Re: Global Consciousness - more than metaphor

Nice to hear from you, Margeret.

> I do not, however, concurr with your statement, Bill, that
> informational complexity is an important measure of complexity.
> I do feel that making "consciousness" dependent on this is
> misleading. One cannot have degrees of consciousness. It either
> is or is not.
>
> However, one might have degrees of intelligence, or if you so
> wish, ability/capability to take opportunistic actions in the
> world (whatever this world might be), and of course, to "solve
> problems".

This is really a matter of semantics. Hugh's analysis was
that informational complexity is an important measure of
consciousness, and I think he is right. The general usage
of the word "consciousness" undoubtedly includes a lower
level of complexity below which an information process is
not said to be conscious. But minds differ in the complexity
of their simulation models of the world and this is a useful
measure. Earlier discussions on this list show a diversity
of opinions about the definition of the word "consciousness",
so a debate over the precise definition is probably futile.

> Bill: In my view a mind is an information process that senses the
> world and acts in the world, driven by some set of values
> (typically including its own survival and propagation).
>
> In this explanation, Bill, it seems (if I understand correctly)
> that values are cyberneitc goals, if you like, and a mind could
> be anything, as long is it is able to "process information
> through porcesses that sense and act in the world". This world
> then could be anything, and the senses could be of any kind. my
> question is- why does this have to be "conscious" at all?

That is the big question, isn't it. But as a practical
matter, consciousness is equated with a sufficiently
skilled verbal report of consciousness. If the pursuit of
its values motivates a mind to learn to verbally communicate
with humans, and if it reports conscious experience
skillfully, then I'd call it conscious. If someone else
denies that it is conscious, I'd leave it to the mind itself
to debate the issue with them.

Here we can interpret verbal report broadly to include
any form of communication that can carry the semantics of
human lanuage.

Clearly most people think they would still be conscious,
with an inner mental life, even if they lost all means to
communicate with others. But when you ask me to answer whether
some other mind is conscious, all I can base it on is
communication with that mind.

My view that consciousnes starts with the ability of brains
to process experiences that are not currently occurring in
order to solve the CAP is just a hypothesis. But since it is
hard to imagine consciousness without the ability to process
experiences that are not occurring, and since a solution to
the CAP is a necessity in the evolution of brains that learn,
it is plausible to me.

> In my interpretation, a robot could easily be able to act on its
> internal informational states and generate states of informational
> pattern for which there are no `matches" to the "world out there".
> Would be say that this robot has consciousness? or would we say
> that it can (merely) "Think for itself"?

Same answer as above. It all depends on its ability to
verbally report consciousness.

By the way, if you can please turn on word wrap in your
emailer.

Cheers,
Bill
----------------------------------------------------------
Bill Hibbard, SSEC, 1225 W. Dayton St., Madison, WI  53706
[EMAIL PROTECTED]  608-263-4427  fax: 608-263-6738
http://www.ssec.wisc.edu/~billh/vis.html