DR. SUSAN BLACKMORE: Consciousness In Meme Machines

[Tace]

by Dr. Susan Blackmore -- Journal of Consciousness Studies, 10, 4-5, 19-30, 2003

http://www.imprint.co.uk

Abstract

Setting aside the problems of recognising consciousness in a machine, this article considers what would be needed for a machine to have human-like consciousness. Human-like consciousness is an illusion; that is, it exists but is not what it appears to be. The illusion that we are a conscious self having a stream of experiences is constructed when memes compete for replication by human hosts. Some memes survive by being promoted as personal beliefs, desires, opinions, and possessions, leading to the formation of a memeplex (or selfplex). Any machine capable of imitation would acquire this type of illusion and think it was conscious. Robots that imitated humans would acquire an illusion of self and consciousness just as we do. Robots that imitated each other would develop their own separate languages, cultures and illusions of self. Distributed seflplexes in large networks of machines are also possible. Unanswered questions include what remains of consciousness without memes, and whether artificial meme machines can ever transcend the illusion of self consciousness.

I am going to set aside some of the major problems facing machine consciousness and concentrate on the question of what sort of machines might acquire human-like consciousness.

The main problem to be ignored is that we do not know how to recognise consciousness in a machine. That is, there is no obvious equivalent of the Turing test for consciousness. I shall define consciousness here in terms of subjectivity; what is sometimes known as “phenomenal consciousness” (Block 1995) or “what it’s like to be” (Nagel 1974). With consciousness being subjective, any objective test, such as any variation on the Turing test, fails to grasp it. You could certainly have a test that shows whether other people think a machine is conscious but this is not the same thing, as our eager propensity to attribute feelings and intentions to even the simplest of robots and mechanical toys reveals. Once we start asking whether there is really something it is like to be the machine, or whether the world appears a certain way for that machine, then our usual tests fail.

In fact we don't know how to recognise consciousness in anything at all. As far as other humans are concerned this is the problem of other minds, but we usually ignore it on the grounds that we think we know what our own consciousness is like and we then extrapolate to others. We cannot do this so easily for other species, hence the problem of animal consciousness, and it is even more difficult with machines.

more

http://worldnewstrust.org/modules/AMS/index.php?PHPSESSID=020be10952651b399dbf72568e486f8b

[benburch]

1. How can I be an illusion?

Since illusion is a property of a conscious observer.

This argument is a tautology.

[Jackpine Radical]

5. Perzackly.

An illusion presumes a...something...to be deceived.

Likewise with the notion that brain science is about to swallow the necessity for a notion of the self.

Don't these people ever read the old-time philosophers? Why do they keep making the same mistakes?

[Arianrhod]

13. Your existence is not a question of consciousness.

However, what you believe your existence to be, is.

Everything you perceive--whether internal or external--is actually the end result of a long (150-250 milliseconds) set of unconscious processes. This is true for vision, hearing, thought, decision-making, touch . . . everything we define as "conscious awareness". These processes, which are based on electrochemical substates of neurons and their immediate environment, produce tendencies in these neurons to either fire or not fire. These tendencies are distributed throughout the brain in patterns that are specific to each particular individual, and are reinforced by repetition. It is this repetition that produces the illusion of continuous stream-of-consciousness, which actually is based on a digito-analog set of conditions.

Because it takes around 250 milliseconds for these processes to "set", everything we perceive about our existence is actually in the past. We do not perceive ourselves "now", but rather create the "now" in what Gerald Edelman calls "present memory". Any stimulus that does not cause a subgroup of distributed neurons to fire for at least 150 milliseconds will never become conscious, even though it may reside solidly in unconsciousness. This is how subliminal advertising works.

Thus, what you think of as "yourself" is actually a reconstruction on a conscious level of processes that have taken place on an unconscious one.

This is the illusion.

[Jim Sagle]

2. Whadda buncha shit.

[MrModerate]

3. Much like Iraq is supposed to be a "Terrorist Magnet" . . .

Academia works like flypaper to ensnare fatuous wackos like Dr. Blackmore and keep them out of the way of actual people who have meaningful things to do.

[melody]

4. Typical Blackmore pleonastic subjective exteriorization n/t

She does it all the time. She assumes her own local assessments are correct and then suggests all answers are locally
directed, thereby making certain she'll be "right". Rhetoricians have been doing this for ages... just as poorly.

Science, to keep from invalidating itself, must not to allow scientific prejudices to become preferred beliefs.

[Jackpine Radical]

6. Better a pleonasm than an aneurism, but better taut than tautological.

That's all I have to say on the topic (lest I repeat myself)

[melody]

7. And better a pleonasm and an aneurism than a neoplasm :)

[Jackpine Radical]

10. I'll see that neoplasm & raise you two neologisms and

an ectoplasm.

[bemildred]

8. LOL.

We do get all tangled up in our memes, don't we:

"The illusion that we are a conscious self having a stream of experiences is constructed when memes compete for replication by human hosts."

B. F. Skinner would be in awe.
:rofl::rofl:

[Jackpine Radical]

9. Behaviorist=a psychologist who professes to have no mind.

I have no quarrel with that position.

[phantom power]

11. Consciousness arises from *some* sort of mechanism.

Anybody who pursues this notion is a behavioralist, in the sense that they are attempting to discern the behaviors of this mechanism. And any other hypothesis is mysticism, in the sense that is can't be the domain of science. Anybody who attempts to understand self-awareness scientifically is a behavioralist. I don't see this as especially threatening. I'm self-aware, and if I ever come to understand the mechanism of my brain that make me so, I'll still be just as self-aware. Maybe more so.

[mainegreen]

12. How the crap do you program a meme?

I'd like to know. It's sounds like a real bitchin' object/class to me. Might be useful!
:evilgrin: