians used to nail dogs to boards and regarded their screams as the squeaking of machinery.

[torridon]

Actually there is no evidence that anything is more than a p zombie. In factI understand that Dennetts model of humanity boils down to being a P Zombie.

In fact I cannot see how you can hold with the illusion of self and not believe we are all p zombies.

That doesn't quite follow.

A zombie would be lacking sentience, experience, qualia; we all have experience and all experience is a product of brain function, and hence the sense of self itself is best understood as also a product of mind.  The way we talk about our inner experience still commonly owes to Cartesian thinking; when we try to conceptualise how sight works, for example, the notion of a self subtly comes into play - it is me that is doing the seeing -  but this is really a nod to a Cartesian homonculus sitting inside watching the visual presentation on its inner cinema screen.  Such notions have no grounding in a modern understanding of how brains work, so that homonculus, that self, also has to go to make way for truer understanding.  The self itself is not a thing, but it is itself, also, a product of mind, part of the quality and fabric of conscious experience.

[Sassy]

If any of that was true, it hasn't done much for you Sass, your attitude really sucks.

Which attitude is that?  You mean your attitude to attack and insult is the real problem.
My attitude is fine it is that of people like yourself, where ignorance reigns and false indignation because of your own
behaviour and need to blame everyone else but yourself.

I guess truth never was your strong point.

[Sassy]

Do or can a machine write independently of it's programmer?

I personally find the thread conversation absolute nonsense considering you are suppose to be educated men.
Is this what denial of Christ has lead the atheist to argue about with believers?

Zombies and the souls of animals enabling them to read or understand??

Is this what educated men are doing now... might as well all give up on yourselves.

[torridon]

And therefore an antelope needs an antelope soul to perceive the visual image formed in its occipital lobe. According to Mr Burns, antelopes either have souls, or they are blind.  Neither position is true of course.

Or they react to visual stimuli in accordance with instinct.

Information from visual images (or other sensory data) can be processed and reacted to without the need of conscious perception.

All animals have conscious perception (as well as subconscious perception); this is part of the base package of functions that all brains do, human, mammalian, reptilian. When a lion creeps up on me and my pet antelope my reaction and my antelope's perception and reaction is identical for all practical purposes, triggering a fight or flight response. 

The characteristics that distinguish humans from other animals are not base motor and cognitive functions like perception, but rather upper cognitive specialisations that developed in humans to allow us to live our particular style of life based on complex social living and dextrous tool making; forward planning, abstract thinking, advanced language, music, humour, intentionality, extended contemplation.

[Walt Zingmatilder]

That doesn't quite follow.

A zombie would be lacking sentience, experience, qualia; we all have experience and all experience is a product of brain function, and hence the sense of self itself is best understood as also a product of mind.  The way we talk about our inner experience still commonly owes to Cartesian thinking; when we try to conceptualise how sight works, for example, the notion of a self subtly comes into play - it is me that is doing the seeing -  but this is really a nod to a Cartesian homonculus sitting inside watching the visual presentation on its inner cinema screen.  Such notions have no grounding in a modern understanding of how brains work, so that homonculus, that self, also has to go to make way for truer understanding.  The self itself is not a thing, but it is itself, also, a product of mind, part of the quality and fabric of conscious experience.

No I think something has been proposed called artificial intelligence which I believe has a test to see if it can give the illusion of humanity. It might be called the Chinese box or something like that.
To look at it has all the hallmarks of consciousness but is in fact unconscious of what it does. Assaulting this is therefore an act of vandalism not cruelty.

How would we know if it was sentient. How is sentience demonstrated? Since definitions seem to include subjective experience?

[Walt Zingmatilder]

Do or can a machine write independently of it's programmer?

I personally find the thread conversation absolute nonsense considering you are suppose to be educated men.
Is this what denial of Christ has lead the atheist to argue about with believers?

Zombies and the souls of animals enabling them to read or understand??

Is this what educated men are doing now... might as well all give up on yourselves.

Granted this looks like a bit of intellectual self stimulation but I'm here to expose a new atheist mis and overuse of the word illusion and theists and atheists have pointed that out in this thread.

[floo]

Do or can a machine write independently of it's programmer?

I personally find the thread conversation absolute nonsense considering you are suppose to be educated men.
Is this what denial of Christ has lead the atheist to argue about with believers?

Zombies and the souls of animals enabling them to read or understand??

Is this what educated men are doing now... might as well all give up on yourselves.

