Interesting and informative.

Thanks

Machines can see. They take a pictures of people, scenes and even stars and galaxies. They can see through human body which human beings cannot do. They can hear for example, they record talks and music. They can walk, talk, touch, smell, they can do everything that human being can do with the external senses if not better. Our TVs show us people and places from far far away to us, which we cannot on our own without them. They can do arithmetic without errors and faster than we human beings. With the advent of artificial intelligence and advancement in communication technologies, there is almost nothing that machines cannot do which human beings can. Machines and technologies are built to imitate or simulate human activities and human thinking. They are built to do our tasks for us. Machines or networks of machines are built indeed by modeling machines after human beings.
So, what would be really interesting is to find what is it, if anything, that machines cannot do but only human beings (or living beings in general) can. Yes, there seem to be some things they cannot do. For example, how about the following:

1.They do not really "know" what they are doing, nor know the meaning of the signals they carry whereas we know the meaning of the words we are speaking (hopefully!) and that of what we are hearing. We know what we are doing. Computers and communication networks do not, although they do all the tasks they do much better than we.

2. They cannot start or change themselves on their own. Once started, they carry on wonderfully. You may call this free will.

Does a quantum computer know what it is doing? Does it know the meaning of its memory contents?

Will a "conscious" machine ever be built?

This debate hasn't been settled yet.

Ref. 2 Syamala

Hello All

A public debate was held at MIT during the 70 th Anniversary of Alan Turing's Seminal Paper "On Computable Numbers." This will give some insights as to what the experts say. Those at IB who are familiar with Turing machine and AI may find it easy to follow.

VIDEO LINK (Duration, 60 Minutes):

http://mitworld.mit.edu/play/420/

Creativity: The Mind, Machines, and Mathematics: Public Debate
November 30, 2006

ABOUT THE LECTURE:

Two of the sharpest minds in the computing arena spar gamely, but neither scores a knockdown in one of the oldest debates around: whether machines may someday achieve consciousness.

****(NB: Viewers may wish to brush up on the work of computer pioneer Alan Turing and philosopher John Searle in preparation for this video.)******

Ray Kurzweil confidently states that artificial intelligence will, in the not distant future, “master human intelligence.” He cites the “exponential power of growth in technology” that will enable both a minute, detailed understanding of the human brain, and the capacity for building a machine that can at least simulate original thought. The “frontier” such a machine must cross is emotional intelligence—“being funny, expressing loving sentiment…” And when this occurs, says Kurzweil, it’s not entirely clear that the entity will have achieved consciousness, since we have no “consciousness detector” to determine if it is capable of subjective experiences.

Acknowledging that his position will prove unpopular, David Gelernter launches his attack: “We won’t even be able to build super-intelligent zombies unless we approach the problem right.” This means admitting that a continuum of cognitive styles exists among humans. As for building a conscious machine, he sees no possibility of one emerging from even the most sophisticated software. “Consciousness means the presence of mental states strictly private with no visible functions or consequences. A conscious entity can call on a thought or memory merely to feel happy, be inspired, soothed, feel anger…” Software programs, by definition, can be separated out, peeled away and run in a logically identical way on any computing platform. How could such a program spontaneously give rise to “a new node of consciousness?”

Kurzweil concedes the difficulty of defining consciousness, but does not want to wish away the concept, since it serves as the basis for our moral and ethical systems. He maintains his argument that reverse engineering of the human brain will enable machines that can act with a level of complexity, from which somehow consciousness will emerge.

Gelernter replies that believing this “seems a completely arbitrary claim. Anything might be true, but I don’t see what makes the claim plausible.” Ultimately, he says, Kurzweil must explain objectively and scientifically what consciousness is -- “how it’s created and got there.” Kurzweil stakes his claim on our future capacity to model digitally the actions of billions of neurons and neurotransmitters, which in humans somehow give rise to consciousness. Gelernter believes such a machine might simulate mental states, but not actually pass muster as a conscious entity. Ultimately, he questions the desirability of building such computers: “We might reach the state some day when we prefer the company of a robot from Walmart to our next-door neighbor or roommates.”

