Misplaced Pages

Revision as of 11:07, 8 December 2004

Request for comment/mediation

Deleting the whole talk page, and replacing the whole article by a text by a single user, is not an editing policy of Misplaced Pages. Therefore, this article was listed in Misplaced Pages:Request for comment in order to prevent possible edit war which may be caused by such editing practice. Tkorrovi 15:53, 1 Dec 2004 (UTC)

I would like to propose that we ask for mediation. Tkorrovi has resisted the reclassification of this article to "strong AI" before and is not going to change now without outside input. Request for mediation User:80.3.32.9

See the section AC and Strong AI on this talk page, this was about moving AC under strong AI. In comments there, I did disagree, Wikiwikifast did disagree:

"Upon reconsideration, I agree that AC should remain a separate article and should not be merged with AI nor moved to Strong AI. Wikiwikifast 03:20, 28 Apr 2004 (UTC)",

another user did disagree, and the rest participating,Paul Beardsell and Matthew Stannard, did not clearly agree, though Matthew Stannard may agree. This does not constitute an overwhelming majority by Misplaced Pages rules, even a simple majority by these rules is not an overwhelming majority, when it concerns voting something, even 4 against 3 is by far not an overwhelming majority. So by this talk page this article was not decided to move to strong AI. And deleting this article still needs Votes for Deletion. Tkorrovi 16:02, 3 Dec 2004 (UTC)

I don't want to delete it. It looks fine under strong AI. See: ]. I want it reclassified which is straightforward. All I am objecting to is that the article is hogging a heading that means something subtly different see: ] - this replacement is not a perfect article by any means but it is more suitable for this general level of heading. User:80.3.32.9

Replacing this article with your replacement article means deleting the entire article. This needs Votes for Deletion. Your opinion about the article is only your opinion, Misplaced Pages articles are edited so that every user adds his contribution, not that the entire article is replaced by the text of another user. Why don't you want to edit normally, adding your subtle changes, and consider other users? You said almost the same already several times here, is it necessary, as everyone already knows your these opinions. Tkorrovi 16:43, 3 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Deletion is something that only sysops can do. It involves removing an article and all its history. Wiping the contents of a page to replace it with something better is desirable, and does not require a Vote For Deletion. When the contributor who does this has the courtesy to move the wiped material to a more suitably titled article then that is even more desirable. That's how we get wikipedia in the news and trusted as a valuable web resource, by continually improving it. When you have articles that are guarded on a sentimental basis then you just have to look at the policy statement on the edit page: If you do not want your writing to be edited mercilessly ... do not submit it. and realise that there is no concept personal ownership of material in wikipedia. It doesn't matter who contributed what, only that the end result is worthwhile. Matt Stan 02:33, 8 Dec 2004 (UTC)

I must say the same things over and over again. Deleting the whole content of the article is equivalent to deleting the article, and a single user has no right to do that, it must be decided by Votes for Deletion. And there is only such procedure in Misplaced Pages as deleting. And deleting (also when it happens after moving the article) is final, a single user shall not write his own article there. I already said more than once, that this article is not written only by me, and I don't own any part of this article. You already said that If you do not want your writing to be edited mercilessly ... do not submit it. and I replied that it is self-evident that Misplaced Pages is not for testing the limits of anarchy. Tkorrovi 03:13, 8 Dec 2004 (UTC)

But your original article looks fine under strong AI See:

Original article. User:80.3.32.9 8/12/04.

The whole point about being merciless is that one shows no mercy. If a whole article needs replacing then so be it - it's not the same as deletion. The whole of Tkorrovi's argument is based on his requirement for mercy about what he has written and what he wants to call what he has written, which is against the spirit of Misplaced Pages since it results in a situation of being stuck, which has been the case with this page for nearly a year. Even trying to correct Tkorrovi's grammar and his mistaking of "what" for "that" has been an uphill struggle resisted by him at every juncture. See , the sheer scale of which I'm sure must break some record for obsessiveness and persistent obstruction (by an Estonian customs officer) of the progress of the encyclopedia. Paul Beardsell, who is a gentle enquirer into truth and an IT professonal, gave up eventually. Then nothing happened until last month when another user tried in good faith to make this article worthwhile. To make a new article to replace an existing one and which others view as a total improvement is no mean feat and, as I put above, is desirable. Of all the contributors to this debate I have yet to see one who supports Tkorrovi in this. Matt Stan 09:59, 8 Dec 2004 (UTC)

"Then nothing happened until last month when another user tried in good faith to make this article worthwhile." This was you sock-puppet, stop trolling. Tkorrovi 11:07, 8 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Also everyone please consider this. Moving an article to another article, or reclassifying, means only changing the heading, it is done when the heading is not exactly correct, so that the article appears under the new heading. This is moving, which means that the article with the old heading disappears. The other procedure in Misplaced Pages is merging, which means that the article would be copied into another article, and again the article under the old heading shall be deleted. What 80.3.32.9 talks about here, is neither of them, it is a procedure not provided by Misplaced Pages rules. It is similar to previous, but not moving and not merging, as it in addition includes deleting the article, and then replacing it with text written by him. The last procedure is not an editing practice of Misplaced Pages at all, the articles either can be edited in co-operation with all interested users, or deleted by the Votes for Deletion, not replaced by a text of a single user after deleting. Furthemore, deleting is final, after that an article under the same heading shall not be created. So there are two possibilities, either deleting the article in Votes for Deletion, or editing it normally in co-operation with other users. There is no procedure for deleting the article, and then replacing the article with a text written only by a single user. So if we supposed to vote, consider what exactly we shall vote, the procedure proposed by 80.3.32.9 cannot be decided neither by votes for moving the article, nor by votes for merging the article. It also cannot be decided by the votes for deleting the article. Such procedure simply is not a procedure of Misplaced Pages, and so simply cannot be done, it cannot be decided by voting. The only possibility for 80.3.32.9 to write his text in the article, is editing the article in co-operation with other users, like the articles are normally edited, he should do that, and not try to overcome it. I really cannot understand, why he doesn't want to do that, as every editor is welcome. But of course it's harder to consider with the text of others, and to co-operate with others. But this is how Misplaced Pages works, I hope he considers that, and we can continue normally. Tkorrovi 18:22, 3 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Note: the article was moved to strong AI where it belongs. Several other users on this talk page have made this suggestion in the past and have been ignored. Your piece is clearly about strong AI and is hogging a Misplaced Pages heading that means something else.User:80.3.32.9

As a previous editor/contributor to this page, I agree with80.3.32.9, who seems to be taking a most conciliatory line and is, I believe, right in his contentions about the placing of AC and Strong AI. His replacement article was better written and more encyclopedic than that which it displaced. The earlier stuff had itself been subject to a long period of dialectics and was, as a result pretty messy. A rewrite was in order, and I'm glad it's happened. Let's not get fussy. There's a link to Strong AI, nothing's been wantonly deleted, so let's just get on with it. I think there is only one dissenter. Matt Stan 11:00, 2 Dec 2004 (UTC)

The owerwhelming majority here did not support transferring the whole Artificial consciousness article under Strong AI. There is an opinion that all topics of Artificial intelligence and Artificial consciousness should remain, as they are important, especially because they are not well understood. Deleting the Artificial consciousness article and replacing it with Strong AI is not a right approach, as Artificial consciousness is existing academic field of study, with peer-reviewed articles published (for example see the special edition of Journal of Consciousness Studies, dedicated to machine consciousness, another name of Artificial consciousness, which is also not the same as strong AI). Sincerely, Tkorrovi 16:46, 1 Dec 2004 (UTC)

80.3.32.9.. Of the 4 users debating the strong AI issue on talk, Wikiwikifast, Paul Beardsell and Matt Stan (probably) have all at some time suggested or agreed that this article should be under strong AI. Who said otherwise?

Strong AI is defined by the first reference to it in the literature:

"according to strong AI, the computer is not merely a tool in the study of the mind; rather, the appropriately programmed computer really is a mind" (J Searle in Minds Brains and Programs. The Behavioral and Brain Sciences, vol. 3, 1980).

This is what you have been discussing under the heading of Artificial consciousness. Consciousness in computers is not the same as artificial consciousness.80.3.32.9

I think we should let this guy (anonymous apart from an IP Address), who seems to have some clear idea of what he is talking about, go in and do what he wants with this article. I think Searle's quote above says it all. The other reason I started synthetic consciousness was to prevent trolling of this article. Matt Stan 01:22, 2 Dec 2004 (UTC)

No, the Searle's quote is important, but not all there is. Nobody in Misplaced Pages has a right to do eberything what he wants, the editing of Misplaced Pages is a collective effort, and based on agreement and co-operation. Considering that, editing this article is a welcomed effort, one more editor, one more person with different viewpoint, is highly valuable. This article was trolled by you and Paul Beardsell, or stop talking about it, otherwise we must go on with arbitration, which was already almost agreed on my request. Tkorrovi 01:55, 2 Dec 2004 (UTC)

I think we should ask for mediation. Tkorrovi has been asked by several people in the past to move the article across to Strong AI and has not done so. The problem with using Tkorrovi's current article as a basis for a more general approach is that it has the belief that Turing machines can be conscious embedded in it. No one really knows if Turing machines can be conscious. What is needed at the level of the "artificial consciousness" article is a shorter article aimed at describing the problem of AC that points to consciousness research, philosophy and various approaches such as AI, QM, biocomputers etc.. 80.3.32.9

Perhaps mediators could look at the two different archived articles of 01/12/04 and the strong AI article of this date. I am happy to be bound by their decision.80.3.32.9

The articles to be compared are Tkorrovi's current version

and ] - a new general discussion of AC. The transfer to be considered is ] which is Tkorrovi's text as strong AI article.

