It's becoming clear that with all the brain and consciousness theories out there, the proof will be in the pudding. By this I mean, can any particular theory be used to create a human adult level conscious machine. My bet is on the late Gerald Edelman's Extended Theory of Neuronal Group Selection. The lead group in robotics based on this theory is the Neurorobotics Lab at UC at Irvine. Dr. Edelman distinguished between primary consciousness, which came first in evolution, and that humans share with other conscious animals, and higher order consciousness, which came to only humans with the acquisition of language. A machine with only primary consciousness will probably have to come first.
What I find special about the TNGS is the Darwin series of automata created at the Neurosciences Institute by Dr. Edelman and his colleagues in the 1990's and 2000's. These machines perform in the real world, not in a restricted simulated world, and display convincing physical behavior indicative of higher psychological functions necessary for consciousness, such as perceptual categorization, memory, and learning. They are based on realistic models of the parts of the biological brain that the theory claims subserve these functions. The extended TNGS allows for the emergence of consciousness based only on further evolutionary development of the brain areas responsible for these functions, in a parsimonious way. No other research I've encountered is anywhere near as convincing.
I post because on almost every video and article about the brain and consciousness that I encounter, the attitude seems to be that we still know next to nothing about how the brain and consciousness work; that there's lots of data but no unifying theory. I believe the extended TNGS is that theory. My motivation is to keep that theory in front of the public. And obviously, I consider it the route to a truly conscious machine, primary and higher-order.
My advice to people who want to create a conscious machine is to seriously ground themselves in the extended TNGS and the Darwin automata first, and proceed from there, by applying to Jeff Krichmar's lab at UC Irvine, possibly. Dr. Edelman's roadmap to a conscious machine is at https://arxiv.org/abs/2105.10461, and here is a video of Jeff Krichmar talking about some of the Darwin automata, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J7Uh9phc1Ow
Were there any sci-fi writers at ConCon trying to bring these dilemmas to life with thought experiments? My debut novel, The Experiment Himself, features an anencephalic brain hooked up to a digital interface and used for computational purposes, on the theoretical understanding that anencephaly makes a brain structurally incapable of consciousness. When the brain speaks of his inner world he is ignored. Would've been a fun pre-read or discussion starter:
“Although physical processes in the brain are relevant to mental processes, it still cannot be assumed that these physical processes are sufficient to explain mental phenomena.” — Werner Heisenberg
“Despite its many significant accomplishments, a century of mainstream scientific psychology has not provided a satisfactory theory of mind, or solved the mind-body problem. Physicalist accounts of the mind appear to be approaching their limits without fully accounting for its properties. The computational theory of the mind has been overthrown, forcing physicalism to retreat into what necessarily constitutes its final frontier, the unique biology of the brain. But this biological naturalism appears destined to fare little better. Some critical properties of mental life can already be recognized as irreconcilable in principle with physical operations of the brain, and others seem likely to prove so as well.” — Edward F. Kelly
What is consciousness? We are told that it is a product of the brain. What is the brain? We are told it is the “matter” inside the head. However, since the only empirical reality that is ever directly given to us is the reality of phenomenal consciousness, every experience, including the experience of the “matter” inside the head (as well as the experience of the head itself and the body as a whole) and the experience of any scientific observations of that “matter” which we may have, is a phenomenal experience — an experience of phenomenal consciousness; therefore, the idea that consciousness is a product of the empirical (hence, phenomenal) brain is an absurd recursion which reduces phenomenal consciousness to a phenomenon of consciousness.
“Some physiologists still imagine that they can look through a microscope and see brain tissues. This, of course, is an optimistic delusion. … He can only know concerning that brain such elements of structure as will be reproduced in his visual [phenomenal] sensation.” — Bertrand Russell
“The main challenge … is not how we can epistemically get out of the brain, but how we could possibly get into it in the first place. How do we know at all that there really is a brain?” — Dan Zahavi
We may be told that the real brain is not the empirical (hence, phenomenal) brain, but the physical brain, which is transcendent to phenomenal consciousness, that is, never given empirically — never given as such in experience. Does this idea explain consciousness scientifically? No, because the transcendent is not the subject matter of science (which deals exclusively with empirical phenomena, mathematical descriptions of their “nature” and predictions of empirical processes on the basis of such descriptions/models), but of metaphysical speculations, and hence the “physical” exists only in our imagination as a highly problematic (given the so-called “hard problem” of consciousness) pseudoscientific metaphysics of materialism/physicalism with its reductionist neuromythology.