Compared with the absolute nonsense you spout Sass, zombies are quite intelligent.

[torridon]

No I think something has been proposed called artificial intelligence which I believe has a test to see if it can give the illusion of humanity. It might be called the Chinese box or something like that.
To look at it has all the hallmarks of consciousness but is in fact unconscious of what it does. Assaulting this is therefore an act of vandalism not cruelty.

How would we know if it was sentient. How is sentience demonstrated? Since definitions seem to include subjective experience?

That is what the Turing Test was intended to do. We need an updated version of Turing's concept going forward as there are already computers that can more or less pass Turing's original test, based on blinded conversations; here is one such, Eliza, a virtual therapist you can chat to if you have problems :

http://nlp-addiction.com/eliza/

Future testing for inner sentience will need to be far more subtle and will probably be based on machine learning software in combination with brain scanning technologies; we are already started down this road in order to develop thought control technologies; we can train computers to learn to recognise tell tale patterns in brain scans that correspond to various arousal and attentional states; we have already used such techniques to look inside the mind of a cat and to reconstruct what it is seeing; by such means we should be able to distinguish genuine inner experience from just the outward appearance of sentience.

[floo]

Talk about being denial!

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-32928979

A guy who found a 6 million year old fossil, is still a YEC!

[ippy]

Or they react to visual stimuli in accordance with instinct.

Information from visual images (or other sensory data) can be processed and reacted to without the need of conscious perception.

Have you ever heard the cows on the farm Alan, when their calves are taken away from them, I try so hard to erase this painful memory from my head, I heard this terrible sound many years ago it still hurts me when I think of it and then I see more of your inane ramblings about things you think you know.

Somehow you've either let yourself be indoctrinated with this absolute nonsense or you just happen to be one of those unfortunate completely gullible people that are so much more susceptible to indoctrination than most, either way you are are a very sad case, surly there must be a little voice somewhere in your head asking questions that are something like, are you sure about this soul business? You've nothing to back up these thoughts? No evidence?   

Only the stuff you keep coming out with is so ludicrous and it wouldn't be as ludicrous if you were to show some reasoned line of thought which up until now is conspicuous by it's absence.   

ippy

[wigginhall]

I was reading something about Newton, who apparently discerned some chaos in the solar system, and posited that God tweaked it occasionally, to avoid planetary collisions, and so on.   This was rectified (I think) by Laplace, who showed that an updated mechanics could deal with this, without divine intervention.

It made me think of this thread, since that God of the gaps, in the solar system,  has been removed really, although I suppose it has turned up again in fine tuning, but today, it's consciousness and the self which seem to provide a gap for God to wiggle his way in again. 

You see, antelopes are just mechanical reaction machines, whereas humans have this super-injection of special stuff, straight from Your Main Man, meaning that when they do the lottery, or try to get the wax out of their ears, they are being super-conscious perceptive God-given Beings.  We know this is true, well, because, well, it just is.  Oyez!

[Alan Burns]

Future testing for inner sentience will need to be far more subtle and will probably be based on machine learning software in combination with brain scanning technologies; we are already started down this road in order to develop thought control technologies; we can train computers to learn to recognise tell tale patterns in brain scans that correspond to various arousal and attentional states; we have already used such techniques to look inside the mind of a cat and to reconstruct what it is seeing; by such means we should be able to distinguish genuine inner experience from just the outward appearance of sentience.

What you describe can all be categorised as data processing. Just correlating physical activity with awareness does not constitute a definition of awareness.  There can be no reliable test for inner sentience because it has no scientific definition.

[Alan Burns]

I was reading something about Newton, who apparently discerned some chaos in the solar system, and posited that God tweaked it occasionally, to avoid planetary collisions, and so on.   This was rectified (I think) by Laplace, who showed that an updated mechanics could deal with this, without divine intervention.

It made me think of this thread, since that God of the gaps, in the solar system,  has been removed really, although I suppose it has turned up again in fine tuning, but today, it's consciousness and the self which seem to provide a gap for God to wiggle his way in again. 

You see, antelopes are just mechanical reaction machines, whereas humans have this super-injection of special stuff, straight from Your Main Man, meaning that when they do the lottery, or try to get the wax out of their ears, they are being super-conscious perceptive God-given Beings.  We know this is true, well, because, well, it just is.  Oyez!

Human awareness is not a gap.  It is what we are.  If everything can be explained by science, we cease to exist as conscious entities of awareness because we just become part of the continuum of matter in this universe.