******************

About the SPEAKERS:

Raymond Kurzweil
Chairman and CEO, Kurzweil Technologies, Inc.
Author, The Singularity is Near

David Gelernter
Professor of Computer Science, Yale University
Chief Scientist, Mirror Worlds Technologies

Rodney A. Brooks
Director of the MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL)

Panasonic Professor of Robotics

fres

Dear Tim

Your contributions to the world we live in today cannot be underestimated. The web has an incredible potential to even out many long-standing social and economic inequities, both globally and locally.

The philosophical, ethical and technical issues you and your colleagues considered, and still consider, to bring the web to life and keep it going, are amazing to me. All I can do is applaud your work, and this article, as well.

I'm awed that DK Matai has brought you here to share this with us. Thank you, Tim and DK.

love, Heath

Dear Tim, you are the chosen man of destiny!

J.Bronowski said in his celebrated book The Ascent of Man, "It seems ideas discover man rather than the other way about."

How I am clear that it is true here in your case!

We advance from body to mind to soul as we evolve and go deeper and deeper into things.

In body we are connected through distances/space, in mind we are connected through thoughts/virtual distances/virtual spaces. In soul we are connected directly or indistinguishably as One.

I see your WWW as Gaia's (Living Earth's) Mind.

Indeed,as you say, as we will advance towards soul, WWW will be so ubiquitous that we will feel we are always connected with all. Gaia will be nearing what in Hindu religion is called Samadhi!

Syamala:

You ask what cannot a machine do that only humans can?

I am thinking that no matter how much artificial intelligence is programmed into a computer, it cannot know what unconditional love is, nor joy or peace, i.e. the higher levels of consciousness. Nor could it reach God-Consciousness. (Not many humans ever reach this point either except for a few saints) If a computer reached God-Consciousness then human creators would be god(s).

Perhaps a computer(machine) could be programmed to "mimic" the emotions of love, but would it be real? Since unconditional love comes from the heart and not the intellect or mind, how would you give a machine a "heart" or program a heart?

Just thinking a machine would never be able to love.

Bonnie

Syamala:

You ask what cannot a machine do that only humans can?

I am thinking that no matter how much artificial intelligence is programmed into a computer, it cannot know what unconditional love is, nor joy or peace, i.e. the higher levels of consciousness. Nor could it reach God-Consciousness. (Not many humans ever reach this point either except for a few saints) If a computer reached God-Consciousness then human creators would be god(s).

Perhaps a computer(machine) could be programmed to "mimic" the emotions of love, but would it be real? Since unconditional love comes from the heart and not the intellect or mind, how would you give a machine a "heart" or program a heart?

Just thinking a machine would never be able to love.

Bonnie

Dear Bonnie,
I agree with you. Free will is identical with the Love you have mentioned although it is not easy to see that.
However here is something of the nature of proof that a computer cannot know what it is doing because it is not difficult to define what "to know" means. A human being knows an object when a representation of that object exists in his/her brain. A computer also behaves as though it knows an object when a representation of the object is written into its memory.
In a brain, the representation is stored by systems of neurons in an associative manner (each bit of information is carried collectively by systems of neurons). In a digital computer, the representation is stored as bytes of '0's and a '1's. In a quantum computer, the representation is stored in a register of qubits.
Using this definition, it is easy to see that a digital computer does not know what it is doing. Suppose that a computer knows an object A implying that a representation of A as a sequence of '0's and '1's is already written into its memory. To be self-aware, the computer must know that it knows A, so it must also contain in its memory the sentence "I know A" and for the same reason, it must also have the sentence "I know that I know A" and "I know that I know that I know A", and so on. So, the computer must be equipped with a mechanism which would write all the sentences in this infinite sequence, once a representation of A is written into its memory. The machine then, enters into an infinite loop and write, and write and write until it runs out of all its memory space. Also, writing each sentence in the loop takes some time however small it may be. Thus the computer with a finite (not infinite)storage space and a finite (not infinitesimal) writing time cannot complete the infinite loop. So, it cannot be self-aware.

We do not know whether the infinite loop completes, if not, what happens in a brain but we human beings do know what we are doing at least when awake.

What about a quantum computer? A quantum computer does have the potential to be millions of times faster than today's most powerful supercomputers and many times larger storage capacity. Can it complete the infinite loop? According to maths, it cannot complete an infinite loop no matter how big a memory and how fast its Write operation may be because they are still finite.