How can you call it my current version? Please look at the history to see who wrote what. I never wrote anything about strong AI or genuine AC in Artificial consciousness article, it is completely wrong, misleading, and unfair to call it "Tkorrovi's strong AI article". Also, the part of the article relevant to strong AI was already transferred to Strong AI article. Your "replacement article" is considerably shorter, and not precise, lacking all the references, quotes and links in the original article. Replacing the article with that means deleting the long time work of several people. It is not how Misplaced Pages is edited, the changes should be made in agreement with other editors, and the content should be preserved, as much as possible. Why didn't you just write the text in your article as additions to an existing article? Why is there such a wish to delete the whole article under Artificial consciousness? This cannot be done in other way than by votes for deletion, it's questionnable whether it would be successful, as for example a parallel article "syntethic consciousness" was not agreed to be deleted, but this is the only way to delete the whole article. Also, this article doesn't state as a fact that Turing machine can implement consciousness, this is again a hypothesis under the strong AI interpretation, why wouldn't you write in strong AI article or AC article about these doubts, would be a good contribution, especially when the references and quotes were added, instead of it being a reason to delete the whole article. Artificial consciousness is also a research, with differen approaches, not just stating known facts. Even if it is not sure what Turing machine can implement, and what not, is that the reason that it cannot be researched? Sincerely, Tkorrovi 13:21, 2 Dec 2004 (UTC)

If you look at ] which is the previous article with most occurrences of "artificial consciousness" changed to "strong AI" it reads fine and provides us with a foundation text for "strong AI". It preserves all the previous contributions. The entire argument here is not that the previous article should be deleted, it is that the previous article should be shifted to "strong AI" and a shorter, more general article about Artificial consciousness placed under the current heading. You lose nothing and Misplaced Pages can be seen by readers to respect a wide range of opinion.User:80.3.32.9

"Artificial consciousness" and "strong AI" are not identical terms, different scientific articles are about "artificial consciousness" and "strong AI", and often their most narrowest meaning is different. One may argue, that in the widest sense they are the same, which does not make them one and the same. Strong AI article must be written sepparately, starting from the most important -- from determining what strong AI is, based on science articles, its most widespread and other meanings, this is not the same as copying artificial consciousness article there and replacing artificial consciousness with strong AI, much more work should be done for writing strong AI article.

The argument here is not whether to copy the texts of this article to strong AI. What happens with the text copied from artificial consciousness article there, depends on that topic, and as it is a different topic, likely most of it would be deleted, when it doesn't fit under that topic. So copying or using the text of this article anywhere else is a totally different question. The argument is, what happens with this article, "artificial consciousness". This article was tried to be completely replaced with the so-called "replacement article". This is not a Misplaced Pages editing practice, to replace the whole article with his text, by a single user. This means deleting the article, which can only be done through Votes for Deletion, otherwise it must be edited normally. So the argument is that it was attempted to completely delete the existing article, by a single user, maybe by two users, while one user disagrees, and no agreement from anybody else, and still it was attempted. This is obviously in contradiction with any proceedings in Misplaced Pages. The whole text of the article cannot be deleted without votes for deletion. Tkorrovi 13:49, 3 Dec 2004 (UTC)

No, this was putting the article under the correct heading, not deleting it. The article had been wrongly classified. User:80.3.32.9

This article is under the heading "Artificial consciousness" and the content of it corresponds to that heading, this is rightly classified. Tkorrovi 16:18, 3 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Also, artificial consciousness article likely cannot go under Strong AI heading just like this. It is because for Strong AI, there are several assumptions. The first comes even from the name, which means that for Strong AI, the intelligence and consciousness are one and the same, and that it is possible to implement consciousness in a computer. Also, partly coming from this, under Strong AI it is often assumed that consciousness is nothing more than a sum of the functions of the brain, ie that there is no need for any basic mechanism for consciousness, just a sum of computer programs, each implementing a different function, would do. Because of these assumptions, many questions discussed in the artificial consciousness article would be void under Strong AI heading, because of the assumptions. Such as the arguments of Thomas Nagel, such as the aspects of AC, there is just no need to study any basic properties of consciousness, when consciousness is assumed to be only a simple sum of different functions human performs in different circumstances. Tkorrovi 22:19, 5 Dec 2004 (UTC)

You may have noticed that substituting "strong AI" for "artificial consciousness" in your original article has produced a fairly worthy contribution under Strong AI (now archived). Follow the link and take a look at the 1/12/04 version. This shows that what you have been discussing is not the general case of artificial consciousness.

The problem with modifying your article is that it is written as an article on strong AI. An article on artificial consciousness must bridge the gap between the philosophy and science of consciousness and possible technologies.

Other users have allowed your contribution to stay in the 'artificial consciousness' position because no one else wanted it. But now it is needed for its true purpose as a connection between the philosophical/scientific view of consciousness and the technological view. What I am asking is that you move across to strong AI, where people expect to see your contribution. You will get a lot more feedback there.80.3.32.9

Please read the section AC and Strong AI on this talk page. You see that not all there think that Artificial consciousness should be under Strong AI. It is btw also not an exact opinion of Paul Beardsell as you consider, his opinion is that the text about Artificial consciousness should be under a separate article, not under AI, as I understood. Of course it may often happen, that parts of separate articles duplicate each other. This is not a reason though to delete another article. In the course of editing, both the Artificial consciousness and Strong AI articles should get their identity. At present, Strong AI article is less determined, because Strong AI as such is even not determined. I suggest to add all existing definitions of Strong AI to Strong AI article at first, which would determine what Strong AI is. And even then it's hard to determine what in Strong AI really duplicates AC, as this would most likely not be based on any generally accepted concepts. Finally, as far as these things are not yet comletely understood, the different possible approaches should remain for that same reason, and both Artificial consciousness and Strong AI articles should remain. It is a problem of course that in such new fields there are not much editors, but on the other hand having more information about new fields of study enrich the content of Misplaced Pages a lot, so this should not be a reason for deleting any articles. Sincerely, Tkorrovi 18:13, 1 Dec 2004 (UTC)

BTW, both unsigned comments above were written by 80.3.32.9, just for information, but better would be if they were signed, for it to be easier for other users to follow the discussion, when they knew who said what. Thank you. Sincerely, Tkorrovi 18:21, 1 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Yes the overwhelming position of strong AI seems to be that strong AI is a set of programs in the computer, which has exactly, or almost, the same functionality, as a human brain. This is mostly not the vision of AC, though. First, important there is the criteria, which the system which can be considered AC, must satisfy, no matter whether it is implemented in the computer, or by any other device. Often neural networks are used, but as in the toolset by Igor Aleksander, they are also not a mere neural networks, but rather a neural networks combined with other solutions. And even some neural networks can be implemented as a separate devices, not in a computer at all. Not to talk about quantum computers, if they also can implement some form of consciousness, which some suggest. And furthemore, the systems which implement some criterias necessary for AC, as Igor Aleksander toolkit, Owen Holland's systems and others, do not necessarily implement all the functions of the mind, and so cannot be considered a mind, but can be considered an AC. This is why it doesn't fit at least for me, to work on strong AI instead of AC. This is what the AC research is about, it mostly has no aim to build any "artificial human", but this is not necessarily what strong AI research is all about, as by some interpretation strong AI is an attempt to make an (almost) exact copy of human. Not to talk about the arguments of Thomas Nagel, which are completely in contradiction with such approach, but not in contradiction with AC. AC, in essence, includes the philosophy about consciousness, it is exactly a link between a theoretical study of consciousness, and implementing an artificially conscious system, in that it is only that part of the theory, which involves implementing the systems (not necessarily in computers), which have certain properties of a conscious system. Sincerely, Tkorrovi 19:51, 1 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Neural networks are examples of devices that are conceptual Turing machines. They are often modelled in software. Quantum computers are usually designed in terms of the operation of Turing machines. There are some aspects that are not compatible with the Church-Turing thesis but you did not mention these. Only Nagel is genuinely non-strong AI but you covered this in terms of 'subjectivism' without pointing out that the contrary belief in strong AI is naive/direct realist or dualist (as Searle pointed out and Bostrom openly admits in his weak supervenience caveat to the simulation argument). User:80.3.32.9

The artificial consciousness article could point to topics as diverse as Pygmalian and Galatea and Panpsychism, machine rights and animal rights etc. The science fiction fans have already, rightly, enjoyed putting in a list sci-fi tin men. The previous article really does belong under strong AI which has not had the benefit of Tkorrovi's attention.User:80.3.32.9

The philosophical questions like panpsychism are a subject of other articles. They are pointed to if necessary. I hope you don't think that what you said is all what the article should be about. This article is *not* about strong AI, and as I already said, no part of it relevant to strong AI was written by me, and the parts relevant to strong AI are already transferred to strong AI article. Tkorrovi 14:21, 3 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Panpsychism and direct realism are closely related, adherents of either might believe that a thermostat is conscious. Your last minute amendments don't really address the problem. It is like trying to amend a book on ships when someone has already written 400 pages on funnels. User:80.3.32.9

Panpsychism and direct realism are not subjects or main topic of this article, but a corresponding philosophy article. In this article these concepts may be pointed to as much as is necessary for artificial consciousness. Tkorrovi 16:18, 3 Dec 2004 (UTC)

NEUTRALITY!

