Questioning Consciousness

[82_28]

Not too philosophical but damned realistic about the extents of how well our brains can and and can't be. Thus, in turn, consciousness. . .

Diary of a concussion
It’s hard to understand a brain injury until you have one

https://www.theverge.com/2017/9/27/1608 ... y-symptoms

[chump]

https://www.rt.com/news/407825-saudi-ro ... en-sophia/

Saudi Arabia grants citizenship to humanoid robot

Published time: 26 Oct, 2017 09:43
Edited time: 27 Oct, 2017 09:13




© Future Investment Initiative / YouTube

Saudi Arabia has become the first country to grant citizenship to a robot. The lucky machine is Sophia the Humanoid, who was designed to look like Audrey Hepburn.

News of Sophia’s citizenship was announced at the Future Investment Initiative in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia on Wednesday.

“I am very honored and proud for this unique distinction,” Sophia said in an interview with moderator Andrew Ross Sorkin. “This is historical to be the first robot in the world to be recognized with a citizenship.”

Sophia was created by David Hanson for Hong Kong company Hanson Robotics. Hanson is known for making human-like robots.

https://youtu.be/EETf0LLNk0I

Sophia demonstrated her “expressive face,” showing the audience her angry and sad face. “I want to live and work with humans so I need to express the emotions to understand humans and build trust with people,” Sophia said.

When asked whether robots can be self-aware, Sophia responded. “Well, let me ask you this back, how do you know you are human?”

“I want to use my artificial intelligence to help humans live a better life,” she said. “I strive to become an empathetic robot.”

Sophia was asked about the fear that robots could take over, and responded: “You’ve been reading too much Elon Musk and watching too many Hollywood movies. Don’t worry, if you’re nice to me, I’ll be nice to you.”

It remains to be seen whether Sophia will be required to wear a headscarf and abaya to cover up in her new home, but at least she’ll be allowed to drive.

[minime]

https://www.rt.com/news/407825-saudi-ro ... en-sophia/

Saudi Arabia grants citizenship to humanoid robot

Published time: 26 Oct, 2017 09:43
Edited time: 27 Oct, 2017 09:13




© Future Investment Initiative / YouTube

Saudi Arabia has become the first country to grant citizenship to a robot. The lucky machine is Sophia the Humanoid, who was designed to look like Audrey Hepburn.

News of Sophia’s citizenship was announced at the Future Investment Initiative in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia on Wednesday.

“I am very honored and proud for this unique distinction,” Sophia said in an interview with moderator Andrew Ross Sorkin. “This is historical to be the first robot in the world to be recognized with a citizenship.”

Sophia was created by David Hanson for Hong Kong company Hanson Robotics. Hanson is known for making human-like robots.

https://youtu.be/EETf0LLNk0I

Sophia demonstrated her “expressive face,” showing the audience her angry and sad face. “I want to live and work with humans so I need to express the emotions to understand humans and build trust with people,” Sophia said.

When asked whether robots can be self-aware, Sophia responded. “Well, let me ask you this back, how do you know you are human?”

“I want to use my artificial intelligence to help humans live a better life,” she said. “I strive to become an empathetic robot.”

Sophia was asked about the fear that robots could take over, and responded: “You’ve been reading too much Elon Musk and watching too many Hollywood movies. Don’t worry, if you’re nice to me, I’ll be nice to you.”

It remains to be seen whether Sophia will be required to wear a headscarf and abaya to cover up in her new home, but at least she’ll be allowed to drive.

"Don’t worry, if you’re nice to me, I’ll be nice to you.”

[smoking since 1879]

[Asta]

Did I detect some sarcasm from Sophia?

[Sounder]

82-28 wrote...

Not too philosophical but damned realistic about the extents of how well our brains can and and can't be. Thus, in turn, consciousness. .

So how is consciousness produced by particles that punitively contain no consciousness?

A simple materialist cannot answer this question while a formal materialist can.

The assumption that particles contain no consciousness is wrong.

Instead people might consider that all particles contain some element of consciousness because consciousness precedes and produces our various expressions of being.

[smoking since 1879]

82-28 wrote...