Syamala, perhaps we can introduce discreteness in "I know that I know that I know A..." in some way so that after some time with each discrete state computer begins to rather lose some of its length of sentence from the "I know A" side. Eventually it will remain with "I know that I know", then even with "I know" then only with "I"...then even forget it. So that like we sort of enter our sleep or even deep sleep state computer too sort of enters its 'sleep or deep sleep state. From where it can again begin when we switch on. Of course just an idea to a computer expert.

Shrodinger say somewhere in his book "What is Life": Just as an electron jumps to higher energy levels in an atom, similarly it jumps to lower energy levels. And REALLY THERE IS NO LOWEST ENERGY LEVEL AS is popularly understood but a CROWDED SERIES OF LEVELS, which too are 'quantized' but with comparatively small steps from one level to the next...

I think these words have some secret in them for making computer which can go to its 'sllep'r ground state in the above way. That is not to say that the computer can become fully human, only that in thi way it can go nearest to being human. As to why it can't become fully human I will give my idea later.

The WWW was mankind’s most transformative invention, perhaps greater than harnessing fire, yet sometimes I think the infrastructure is a tangible manifestation of it's intangible counterpart consciousness.

In other words we have collapsed the universal consciousness "wave" and stored it as bits of zeros and ones on magnetic media for the most part. The interesting thing is this consciousness creates reality at the minimum by the decisions and actions each individual takes. This means we have a map of the collective “mind”, which creates collective reality. Yet this mind is unlike the individual mind’s that generate it as a product, of which the sum essence of it, is without ego.

Tim Berners-Lee made some excellent points.

I think we are in for an exponential surge in human evolution.

I like to call (R)evolution. (Our) Evolution.

We know that all computers required consciousness to come into existence. They require a programmer to function regardless, so it doesn't matter if they ever pass the Turing test or not, they are a product of human consciousness.

We can also estimate the probability to be very high for the Universe as the Master Quantum Computer to require consciousness as well. Not unlike the PC the Universe can have an operating system with many independent programs running in it.

I think some simply do not understand the nature of the creature called self conscious awareness. Computers are a part of consciousness but could never contain or produce it, no matter how much they might emulate it with artificial intelligence. Even with artificial intelligence the original intelligence and logic comes from and is an extension of it’s human counterpart.

I think the best we will ever do is to have computers / technology become an extension of our consciousness and intention, as they have, as well as supplementing the capabilities of our physical body.

Fres,
I now see that I confused between Bonnie and you and missed to reference your message#3 in my #7 which includes responses to both of you. Since you said "Will a "conscious" machine ever be built? This debate hasn't been settled yet", the point I am trying to make in #7 is that a machine canno be conscious like a human being because it cannot know what it is doing. Have any comment?

In #12, #7 is not right. Please read it as #8. Ah,I can never get these numbers right.

"a machine cannot be conscious like a human being because it cannot know what it is doing."

The debate of whether machines can someday have 'consciousness' is a open one in the scientific circles. The debate which I mentioned in post #3 is one such example. Please go through it understand why it is still open.

"We do not know whether the infinite loop completes, if not, what happens in a brain but we human beings do know what we are doing at least when awake."

The argument in post #7 doesn't address the key point - How does consciousness work in human brain. Human brain attaches "meaning" to information without going through literally infinite loops. If we understand what it means to be "conscious as a human being" then perhaps we can build a machine which is "conscious as a human being".

Science is still premature in the study of consciousness. There is exciting research going on in the studies of human mind and consciousnesses. Till science doesn't settle the question of human consciousness, the debate will be open.

Science of consciousness is termed as the ten most important discoveries to look forward in this century, and V.S. Ramachandran is among the stalwarts in that field.

Here's an article which gives insights into the biological evolution of consciousness in human beings and what it means to be "conscious" as a human being.

On My Mind: V.S. Ramachandran

On Consciousness Evolved

What is consciousness? This really breaks down into two questions: The first is the nature of qualia--how does the awareness of sensations like bitter, or painful, or red arise from the activity of neurons? The second: How does the sense of self—the person who experiences qualia—arise?

