Mind reading

I'm not sure. In p

I'm not sure. In principle, it should be do-able, but there may be specific engineering problems that make this tricky. Like the inversion of the retina; who knows what other unexpected specifics we might run into? In which case the solution may well be so cumbersome as to not be worthwhile.

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The idea of downloading a mind to silicon may just be an inappropriate appealing to our modern technology sense of things to set the hook and reel us in.

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To what?

I think Glordag nails it. Seeing as I have already rejected supernaturalism, it mjust be the case, as far as I can see, that consciousness and mind are epiphenomenon of our physical structure. If that is true, then the default presumption must be that it is a set of code and that we will eventually figure it out. The contrary position seems to me to require the introduction of some kind of unmoved mover.

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"Thought-controlled" Neuroprosthesis
ROSSLYN, Va., March 6, 2000---Biomedical engineers have developed a prototype neuroprosthesis that a quadriplegic can use to grasp and manipulate objects just by thinking about it.

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The experimental device combines muscle-stimulating electrodes implanted under the skin with a computer sensitive to brain waves. Brain signals activate the electrodes that cause the hand muscles to contract.

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Note this is 4 years old.

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Volunteers Play a Video Game Using Only Their Thoughts; One Player Achieves Pinpoint Accuracy

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ARLINGTON, Va., July 9, 2004 -- Four adults quickly learned to play a simple video game---and win---by using only their thoughts to control the computer.

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"It took six minutes of training and they all achieved control in less than 24 minutes," said Eric Leuthardt, M.D., a neurosurgeon at Washington University in St. Louis. One player hit the target on every try.

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Error: 404 Category not foundThat ones more recent. Now I ask: if we have info tech already that can duplicate our brains control over its limbs, what reason is there for thinking that the organ which produces these instructions is essentially any different from a computer, or that it's data is in some sense a specially complex problem? It is not. The problem is that the brain and its programming is NOT intelligently designed, and so figuring out how to get these things done is messy. But that is only a matter of time.And then we might be able to run optimisation algorithms against the design and implement them into DNA.

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The actual experiences -- called "qualia" -- contain facts that are not physically describable.

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I regard that is completely impossible; for them to be experienced in the first instance they must have been materially expressed. If they can be materially expressed in one brain, they can be materially
expressed in another.

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and that's what thoughts are fundamentally: feelings.

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... which are in turn merely chemical and electrical interactions. That is what you feel - just as a computer would.

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I can use electrical impulses to manipulate a dead frogs leg, does this mean I can have it jump up and do the "Michigan Rag"? LOL.

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Yes, potentially. If you had a good enough algorithm, and a good enough interface, you could programme a sequence of electrical signals that would produce a series of muscular contractions that could in turn make a dead frog dance.

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Humans are emotional animals. Can emotion be duplicated?.

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I don't see why not. Emotion too is a chemical and electrical interaction like everything else your consciousness experiences. In fact, you felt emotions as a small child before you were meaningfully sentient; as do animals. So of all things that might separate biological and silica intelligences, thats unlikely to be it.

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AI is most likely going to be a reality in the future, I just do not think AI will be human.

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Oh it certainly won't be HUMAN by a long way. Consider, it won't even be a mammal.

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Mary Shelly would be proud.

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Well as it happens, the discovery by Luigi Galvani that electricity could and would be conducted by frog nerves, in conjunction with work by Alessandro Volta, both brought about the electrical age and cut against "divine spark" arguments for animate life. It's highly probable Shelley was familiar with this work, IIRC. Her book is authentic science fiction.

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And I do not agree that emotions can be duplicated . I say this because if emotions are different for every person and creature...

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My highlight: IF emotions are different. Are they? Do we have reason to think they are?Memories are different, but you would recognises an angry person's anger even if you knew nothing about their culture or language. Similarly, you could recognise, and even join in, their laughter, perhaps without even understanding the joke.Emotions, it seems to me, are a platform-level protocol.

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I have memories that shape my behaviors and conciousness, if one were to attempt to duplicate my emotions and psyche how would a programmer know what I thought about a tree, or the color red?