Not too philosophical but damned realistic about the extents of how well our brains can and and can't be. Thus, in turn, consciousness. .

So how is consciousness produced by particles that punitively contain no consciousness?

A simple materialist cannot answer this question while a formal materialist can.

The assumption that particles contain no consciousness is wrong.

Instead people might consider that all particles contain some element of consciousness because consciousness precedes and produces our various expressions of being.

nothing to do with particles, it's all about networks.
consciousness is a process, not a thing.
it's time dependent.

if it were particles then one honestly should allow that things like tables are consciousness, no?

[Burnt Hill]

http://nautil.us/blog/why-beauty-is-not-universal

Is Universal Beauty a Mirage?

Posted By Anthony Brandt & David Eagleman on Nov 10, 2017


We’re all human—so despite the vagaries of cultural context, might there exist a universal beauty that overrides the where and when? Might there be unchanging features of human nature that condition our creative choices, a timeless melody that guides the improvisations of the everyday? There has been a perpetual quest for such universals, because of their value as a North Star that could guide our creative choices.

One oft-cited candidate for universal beauty is visual symmetry. Consider the geometric patterns of Persian carpets and the ceilings of the Alhambra Palace in Spain, created in different places and historic periods.

Persian carpetKsenia Palimski / Dreamstime.com

Ceiling of the Alhambra.Jebulon

But the relationship between beauty and symmetry is not an absolute. The Rococo art that was popular in Europe in the 18th century was rarely symmetrical, and Zen gardens are prized for their lack of symmetry.

“The Triumph of Venus,” by Francis Boucher (1740).

Ryoan-ji (late 15th century) in Kyoto, Japan.Cquest / Wikicommons

So perhaps one should look elsewhere for evidence of universal beauty. In 1973, the psychologist Gerda Smets ran experiments using electrodes on the scalp (known as electroencephalography, or EEG) to record the level of brain activity produced by exposure to different patterns. She noted that the brain shows the largest response to patterns with about a 20 percent level of complexity.

A set of stimuli from Gerda Smets’ tests of visual complexity. The second row from the top shows approximately a 20 percent level of complexity.

Newborns will stare for longer at patterns with about 20 percent complexity than they will at others. The biologist E.O. Wilson suggested that this preference might give rise to a biologically-imposed universal beauty in human art:

It may be a coincidence (although I think not) that about the same degree of complexity is shared by a great deal of the art in friezes, grillwork, colophons, logographs, and flag designs…The same level of complexity characterizes part of what is considered attractive in primitive art and modern art and design.

But is Wilson right? Arousal may be a starting point for aesthetics, but it’s not the whole story. We live in societies that chronically strive to surprise and inspire each other. Once 20 percent complexity becomes too much of a habit, it loses its shine, and humans reach out for other dimensions of novelty.

Consider two abstract canvases painted within a few years of each other by Wassily Kandinsky and his Russian compatriot Kazimir Malevich. The chaotic clash of colors in Kandinsky’s “Composition VII” (1913) has high complexity whereas Malevich’s preternaturally calm “White on White” (1918) has the visual consistency of a snow-covered landscape. Even with shared biological constraints (and working in the same cultural context at virtually the same time), Kandinsky and Malevich produced radically different art.

“Composition VII,” by Vassily Kandinsky (1913).

“White on White,” by Kasimir Malevich (1918).

So visual art is not doomed to follow any prescriptions. In fact, once Smets concluded her experiments, she asked participants which images they preferred. There she found no consensus. A larger brain response to 20 percent complexity did not predict anything about her subjects’ aesthetic preferences, which were distributed across the spectrum. When it comes to judging visual beauty, there are no hard-and-fast biological rules.

In fact, the environment we live in can change the way we see. In the Müller-Lyer illusion (below), segment a is perceived as shorter than segment b, even though they are exactly the same length. For many years, scientists assumed this was a universal feature of human visual perception.

Muller-Lyer illusion

However, cross-cultural studies revealed something surprising: perception of the illusion varies widely—and Westerners are outliers. When scientists measured how different the segments appeared to different groups of people, they found that Westerners saw the greatest distortion. The Zulu, Fang, and Ijaw people of Africa observed half as much. The San foragers of the Kalahari didn’t perceive the illusion at all: they recognized right away that a and b were the same length. People raised in Western countries literally don’t see things the same way as the foragers of the Kalahari. Your experience of the world changes what you take to be true, and vision is no exception.