It has been suggested that the first problem is more tractable and should be tackled before going on to the issue of the self, which has elements of unity, continuity, a sense of agency and less obviously, the attachment of meaning to mere sensations. I disagree. I suggest that qualia (e.g., visual awareness) and self are two sides of a coin; you cannot solve the qualia problem without understanding the self. The reason is obvious: You cannot have "free floating" qualia without a self to experience them and to give them meaning.

We know that awareness is not a property of the whole brain, so the problem can be reduced to, "What particular neural circuits are involved in consciousness? And what's so special about these circuits that they can explain consciousness?"

I suggest that a new set of brain structures evolved during hominid evolution, turning the output from more primitive sensory areas of the brain into what I call a "metarepresentation." I think they edited, enhanced and packaged sensory information into more manageable chunks, used for juggling symbols and language. And most important, they made the link to meaning—whereby the sensory objects we perceive evoke multiple parallel implications in our minds. For example, an apple has potentially infinite nuances of meaning for humans, such as baking, keeping the doctor away, tempting Eve. But for a lemur, apple has no "meaning"; it's simply identifiable as food.

I believe the anatomical structures involved in creating this metarepresentation include the inferior parietal lobule, Wernicke's language comprehension area and the anterior cingulate cortex. Find out how these structures perform their job and we will have figured out what it means to be a conscious human being.

—V.S. Ramachandran, MD, PhD, is director of the Center for Brain and Cognition at UC, San Diego, and was the BBC Reith lecturer for 2003.

http://seedmagazine.com/news/2006/10/on_my_mind_vs_ramachandran.php

About the author (Ref 14)

V.S. Ramachandran is a good friend and neighbor of Deepak Chopra. He also has a great understanding in Vedanta Philosophy. Newsweek Magazine named him among the 100 most influential people to look forward to in the new millennium. His recent work is in the field of art where he proposed the existence of artistic universals.

Post # 8 need not address how consciousness works in human brain. It shows that even without knowing an answer to that question, it is not difficult to see that a machine cannot know what it is doing because completion of the infinite loop is a necessary (as opposed to sufficient) condition for a machine to know what it is doing. Post #8 also implies that a brain has some real information such that no matter how it is represented in a machine, the machine would not know what it is doing because the machine cannot have infinite storage nor can it execute its WRITE with infinite speed (only as fast as light at the most).

A human mind doesn't have infinite storage and cannot perform operations with infinite speed.

The trick lies in understanding human consciousness. what it means to be conscious and what it means to be self-aware as a human. This is not easy and not impossible either.

If the debate about human consciousness is settled and the simplistic proof presented in Post #8 is valid, then the scientists, mathematicians, philosophers and logicians would not argue over it as they did(and still do with renewed vigor and with new insights into the science of human brain and information processing theory)since the days of Alan Turing and Kurt Godel - simply because these people are experts in logic and would be more than happy to accept a simple "valid" proof.

The debate is not settled among the scientists and mathematicians. Just Go to MIT, Caltech, or UCLA and enlighten them about this little proof which settled a major debate and deserves a honorary doctorate. It may be settled in some pseudo spiritual circles where the adherents offer logical proofs which are fool-proof but not else where.

For all I know this debate may never be settled with a logical proof as indicated by the works of Godel and Alan Turing.

It's a mutual friendly settlement you see Fresportra at ib :))

COMPUTERS, GODEL, ALAN TURING, PARADOXES , FREE WILL, REASON AND AVERROES.

Self-reference is well known in computer languages. In philosophy, it also refers to the ability of a subject to speak of or refer to themself: to have the kind of thought expressed in English by "I".*

Godel showed that self-reference leads automatically to paradoxes in logic.

He showed that all sufficiently powerful systems of logic contain unprovable statements.

Alan Turing analogously showed that self-reference leads to uncomputability in computers. A well-known problem whose answer is uncomputable is the Halting problem. first proposed by Alan Turing: Program a computer. Lwt it run. Does the computer ever halt and give an output? Or does it run forever(going into an infinite loop)? There is no general procedure to compute the answer for this question. No matter how long a computer has gone on computing without halting you cannot conclude that it will never halt.

How do computers attach “meaning” to information? You need an interpreter to do that.

You DON’T need infinite storage to run a code which is made of a few bits of information that which falls into an infinite loop due to self-reference. The interpreter has to decide what it must make out of an infinite loop if it can. But, this leads to the halting problem. There in lies the unpredictability and is tempting to identify the same paradoxes in the function of human mind.