SUGGESTION IMPLEMENTED. The words ARTIFICIAL CONSCIOUSNESS were changed for STRONG AI in MS Word and the article pasted back. It reads fine as a description of Strong AI.

suggestion:

1. Put a revised version of the previous version at 30/11/04 as the article under this heading with clear links to a Strong AI article. It will also be possible to provide a clear discussion of simulation versus real AC and how simulation means something different for a radical behaviourist to what it means for a dualist. Discussion of Zombies etc can be included to expand this AC article into a broad coverage of the field.

2. Create a Strong AI article by removing the more general discussion in the current AC article (perhaps writing these back to the AC article). That the Artificial Intelligence article is also amended to give clear links to the new Strong AI article.

Discussion of Zombies is not a part of the Artificial consciousness article, neither is it a part of strong AI article, it is a part of consciousness studies, and so belongs under the consciousness article. Tkorrovi 20:20, 1 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Reasons for this suggestion:

To me this article reads like a naive realist article about strong AI. There is currently no article devoted to strong AI and I strongly recommend this entire text is shifted to a new heading. The current text says:

"This functionalist view, that the human being is truly a real machine, prompts us to ask what type of machine the brain is. That the brain is a machine of the Turing type is assumed because no more powerful computing paradigm has been discovered and all that is known about the brain (admittedly not very much), in the mainstream view, does nothing to contradict the supposition."

This shows that the article is clearly about strong AI and not artificial consciousness per se.

As an article on artificial consciousness it is far too partisan. It introduces none of the problems of the philosophy of consciousness and fails to properly consider the viewpoints of workers outside computer science.

It is unsuitable as an encyclopedia article on AC. It must be moved and adapted to Strong AI

I suggest that the reversion of 1/12/04 is replaced by the previous version and a new Strong AI heading is created for this article. I did not immediately revert it because this deserves some discussion.

Some points that show the partisan nature of the article:

1.It uses sentience as interchangeable with consciousness when the two terms are not interchangeable.

2. It uses a dictionary definition of consciousness: "Possessing knowledge, whether by internal, conscious experience or by external observation; cognizant; aware; sensible" when there is a perfectly good Misplaced Pages entry that considers the ramifications of the subject.

There is a need, as you suggest, in order to avoid the naive realist fantasy, to have some reality checkpoints. Surely a discussion of artificial consciousness should be grounded on a primary definition of consciousness itself and not on wikipedia's own 'derived' definition, no matter how good the latter might be. Matt Stan 10:30, 1 Dec 2004 (UTC)

The use of the limited dictionary definition allows a partisan view without directing readers to where the issues might be discussed.

3. It fails to provide an overview of the philosophy of consciousness.

The focus of previous discussions revolved more around the idea of the artifice in artificial consciousness, since, as you point out, consciousness per se is covered elsewhere. Another term, synthetic consciousness, was coined to get over the philosophical problem that artificial consciousness is a tautology: if observers are aware of the artifice then they will never deem artificial consciousness to be real, and if it's not real consciousness then it isn't consciousness at all! Conversely, if observers are unaware of the artifice and deem the entity to be real then it is no longer artificial, but real consciousness, regardless of how it was contrived. But also see Philosophical zombie and zimboe Matt Stan 10:30, 1 Dec 2004 (UTC)

This shows that I am not the first person to spot that this article is partisan.

Artificial consciousness simply means an entity created by artifice that is conscious. What seems to be happening here is that some proponents of strong AI who believe that this would generate real consciousness are occupying a Misplaced Pages heading to ram their point home. A discussion of the wider philosophical issues would demonstrate that strong AI is only one of several approaches to AC.

Or it could mean consciousness that was perceived to be artificial. Otherwise why not use the term synthetic consciousness or simulated consciousness. An artificial sweetener is so called because it is ersatz sugar, and detectable as such. If term artificial consciousness really only refers to the conscious aspects of entities with artificial intelligence, then this connection should be made clear. This is merely a semantic point, but it is intended to isolate the definition of consciousness and if it can ever be said to be artificial in itself. An artificially conscious entity simply means an entity created by artifice that is conscious. That is not the same as artificial consciousness. Matt Stan 11:12, 1 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Artificial sugar would be real sugar made by artifice. Artificial sweetners may not be sugar. Artificial consciousness is real consciousness made by artifice.

I think you are getting my drift and beginning to see the nature of the semantic problem. Real and artificial are opposites. What is real or artificial about the manufacture of sugar? There can't be a real way which is different from an artificial way to make sugar. Ok, if artificial consciousness is real consciousness made by artifice, then we are discussing the means and not the ends, and I like your definition: Artificial consciousness is real consciousness made by artifice. And there is no such thing as an artificial consciousness analogous to artificial sweeteners, i.e. like, but not the same as, the real thing. Matt Stan 15:33, 1 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Your mention of philosophical zombies shows how important it is that Artificial consciousness should be kept as an overview of the field and not subverted by strong AI.

You are right! Matt Stan 11:15, 1 Dec 2004 (UTC)

4. It mentions behavioural psychology but gives no attention to cognitivism and indirect realism. It fails to distinguish adequately between the SIMULATION of consciousness and consciousness.

5. It fails to note that the simulation of consciousness is the same as consciousness to behaviourists and direct realists.

6. It gives nowhere near enough attention to the indirect realist physicalist yet indirect realist non-dualist arguments or why such arguments exist.

7. It does not mention the suggestion of many authors from Searle to Penrose that artificial consciousness may require physical phenomena that are not part of classical information processing.

I disagree with such approach. Replacing the whole text of the article by a single user with his text is not the editing policy of Misplaced Pages. As an alternative, and a means to compromise, I suggest moving all parts of artificial consciousness article relevant to Strong AI, to Strong AI article, but so that no content of the article would be lost, and the part relevant to artificial consciousness would remain in that article. Sincerely, Tkorrovi 16:08, 1 Dec 2004 (UTC)

It's all very well saying, 'I disagree' and then mentioning editing policy - of which, incidentally, there is very little: anybody can do what they like; the final arbiter is the quality of the end result. If there is any policy, it is at the bottom of the page that I am editing now, which says, in bold If you do not want your writing to be edited mercilessly and redistributed at will, do not submit it. I can't see the difference anyway between what Tkorrovi is suggesting as an alternative and what the anonymous user actually did! Matt Stan 11:34, 7 Dec 2004 (UTC)

It was also written somewhere, that Misplaced Pages is not about testing the limits of anarchy, don't remember where it was written, but I think it is self-evident. Tkorrovi 14:06, 7 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Please add your text to existing Artificial consciousness article, it is the right way of doing it, editing from the existing article, in agreement with other users. What is not a right policy, is replacing the whole article completely with the text written by a single user. Strong AI is a separate article, the text appropriate for that, should be added there. Sincerely, Tkorrovi 16:56, 1 Dec 2004 (UTC)

The following are my points of view, some may duplicate the opinions of Matthew Stannard, some may not. First, the text relevant to strong AI, which constitutes a large part of the article, was not originally written by me, it was mostly written by Paul Beardsell, and I didn't want to include it in the article at all, as it doesn't go under what I consider AC, and as the logic also seemed somewhat questionnable for me, also a lot of it not supported by references, which Paul himself admitted. But I had to agree in including it, because any Misplaced Pages article is written by several people, and you as an editor must let to include there opinions, with what you don't agree, only that way it becomes NPOV. Second, this article doesn't include the explanation of philosophy of mind etc, because they belong under appropriate articles. It must only include that part, which is directly necessary for implementing artificially conscious system. Concerning the definition of consciousness, it must be the definition in dictionary, and it is the principle of Misplaced Pages that public domain dictionaries, available for everyone, should be primarily used. Concerning the different names, it was the will for example of the authors of digital sentience, to merge it with artificial consciousness. It is the opinion of many, that Artificial consciousness is the best common name, and it includes other concepts such as digital sentience, which may not necessarily be identical to each other, but have the same general aim as Artificial consciousness. The term Artificial consciousness was introduced the most in science by Igor Aleksander. Now they talk about machine consciousness, which they themselves admit comes from Artificial consciousness, as it comes from concepts of AC introduced first by Igor Aleksander. So machine consciousness also goes under AC, but AC is somewhat larger concept, as it also may include the systems, which strictly speaking are not machines, like say quantum computer uses some natural processes, so it may not be considered completely a human made machine. Sincerely, Tkorrovi 20:55, 1 Dec 2004 (UTC)

What concerns the concepts of sentience versus consciousness, behavioural psychology (not written or agreed by me, edit if you find mistakes there) etc, then add these explanations, if they are indeed not written anywhere else. No, AC is not the same as implementing consciousness by artificial means, it has not necessarily an aim to implement the whole consciousness, just a system which satidfies some criterias of artificially conscious system. Also the aim in AC has mostly been the research only, not exactly creating of any fully conscious systems. Also, Matthew, nice to see you here. There is a small suggestion though, which is only my personal opinion, but which may significantly improve for other users to follow the discussion. I think that would be easier, if the comments are not written in the middle of other users comments, rather than after other comments or at least after some larger subdivision of the comments, just would be easier to follow (just an aside note). Also, with the new font of Misplaced Pages, it may be clearer to separate paragraphs with two line feeds. Sincerely, Tkorrovi 21:24, 1 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Comment

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)

Yep, don't appreciate it either. Is it really institute? Tkorrovi 16:22, 2 May 2004 (UTC)