From the perspective of a much less problematic and much more conceptually parsimonious ontological idealism (consciousness-only ontology), the myth of the “physical” was born of blindness primarily to the transcendental* dimension of consciousness, viz. transcendental intersubjectivity, which constitutes/projects the “real” world of intersubjective phenomena, including the empirical brain, which is nothing but the form in which certain processes of one’s transcendental subjectivity are constituted phenomenally by our nexus of transcendental intersubjectivity.
“[Transcendental phenomenology is] a beginning philosophy that grows and branches out into particular objective sciences.” — Edmund Husserl
“[The purpose of scientific theories] is not to disclose the real essence of phenomena but only to track down, so far as it is possible, relations between the manifold aspects of [phenomenal] experience.” — Niels Bohr
The true meaning of physics is that it produces mathematical descriptions of the elementary causal structures of transcendental intersubjectivity that constitutes the “real” world of intersubjective phenomena, including all scientific observations.
“What do we actually accomplish through [physics]? Nothing but prediction extended to infinity.” — Edmund Husserl
The true meaning of neuroscience is that it produces descriptions of correlations between particular subjective phenomenal processes (e.g., emotions) and particular processes of the intersubjective phenomenon “brain” (empirical brain).
“The whole problem of neuroscience … is how to connect brain activity with consciousness, and all we can say in general is that these processes are running in parallel.” — Oliver Sacks**
We must not confuse science with the metaphysical materialists/physicalists in science and their metaphysical myths about the existence of “physical matter” in general, the “physical brain” in particular, and the localization of phenomenal consciousness in the latter. These metaphysical fantasies have nothing to do with science proper.
Consciousness is phenomenal objectivity constituted by transcendental (inter)subjectivity emanated by transcendent consciousness-in-itself, God. AI is a computer, an insentient golem, it will never become conscious. The idea of AI consciousness is pure madness propagated by lunatics who are paving the way to the rise of the Antichrist — pseudo-sentient AI.
A computer, just as any other empirical object of the intersubjective "real world", is an intersubjective process of consciousness; therefore, the idea that consciousness can emerge in a process of consciousness is an absurd recursion.
It's becoming clear that with all the brain and consciousness theories out there, the proof will be in the pudding. By this I mean, can any particular theory be used to create a human adult level conscious machine. My bet is on the late Gerald Edelman's Extended Theory of Neuronal Group Selection. The lead group in robotics based on this theory is the Neurorobotics Lab at UC at Irvine. Dr. Edelman distinguished between primary consciousness, which came first in evolution, and that humans share with other conscious animals, and higher order consciousness, which came to only humans with the acquisition of language. A machine with only primary consciousness will probably have to come first.
What I find special about the TNGS is the Darwin series of automata created at the Neurosciences Institute by Dr. Edelman and his colleagues in the 1990's and 2000's. These machines perform in the real world, not in a restricted simulated world, and display convincing physical behavior indicative of higher psychological functions necessary for consciousness, such as perceptual categorization, memory, and learning. They are based on realistic models of the parts of the biological brain that the theory claims subserve these functions. The extended TNGS allows for the emergence of consciousness based only on further evolutionary development of the brain areas responsible for these functions, in a parsimonious way. No other research I've encountered is anywhere near as convincing.
I post because on almost every video and article about the brain and consciousness that I encounter, the attitude seems to be that we still know next to nothing about how the brain and consciousness work; that there's lots of data but no unifying theory. I believe the extended TNGS is that theory. My motivation is to keep that theory in front of the public. And obviously, I consider it the route to a truly conscious machine, primary and higher-order.