We all know that human beings are masters of self-reference. Some are capable of no other form of reference as can be seen from the contributions of a few self enlightened people contributing to this Socratic dialogue. Humans are certainly subject to paradox as are computers.

We are notoriously unable to predict our future actions. This is an important feature of what we call free will

By “Free Will” I mean our apparent freedom to make decisions. It is like a person who sits in a restaurant and looks at a menu and he and he alone can decide what he will choose , and before he chooses, he himself will not what will choose. That is the future action of a person is inscrutable to himself.

The inscrutable nature of our choices is close analog of Halting prolem: once we set a train of thought in motion, we don’t know whether it will lead to somewhere or not. And if it leads to somewhere we don’t what it is until we reach there.

We generally assign unpredictable behavior to “irrationality”. This is because, if we behave rationally, i.e. if we reason our actions will be more predictable.

But, the irony is that, just when we behave rationally, thinking logically like a computer in a step to step procedure, our actions become provably unpredictable. RATIONALITY COMBINES WITH SELF-REFERENCE AND MAKE OUR ACTIONS INTRINSICALLY PARADOXIAL AND UNCERTAIN.

Muslim Philosopher Averroes* (Ibn Rushd)

Said that what is immortal in human beings is not their soul but their capacity for reason. Reason is immortal exactly because it is not specific to any individual. It is the common property of all reasoning beings.

COMPUETRS POSSESS THE CAPCITY TO REASON AND THE CAPACITY FOR SELF-REFERENCE. AND THEREFORE THEIR ACTIONS ARE INTRINSICALLY INSCRUTABLE.

The consequence is that as they become much more powerful than they are now and perform complex tasks they exhibit an unpredictability approaching that of humans. And going by Averroes they have the same degree of immortality as humans.

1)*Self-reference is possible when there are two logical levels, a level and a meta-level. It is most commonly used in mathematics, philosophy, computer programming, and linguistics. Self-referential statements can lead to paradoxes

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-reference

2)*Ibn Rushd , Arabic (ابن رشد), known as Averroes (1126 – December 10, 1198), was an Andalusian-Arab philosopher and physician, a master of philosophy and Islamic law, mathematics, and medicine. He was born in Cordoba, Spain, and died in Marrakesh, Morocco. His school of philosophy is known as Averroism.

Averroes tried to reconcile Aristotle's system of thought with Islam. According to him, there is no conflict between religion and philosophy, rather that they are different ways of reaching the same truth. He believed in the eternity of the universe. He also held that the soul is divided into two parts, one individual and one divine; while the individual soul is not eternal, all humans at the basic level share one and the same divine soul. Averroes has two kinds of Knowledge of Truth. The first being his knowledge of truth of religion being based in faith and thus could not be tested, nor did it require training to understand. The second knowledge of truth is philosophy, which was reserved for an elite few who had the intellectual capacity to undertake its study.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Averroes

The code creating the loop above is very short. It simply adds a string "I know" to the front of the present output string and feeds it as input. The code does not occupy a lot of memory. The input and output are both increasing in length. Because the output of each step is being written back into the memory, more memory space is consumed in each step. If you have an interpreter that brings a system come to a halt in case if it falls into an infinite loop, fine; the infinite loop does not complete no matter what.
Yes brain scientists are indeed aware of the simplistic proof above. I read it in a book on the brain by a well known biologist (Unfortunately, this was some time ago and I forgot the author's name.) Since a human brain (not mind) doesn't have infinite storage and cannot perform operations with infinite speed, self-awareness of human brain is said to occur as a cumulative effect of the functions of neuron systems at various hierarchical levels. The book of course, did not say that a machine can also be self-aware because they cannot explain self-awareness of the brain in detail. Until now, what we store in computers is only a representation (a mapping into bits, qubits, etc.) of some information contained in the brain; it is not the same as that information. Similarly energy signals carried on communication lines are also a mapping but not the same as informtion in the brain (for example, electrical signals and light signals are two kinds of representations and can convey the same piece of information). So, it is possible that the information contained in the brain is of a DIFFERENT NATURE than its representations stored in computers and conveyed on communication lines. The suggestion here is that information in the brain therefore, may not require infinite storage space. It is possible that it is non-local in nature, and if so, the infinite loop may complete in the brain in a finite time. That is what I wanted to convey by my simplistic proof above. "Mind is a different kind of matter" is what Vedanta says. So, it might help scientists to solve their riddles concerning the brain if they change their current assumptions about the brain.
Deepak was suggesting to brain scientists in his posts "Why Robots love music", that the brain is an agent of the mind but not identical with the mind. That mind may not be identical with the brain is what I am suggesting too.