[Shaker]

Human awareness is not a gap. It is what we are. If everything can be explained by science, we cease to exist as conscious entities of awareness

That doesn't actually follow, but it does explain your fear of science.

we just become part of the continuum of matter in this universe.

Yep. Problem?

[Sebastian Toe]

There can be no reliable test for inner sentience because it has no scientific definition.

So that means that you can't prove that other animals don't have an animal soul!

[ippy]

YOU GOT IT, that is what we are, what is wrong with that?

It looks like this thread may have done some good, hopefully, this poor unfortunate bloke has supplied the answer to himself, that he couldn't take from others; well done at last Alan.

ippy

[Alan Burns]

YOU GOT IT, that is what we are, what is wrong with that?

Sorry Floo, you have not got it yet.

I was just highlighting the impossibility of building an entity of conscious awareness from unconscious material elements.

[Maeght]

'I was just highlighting my belief in the impossibility of building an entity of conscious awareness from unconscious material elements.'

Just corrected there for you Alan.

[torridon]

Human awareness is not a gap.  It is what we are.  If everything can be explained by science, we cease to exist as conscious entities of awareness because we just become part of the continuum of matter in this universe.

That makes no sense.  Did rivers stop flowing downhill when Newton explained gravity ?

[Shaker]

That's what I thought - total non sequitur.

[torridon]

Future testing for inner sentience will need to be far more subtle and will probably be based on machine learning software in combination with brain scanning technologies; we are already started down this road in order to develop thought control technologies; we can train computers to learn to recognise tell tale patterns in brain scans that correspond to various arousal and attentional states; we have already used such techniques to look inside the mind of a cat and to reconstruct what it is seeing; by such means we should be able to distinguish genuine inner experience from just the outward appearance of sentience.

What you describe can all be categorised as data processing. Just correlating physical activity with awareness does not constitute a definition of awareness.  There can be no reliable test for inner sentience because it has no scientific definition.

Well you didn't read my post, or you didn't understand it. Such techniques are currently in infancy, granted, but their reliability will be proved or otherwise through testing.  Quite apart from the AI applications of testing for machine consciousness which is quite a way off yet, in the nearer term we will be using such techniques to diagnose more closely the inner mind state of people who are in coma, in vegetative state, brain dead (apparently), comatose, under sedation, under general anaesthetic and other such conditions where it is impossible currently to merely ask the patient how they are feeling.

[Rhiannon]

If everything can be explained by science, we cease to exist as conscious entities of awareness because we just become part of the continuum of matter in this universe.

I think that's rather amazing.

[Alan Burns]

What you describe can all be categorised as data processing. Just correlating physical activity with awareness does not constitute a definition of awareness.  There can be no reliable test for inner sentience because it has no scientific definition.


Well you didn't read my post, or you didn't understand it. Such techniques are currently in infancy, granted, but their reliability will be proved or otherwise through testing.  Quite apart from the AI applications of testing for machine consciousness which is quite a way off yet, in the nearer term we will be using such techniques to diagnose more closely the inner mind state of people who are in coma, in vegetative state, brain dead (apparently), comatose, under sedation, under general anaesthetic and other such conditions where it is impossible currently to merely ask the patient how they are feeling.

I think the key word in your post is the "Artificial" in the AI reference.  All human endeavours can do is to imitate the properties of conscious awareness so that they appear to simulate the human property, but there can be no entity of awareness within this simulation because it has no definition in material terms.  Awareness requires a recipient of information.  It is not defined by any externally perceived activity.  The recipient is simply aware of things - it needs no reaction.

[torridon]

I think the key word in your post is the "Artificial" in the AI reference.  All human endeavours can do is to imitate the properties of conscious awareness so that they appear to simulate the human property, but there can be no entity of awareness within this simulation because it has no definition in material terms.  Awareness requires a recipient of information.  It is not defined by any externally perceived activity.  The recipient is simply aware of things - it needs no reaction.

Awareness is a reaction; to be aware of something requires many complex interlinked chained reactions.  If you are aware of something in your line of sight, that awareness is a multiple chain reaction from photons to retina to optic nerve to visual cortex to thalamus, back to cortex potentially many times iteratively.  Awareness is always aware of something, and although it feels effortless, there is much going on under the hood to yield that awareness.

We might not have a good definition of consciousness in scientific terms yet but we are working on it, and long before we get to testing for awareness in machines we will prove the theory against live human and animal models; so by the time we get to AI we will be fairly confident in the procedure.