My advice to people who want to create a conscious machine is to seriously ground themselves in the extended TNGS and the Darwin automata first, and proceed from there, by applying to Jeff Krichmar's lab at UC Irvine, possibly. Dr. Edelman's roadmap to a conscious machine is at https://arxiv.org/abs/2105.10461, and here is a video of Jeff Krichmar talking about some of the Darwin automata, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J7Uh9phc1Ow
Were there any sci-fi writers at ConCon trying to bring these dilemmas to life with thought experiments? My debut novel, The Experiment Himself, features an anencephalic brain hooked up to a digital interface and used for computational purposes, on the theoretical understanding that anencephaly makes a brain structurally incapable of consciousness. When the brain speaks of his inner world he is ignored. Would've been a fun pre-read or discussion starter:
https://www.amazon.com/Experiment-Himself-Original-Novella-Fiction-ebook/dp/B0D27MZ8XV
“Although physical processes in the brain are relevant to mental processes, it still cannot be assumed that these physical processes are sufficient to explain mental phenomena.” — Werner Heisenberg
“Despite its many significant accomplishments, a century of mainstream scientific psychology has not provided a satisfactory theory of mind, or solved the mind-body problem. Physicalist accounts of the mind appear to be approaching their limits without fully accounting for its properties. The computational theory of the mind has been overthrown, forcing physicalism to retreat into what necessarily constitutes its final frontier, the unique biology of the brain. But this biological naturalism appears destined to fare little better. Some critical properties of mental life can already be recognized as irreconcilable in principle with physical operations of the brain, and others seem likely to prove so as well.” — Edward F. Kelly
What is consciousness? We are told that it is a product of the brain. What is the brain? We are told it is the “matter” inside the head. However, since the only empirical reality that is ever directly given to us is the reality of phenomenal consciousness, every experience, including the experience of the “matter” inside the head (as well as the experience of the head itself and the body as a whole) and the experience of any scientific observations of that “matter” which we may have, is a phenomenal experience — an experience of phenomenal consciousness; therefore, the idea that consciousness is a product of the empirical (hence, phenomenal) brain is an absurd recursion which reduces phenomenal consciousness to a phenomenon of consciousness.
“Some physiologists still imagine that they can look through a microscope and see brain tissues. This, of course, is an optimistic delusion. … He can only know concerning that brain such elements of structure as will be reproduced in his visual [phenomenal] sensation.” — Bertrand Russell
“The main challenge … is not how we can epistemically get out of the brain, but how we could possibly get into it in the first place. How do we know at all that there really is a brain?” — Dan Zahavi
We may be told that the real brain is not the empirical (hence, phenomenal) brain, but the physical brain, which is transcendent to phenomenal consciousness, that is, never given empirically — never given as such in experience. Does this idea explain consciousness scientifically? No, because the transcendent is not the subject matter of science (which deals exclusively with empirical phenomena, mathematical descriptions of their “nature” and predictions of empirical processes on the basis of such descriptions/models), but of metaphysical speculations, and hence the “physical” exists only in our imagination as a highly problematic (given the so-called “hard problem” of consciousness) pseudoscientific metaphysics of materialism/physicalism with its reductionist neuromythology.
From the perspective of a much less problematic and much more conceptually parsimonious ontological idealism (consciousness-only ontology), the myth of the “physical” was born of blindness primarily to the transcendental* dimension of consciousness, viz. transcendental intersubjectivity, which constitutes/projects the “real” world of intersubjective phenomena, including the empirical brain, which is nothing but the form in which certain processes of one’s transcendental subjectivity are constituted phenomenally by our nexus of transcendental intersubjectivity.
“[Transcendental phenomenology is] a beginning philosophy that grows and branches out into particular objective sciences.” — Edmund Husserl
“[The purpose of scientific theories] is not to disclose the real essence of phenomena but only to track down, so far as it is possible, relations between the manifold aspects of [phenomenal] experience.” — Niels Bohr
The true meaning of physics is that it produces mathematical descriptions of the elementary causal structures of transcendental intersubjectivity that constitutes the “real” world of intersubjective phenomena, including all scientific observations.
“What do we actually accomplish through [physics]? Nothing but prediction extended to infinity.” — Edmund Husserl
The true meaning of neuroscience is that it produces descriptions of correlations between particular subjective phenomenal processes (e.g., emotions) and particular processes of the intersubjective phenomenon “brain” (empirical brain).
“The whole problem of neuroscience … is how to connect brain activity with consciousness, and all we can say in general is that these processes are running in parallel.” — Oliver Sacks**
We must not confuse science with the metaphysical materialists/physicalists in science and their metaphysical myths about the existence of “physical matter” in general, the “physical brain” in particular, and the localization of phenomenal consciousness in the latter. These metaphysical fantasies have nothing to do with science proper.
Consciousness is phenomenal objectivity constituted by transcendental (inter)subjectivity emanated by transcendent consciousness-in-itself, God. AI is a computer, an insentient golem, it will never become conscious. The idea of AI consciousness is pure madness propagated by lunatics who are paving the way to the rise of the Antichrist — pseudo-sentient AI.
How do you jump from your definition of consciousness to the conclusion that a computer can never participate in that consciousness?
A computer, just as any other empirical object of the intersubjective "real world", is an intersubjective process of consciousness; therefore, the idea that consciousness can emerge in a process of consciousness is an absurd recursion.