LOL, I tried to copy a picture but no go!

Please open www.selfdesigneduniverse.com and then scrolling down to middle open the picture containing mineral, plant, animal, ape, woman/man alongwith their anti-mineral, root, tail, hind-body, brain parts(just above the lover pair.

Brain is what
anti-mineral is to a mineral
root is to a tree,
tail is to an animal
hind-body (goes latent in hind-body)is to an ape
and finally which is called brain in humans.

It changes along with the changing forms of the principals as they evolve. (In fact it also contains answer to one of scientists' most important questions today - where anti-matter has gone??
******

Now mind is WHAT LINKS a (whole)tree, animal, ape, man to the whole history of the universe. Obviously it contains the whole past history of us, of our evolution as part of the universe in it. And obviously again it must have what we call Consciousness or Consciousness-s-such as one of its most prominent constituents.

It began right from big bang, and is our link to the big bang and via that to what we call Consciousness and what some scientists tentatively call Supersymmetry and I call Mosc (Matter of spiritual category).

I would like to repost a couple of posts in this thread which were made by our good friend Alex who in the past contributed in Deepak Chopra's threads.

These posts appeared in Deepak Chopra's thread;

The Trouble With Genes (Part 2)

http://www.intentblog.com/archives/2006/10/the_trouble_wit_1.html

But, these comments are very relevant to the posts made by fresportra and Syamala.

It addresses the debate directly from different perspectives.

Point of views, arguments and proposed proofs don't automatically make them "valid" as fresportra rightly pointed out. It is narrow-mindedness to say that the debate is closed.

Since this Socratic dialogue intends to merge science and spirituality, it might as well merge the materialistic point of view.

PS: I also suggest everyone who are interested in Quantum computers and their counter intuitive quantum weirdness and our present limitations due to the elusive theory of quantum gravity, to see my numerous posts on this topic in the same thread, "The Trouble With Genes (Part 2)" URL above. or Click my profile name.

Allow me to elaborate on materialism, spirituality and and how materialist’s point of view is compatible with spirituality:

Please follow me, it may become lengthy:

With Artificial intelligence it seems evident that there could be robots whose general behavior is the same a s the behavior of the humans beings. These robots would be thinking beings which evolve don the substrate of metal and silicon chips just as we evolved on a substrate of amino acids and other carbon based compounds which formed our DNA.

Would one be justified in sayinfg thatbthese highly evolved robots possess consciousness in the same sense that humans do?

Upon lengthy introspection…… most people will agree that the individfual person consists of three distinct parts:

1.) Hard ware physical body and brain.
2.) Software, the memories skills and opinions, general behavior etc.
3.) Consciousness, the sense of self and personal identity, pure awareness, the spark of life or even the soul. (or awareness of consciousness and the awareness of consciousness of the consciousness as Deepak Chopra would say)

We can argue that any component parts of 1). or 2) can be replaced or altered with out really affecting 3). The purpose of this argument would be show that there is nothing about part 3) that is specific to the individual.

First point first. About hardware. If one gets an artificial limb, kidney or heart one is still the same person. I maintain that it is possible to envisage a time in future when one could get a new artificial brain. This could be done by say holographically recording the physical, electrical and bio chemical structure of the brain and then transferring this structure isomorphically on to a large silicon chip on to a tissue cultered brain. Presumably one would experience such transfer during a brief period of unconsciousness after which one would go on thinking much the same as before. The whole process would be comparable in progarmmming a new computer with duplicate software.

For the s software part, a persons personality is always changing with time. One is learning new things always and forgetting old things. There is also the extreme example of brainwashing. We are inclined to say that a person’s essential identity is unchanged, even if he is given a complete set of false memories.