Archived Discussion

• Talk:Artificial consciousness/Blasphemy archive
• Talk:Artificial consciousness/Archive 1
• Talk:Artificial consciousness/Archive 2
• Talk:Artificial consciousness/Archive 3
• Talk:Artificial consciousness/Archive 5
• Talk:Artificial consciousness/Archive 6
• Talk:Artificial consciousness/NPOV_Version/discuss
• Talk:Artificial consciousness/Archive 7
• Talk:Artificial consciousness/Archive 8
• Talk:Artificial consciousness/AI_vs_AC
• Talk:Artificial consciousness/Archive 9

"Supposed Experts" in Artificial Consciousness

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)

Various suggestions (please add to list):

• Douglas Hofstadter - consciousness is a central interest as is AC
• Daniel Dennett - wrote Consciousness Explained and deals with AC
• Roger Penrose - denies AC though most scientists dismiss his reasoning
• Thomas Nagel - subjective experience
• Igor Aleksander - AC
• Owen Holland - AC
• Rod Goodman - AC
• Sam S. Adams - AC - Joshua Blue project, IBM Research
• Gerald Edelman - Nobel prize winner, respected ideas on the theory of mind
• Cynthia Breazeal
• Stephen Jones

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)

AC can perhaps be seen as a part of AI or as a part of Consciousness. Interestingly Misplaced Pages'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)

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)

AC and Strong AI

How about moving 'artificial consciousness' over to strong AI instead? Wikiwikifast 16:19, 26 Apr 2004 (UTC)

I disagree, strong AI is a limited proposition about information processors (digital computers/Turing machines) artificial consciousness is about any type of machine, including those based on a 20,000 gene set of DNA strands.

There is no strong AI article, the link refers to AI article where strong AI is also mentioned. And there is no strong AI theory, also there are no strong AI projects, there are no strong AI programs, it is usually only mentioned in comparison to weak AI. As much as I know, so far only AC is something what supposed to theoretically perform of what strong AI supposed to, but it is not the same as strong AI, and likely more genuine compared to consciousness than strong AI. There is no place in AI article where information about AC can be written, also why this approach cannot be separate article when the subfields of AI are? If there was enough to say about strong AI, then it could be a separate article as well, the reason why it was not a separate article was just that probably nobody knew what to write about it, it is not determined at all what strong AI is. Tkorrovi 19:30, 26 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Another tiresome set of assertions wrongly presented as hard fact. There is a strong AI theory, there are strong AI projects, the field of AI is vehemently split between believers of the weak and strong AI theories, strong AI is not only mentioned in contrast to weak AI. No one who has read widely could believe otherwise. Paul Beardsell 22:16, 26 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Then say one strong AI theory, or one strong AI project, or even one good strong AI definition. I read AI forums and followed AI for a long time, and saw that it's not clear for almost anybody what it is. Tkorrovi 01:10, 27 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Now you deny even a definition! If I provide an example will you admit you are wrong? Paul Beardsell 11:23, 27 Apr 2004 (UTC)

I think the science is plain: AC can be real/genuine/true consciousness. This is a minority opinion on this talk page but is nevertheless a popular view among computer scientists and philosophers of mind. As such I think AC fits into the Strong AI section of the artificial intelligence article rather well but I think a separate article is a better idea. Those here who (in defiance of the Copernican principle and Occam's razor and the Church-Turing thesis) think that AC can only ever be a simulation of real/genuine/true consciousness can not, in my opinion, be happy with including AC into Strong AI because Strong AI is real/genuine/true intelligence - not a simulation of it. Paul Beardsell 22:16, 26 Apr 2004 (UTC)

It may be plain for you, but at least it's not that plain for Thomas Nagel, it's also that without understanding or considering everything, things look like much more simple. Tkorrovi 01:24, 27 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Even if AC does turn out to be a branch of AI, I think there is still room for an article to clarify that point - separate from the AI article. If it does turn out that AC can be developed as an end in its own right, as I had always assumed, then even more point in it having a separate article. I have no great learning in this field, and I come here primarily to learn. Can we have summaries of the main proponents' arguments about consciousness (as distinct from intelligence) in the main article, please? My offerings, for what they are worth are as follows:

1) There isn't, from what I have gleaned, a project to pursue the development solely of a machine implementation of consciousness for its own sake, or even as part of some other purposeful endeavour;

I think for many researchers AC is the holy grail. Growing up with Lucy by Steve Grand is perhaps not an example with much promise but that is surely his goal? Paul Beardsell 09:45, 30 Apr 2004 (UTC)

"Non-disciplinary" philosophy of "general purpose building blocks," no software "yet". Like building a house from bricks. Tkorrovi 15:25, 30 Apr 2004 (UTC)

2) I do not agree that there should necessarily be a strict dichotomy between weak and strong consciousness - the distinction certainly doesn't arise with natural forms of consciousness, and therefore a coherent definition of AC per se is required before we can perhaps make distinctions that were developed for the AI Topic;

If by strong and weak you mean genuine/real/true and non-genuine/simulated/pretend then, of course, the distinction does not arise in natural consciousness. Except when we pretend to be asleep! Paul Beardsell 09:45, 30 Apr 2004 (UTC)

3) I can imagine implementations of AC in various contexts that might be considered just as art - if they have no obvious function - or as entertainment. Though I agree about Misplaced Pages not being primary research, it does have the propensity to make connections (links) between subject-matter that doesn't occur anywhere else. An article that bridges the gap between what SF writers imagine in their stories and what is both theoretically and practically possible from an engineering perspective is a useful endeavour and doesn't, I rhink, conflict with what Misplaced Pages is about. Matt Stan 00:41, 27 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Yes! You can buy solar powered (non-flying) decorative butterflies using muscles wires on some robotics sites. I reckon with a bit of tweaking they could have a genuine consciousness in excess of the most advanced thermostat. Paul Beardsell 09:45, 30 Apr 2004 (UTC)

As much as I know no scientist ever argued that thermostat is conscious.Thermostat is a Chalmers example what he didn't provide because he himself thinks that thermostat is conscious, but for reductio ad absurdum the Lloyd's argument that the connectionist models might shed light to subjective aspects of consciousness described by Nagel. "On the face of it, this approach is put forward as a way of dealing with Nagel's worries about consciousness, where the central mystery is: why is there something it is like to be us at all? There is a huge prima facie mystery about how any sort of physical system could possess conscious experience. Lloyd holds out the promise that connectionist models might shed light on this question, but at the end of the day the models seem to leave the key explanatory question unanswered. Even if we were to go out on a limb and suppose that these simple systems are conscious, the question of explanation would still remain untouched." http://jamaica.u.arizona.edu/~chalmers/notes/lloyd-comments.html (article by Chalmers). Tkorrovi 16:33, 1 May 2004 (UTC)

Even this selective quote does not say quite what Tkorrovi seems to think. See below discussion in Thermostat section. Paul Beardsell 12:15, 3 May 2004 (UTC)

The reason why there is no "strong AI project" in the way you think of it is because the real work done in "strong AI" is in philosophy. You can be an engineer and say, "Since no one is creating strong AI, I will do it!" But how do you start? What makes your project not weak AI? Obviously, we haven't figured out what is necessary or sufficient for consciousness.

Weak AI is important for strong AI because it serves as inductive evidence for consciousness/intelligence. That is, if we can make something that seems conscious/intelligent, there is a possibility that it is truly conscious. If we can't even make something that exhibits intelligent/conscious behaviour, then that it is truly conscious is out of the question. Hence, the idea behind the Turing Test is worth mentioning.

Lastly, Dennett, Nagel, etc. are not "experts" of AC/strong AI in that what they say must be true. Philosophy of mind and AI is an ongoing debate, and what they say is only one side of the picture. Characteristic of philosophy, there are many competing theories that exist.

--Wikiwikifast 10:33, 27 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Whilst AI seems to have been dominated by philosphers and its theories disappearing up their own arse (i.e. not leading to particular progress in the engineering field), research into consciousness is focused in psychoneurology, in particular using scanners to correlate perceptual and cognitive activity with neural activity. There may one day be (if there isn't already) a mental map based on this research that equates to the human genome project (already completed). My suggestion is that artificial implementations that attempt to simulate the operation of conscious processes, as evinced from such neurological research, is the path towards AC actualisation. This will leave philosophy way behind. I am not concerned with the philosophers' views on what constitutes consciousness or not - they'll never reach a consensus, just as they've never reached consensus even on logic or ethics. However if I can produce and sell a machine whose advertising claims that that machine is conscious, or even artificially conscious -- and that claim isn't disallowed by the Advertising Standards Authority -- then I'll be able to claim strongly that my AC is real AC. Some implementations that I've considered as candidate AC products are:

• A conscious bus stop that recognises the people who regularly stand next to it, welcomes them, tells then when their bus is due, introduces them to each other, shares in their complaints about the bus service, answers questions by sending voice-recognised text to Google, plays music, replays horrifying images of muggings that have taken place near it, etc, etc.
• (Related to the previous) A conscious policeman on the beat that collects evidence, helps the public in simple ways like answering questions about the way to the nearest bus stop, and never wants promotion
• A conscious sexual partner that never thinks, never complains, and whose heuristic is designed to ensure increasing satisfaction the more it is used. This is perhaps the most promising idea in that there is already a well-established market for sex toys
• A conscious (and articulated) computer screen combined with webcam, upon which appears an animated representation of a human (which a camera on this or on other instances had previously observed and which uses morphing software to drive its images), which proactively interacts with its user (partner?) and takes on personae which are effectively caricatures of people with whom it has interacted previously. (Of course one could buy characters, much like people buy mobile phone ring tones, and people who had used the product to the extent required for the machine to build virtual representations of them could sell their characters. A useful pastime and money-spinner perhaps for old celebrities)
• A conscious driving assistant (already marketed by BMW on its latest model) that keeps your car going in the right speed and direction even when the actual driver becomes inattentive
• A conscious dinner party host that ensures quests' glasses are filled, coordinates the timing of the cooking, makes trivial conversation (AI component required here, perhaps), and interrogates bus stops across the internet to trace late-comers