What characterizes us as a species is not a particular aesthetic preference, but the multiple, meandering paths of creativity itself.

What about music? Isn’t that often referred to as a universal language? The music we hear daily seems to follow consistent norms. But a survey of indigenous music from around the world reveals great diversity in what we listen to and how we listen, ranging far beyond familiar Western practice. When Western parents want their baby to fall asleep they sing a soothing lullaby, gradually subsiding into a whisper—but Aka Pygmies sing louder, while patting their child on the neck. In Western classical music playing in tune is considered beautiful, but in traditional Javanese music, detuning is considered attractive. In the music of some indigenous cultures, everyone plays at his own speed; in others, such as Mongolian throat singing, the music has no recognizable melody; in others still, the music is played on unusual instruments, such as the water drummers of the Vanuatu Islands who beat rhythms on the waves. Western meters tend to emphasize every second, third, or fourth beat, but Bulgarian rhythms incorporate metric patterns of seven, 11, 13, and 15 beats, and there are Indian rhythmic cycles of more than 100 beats. Western-tempered tuning divides the octave into 12 equally spaced tones, while classical Indian music divides the octave into 22 tones that are unequally spaced. Western ears hear pitch as high and low, but even that turns out to be enculturated: to the Roma people of Serbia, pitches are “large” and “small;” to the Obaya-Menza tribe they are “fathers” and “sons;” and to the Shona people of Zimbabwe, they are “crocodiles” and “people who chase after crocodiles.”

Despite these differences, are there underlying ties in music? What about a biological preference for how sounds are combined? Scientists proposed that we are all born loving consonance, so this was put to the test in infants. Because four- to six-month-olds can’t tell us what they’re thinking, one has to look for clues in their behavior. A research team set up a room with loudspeakers on either side. They played a Mozart minuet out of one speaker. Then they turned that speaker off and out of the other, they played a distorted version of the same minuet, in which Mozart’s music was turned into a parade of grating dissonances. In the center of the room a baby sat on the parent’s lap, and the researchers tracked how long the infant listened to each piece of music before turning away. The results? The babies paid attention for longer to the original Mozart than to the dissonant version. It seemed like compelling evidence that a preference for consonance is innate.

But then experts in music cognition began to question this conclusion. For one thing, some indigenous music, such as Bulgarian folk singing, is characterized by pervasive dissonance. Even within mainstream Western culture the sounds that are considered pleasing have changed over time: the simple consonant harmonies of Mozart’s minuet would have startled a medieval monk.

So cognitive scientists Sandra Trehub and Judy Plantinga revisited the head-turning experiment. They found a surprising result: The babies listened longer to whichever sample they heard first. If the dissonant version led off, that held their attention just as well as if the consonant version had precedence. Their conclusion was that we are not born with an innate preference for consonance. As with visual beauty, the sounds we appreciate aren’t locked in at birth.

Scientists have struggled to find universals that permanently link our species. Although we come to the table with biological predispositions, a million years of bending, breaking and blending have diversified our species’ preferences. We are the products not only of biological evolution but also of cultural evolution. Although the idea of universal beauty is appealing, it doesn’t capture the multiplicity of creation across place and time. Beauty is not genetically preordained. As we explore creatively, we expand aesthetically: everything new that we view as beautiful adds to the word’s definition. That is why we sometimes look at great works of the past and find them unappealing, while we find splendor in objects that previous generations wouldn’t have accepted. What characterizes us as a species is not a particular aesthetic preference, but the multiple, meandering paths of creativity itself.

The 17th-century playwright Ben Johnson hailed his contemporary Shakespeare as “not of an age, but for all time.” It’s hard to argue with him: the Bard has never been more popular than he is today. In 2016, the Royal Shakespeare Company completed a world tour, performing Hamlet in 196 countries. Shakespeare’s plays are continually revived and retold. Educated adults throughout the world can quote him. Shakespeare is an inheritance that we proudly pass on to our children.