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Actually, thats not going to be the interesting question. A living machine, like an animal, takes inputs from the world and processes them to determine actions. So the machine will have its own experience of red, and its own memories of its life time.I am not talking about making a machine that duplicates a human. I'm talking about a machine that is itself conscious on its own terms.

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Just think about how many hormones that upregulate and downregulate a woman who is PMS'ing..influencing her emotions. Now say she had a bad day. Do you think this complex system of whoopass is going to be duplicated?

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Yes. Our programmes are already bigger than we can directly comprehend.

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Can you not see how uncertain human emotion is. You would stand there with tartar sauce splashed in your face wondering...what the hell did I do?

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You have confused emotion with experience. By analogy, you might encounter a computer with a chip (pardon the pun) on its shoulder from negative experiences of keyboard cleaning fluid

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So what? Who said that the material expression is the whole of the experience? Seems like you're begging the question here.

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Well, we have not the slightest indication that there is, or could be, or would be or should be, any other dimension to these reactions. If you have a claim in regards these, by all means propose an experiment by which we could confirm or refute your hypothesis.

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Again, so what? Your statements seem to carry a hidden presumption of ontological materialism which -- since it is this ontology being challenged -- begs the question.

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Actually, I'm a dialectical materialist, but by all means challenge away. I am claiming the basis of such a challenge requires assumptions not in evidence.

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In other words, the idea that there is any externality at all lacks any non-circular basis in external reality. The presupposition that the entire universe exists as a manifestation of your individual consciousness has just as much basis in reality as the presupposition that other consciousnesses exists outside your own.

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To which I say "nonsense". Even if all the world and the voices in it are properties of my imagination, its still a valid process to investigate the origins of those voices within the internally consistent content of my imaginings. that is, even if the world is illusory, its displays illusionary consistency and can still be methdologically interrogated.But even worse for your argument, if its true that the world is a property of our opersonal delusions, then that delusion is a lie carefully sculpted to give the impression of material dependancy. You end up in the same box as theists trying to show why god should not be blamed for creating a world that tesmpts us to sin.The solpisitic defence is basically anti-knowledge. I can;t believe any adult takes it as a serious aregument.

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I'll concede that it is true to say that objectively thoughts and feelings are expressed as chemical and electrical interactions, however objectivity ignores the subjective experience -- and it's THOSE facts that functionalist explanations sweep under the carpet as though they weren't real.

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They are not real any more than a pop-up message box on your computer is "real".This message has been edited by contracycle, 07-26-2004 04:49 AM

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Your Marxist tendencies are showing through.

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They have never been concealed.

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If all is delusion, then even material delusions are illusion.

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My highlight. I'm not the one advocating such a delusion - the Essentialists are those calling for an immaterial 'spark'. I merely claim that such an immaterial spark requires more assumptions than not.

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And you find yourself in the same coffin as the theists. God can't be blamed for your thoughts.

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I'm not 100% sure I understand your point, but if your thrust is that my interest in materialism may be mistaken on the basis that gods design may give that impression, then I concede the point but riposte that this deliberate misrepresentation makes god culpable of deceit and the kind of bastard most theists refuse to accept.

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To indulge you a bit, the universe is as conscious as you are.

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I'll concede that qualitatively, but not quantitatively.

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A sesmic footfall, a burst of sonic information, and an electrical impulse borne of whatever emotion are all recorded in this universe. Will we ever be able to read these recordings? You know the answer to that.

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I do; the answer is "no" becuase signals degrade the longer the distance over which they are transmitted. Time counts in a rather similar way. Information requirtes ordering and like anything ordered, it is prone to decay.

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Why do you think God even cares??

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Well, I don't think god is even there to care.That god cares is a theist claim.

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Using the Hubble telescope we already have a good idea of a few things that happened millions of years ago.

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Yes, because space is about as good a transmission medium as you get. Nonetheless, we had have got more info out of any observation had we been nearer to it.

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Nonsense. Dream experience, for one, hints at the deeper qualities of consciousness.