If any of these ideas were freshly patentable then they aren't now! They are in the public domain on wikipedia. And I don't think you need a philosopher to tell you whether they are implementable. Matt Stan 08:06, 1 May 2004 (UTC)

As I said before, the results of scanning the neural activity http://www-inst.eecs.berkeley.edu/~cs182/readings/ns/article.html suggest that awareness is awareness of processes. Human genome project is completed only in the sense that the DNA sequences are mapped, but only a function of a very few fragments of DNA are known. The complexity of that problem is so huge, that it's not feasible to understand everything that way. Neither probably by scanning the whole neural activity. In addition to that, such scanning only shows when neurons fire, but nothing about what happens inside the neuron, but neuron may be as complex as a computer. And even if we could do that, again just having a map would not by itself explain anything. There is also by far not enough information in DNA for all brain activity what even a child has, what shows again that the brain activity is not pre-programmed, but is a result of learning. What we must understand is how that happens, not what *exactly* is in the brain. AC is useful for providing an experimental method to test philosophy. I thought just about a regulator at first, what could model the processes based on the input and predict how they would develop. A natural processes, such as friction of the tyres of your car, what depends on so many things, and cannot be uniformly modelled. Tkorrovi 15:54, 1 May 2004 (UTC)

"What makes your project not weak AI?" "Objective Less Genuine AC" should do that. Well, "Genuine AC" should do that as well. Not sure though how Paul interprets it, and why he said that thermostat can considered to be "Genuine AC", concerning that you should ask him, I don't support "Genuine AC" because I don't think that it would be ever possible to model consciosness completely. Tkorrovi 09:40, 28 Apr 2004 (UTC)

You use project and expert in a restrictive way which suits your argument. Given that I agree with what you say. Please do not misunderstand me: I never said the problems are solved and now all we need is enough Meccano to construct Sentient Expert Mk 1. Paul Beardsell 11:13, 27 Apr 2004 (UTC)

The 'you' in my first paragraph was directed at Tk, and my comments about projects and experts was directed more at him as well. I mostly agree with you (PB) when you said that there are strong AI projects, etc., but I was addressing the restrictive sense of project as in an engineering project, which was what I took Tk to mean. Wikiwikifast 00:35, 28 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Obviously there isn't a Strong AI project like the Boeing 7E7 engineering project. How many research grants, how many funded scientists does there have to be before a project is admitted? There are, of course, many Strong AI research projects. And each computer scientist / philosopher of mind engaged in Strong AI has a theory, or pretends to have one, to get his/her funding. The theory is not established like, for example, Special Relativity but to say there is no theory (or rather no set of candidate theories) is just to redefine the word. Paul Beardsell 11:40, 27 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Yes, there are engineering projects that are created for a purpose other than making something useful for humans. But calling them 'strong AI' projects makes it sound like there are conscious robots out there. However, people have created robots that act like insects that can move around autonomously, etc. Wikiwikifast 00:35, 28 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Upon reconsideration, I agree that AC should remain a separate article and should not be merged with AI nor moved to Strong AI. Wikiwikifast 03:20, 28 Apr 2004 (UTC)

The concept of machine

Daniel Dennett compared mind to a machine, but the problem is that he never said what he means by machine (if you find where he did that, then please say). Machine is usually interpreted as something human-made or something what humans can make. Then there are virtual machines, like Turing machine, what are theoretical concepts, what cannot always be made, like Turing machine with endless tape. or we cannot implement them because it's impossible to obtain all necessary information to implement them. So machine and virtual machine are not the same. We can say that mind is equivalent to certain virtual machine what satisfies Church-Turing thesis, what it certainly is, but this is not the same as to say that mind is a machine. We may call such theoretical machine a Church-Turing machine, to name it somehow. Then we may say that mind is some kind of Church-Turing machine. We cannot follow the logic of Dennett until we don't know what Dennett meant by machine, especially when the question is exactly in the difference of consciousness and a machine. So this is a theoretical problem, I hope it's understood. Tkorrovi 11:41, 28 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Fortunately for Dennett the Church-Turing thesis says that all machines are equivalent in computing ability except for speed and memory capacity. So Dennett does not have to say what type of machine he is talking about. One idealised computing machine, the Turing machine, is shown by Turing to be equal or superior in capability to other computing machines. A Turing machine is of course implementable (and there are examples on the web) except for the infinite memory size. But any program which runs in finite time can only access a finite amount of tape. The human being has a finite life time and so doesn't need an infinite tape. According to the Church-Turing thesis, any computer can mimic any other. The unavoidable conclusion is: If your Sinclair ZX-80 cannot mimic the human being replace the C30 cassette tape with a C60. Of course, there is also the problem of writing the software. Paul Beardsell 12:02, 28 Apr 2004 (UTC)

So, are you saying that humans are not machines? That there is something spiritual about them: a soul or a magic spark? Or are you questioning the Church-Turing thesis? Or are you questioning it's applicability to humans on the basis of new physics? Or are you saying that the software cannot be written? Paul Beardsell 11:46, 28 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Are you saying that humans are machines? The argument for strong AI goes:

(1) Given that the mind is the software/hardware brain, and

(2) Given the Church-Turing thesis,

(3) The possibility of Strong AI must be accepted.

I do not disagree with (2), but (1) is questionable. --Wikiwikifast 02:37, 5 May 2004 (UTC)

Yes, that humans are but machines is a very common view amongst many/most scientists and many/most philosophers. Even Penrose agrees with (1) but he disagrees with (2). See functionalism. But the point is not whether you or I agree with either (1) or (2) and of course you can logically disagree with either but that if you accept them both then the conclusion (3) is unavoidable. Paul Beardsell 02:48, 5 May 2004 (UTC)

Many/most scientists and philosophers believe in some form of materialism, but I don't think many/most believe that the mind is a machine qua symbol manipulation. Wikiwikifast 04:03, 5 May 2004 (UTC)

If I change "many/most" into "many" then the point is incontrovertible: Many scientists and philosophers do believe that the hardware/software brain is a computing machine.

My point is that the mind is not necessarily a virtual machine. Wikiwikifast 04:08, 5 May 2004 (UTC)

If by "virtual" you mean not-real then I agree with you. But I think we disagree because many do believe the mind is really the software/hardware machine. That I strongly believe so is hardly pertinent! Your position is, of course, not an unusual one: Most religions are on your side. Paul Beardsell 11:43, 5 May 2004 (UTC)

What??! By virtual machine I mean a finite state machine or Turing machine. The mind may not be analogous to concepts of software/hardware, because it is controversial that cognition consists of merely symbol manipulation—symbol manipulation as in the reading and writing of discrete tokens such as 0 and 1. In the connectionist framework, cognition isn't transformation of discrete symbols, but rather patterns of activity. Wikiwikifast 14:02, 5 May 2004 (UTC)

I think you may be redefining "virtual machine". The view you express, if backed up by appropriate citings, should go in the article. But others think (and I reckon I can find references to back this up) that "patterns of activity" is just like the flashing of lights on the panel of a 1970's computer. What is going on, underneath the patterns, is symbol manipulation. Paul Beardsell 22:22, 5 May 2004 (UTC)

"Virtual machine" I took from Tkorrovi's post, the first one in this section. Connectionist nets are modelled after neurons in the brain. The firing of one node activates certain other nodes in its vicinity, depending on the connection strength between it and a neighboring node, which is supposed to simulate how neurons work. In neural nets, I believe connections are given numerical weightings, e.g. 0.55. I think the numbers aren't supposed to be discrete, but are theoretically supposed be real numbers (i.e. continuous). If you accept this model, cognition cannot be symbol manipulation, because there are no discrete tokens like either 0 or 1, but rather, it uses the set of real numbers (of which there are infinite, and have no discrete divisions). Hence, if you accept this model, the mind cannot be a Turing machine. Wikiwikifast 00:12, 6 May 2004 (UTC)

I think the use of "virtual" in this context is a red herring. As a software professional, I have always understood a virtual machine to be an implementation of a machine within another machine, e.g. the Java Virtual Machine within the Windows operating system (machine). Now whilst it might be worthwhile to think of "mind" as a virtual machine machine within the "body" machine, I do not think that is the intention here and I don't think that analogy holds anyway. It is more likely, I think, that Tkorrovi looked up "virtual" in the dictionary and thought that it would be useful to describe mind as "a bit like a machine", or "virtually a machine", which is of course misleading anyway, as we are aiming to indicate whether mind is a machine at all, and as Wikwikifast points out, from a scientific materialist perspective, it is. The salient question, as Wikiwikifast again correctly identifies, is to ask what sort of machine the mind is, because that will throw light on whether it can be emulated using the methods available to us. Matt Stan 06:49, 6 May 2004 (UTC)

"Virtual machine" is another of those compound nouns the meaning of which can be perfectly well understood from each of the constituent words. It also has its own article. The first usage of that term in this section is incorrect. Paul Beardsell 09:39, 6 May 2004 (UTC)

