Talk:Artificial consciousness/Archive 10

message: The link to the Enticy Institute on the article page is a link to a patent nonsense site. Matt Stan 14:09, 2 May 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: Yep, don't appreciate it either. Is it really institute? Tkorrovi 16:22, 2 May 2004 (UTC)
thread_title: Comment

message: Let us attempt to reach consensus on who are the leading proponents of artificial consciousness and its relation to artificial intelligence. OK? Matt Stan 08:44, 26 Apr 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: But Hofstadter, Dennett, Penrose, and Nagel are philosophers of AI or philosophers of mind. They use the term "AI" or "consciousness", but not "artificial consciousness". I don't really have information on the others. Wikiwikifast 16:05, 26 Apr 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: AC can perhaps be seen as a part of AI or as a part of Consciousness.  Interestingly Wikipedia's article on Hofstadter says he is interested in consciousness not intelligence.  Readers of his work will know, of course, that he is interested in both.  But in his case it may be wrong to say that he is interested in AC only as a part of AI.  I believe the same comments apply to Dennett who wrote a book entitled Consciousness Explained, not a book called Intelligence Explained.  Penrose is a celebrated mathematical physicist, but a philosopher of dubious importance.  Paul Beardsell 22:16, 26 Apr 2004 (UTC)

text: I included Nagel only because his subjective experience concept has importance for AC. Dennett talked about of what should be considered AC, but the same thing (AC) is unfortunately often referred to under different names, what may not be proper. The only importance of Penrose is that he denies AC (but not all subfields of AI), Hofstadter writes a general philosophy similar to Dennett, what also touches AC. At present Igor Aleksander, Owen Holland and Rod Goodman work on big project to create a conscious robot http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk_news/story/0,3604,1028776,00.html Tkorrovi 19:13, 26 Apr 2004 (UTC)
thread_title: "Supposed Experts" in Artificial Consciousness

message: Oliver Sacks describes in his book The Man Who Mistook His Wife For A Hat the case of autistic-savant identical twins who were able to compute large prime numbers within a timescale that was several orders of magnitude less than what would be required by the most powerful computer to perform the same feat . These twins were not articulate enough to describe the methods they used, and I think their ability remains a mystery twenty years later. They certianly did not have the mathematical ability to compute prime numbers using any standard algorithm such as the sieve of Erastothenes - they could not even do simple multiplication. Such pathologies as Sacks describes raise questions about the operation of the brain that could possibily be used to counter the Church-Turing thesis, or at least to question it until a viable explanation had been found. The twins in Sacks' story seemed to have a particular consciousness of primeness (and not much else besides) and savoured each new prime number they encountered as one might savour a newly discovered vintage wine. Sacks mentions a number of examples of enhanced and deficient mental abilities that surely throw some light on our conception of consciousness, and which perhaps should be taken into account in our discussions here. Matt Stan 07:13, 6 May 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: Please would you provide a reference to Beethoven in this context, unless you mean the composer. If the latter, why should the ability to produce musical patterns be cited as a counter-example for the Church-Turing thesis in relation to mind? Matt Stan 10:38, 6 May 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: I agree with you!  Beethoven, even though he was much more impressive than Sacks's twins, is no evidence for humans being more than FSMs.  Paul Beardsell 10:47, 6 May 2004 (UTC)

text: Identical twins important?  Did you forget to provide this link?  My point being that even a cluster of computing machines is no more capable except in speed and memory capacity than any other computing machine.  Paul Beardsell 12:00, 6 May 2004 (UTC)
thread_title: Counter-example

message: In terms of learning ability, I am reminded of Richard Feynman's calculation that if you were to encode alphabetic symbols at the atomic level, using 100 atoms per character, and build a block of material encoded in such a way, then the entire content of all the world's reference libraries could be stored in a piece of matter (I think he said metal, actually) as small as a grain of sand. I don't know what the volumetric storage requirements of biological memory are, but assuming they are not more than an order of magnitude different from Feynman's model, then one could theoretically perhaps store the entire contents of the Internet in a small corner of one's brain. What this makes me wonder is whether there might be some kind of critical mass of grey matter below which consciousness is impossible, and that therefore there are physical constraints on artificial implementations using current technology. If this could be demonstrated then one might come up with a calculation that one would need a disk platter as large as the rings of Saturn, or perhaps as large as the orbit of Pluto round the sun, to store enough data to make consciousness possible. How many neurons are there in a typical brain? I think we should be told. Matt Stan 18:38, 6 May 2004 (UTC)
thread_title: Brain size