December Days: Spirituality

[jack]

When I was talking about prompts I used the word "spirituality", and simont asked what I meant by it, and I realised that what I really wanted was to spill the religion post onto another day.

Last post, I think I described what I didn't believe about religion. Basically, "anything supernatural".

However, I've recently been feeling that there's something I want to explore but I'm not quite sure what. Partly that I know more people who believe in God, but in total have beliefs really similar to mine, and I want to understand that. And partly that I've been thinking in terms of spiritual health, not in terms of a supernatural spirit, but in terms of "being aware of myself" and "giving up being scared of things I'm scared to try" and of "actually doing things I always felt I should do" and generally becoming healthier as a whole mind. And basically everything that is (I think) part of the mind, but in how the mind itself works or doesn't work, not in how it represents facts.

Comments

[gerald_duck]

How do you feel about the metaphysical, if you see a distinction between that and the supernatural? (I do: something like parting the Red Sea would be supernatural — of this world, but beyond what we'd naturally expect. But concepts such as souls, Heaven, Hell, God, etc. are metaphysical, making statements about things largely disjoint from the physical world.)

What are your views on the nature of consciousness? I used to say that my own consciousness was my one metaphysical certainty: the symmetry-breaking that meant that I see out of my eyes not, for example, yours. That means there's a me at all. As and when — if and when, we start getting machines that can pass the Turing Test, do you think they'll be conscious in the same way humans are? Should they have rights?

Is this a topic for another day? (-8

[jack]

How do you feel about the metaphysical, if you see a distinction between that and the supernatural?

I think I need to know more what you mean by that to answer sensibly. To me, metaphysics is really hard to describe, but is something like, the process of deciding whether things are material, supernatural, emergent behaviours, bad questions, or... some other category of truth or falsehood I haven't thought of yet. To me, "souls are metaphysical" doesn't really mean anything (except maybe, we haven't worked out what souls are yet")

But I've heard you talk about this before, and I think you mean something else by it, and I can sort of see what, but I don't understand well enough to be able to say if I agree or not. Can you unpack more?

What are your views on the nature of consciousness?

I think, it doesn't necessarily have a clear definition, but it's clearly something that humans have. And maybe animals have to a varying extent, I'm not certain. I agree that I'm only certain that I experience consciousness, but the same goes for "blue" or "fear" -- everyone else looks they experience all those things, and AFAIK runs on similar brain-hardware to me, so I assume they experience something equivalent, the same way I assume objects go on existing when I can't see them. (I used to be a bit more apologetic about this, now I'm a bit more certain)

we start getting machines that can pass the Turing Test, do you think they'll be conscious in the same way humans are?

With the caveat that the turing test is an approximation (a very good one, but I'm looking for tests which fulfil the spirit of the turing test, not ones that technically pass by fooling interlocutors into not prying into areas the machine can't handle), if something passes the spirit of the turing test, I'd say it would be conscious. I'm not positive -- I suspect it will turn out to be more complicated than that, but that's my default.

Should they have rights?

Yes. If it can think, talk, etc. It might be more complicated than that, there are ethical dilemmas about people you can copy and paste, or people who have fundamental drives other than the expected human drives. But by default, aliens, clones, uploads, AIs, etc, should be embraced as human-equivalent for moral and practical reasons.

I guess this might be a difficult question if you think a soul is something other than an emergent property of the mind? Even in secular fiction, I've seen people think of AIs which are conscious but don't have souls which doesn't really make sense to me: they might not have the same sense of morality as us, but I don't think a soul is something you can have or not have. I agree, if we develop AI, there might be a point where something is sort-of conscious, and I don't know how we'll draw the cut-off, but I'll recognise that's a necessary compromise in the law and in ethics, not that there's necessarily a clear dividing line for the AI involved.

[gerald_duck]

So machine-minds should be able to have property?

What happens when you duplicate it? Which of them gets the property? Conversely, presumably machine-minds should also be able to write a will, but how do you define when it's dead?

If we decide machine-minds are persons with rights, the singularity becomes vastly more problematic. I'm not saying that's a reason to deny them personhood if that is actually their due, but…

I do think consciousness (or soul, but I think consciousness might be the better term, here) is something other than an emergent property of the mind. In particular, I'm conscious and I know how being conscious feels to me, and it feels like, well, feeling. Physics simply can't explain how consciousness feels to a conscious being — that's not a limitation of physics so much as a category error.

How to know if and when a machine is conscious rather than merely intelligent, i.e. when a machine starts to feel like it's a machine rather than merely being one, is difficult. An intelligent machine could decide to fake it. Then again, you could be faking consciousness to fool me. Or, at least, that's how I used to see things…

[jack]

What happens when you duplicate it?

I agree there are practical problems and I don't know how to handle this, it depends exactly how it comes about. But I think it's necessary to separate what's moral from what's possible. The human rights we have now might be impossible to grant to all biological humans in many circumstances -- indeed that was most of history. But I think that's an unfortunately necessary concession to reality, not a reason to say "people in the other tribe aren't human".