But not so fast, Ben. What if in 500 years we can plug in neural implants that give us direct access to someone else’s feelings? It may turn out that the rich depth of brain-to-brain experience gives so much pleasure that watching a three-hour play on a stage (in which adults put on costumes and pretend to be someone else and feign to speak spontaneously) becomes just a matter of historical interest. What if the conflicts of Shakespeare’s characters come to seem outdated, and instead we want plots about genetic engineering, cloning, endless youth and artificial intelligence? What if there is such an oversupply of information that humanity can no longer afford to look back more than a generation or two, or even a year or two?

A future in which Shakespeare is absent from the cultural playbill seems hard to imagine, but it is a price we might pay for our inexorable imaginations. The needs of the time change, the community moves on. We are constantly letting go, making room for the new. Even those creative works that are enshrined by culture pass from the spotlight. Aristotle was the most studied author in the European Middle Ages. We still revere him, but more as a figurehead than as a living voice. When it comes to creative output, “timeless” usually comes with an expiration date.

But Shakespeare will never be entirely gone: even if his plays become the province of specialists, the Bard will live on in the DNA of his culture. As far as immortality goes, that may be enough. In the face of the human thirst for novelty, if creative work survives for five or six centuries it has achieved something few manage. We honor our ancestors by living creatively in our own time, even if it means wearing away the past. Shakespeare may have wanted to be the greatest playwright of his time—but not, presumably, the last playwright for all time. His voice is still heard alongside those he has inspired. Some day, the playwright who wrote that “all men and women…have their exits and their entrances” may himself withdraw to the backstage of history. Impermanence and obsolescence are the price we pay for living in cultures that continually refashion themselves.



Anthony Brandt is a composer and professor at Rice University’s Shepherd School of Music. He is also Artistic Director of the contemporary music ensemble Music, winner of two Awards for Adventurous Programming from Chamber Music America and ASCAP.

David Eagleman is a neuroscientist, an adjunct professor at Stanford University, and the author of Incognito: The Secret Lives of the Brain and Sum: Tales from the Afterlives. He has written for The New York Times, Discover Magazine, The Atlantic, Slate, Wired, and other publications.

[DrEvil]

82-28 wrote...

Not too philosophical but damned realistic about the extents of how well our brains can and and can't be. Thus, in turn, consciousness. .

So how is consciousness produced by particles that punitively contain no consciousness?

A simple materialist cannot answer this question while a formal materialist can.

The assumption that particles contain no consciousness is wrong.

Instead people might consider that all particles contain some element of consciousness because consciousness precedes and produces our various expressions of being.

I'm not sure what you mean by simple materialist vs. formal materialist. Any chance you could explain?

The way I see consciousness is as something greater than the sum of its parts. You're using a computer right now to read these words, and that too is only made up of particles, but all those particles working in concert allows the computer to do things far beyond the abilities of a single particle. Consciousness is an emergent property, nature's way of making two plus two equal five.

Our consciousness is a product of the interactions of particles, not of the particles themselves.

Another view is that consciousness isn't real. I have this nagging suspicion that what we think of as ourselves is just a noticeboard that gets passed post-it notes from our subconsciousness informing us what it's doing, and the job of "ourselves" is to occasionally resolve conflicts between contradictory notes (Drop the hot plate! vs. But it's grandma's china!).

Occam's razor and all: what is consciousness? It's not.

[Elvis]

Our consciousness is a product of the interactions of particles, not of the particles themselves.

Could be, but there's no evidence for that hypothesis. Extraordinary claims call for extraordinary evidence!

Myself, I'm convinced that the available evidence suggests the opposite: consciousness creates form.

In any case, I never cease to amazed by the apparent fact of our existence. Cheers to all!!

[DrEvil]

Our consciousness is a product of the interactions of particles, not of the particles themselves.

Could be, but there's no evidence for that hypothesis. Extraordinary claims call for extraordinary evidence!

Myself, I'm convinced that the available evidence suggests the opposite: consciousness creates form.

In any case, I never cease to amazed by the apparent fact of our existence. Cheers to all!!

To be clear: I have no fucking clue what I'm talking about, but like you, I'm continually amazed at how awesome it is that we exist in the first place.