Sowhat remains of Part3? It can be contended that the sum total of the individual consciousness is the bare feeling of existence, expressed by the primal utterance, I AM (Also found in mystical traditions of east and in Old Testament). Anything else is either hardware or software and can be changed or dispensed with. Only the single thought I AM ties me to the person I am years ago.

Curious thing is that we have to express our individual consciousness with the same words I AM. IAM myself I AM me I exsist etc. (Hegel calls it “the divine nature of language”)

What conclusion might one draw from the fact that you’re essential consciousness and everyone else’s consciousness is expressed by the same words? Perhaps it is reasonable to suppose that there really is one consciousness, that the individual are smply disparate faces of what the classical mystical traditions call, The One.

We can say that the essence of consciousness is nothing more the simple existence, I am. Why should the possession of this sort of consciousness be denied to anything that does exist? As the Zen phrase says, “The universal rain moistens all creatures”. To exist is to have consciousness. The other things one might feel necessary for xconsciuosness are more orless complicated software and patterns of mass and energy. But, no pattern can be conscious until it exists until it is brought into reality. Existence is finally the only thing required for consciousness. A rock is conscious. A key board is conscious. And so, of course a robot is conscious before and after its behavior evolves to the level of human being.

Traditionally, those who have asserted the equivalence of men and future machines have been called positivists (I would like to say here that Stephen Hawking considers himself to be positivist), mechanists or materialists.

They put their view as such:

“Men are no better than machines”

But, if one only changes emphasis, this expression of materialists becomes an expression of deep belief in the universality and the reality if consciousness:

“Machines can be as good as men.”

36. Posted by Alex on October 14, 2006 10:00 AM

There seems to be three view points regarding the souls in relation to Humans and robotic machines.

A mechanist or materialist point of view: Both men and machine s are nothing but machines and there is no reason why man like machines can exist.

A Humanist point of view: Men have souls and machines don’t and therefore no robot can be quite like a man.

Mystical point of view (Perhaps mysticism is not a right word for this view but lets stick to it): Everything whether man or machine participates in the Absolute, therefore it is possible for man-like machines to exist.

In my last comment I argued that for the third point of view under which “to have a soul” is a concept automatically satisfied by anything that exists. But, this view leads to a conclusion identical to that of mechanism; SOME OF YOU MAY FEL THAT I HAVE DUCKED THE REAL ISSUE. We feel our individual beings to be to be more than just a machine!

Is there any possible justification for this belief short of recourse to an all pervading Absolute?

Alan Turing developed a powerful argument for mechanism: All that we can know about another persons mind is based on seeing his behavior (by conversing with him, reading his writings and so on.) And there seems to be in principle, no reason why there could not be a machine whose conversation is like a person’s.

Now, it might be objected that such an argument doesn’t account for private mental phenomena, such as mental images, purposes emotions and the like. But a determined mechanist ( or materialist) can say that what we all a mental image is merely a model or simulation such as a computer which uses, that a purpose is simply an assignment of utility of values to certain internal states and that emotions are ways of assigning values toe external phenomena.

As even stronger argument for mechanists position can be formulated by asserting that: 1) the activities of the mind are isomorphic to certain electrochemical processes in the brain and 2) the brain functions basically like a digital computer.

The assertions can be restated: 1) there is no mind apart from the matter; and 2) brain is finite. The idea that given 1 and 2 we can be sure that the operation of mind is a finite law-like process; and any such process can , in fact, be modeled by a large enough digital computer.

Assumption 1) is often questioned by those who believe in telepathy and other forms of ESP like Deepak Chopra and his faithful followers. The investigations have pointed out various unusual occurrences or perceptions that do not seem to fit in with the idea that they indicate simply a phenomena taking place in the limited confines of the skull. One really doesn’t know what to make of the claims made of ESP (extrasensory perceptions like the evidence which Deepak Chopra provides.).

For your information Aurora Carlson and others, I myself have my fair share of synchronicities: meaningful coincidences, true premonitions, and lucky guesses. But the desire for result is so strong, and the opportunity for deception so great, that the most extreme caution is necessary. The human mind is known to be gullible too when it comes to cognition.( Great minds are known to commit blunders time and again. Some remain in a state of Denial. Not just the politicins but some philosophers, mystics and learned in science people. In these cases blind faith takes over and overides logic and reason in their rational arguments it seems.)

