Sam: Definition of consciousness
I thought that "consciousness" was current jargon for awareness of self. I am not happy with the dictionary definition of this term (I do not believe that thinkers in this area are happy either). I prefer to impart a sense of the meaning by describing some thoughts.
When I play chess or ski or whatever, there is some part of my mind which says things like "I am Guv; I am playing chess; I want to win; this is a boring or difficult opponent; Next weekend, I plan to go skiing; I first played chess with my father; I would rather be with my girl friend."
When a computer plays chess, there is no such internal activity, only some number crunching and data manipulation related to the chess-playing software. Nothing in the computer cares about winning or has an opinion about liking the game.
The awareness of self that I have and the computer does not have is what is called consciousness. It is also that part of me that is aware of my past history and has anticipation of a future.
An interesting question being discussed these days: "Is consciousness a byproduct of intelligence, or is it required for intelligence?". After all, a computer now plays chess better than any human. Perhaps a computer could ultimately do almost any intellectual activity that humans are capable of, without being conscious.
Animals are very intelligent.
Here's some interesting stories about animals that would direct them towards being intelligent.
I remember being on a farm when i was a small child.. and my grandfather used to go hunting with his "Birddogs" as he called them..it was really strange to see this..but whenever he would come out of his house with his rifle too go bird/rabbit hunting the dogs would go crazy because as soon as they seen that rifle..they new it was time to go hunting...Also have any of you ever seen a dog grin?? my pitbull does, it's really weird....what i think happens is that the dog (given enough time of seeing people smile) they think/or some how process the thought "well my master and his friends are doing that thing with there faces maybe i can do it to!"
On to the unintelligent parts....i have seen dogs that ..arent really stupid..but this could be considered stupid... they walk through a open door or some sort of open space...and they cannot comprehend going back in the same direction. It's really weird.
I beleive that animals are intelligent ...too a point..
Then again humans are only intelligent too a point.
See ya:)
God I hate you MicroSoft!
I had just finished writing out a large post on this forum, when the silly computer decides to go and crash! Well, here is the editedversion, as I can't be bothered to write it all out again...
On Selfawarness as conscious:
Self awarness is actually a widley accepted definition of conciouss, but as previos post pointed out, it is insufficint. The classic test for animal self awarness is to see if they can tell a reflection of themselves is a reflection, or see it as another animal. Dolphins, chimps in their prime(not young or old) and humans (but not babies!) all pass this test(but squirrels, unfortunatly do not), and if accepted, it means that babies are not conscious. (which is entirly posiible, and indeed quite likley, as their brains have a lot of developing to do, the glial cells have barley develped at all). It also means that if someone programs a robot to reccognise images of itself, it would be defined as conciouss, a result most people would describe as ludicrious. Conciousness, claim others, requires more than just the neuroscience of the brain, the chemical and electrical interactions, it, the claim, is impossible to explain by these means. The claim it needs a 'ghost in the machine', a 'soul', or similar thing, to explain it, and they claim (usually) that machines can never be conciouss.
Conciousness can also be decribed as the ability to think abstract thoughts. Anyone can think a thought, but we can also think about those thoughts, up to infinity (Eg I think 'I know Sharah did it', and John thinks 'I know that he thinks Sharah did it' and I think 'I believs he thinks that I know that Sharah did it' and so on) This however could eliminate the severly autistic, as they have no comprehension of others as beings with minds, the treat everyine like mechanical toys. Clearly, this is a difficult question, but sqirrels seem doomed to be not self aware, and not conciousess.
On language and thought:
It was claimed early on that to be self aware required language, but chimps (whilst they do commincate somewhat) do not have a laungaue capable of express ing abstrcat thoughts, but they (in their prime) pass the self awareness test, showing that the spoken language is not a neccesity. It was also suggested that the (human)brain thought entirly in human laungauge, later refuted, and then claimed that people used one of three types (Words, images, abstract symbols), while it is the case that all people use all of them. It is easier to think about how a corkscrew works in pictures rather than words, it is impossible to think abstract thughts in pictures, and the brain uses symbols to think, underlying both these processes. There also is, acording to some (See S. Pinker, 'language of Thought'--definatly the corrct author, maybe not the exact title!!) a univeral human language of thought, which he refers to as 'menatalese', which all humans use to process information, as humans process information v. simiraly, regarless of launguage.
On 'Hard wiring' or instinct, and intelligence:
The example of birds is actully an interesting one, because if birds were hard wired with th knowledge of the stars, then they knowledge would be usless. The reason for this is evident, as the birds evolved/were evolving in a time when the night skys were completly differt, and the night skys chane all the time (slowly treu, but fast enogh that the patterns 'hard wired' in would become worse than usless, and be a hiderance, to the birds now). BIrds actually watch the night sky form the nest, and learn the movements of the sttars, so the navigate as adults, but the ability to navigate by these learned postions is probably an innate one, and it this combination of instint ad learnig that make biological systems so succsesful.
Intelligence can be defined to a certain extent as an ability to go beyond instinct (as mentioned earlier in this forum), and the ability to plan present action based on past and future experiences/pedictions is just one aspect, perhaps the lesser, the other being the abilty to modify them by sybjective wants (For exapmple planning can be seen in 'I will not eat this cake now, for then I will not be able to eat my tea' and wants is shown by 'I will not eat this cake, for then I will not lose weight, as I want to'). I do not believe that anyone has yet shown animals have the ability to plan according to subjective want, based on information not currently present. However, I don't bliev that this can be taken to far, I am not sure that you can say that Einstien or Bach were more mentally flexible in this way than anyone else, it is only really useful when applied to large groups, not individuals.
Finaly, on Machine conciosness.
There is a test that is accepted by most academics as proving machine conciosness, and that is the Turing test. In the Turing test, a person speaks (usually via a keyboard) to an unknown - either a computer or a machine. I f the machine fools the person into believing it is a human, it passes. (There is a interesting case of a woman who failed the tueing test, as her answers were considerd by the other humans to be too long and factual to be from a human) I belive that this test is not sufficient, for two main reasons. One, the test is subjsective, and some humans may pass the machine, and others fail it, (I have already menationd the human who failed it), so is the machine conciousss to some people, but not others? The other reason is that I believ that such a machine would mearly be an efficent language processor. An famous example of this is the Chinese room. If a man is placed into a room, and tarined to, when a specific symbol comes in to thr ooom, to take another symbol from a box and pass it out of thee room. The man becoms very good at his job. He dosn't know it, but the symbols coming in are question about Chinese storis, in Chinese, and he answeres thwm by putting out the Chinese cahracters. Does this man therefore know Chinese? Most people would say no, some say that the room and the man understand Chinese. (I would say that he knew the written language to a certain extent, but not that he understood). The machine that passed the Turing test could be very similar to the man in the room, the computer juat responding approritly from cleverly written speech analysis/construcion programs, not that the computer understood the converstaion! As a machine that did understand the conversation would reacat the same as this one (or a human, and same, I do not mean identiacally!) I belive this test is insufficent proof.
However, the behaviorlists would say thatif something acts exactly like ssomething, it is that something, if a computer acts as if it understands converstaions, it does, if the man/room acts as if it understands Chinese, then it does! Personally I see this idea as failry silly, but it can be a useful model to understand certain aspect of human/animal behaviour.
So, I'd have to say the evidence points to squirrels not being concious, and machines not being concious (at present), and squirrels being intelligent, and machines possibly being intelligent (or acting as if they are..).
