From: emc@doe.carleton.ca (Eli Chiprout)
Subject: Re: The rise of consciousness
Keywords: brain,evolution,consciousness
Organization: Dept. of Electronics, Carleton University
Date: Tue, 1 Sep 1992 15:26:07 GMT

I wrote.
>>There are many such algorithms going on
>>(it is the feeling of most researchers) long before they come to our
>>conscious perception.  We, apparantly, do not become "aware" (conscious) of 
>>the calculations going on in our brain at all times.  My question asked
>>what selective advantage does conscious perception of these algorithmic 
>>activities confer to a species.  I could conceive of designing a complete
>>silocon based automaton that would do exactly the same calculations as
>>I would and would therefor react the same way as I would, without
>>(supposedly) having a conscious perception of the calculations. i.e.
>>without perceiving colors, or feeling pleasure or pain.  Would it
>>be possible to build such an automaton?  If so, what is the advantage
>>of having perception against natural selection?

Matthew P Wiener (weemba@sagi.wistar.upenn.edu) writes
>That "supposedly" of yours covers a wide yawning gap!  

I am not sure what you mean.  What I meant was that I assume that if
I constructed a computer to respond to the evironment in exactly the
same way as I do, it would not necessarily imply consciousness on the part
of the machine.  This involves the Turing test.  If someone comes along and
says -- "look, as soon as you construct a machine that will react exactly
as you do, consciousness will be an inevitable product of that complex
construction, no matter what material you made it out of", 
that would be quite a different statement.  That is not my inclination, but
seems to be a possibility that you are entertaining (see below).

>You should restrict
>your disagreement with Mike Siemon on where you disagree regarding the nature
>of consciousness, and not say that he's merely arguing in circles.  

But I gave the line of disagreement and pointed to the circular expalantion.
What could be clearer?  To argue in circles is not a "merely" -- it is a
serious logical flaw. 

>If indeed
>consciousness is nothing but a certain level of mental computation, then he's
>obviously not in a circle.

Then why talk about consciousness?  What differentiates consciousness from
a computer program.  It can be shown that anything done by a computer program
(no matter how complicated, or how parallel) can be done on my personal
calculator, given enough time.  However, I would be hard pressed to say that
my calculator is feeling the pain and the pleasure of it.  I could be wrong
on this of course :-).
If what you are saying is right, then the term "consciousness" is
superfluous and we might as well drop the subject.  I would be able to
create it by starting to type the "conscious calculations" on my calculator.
However, if consciousness is due to the effect of
quantum physics, non-computable processes and perhaps other physical 
processes not yet understood (see for example the Emporer's
New Mind - Penfield) than we have an effect that is not to be carried out
on my calculator, and the explanation given is indeed circular.  I made
it clear in my original posting that I differentiated consciousness from
automatic computation and wondered why it would be useful for genetic
propagation.  If the answer given is that the two are absolutely the same,
that any complicated enough species generated by evolution which
dealt with the environment in the sophisticated way that we do, would
*of necessity* be conscious, than we have nothing to talk about.  But
that is not what Mike was saying.  He was explaining why consciousness
was necessary, at the same time as boiling it down to computations, which
relieves the necessity of explaining consciousness at all.

The Chinese room argument of computation would seem to be a strong
refutation of that position.

>Without actually adopting Julian Jaynes' bicameral mind breakdown theory,
>you can get a lot of impressive perspectives from his book.  One view that
>I find quite plausible is that the rise of language is a necessary precursor
>to our human sense of consciousness.  Brain-language coevolution selects for
>more accurate communication and ends up with self-awareness on the side.

I have yet to read that book so I can't react.  However,
there is also the theory (following along those lines)
that primitive man was not as conscious as is 
modern educated man.  However, that does not dispell the idea of the
sense of pain that I feel when I put my hand into the fire, which I
presume other species to feel as well.  This, an automatic program
could not acheive (I believe).

>-- 
>-Matthew P Wiener (weemba@sagi.wistar.upenn.edu)
--
Eli Chiprout
Dept. of Electronics, Carleton University
Ottawa, Ontario, Canada
emc@doe.carleton.ca