One of the reasons most lacking in ESP research is any reasonable theory of how the mind could, in fact, go beyond the confines of the brain. There are still ideas for only ideas of some theories.

Quantum entanglement indicates that there is a very real sense in which the particles that have interacted have continues to affect each other long after the interaction has taken place…and in a instantaneous way even when they separated light years away! . This is oft mentioned in Deepak Chopra’s writings. If this indeed true as it seems to materialists and quantum physicists, then the universe would of necessity behave as a single organic whole, leading to the possibility to identify one’s mind with the cosmos rather than with some individual brain. But, as pointed out in my earlier post there is no reason to why such consciousness would not be open to robots as well. Of course then robots will not be machines in narrow sense (as in a finitistic proof) as indicated by the mechanism.

Going back to the argument of mechanism and assumption 2), what about that? It is certainly possible that that matter is infinitely divisible or may be made up of unimaginably microscopic strings (according to string theory). If this were indeed true any material object, such as a human brain, would in fact be infinitely complex (or extremely highly complex). Perhaps we really do think infinite thoughts which are rather very highly complex thoughts, and it is only an accident property of the limited scale level that our description of our thoughts comes out finite and at non-quantum level.

Cantor remarked “the infinite even inhabits the minds”

Perhaps the materialists or mechanists are right. But it is certainly worthwhile to keep an open mind even if it means occasionally seeing how it feels to believe something that is “impossible”. That is what most materialists or scientists do unlike the pseudo-scientists or some people who make mystical claims and are close minded to discard the materialist’s point of view.

41. Posted by Alex on October 14, 2006 12:10 PM

Re-reading these excellent posts by Alex, I have nothing much to add, except may be something about Quantum Computers.

Wisdom from Islam Fresportra? Give me a break. The individual soul called Jivatman is as eternal as the Universal Spirit Paramatman!! Former is like an ocean drop of the ocean(the latter). Same basically, only at another level of existence they appear different. Your posts are very good but Wisdom from Islam? don't insult our intelligence. It is mostly for jackasses! You don't have to go deeper, just a glimpse at the Islamic world tells you. It is Pakistan's turn to boil now. LOL! Screwing each other's ass thru' violence is the only thing they know.

btw Deepak is one of the top 100 Icons of the last century declared by Time magazine, and that is no cheap street magazine.

I.V.

Actually, Averroes was interpreting Aristotle when he said that reason is immortal, as was quoted by Fresportra in #20 to make a point about the likeliness of reasoning capabilities of computers and human beings alike.

Ok Nagaraj, I mean Thangaraj. I like reading your posts as the focus is mainly on reasoning and not on sentis, now don't go and tell this to bunty or laxmi aunty. ok? Last but not the least, please don't play pranks with me: saying Wisdom from Islam. It's an Oxymoron. Try some morons, not me or find laxmi aunty and go tell her. LOL! I'm in Meditation, as the pink light was entering, suddenly this thought came about the wisdom, and it was all black out in meditation. Anyway, you can continue your shivatandav, I won't interfere. I'm a Shivbhakth!

Your friend,
Naresh Reddy:-)

Self-referent and quantum mechanicl systems:

As a self-referent system I am somebody else or have an other "I" and as a quantum mechanical sytem I have quite an other. The former does not depend upon the observer while the latter changes with the observer.

For example, suppose I am an middle-ager. As a self referent system I am a middle ager. And have my "I" in my head. But now suppose a child comes before me (observers me). I begin to interact with her like a child. My "I" shifts to my navel, where the "I" of a child operates, according to my explanations already given. This latter is my quantum mechanical "I".

But nturally my reality or "I" as a self-referent system, of middle-ager will yet control my quantum mechanical reality or "I".

Bohr's Copenhagen Interpretation of quantum theory deals with quantum mechanical reality. Bohm tried to prove the reality of systems as self-referent systems underpinning their quantum mechanical reality and said that self-referent reality ultimately controlled the quantum mechanical reality. It was, in other words, Bohm's hidden variables.

As self-reference systems we are part of the universal evolution in a direct way. I don't think we can give this reality to machines.

Harb

Just wanted to add, all big or small systems have their particular self-referent realities underpinning their quantum mechanical realities. And to understand them we will have to understand evolution in terms of four basic interactions right from Big Bang.