Let us also conjecture another principle that conscious systems must satisfy: that of autonomy, i.e. that information can be processed with relative freedom from external influence.
That’s never been part of my concept of consciousness. E.g. I think conscious subroutines are possible, but need not have any autonomy.
Consciousness implies recognizing actions as associated with the actor or not?
To recognize such a correlation implies some means to ‘cause’ action
(otherwise the perceptronium is just a pattern detector and I don’t think that sufficieces for consciousness).
To ‘cause’ actions implies that the action is not (detectably) determined by external effects
(but effectively only by structure internal to the actor).
Thus you need this autonomy (if you subscribe to this model).
Consciousness implies recognizing actions as associated with the actor or not?
Not on my concept of consciousness. For me, consciousness is about subjective experience, not about agency. To paraphrase Bentham, “My question is not, Can they reason? nor, Can they act? but, Can they suffer?”
Hm. Trying to come up with a matching definition of “suffer” in this context.
How about “perceiving damage”. But that is not conscious. That could be said about any minimal (neurological) circuit.
“Perceiving damage to self”. But that recurses to “self”. And it we avoid “self” by using “actor” (which is more specific but needs a simpler concept) we are back where I was.
Also “suffer” implies some kind of stress. Some mode that deals with existential danger. Which can be a) act actively to avoid that danger or b) display signals to some perpetrator to reduce the danger or c) failure due to (partial) break down of essential systems.
But if I use just “being in a state of suffering” (as above a) to c)) this is still not conscious so I guess something must be missing.
Suffering is not about damage. I’m not even sure it’s about aversion. Suffering seems to be tings like boredom, sadness, and frustration. The best hypothesis I’m found so far is “internal conflict”. The primary capability that enables suffering seems to be desire.
Pain and damage doesn’t cause suffering; it’s wanting to get away from it and being unable to that does. If you feel a jolt of excruciating pain, it disappears entirely when you flinch away, and you negate it’s source to remove the risk in the future, you’ll probably experience it in a highly positive way.
I agree with that but it just explains words with other insufficiently undefined words (insufficient for the purpose of defining consciousness). I tried to reduce “suffer” to more primitive and unambigous terms. And if you disagree with my proposal please propose in that format.
His term “perceptronium” is handy.
That’s never been part of my concept of consciousness. E.g. I think conscious subroutines are possible, but need not have any autonomy.
In fact we have a counterexample right now: tulpas.
Consciousness implies recognizing actions as associated with the actor or not? To recognize such a correlation implies some means to ‘cause’ action (otherwise the perceptronium is just a pattern detector and I don’t think that sufficieces for consciousness). To ‘cause’ actions implies that the action is not (detectably) determined by external effects (but effectively only by structure internal to the actor). Thus you need this autonomy (if you subscribe to this model).
Not on my concept of consciousness. For me, consciousness is about subjective experience, not about agency. To paraphrase Bentham, “My question is not, Can they reason? nor, Can they act? but, Can they suffer?”
Hm. Trying to come up with a matching definition of “suffer” in this context.
How about “perceiving damage”. But that is not conscious. That could be said about any minimal (neurological) circuit.
“Perceiving damage to self”. But that recurses to “self”. And it we avoid “self” by using “actor” (which is more specific but needs a simpler concept) we are back where I was.
Also “suffer” implies some kind of stress. Some mode that deals with existential danger. Which can be a) act actively to avoid that danger or b) display signals to some perpetrator to reduce the danger or c) failure due to (partial) break down of essential systems.
But if I use just “being in a state of suffering” (as above a) to c)) this is still not conscious so I guess something must be missing.
Suffering is not about damage. I’m not even sure it’s about aversion. Suffering seems to be tings like boredom, sadness, and frustration. The best hypothesis I’m found so far is “internal conflict”. The primary capability that enables suffering seems to be desire.
Pain and damage doesn’t cause suffering; it’s wanting to get away from it and being unable to that does. If you feel a jolt of excruciating pain, it disappears entirely when you flinch away, and you negate it’s source to remove the risk in the future, you’ll probably experience it in a highly positive way.
I agree with that but it just explains words with other insufficiently undefined words (insufficient for the purpose of defining consciousness). I tried to reduce “suffer” to more primitive and unambigous terms. And if you disagree with my proposal please propose in that format.