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Nonsense. We know that items in recent experience are mst likely to be represented in dreams. I submit this is directly analogous to a computers disk compression process, in which recent data is filed in more convenient places. Sometimes, old data has to be picked up and relocated to get the optimum fit, which matches the occasional appearance of odd, forgotten memories in dreams.Dreams look a lot like disk compression to me. Our brains are designed to construct a temporal story for its inputs so it makes sense these are interpolated into an "experience".

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You misunderstand. I'm dealing with a priori knowledge, not any type of testing of external reality. The point is to show that there is a priori factual knowledge accessible to conscious individuals that is unassailable through empricial discovery. To insist that one should empirically discover that which is posited to be beyond the reach of empirical discovery in order to demonstrate that the discovery is indeed beyond empiricism is to reveal a flawed understanding of the principles involved.

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I definitely did not misunderstand the point; that is why I asked you for an experiment to perform. Without an experiment, all you have is speculation, which I can freely discard. Until such time as you can demonstrate there is an issue that CANNOT be solved by empiricism, empiricism remains the favourted tool.

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Such as...?

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Such as the very concept that there is anything OTHER than the world as we experience it.

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Again, I'm not saying that anything in reality is false, I'm simply arguing that there is more to reality than materialism.

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And I say again: what is the basis for this claim? On one of the links recently provided to the philosoiphy of AI, reference was made to psi powers. Yes, if psi powers were demonstrable, then that would support your argument (a little), but failing that there is no "engima" to address. Materialism is all there is.

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To be frank, I'm not certain that you grasped the argument because the introduction of solipsism at the start of that paragraph was meant as a prelude to the zombie argument that you snipped and didn't even address. Regardless, I'm disappointed that you seem reluctant to actually face the problem of solipsism since it is a real problem, and instead can only offer strawmen and handwaving coupled with a thinly-veiled insult.

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Actually, I have frequently discussed solipsism, on this board and others. I'm happy to do so again, but it is IMO an intellectually vacuous position. The fact of the matetr is you recognised your mothers teat well before you were a conscious human being able to conceptualise the very idea that the world might be imaginary; and unless ALL experience is imaginary, the world as a material reality must be the default premise. And IF all experience is imaginary, then you might as well give up arguibng with me, becuase I am merely a piece of your own psyche giving you lip. All of which is far too hubristic for me to take seriously.

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For that reason, the so-called "zombie world" or "solipsist's world" -- the world wherein there are no other conscious individuals but only organisms which behave as though they were conscious -- is objectively indifferentiable from a world where consciousnesses exist separately from yours.

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True, except that this position is exemplary of philosphy for its pwn sake rather than anything to do with understanding or exploring the world. It's a wholly fictitious problem.

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Therefore, if we *are* to suppose that there exists an external reality and separately existing consciousnesses, we must admit that there are real facts about those consciousnesses that we cannot assail empirically.

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Nonsense; that is your assumption not in evidence again. There is no reason for considering the zombie world as plausible in the first place, and thus no indication that there is anything to the walking talking beings before me than what they appear to be. To take that seriously requires first the assumption that an immaterial existance is even possible, and secondly the assumption that intellect forms spontaneously and fully developed in this notional space. Both of these are completely baseless.

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The material world is what exists "on the outside of things," so to speak, but I'm arguing that there is a valid realm of knowledge "on the inside of things."

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Why? Merely becuase your mind can conceptualise that possibility? Thats not a valid basis at all; we can also conceptualise a moon made from green cheese.

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I think it is obvious that such exists when one considers the primacy of individual consciousness as it regards experience, and that was where the problem of solipsism became relevant

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By no means; becuase that problem is solved by allocating mind to a physical vehicle. If mind is a property of physicality, then it is inevitable that such a physical being will experience its own consciousness as an absolute primacy. There is no mystery to solve.

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Do you dispute the points that I made regarding the indifferentiability of a world full of zombies vs. a truly conscious humans?

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Yes. I require you propose some reason I should take the hypothesis seriously.

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If you mean that you think my computer has conscious experiences, I don't really disagree with you. If you think that the computer's conscious experience is fully described by it's formalized circuitry, I do disagree.

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There is nothing else for it to be described by. That is what there is. That is what it does.This message has been edited by contracycle, 07-27-2004 05:16 AM