Do real numbers exist in nature? This is an interesting philosophical question. Even distance, we are told by the quantum theorists, is discrete. Maybe only rational numbers exist. Certainly our vision is digital and discrete. The pixels are close together and we do not see pixellation - there must be smoothing happening in software - but the retina consists of discrete rods and cones. In the connectionist nets the values assigned to the nodes are not chosen from the whole set of real numbers but from a subset of the rationals: This is a proven limitation of all computers. As the firing of a neuron in the brain must involve an integer number of electrons we also know that not all real numbers can be represented at the synapse junctions. The neuron cannot be set to fire after the transfer of a fractional number of electrons. The brain does not process real numbers. Brain processing is chemical and electrical. Everything is a multiple of a number of molecules or a multiple of a number of electrons. Brain processing is discrete. Paul Beardsell 01:17, 6 May 2004 (UTC)

See philosophical implications of the Church-Turing thesis. Is the Universe computable? Paul Beardsell 01:35, 6 May 2004 (UTC)

You have a good point. However, I just wanted to point out that not everyone believes in symbolicism.

symbolicism - An approach to understanding human cognition that is committed to language like symbolic processing as the best method of explanation. ... The commitments of symbolicism have been challenged by connectionist research and most recently the dynamical systems theory approach to cognition. - Dictionary of Philosophy of Mind

See also John Lucas' Minds, Machines and Gödel for an argument against the claim that the mind is a Turing machine. Instead of debating incessantly over talk pages, I should probably use my time constructively by contributing to the AI and cognitive science articles... Wikiwikifast 02:38, 6 May 2004 (UTC)

As to what type of machine the brain is, this is settled for most scientists. Turing showed that anything which does symbol manipulation is no more powerful than the Turing machine. And anything passing about discreet lumps of stuff (e.g. electrons and molecules) is doing symbol manipulation in the computer science sense. It is a finite state machine. All finite state machines are no more powerful that the Turing machines. Proven computer science result. It's maths. No argument. The onus is on the dissenters to explain what is wrong with any of this reasoning. Penrose understands this and attempts to do so, but established science finds serious flaws in his arguments. But Penrose understands what it is he has to show, most other dissenters ignore the scientific method. That is what is happening here. Paul Beardsell 09:39, 6 May 2004 (UTC)

Cognitive science article would indeed be a better place for that. This is not necessary for AC considering the Thomas Nagel argument that subjective experience cannot be reduced (modelled), and this is included in the article. Considering that, it doesn't matter whether subjective experience is physical. I think it's physical and Nagel thinks that it's physical, but this doesn't matter for AC. Tkorrovi 08:59, 6 May 2004 (UTC)

If the mind is no more powerful than the Turing machine then what accounts for subjective experience? A magic spark? The soul? Penrose quantum quackery? Maybe Nagel is wrong. Paul Beardsell 09:45, 6 May 2004 (UTC)

It (that the mind is a machine) does matter for genuine/true/real/strong AC. Obviously. Paul Beardsell 09:39, 6 May 2004 (UTC)

All machines are equivalent in computing ability except for speed and memory, but there is a difference between virtual (theoretical) machine and man-made machine also in that it may not be possible to obtain all necessary information to make the machine, in spite that theoretically some type of virtual machine can implement it. Please read Thomas Nagel "What is it like to be a bat" to get an idea. Tkorrovi 12:19, 28 Apr 2004 (UTC)

I have read the book*. I have demonstrated the equivalence of the Sinclair ZX-80 and the human being (except for speed and memory capacity). Neither of these are theoretical machines. Trying my best to interpret what you have said I think you have chosen the last of the presented alternatives: You think the software cannot be written. Paul Beardsell 12:28, 28 Apr 2004 (UTC)

(*)I have read the book "The Mind's I" in which Nagel's ideas are quoted at length and the bat essay may appear in it's entirety. The critique of those ideas which appears in that book and especially how they are contrasted with other ideas is interesting and entertaining. But, I suggest, not entirely relevant to the narrow point we are trying to resolve here. Paul Beardsell 12:43, 28 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Yes it may be not entirely relevant. It is said in the article Thomas Nagel that "While many philosophers of mind and cognitive neuroscientists accept the fundamental distinction between the subjective and the objective, they often have not accepted Nagel's dismal conclusions." This is almost that what is relevant for AC. But concerning dismal conclusions, maybe Nagel is not so well understood, he doesn't deny the reduction of that what is objective. Tkorrovi 12:56, 28 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Whether written or taught, we cannot make sure that it can be developed so that it implements consciousness completely, but we can develop it so that it implements consciousness partly when we don't omit anything, except that what is not objective. Tkorrovi 12:39, 28 Apr 2004 (UTC)

OK, I cannot deny that view but that is just one way things might work out. At some point the built-consciousness might reach a critical mass, transfer itself to a local super-computer cluster of 100,000 Trituim 86666MHz processors running MacOS XII, attach several Terabytes of NAS memory and, changing gear, evolve a consciousness which is a superset of human consciousness. But, please, neglect this flight of fancy for the moment. I return to your view: Will your partially implemented consciousness be a genuine manifestation of consciousness or not? And, if not, why not? Paul Beardsell 12:52, 28 Apr 2004 (UTC)

The problem is that whether it is genuine consciousness or not can never be found out. Because of that, as science must be objective, in scientific terms we must say no. But there is a possibility that it may seem one day very genuine, especially if maybe implemented on quantum computer, maybe even exceed some human abilities, in theory there seems to be nothing what restricts such system. And then one day we may believe that this is genuine consciousness, but there would be no scientific way to find out, all what we can test even in that case would be that it is artificial consciousness. Tkorrovi 13:13, 28 Apr 2004 (UTC)

But, as an aside, and this is another fact to trip up Penrose, the Church-Turing thesis still applies to the quantum computer. Paul Beardsell 13:47, 28 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Sure, I also think that Church-Turing thesis apply, and I think it's not Gödel's theorem what is wrong, but rather the way how Penrose uses it. This question has been discussed endlessly in the Internet. Tkorrovi 20:59, 28 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Dennett deals with this issue well in both The Intentional Stance and Consciousness Explained. Essentially, he denies the human any special place in the universe, he says we allow another human consciousness because he says he is, and says it is mere arrogance to deny something else consciousness if it acts as if it is conscious and if it claims it is conscious. He makes the point better than I do, doubtless. Paul Beardsell 13:24, 28 Apr 2004 (UTC)

As I understand it he is saying your use of subjective and objective you fail to apply to humans themselves. Subjectively you say you are conscious. Objectively, how do I know? Paul Beardsell 13:26, 28 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Yes, the only reason why we can say that we are conscious is that we are humans, and capable humans are considered to be conscious when they don't happen to be in coma. We cannot even completely compare our consciousness to that of somebody else. This doesn't mean that we are better, this is just how we determine consciousness. Maybe dolphins are better than we are, but we can never know. Tkorrovi 13:40, 28 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Except that dolphins act as if they are conscious, they do all but say they are conscious. I have seen a conscious dolphin, I am sure. Neither you nor I can be sure that the other is conscious: Indeed, for all you know I have tapped this out on a panel in my tank. ] Paul Beardsell 13:47, 28 Apr 2004 (UTC).

Counter-example

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)

But you invent magic. We do not know how we remember the spelling of "Erastothenes" but we do not invent magic to explain it. The scientific method does not say "invent science to support your prejudices". Paul Beardsell 09:34, 6 May 2004 (UTC)

Experiments on primates have shown that there is an area of the brain concerned with visual cognition that does pattern-matching and which, interestingly, operates at a level of resolution (topological complexity, to be more precise)commensurate with alphabetic and other writing system symbols (e.g. Chinese). This is used to show that our brains were not designed for reading, but that we have innate capabilities (shared with other primates) that lend themselves to be able to interpret writing. So our spelling ability is capable of being understood at an elementary level. However the recognition of prime numbers is held to be a difficult feat to perform algorithmically, and is indeed the basis of modern cryptography. Therefore if we cannot explain how certain individuals' brains can divine prime numbers, surely that is a good argument to suggest that the Church-Turing thesis may not hold in all circumstances when it comes to understanding consciousness, as I suggest above. If we could explain it then there is the possibility that cryptography would founder. Matt Stan 09:52, 6 May 2004 (UTC)

Firstly, you overstate the ability of the idiots savant. They could not do any prime number problem. Related problems, e.g., which a mathematician would be able to work out if they knew what the twins knew, stumped the twins completetly. You have managed to remember and store away a large vocab, to store away a fairly detailed map of London, to remember many facts about scores of people. These idiots savant did none of that. The storage capacity of the brain is known to be enormous. Yet I can store a lot of prime numbers on my laptop. No one is saying that the brain is not remarkable. But no new science should be invented until necessary. It is difficult for people to appreciate they are not God's chosen ones. We feel special. A more plausible explanation than the brain not being finite state sub-Turing is that it's drugs in the water that make you think this way. No new science required for that. Paul Beardsell 10:03, 6 May 2004 (UTC)

A much better counterexample is the finite state machine known as Beethoven. Paul Beardsell 10:06, 6 May 2004 (UTC)

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)

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)

In the story that Oliver Sacks tells (and he was a neurologist invited to examine the twins), at first no one was aware that the twins were savouring prime numbers. He listened to them, noted down the numbers they mentioned, and took his notes to a mathematician who indicated that they were all primes. Sacks then wrote down some more primes - bigger ones - and re-joined the twins. He mentioned his primes and the twins paused to consider them. They had never encountered such large primes and were delighted with the new player (Sacks) in their game. I forget how large they went in terms of the numbers mentioned, (and the twins did take longer to recognise larger primes) but I think it's fair to say that it's unlikely they had memorised a list previously presented to them. They also, incidentally, had the ability correctly to state (without delay) the day of the week of any date in the previous or next 10,000 years. I doubt whether they'd had the chance to memorise such a large number of calendars. Whatever the explanation, I don't think it's one of them having an eidetic memory, though some idiot savants do have this. I also don't think their ability was learned - the fact that they were identical twins being important here. Matt Stan 10:30, 6 May 2004 (UTC)