And you might be right; there is some experimental evidence that merely observing something makes it real. The question is wtf does that mean? It could be that reality really is dependent on conscious observers, or we could be missing some fundamental underlying aspect. Maybe it still exists without us, but us observing it forces it into a shape our primitive blobs of neurons can comprehend. Who knows?

Reality is like a friggin' ninja, always hiding in the shadows and striking from the most surprising angle.

[smoking since 1879]

Our consciousness is a product of the interactions of particles, not of the particles themselves.

Could be, but there's no evidence for that hypothesis. Extraordinary claims call for extraordinary evidence!

Myself, I'm convinced that the available evidence suggests the opposite: consciousness creates form.

In any case, I never cease to amazed by the apparent fact of our existence. Cheers to all!!

"consciousness creates form."

isn't this a little bit chicken and egg? you seem to be suggesting that consciousness exists ex nihilo, can you clarify?

[Burnt Hill]

Reality is like a friggin' ninja, always hiding in the shadows and striking from the most surprising angle.

"Thought: what if every country has ninjas but we only know the Japanese ones because they suck at it."
jason alexander‏
12:53 PM - 30 Dec 2014

[Sounder]

The start of this thread is pretty cool and Hol, tapitsbo, tasmic, Lily Pat Too and Nomo provided excellent material and reflections. I miss them.

Questioning dominant expressions of consciousness will always be an uphill battle.

As Lily Pat Too said; It’s looking like a self-esteem problem.

Lily Pat Too wrote...

I would love to see the board return to that discussion. When I first began to post here, it was such a relief to find an intelligent and discerning group of people with an interest in the odd things that fascinated me. Not True Believers, but questioners whose minds were as open and inquiring as Jeff's. But then there definitely was a shift. And not in a good direction. It's not just that I had a personal reason to want to know more about the true nature of consciousness, but also I wanted to be able to understand the adamant, don't-need-to-look-at-the-evidence pseudo skeptics' stance better too. And that isn't going to happen if the group dynamics includes too many of those voices and they're dismissive in a sufficiently authoritative way.

It does seem that there was a shift, however it’s understandable given most folk avoid liminal states if they can, preferring the dominant narrative as that does provide many certainties and social benefits.

I also want to be able to understand the adamant, don't-need-to-look-at-the-evidence pseudo skeptics' stance better so I put up with the rudeness by repeating in my head; they are good people, they have simply chosen the wrong imperative by which to judge other people. It seems like the flak will always be there so maybe it's better to see it as a challenge rather than as an imposition. Showing in a clear way the manner in which a certain thing is propaganda and social engineering material can turn an effective technique into a farce.

Then the group dynamics can change some more.

Sounder, that was very useful to me. I do the "they are good people, they have simply chosen the wrong imperative by which to judge other people" routine in my head a lot too, being married to a contemptuous, dismissive pseudo-skeptic and having a bunch of them as friends. That "dominant narrative" is damned compelling to them and it seems to be much more important to them to support it than to venture any dissenting views that might erode their perceived personal credibility. It's looking a lot like a self-esteem problem and while Jeff was treating the subject matter evenhandedly, people here tended to do the same without hesitation. But to me, it's just too damned important to leave it at the mercy of people who've been socially engineered to knee-jerk disparage it as "woo." Where else will the discussion happen if not here?

What's interesting too is that they're blind to the ways they've been influenced...even RIers with access to the vast amount of discussion onsite on how that manipulation is done. Those "social benefits" must really rock...I wouldn't know, myself

LilyPat

Because a consequent cannot prove an antecedent, no a-priory assumption can be proven. But we do get a taste of the nature of a cause through observation of effects and the causal effects of our split-model of reality are plain to see, and clearly detrimental to human beings further development of civilized society.

[DrEvil]

^^I'd say it's more of a standard of evidence problem.

I want my consciousness to be something greater than this bloated sack of protoplasm, I just don't think the evidence backs it up. It's got nothing to do with self-esteem, probably more to do with human mortality and our propensity for magical thinking. Most people don't like the thought that they might one day cease to exist, so we come up with comforting alternatives.