I do think consciousness ... is something other than an emergent property of the mind ... Physics simply can't explain how consciousness feels to a conscious being

I don't understand this. Physics can't explain whether a computer searching for a counterexample to fermat's last theorem will ever stop (that needs maths); or what the effect on the economy of certain policies will be (that needs economics); or how the body works (that needs biology). But that's not because those things are magically not deterministic emergent properties of physics, it's because the arrangement of physical things that causes them is REALLY COMPLICATED, so it needs a whole field of study.

I think the same applies to the mind. Why do you disagree?

when a machine is conscious rather than merely intelligent,

See, to me, this is a category error. I think if two things are intelligent enough to pass the turing test, I'm not convinced it's meaningful to say one is conscious and one isn't. I'm not convinced that there is a sensation of consciousness that you can, or can not, have -- I think that's probably more like, the sum of all the feelings and sensations and apparent choices you have. I would be interested to see if there IS any way of testing this, but I suspect it'll turn out to be something that, when examined closely, turns out to be all semantic-argument and nothing actually there...

[gerald_duck]

Sorry — "physics" tends to have a broader meaning when used contrastively with "metaphysics". As Wikitionary puts it in sense 2, "Of or pertaining to the physical aspects of a phenomenon or a system". When we talk about "the physical universe", we don't mean to exclude mathematics, economics or biology — we're talking about the universe as we can sense it and reason about it.

Or I am, at any rate. /-8

My point is that you are conscious, and being conscious feels to you like being conscious, and… we both know what is meant by the term "conscious", but it defies any attempt to relate it conclusively to any physical phenomenon.

I agree that my consciousness is housed in a brain that operates according to immensely complicated emergent phenomena operating according to scientific principles that are, by and large, susceptible to enquiry and theorising. My point is that that doesn't explain my consciousness.

You yourself alluded to the problem of whether or not blue looks the same to everyone. There is simply no way science can ever hope to gain traction on such a question. Sure, we can find out if comparable patterns of neurons fire in different people, but that's not the same thing.

See, to me, this is a category error. I think if two things are intelligent enough to pass the turing test, I'm not convinced it's meaningful to say one is conscious and one isn't.

Now I'm slightly confused. When you say "I'm not convinced it's meaningful", do you mean "I'm convinced it's not meaningful"? I would say that, for so long as you're agnostic on the issue, you're behaving as though it might be meaningful to make the distinction, at which point "intelligent" and "conscious" at least in potentia have different meanings and there's no category error in discussing that potential distinction?

Frustratingly, this is something people always seem either to "get", or not. I'll try looking at it in a different way: somewhere along the line, a few decades ago, biological processes collected together a bunch of material to form a person which now feels like your "you" to you. The you that is doing that feeling — how did it arise?

Yet another way of looking at it: the universe obeys all sorts of symmetry rules, and when those of us of a scientific bent see symmetry being broken we hunt for the reason. Your consciousness breaks translational symmetry between human brains — it is associated with one specific brain to the exclusion of all others. How? Why? Why not a shared consciousness? Why not ESP? Why, again, does your "you" feel like you to you? Do we even have a good handle on what you could have been conscious of if not your "you"?

Is an anthill conscious? If so, how? If not, what disqualifies it?

[jack]

we're talking about the universe as we can sense it and reason about it.

OK, that makes sense. Then I would have said, yes, an emergent property of physics. But I'm not sure that's actually bearing on the question. What I'm pretty sure of is that everything that actually happens, is physics, due to neurons, and isn't due to some supernatural effect (assuming we agree what "supernatural" means). But the things you are classifying into metaphysics, I'm not sure of. I'm sure they're not supernatural.

But I'm not sure what I do think about them. Is consciousness, some level of self-awareness? Or the sensation experienced by being me (and, presumably, everyone else?) Or something I haven't thought of? Or is it a meaningless concept? I don't dismiss that last option -- I think many things DO turn out to meaningless when examined closely.

But I'm not sure what's meant by things like "that doesn't explain my consciousness". If consciousness is a sensation in humans similar to fear or blue in humans and also other mammals -- then we don't understand exactly how it's caused, but it's clear that's by neurons and hormones. Or if it's some level of self-awareness (like being able to reason about your self and future self), then likewise. I'm not sufficiently sure what I mean by consciousness to answer either way, but language like "can't explain" seems to suggest our lack of knowledge is in "how" not "what to call it", which I'm not sure of...

I would say that, for so long as you're agnostic on the issue, you're behaving as though it might be meaningful to make the distinction, at which point "intelligent" and "conscious" at least in potentia have different meanings and there's no category error in discussing that potential distinction?

I guess it's like, someone saying "do people other than you have flargle-wargle?" It's not that there's a specific concept which people either have or don't but I don't know which. It's that I'm not sure what question I'm asking myself. I have no concept what "intelligence without consciousness" would mean, but I'm leaving open the possibility it might mean something I haven't realised yet, even if I don't understand what that might be.

I am still mulling over the rest of your post -- I don't quite get it, but I'm not sure what questions to ask.

[wildeabandon]

This encouraged me to write up my religion-related prompt; it may possibly be of interest