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)

If you know all the prime numbers to 1000, say, then it is not super-humanly difficult to test numbers to 1000000 for primeness. Not magic. The calendars might have impressed Oliver Sacks the mystic, but it would not have impressed Oliver Sacks the mathematician. You only have to learn 14 calendars to know them all. The magic feat is simply one of dividing modulo 14 and applying an offset correction for Pope Gregory. I can tell you whether any number of any size is divisible by 11. But then I am not like you machines. I take Super Unleaded. Paul Beardsell 10:45, 6 May 2004 (UTC)

Perhaps I am digressing, but it occurs to me, from reading Sacks and others that part of our normal humanness consists of constraints (attenuators) on our consciousness. See hrair limit (also relevant in the autistic savant context), and remember Sacks' example of the man who smelt like a dog (i.e he could smell water at a distance) temporarily after experimenting with drugs. I am primarily concerned here, though, with the example of primeness. It is not easy to test a number for primeness in your head, even with relatively small numbers. See http://primes.utm.edu/prove/ for the known methods of proving primeness, and bear in mind that the twins couldn't do simple arithmetic. What I think they demonstrate is that there was some mysterious method of determining primeness (perhaps by means of some form of pattern matching and/or symbol manipulation) which was not learnt (the only reason why the twins are important is that they had the same genotype which gave them each the same mysterious capability) and was not explainable by them - they didn't know how they did it, i.e. they didn't do it by any known mathematical/algorithmic process, and it couldn't be fathomed by anyone else, and still can't, as far as I am aware. Matt Stan 18:38, 6 May 2004 (UTC)

Brain size

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)

The unit of biological memory has to be the neuron or the synapse because the reading and writing of material within the cell cannot be done in seconds. A neuron is huge when measured in numbers of atoms: 25 microns = 2.5*10^(-5)m. Feyman's info density packing will be based on the size of an atom: 2.5*10^(-11)m. 10^6 difference in linear dimension. But to your question: The volume of a human brain is 1600cc or 1.6litres or 0.0016m^3. Linear dimension of a neuron is 2.5*10^(-5)m. Volume is 1.6*10^(-14)m^3. At maximum packing density there are 1.6*10^11 neurons in the brain. The easy way tells us 100bn neurons. 100*10^9 = 10^11. I was spot on: super unleaded! Is that 100Terabits = 10Terabytes? Paul Beardsell 23:45, 6 May 2004 (UTC)

Brain as Finite State Machine

Recipe for recognising the true nature of the brain: Define finite state machine. See that brain conforms to definition. Acknowledge the proof that finite state machines are Turing machines (or, more accurately, that FSMs are no more powerful than a TM). Acknowledge that the Church-Turing thesis holds that all computing machines (FSMs, Pentium IVs, etc) are equivalent in capability except in speed and memory capacity. Adopt the true faith. Paul Beardsell 10:39, 6 May 2004 (UTC)

I ought to quickly acknowledge my recent discovery that FSMs as formally defined here at Misplaced Pages (at least) are less powerful than TM's. Qualitatively, at least, my argument stands. Paul Beardsell 12:15, 6 May 2004 (UTC)

Related Topics

• artificial intelligence
• emotional intelligence
• consciousness
• philosophy of mind
• unconscious mind
• artificial life
• digital organism

I think AC is most directly related to consciousness, other fields come from that (intelligence->artificial intelligence), artificial life and digital organisms should be related to biology. BTW thereis mind also, its somewhat unclear, should it be synonum to consciousness? Tkorrovi 20:35, 2 May 2004 (UTC)

And cognitive science Tkorrovi 20:41, 2 May 2004 (UTC)

People

• David Chalmers
• Daniel Dennett
• Gerald Edelman
• Colin McGinn
• Roger Penrose
• John Searle
• Igor Aleksander
• Owen Holland <-- article required
• Rod Goodman <-- article required
• Thomas Nagel

Thermostat

Any conscious entity which does not appreciate the thermostat argument must have a screw loose. I suggest that we return it to its manufacturer as fatally flawed and ask for our money back. I would not be happy with a repair. But I worry that anything which is as broken as that is bound to be well beyond its warranty period. Paul Beardsell 00:00, 3 May 2004 (UTC)

What argument? David Chalmers didn't argue that thermostat could be considered conscious, state clearly what argument you are talking about. Tkorrovi 01:18, 3 May 2004 (UTC)

Once again you make a wild assertion stated as if it is bold fact and it is wrong. To do this again and again, as you do, is fundamentally a dishonest way to proceed. Paul Beardsell 12:05, 3 May 2004 (UTC)

And if you are not competent in AC or consciousness studies, then give up. Tkorrovi 01:28, 3 May 2004 (UTC)

Absolute competence in AC studies I am not claiming for myself: These things are relative, of course, so competence is what I seem to have in relation to some others. Competence in writing an encyclopaedia requires an interest in the truth, an ability to understand English, the willingness to read others' competent research, the willingness to maintain an open mind, to not press one's own view in defiance of the facts. People who live in glass houses. The task at hand here is to write an encyclopaedia. Paul Beardsell 12:05, 3 May 2004 (UTC)

A search at Google for "chalmers conscious thermostat" gives this result:

David J. Chalmers in The Conscious Mind: In Search of a Fundamental Theory. OUP,1997: Someone who finds it "crazy" to suppose that a thermostat might have (conscious) experiences at least owes us an account of just why it is crazy. Presumably this is because there is a property that thermostats lack that is obviously required for experience; but for my part no such property reveals itself as obvious. Perhaps there is a crucial ingredient in processing that the thermostat lacks that a mouse possesses, or that a mouse lacks and a human possesses, but I can see no such ingredient that is obviously required for experience, and indeed it is not obvious that such an ingredient must exist.

That Tkorrovi repeatedly misrepresents the facts is well established. What would now be interesting would be to review all his contributions as I think we might find they are equally questionable. Paul Beardsell 12:05, 3 May 2004 (UTC)

I don't know, maybe you are right. David chalmers wrote in the article referred above "A thermostat, or indeed a simple connectionist network, as a model of conscious experience? This is indeed very surprising. Either there is a deep insight somewhere within Lloyd's reasoning, or something has gone terribly wrong." And from the interview :

"TT: So you're talking about this double-aspect view of information, (the idea that all instances of information processing, even simple ones, give rise to some kind of subjective experience - a sort of panpsychism though Chalmers is wary of that term.) In your book this led to questions like "What is it like to be a thermostat?"

DC: (laughing) Right, yeah. This is all very speculative of course."

So his statements are indeed highly controversial. So it's not me who misrepresents the facts or lives in the glass house, if anybody then it's Davis Chalmers, and you included an argument by him in the article, I didn't refer to Davis Chalmers before. And all this panpsychism and pseudoscience has nothing to do with artificial consciousness, I don't know why you want to include it into article. We cannot artificially make the "fundamental" consciousness Chalmers talks about, what would be as fundamental as space and time and connot be explained by other physical processes. I deeply disagree with that. But I did like the way Chalmers argued against the connectionist view of consciousness in the article referred to above. Tkorrovi 16:46, 3 May 2004 (UTC)

Of course they're controllversial: The whole subject is controversial and speculative. And it is a result which he finds surprising but pleasingly so and which he cannot discredit. But tkorrovi's point was that Chalmers did not say something that he did indeed do. He stated this vehemently as if he had checked and removed the Chalmers' point from the article. Paul Beardsell

My point was based on one argument of Chalmers, by what he clearly didn't consider thermostat consciou. You seems to agree that his arguments are controversial, so it's not my fault if another argument contradicted it. But as you think that it is controversial, why you included it into article then, stating it there as if it was certain? Tkorrovi 17:48, 3 May 2004 (UTC)

Tkorrovi caught out again in another barefaced lie. If he can twist the facts to support his view he will. I did not insert the thermostat argument as if it were certain fact. I wrote (in a section discussing various schools of thought): "Some believers in Genuine AC say the thermostat is really conscious". Paul Beardsell 15:06, 4 May 2004 (UTC)

What dictionary

If we want to use free dictionary what also remains free (is under GPL licence), then we should not use dictionary.com but GCIDE , it includes entries from both public domain 1913 Webster and 1997 WordNet. dictionary.com searches GCIDE and also some proprietary dictionaries. Tkorrovi 01:20, 3 May 2004 (UTC)

What and that

There is benefit in using a dictionary (any dictionary, but a learner's dictionary in particular) to discriminate between the usage of what and that. One of the benefits of humanity is that people (or at least some people) are able to learn languages. Some people, unfortunately, never master this art. Matt Stan 13:01, 3 May 2004 (UTC)

As I remember, you were the one who suggested to use free dictionary, and was so vehemently against using Concise Oxford Dictionary. Did your opinion change meanwhile? Why free dictionary is better than just any dictionary is that it is available to everyone, this avoids confusion of referring to different dictionaries. This is advised in Wiktionary as well. Tkorrovi 16:24, 3 May 2004 (UTC)

The problem is that we must be much more precise here than just what an that. Tkorrovi 16:49, 3 May 2004 (UTC)

The word is "and", not "an". We will continue using the best reference material available. Paul Beardsell 17:26, 3 May 2004 (UTC)

You act like chatbot what cannot understand that a mistake was made just by not pressing a key hard enough. Tkorrovi 18:01, 3 May 2004 (UTC)

It's not "what" but either "which" or "that". Press those keys harder. Paul Beardsell 18:18, 3 May 2004 (UTC)

Ask Matt Stan then why he wote "what and that" and not "which and what" Tkorrovi 18:26, 3 May 2004 (UTC)

I do not need to: He was referring to an error you made confusing the correct usage of "what" and "that". I refer to a later error, above, where you should have used "which" or "that" instead of "what". Oh, and you missed out an "a". Paul Beardsell 18:32, 3 May 2004 (UTC)

What you exactly want to say and why is it important? Tkorrovi 19:09, 3 May 2004 (UTC)

It is important, as Tkorrovi indicates, with a controversial topic, to report accurately what the proponents' arguments are. In reporting accurately, it is helpful to maintain correct usage of the language concerned. People reading an article won't be so impressed if they think the writer is illiterate. Misplaced Pages is very forgiving in this respect because those who know correct usage can come in and put an article right; so perfect writing style is not a requirement in the first instance. However, when someone repeatedly makes the same mistake, in this instance a seeming confusion of usage of certain prepositions and relative pronouns, then I don't think it out of order on a talk page to point this out. What is interesting here is that, rather than going away and learning the correct usage, the object of my criticism seems to want to argue about what I meant when I wrote the heading to this section. C'est la vie! Matt Stan 08:44, 4 May 2004 (UTC)

To illustrate, the sentences 'I know what you wrote correctly.' and 'I know that you wrote correctly.' are both gramatically correct, but mean different things. The first indicates that I know something and you wrote it correctly; the second simply that I know about the correctness of what you wrote (regardless of whether I know about what you wrote about). Matt Stan 08:44, 4 May 2004 (UTC)

Matt Stan falsely accused by Tkorrovi

Matt Stan, with what right you deleted part of my post without even saying anything? Tkorrovi 17:09, 3 May 2004 (UTC)

I deleted nothing that you wrote. If you read what is there, in the comparison URL given above, you'll see that I just broke your long paragraph up into sections so that I could answer the points separately. But your paranoia seems to preclude your being able to understand what I wrote or answer the points that I make. Why is that? I think the Russell quote is particularly apt in this context. Matt Stan 08:19, 4 May 2004 (UTC)

And I have a suspicion that this was also done against me before. Reading the archives I didn't find some posts what I remeber I wrote. But I have not all time in the world to search through history to confirm it. Is this an accepted behaviour by people who supposed to talk about science? Tkorrovi 17:19, 3 May 2004 (UTC)

The example you give in the 1st para is not evidence of what you allege. You follow this up with another allegation of which you present no evidence. You are a dishonest troll, tkorrovi. Please go away. Paul Beardsell 17:23, 3 May 2004 (UTC)

No, as I did show the evidence that my post was indeed secretly changed, then this is not dishonest allegation, but substantiated suspicion. If you indeed came to make jokes here, then please do that in some more proper place, the problem is that your jokes here are not well understood by most people. I will not go anywhere, because I am honest man, and honest man has nothing to afraid. Tkorrovi 17:31, 3 May 2004 (UTC)

I asked this on Matt Stan talk page also, no reply yet. A comment last written on that page was "Anecdotalise from an irrelevancy on the artificial consciousness talk page" The only way to argue is by correct arguments, if you don't want it, please go away and let people seriously talk here, and write a good article. Tkorrovi 17:42, 3 May 2004 (UTC)

I followed the link Tkorrovi provided in the first para. Every word he wrote remains. Use the scroll bar. Paul Beardsell 17:44, 3 May 2004 (UTC)

Then don't write replies in the middle of the posts, some way it caused the rest of my post to appear on single line, so that it couldn't be read. Don't know whether it was intentional or not, but you see that your additude and vandalism here cause the suspicion of the worst case. Tkorrovi 17:58, 3 May 2004 (UTC)

Your response is not appropriate. Think: What response whould you expect if you have been wronged as you have now wronged Matt Stan? Make that response. Paul Beardsell 18:05, 3 May 2004 (UTC)

Yes it was appropriate, stop joking here and become serious. Tkorrovi 18:11, 3 May 2004 (UTC)

You lack honour. Your other allegation remains here. You have not withdrawn it. Give examples or withdraw that too. Paul Beardsell 18:16, 3 May 2004 (UTC)

"Part of my post was made unreadable", says Tkorrovi, blaming his tools, "by Mozilla"

Part of my post was made unreadable Tkorrovi 17:09, 3 May 2004 (UTC)

If you look at the "What should be in the AC article?" section, then you see a post what is on a single line, at least I see it with Mozilla. Tkorrovi 18:23, 3 May 2004 (UTC)

I use Mozilla as my browser. I do not have this problem. And if I did I would use the horizontal scroll bar before I accused others of deleting text. Paul Beardsell 23:19, 3 May 2004 (UTC)

Tkorrovi apologizes and propose to forget the issue

OK, I'm sorry, I admit that I made a mistake and deleted the dispute, proposing to forget the whole issue, but you don't want to stop. Part of my post indeed appeared on a single line, I don't know what technical problem may cause this, but I made mistake and didn't notice that line, I must be more careful in the future. We all make mistakes, I think you admit that you also sometimes make mistakes. Tkorrovi 23:34, 3 May 2004 (UTC)

Whatever, if Matt Stan now says he's happy then I won't revert if you delete the section. Paul Beardsell 23:42, 3 May 2004 (UTC)

Title

Titles such as Artificial consciousness according to Tkorrovi are not appropriate for Misplaced Pages. If you want signed articles with that sort of title, try Wikinfo. I've listed it on Misplaced Pages:Redirects for deletion. Angela. 23:47, May 3, 2004 (UTC)

NPOV

The article includes all views whatever are proposed, for and against, what still doesn't satisfy you Paul, why you still insist that article is not NPOV? Tkorrovi 23:57, 3 May 2004 (UTC)

NPOV isn't the be all and end all of articles in wikipedia. Sure, when a view is expressed, it should be expressed in such a way as to acccmmodate a different view. But that isn't the same as saying 'anything goes (provided one expresses it couched in NPOV terms)' People come to an encyclopedia expecting to obtain knowledge, not patent nonsense. The discriminant between knowledge and patent nonsense (and the shades of indeterminate truth in between, i.e. pseudoscience) is the academic establishment and the institution of peer review. How can I make a judgment about, say, the reality of cold fusion unless I am aware of the claims and counter-claims about it? The same must surely apply to machine consciousness. There is also a tradition in wikipedia of removing patent nonsense. Who judges what constitutes patent nonsense? Why, we the wikipedians, who ourselves provide the ultimate peer review, ultimate because it is not restricted to subscribers to academic web sites. What is the arbiter to help us decide whether something is patent nonsense? Why, it is whether or or not the view expressed on a scientific topic is expressed properly and is itself backed up by academic references. If not, then any wikipedian can refute that view and, if need be, remove it from an article. The question that remains then is, "Is artificial consciousness supposed to be a scientific article or a pseudoscientific article?" Again the convention in Misplaced Pages is that an article should state at its outset its terms of reference. Rather than putting "The neutrality of this article is disputed", perhaps it would be better for the article to start with "This article covers the aspects of machine consciousness that are not backed up by scientific research. For a more rigorous scientific treatment, see machine consciousness (or perhaps link to a section within the artificial consciousness page. Matt Stan 08:54, 10 May 2004 (UTC)

You know not what NPOV is. Views with which you disagree have now had flawed criticisms applied to them by you. If Nagel says it, then it is Gospel truth as far as you are concerned. Anything anyone else says is not allowed by you without you applying what is often an unfair reading of Nagel to it as cirticism. You refuse to enter into logical argument and you seem unable to. As has been demonstrated, you continue over and over again to state as fact that which is not true. You will not even allow your English to be corrected. It seems Matthew (Matt Stan) has left not to return, you must really have annoyed him. I will also stop contributing here (it is too much hard work to keep you honest) but if I do I will ensure the NPOV line remains. You are not an asset to Misplaced Pages. You only contribute here and you wind the rest of us up. You should have a look at other articles Matt Stan contributes to as a lesson on how to contribute to Misplaced Pages. You are a troll. That is why. Paul Beardsell 00:10, 4 May 2004 (UTC)

Tkorrovi, I think you should read the signed article info from Angela above. Then you can do your own AC article Artificial Consciousness by Tkorrovi where your own distinct view can be propagated. Don't forget to quote your qualifications and experience as it says you should. Paul Beardsell 00:32, 4 May 2004 (UTC)

If something is not undisputed fact, or other theories question it, then it must be explained, what is wrong in that? This page and archives are full of logical argument by me, you and others, even if we exclude all unnecessary personal attacks, too much to say that I refuse to enter into logical argument. What is that what I continue over and over again to state as fact that which is not true? I am honest and I am not a troll, couldn't you avoid to call me so, when you came here to make serious contributions to Misplaced Pages, then why you offend and ridicule others?

No, I started this article in Misplaced Pages, I want to contribute to NPOV Misplaced Pages article. The different views are important, and it to be written so as others see it, not just myself. I may write my own articles, or may not, this is a separate issue.

It's not clear what doesn't satisfy you. Either you don't like the theory of Thomas Nagel to be mentioned, or you don't like any edits by me. As such your requirements cannot be satisfied. All views are there, so article is NPOV, and you as anyone else has a right to edit if there is something in particular what you consider wrong or want to make better. Tkorrovi 00:58, 4 May 2004 (UTC)

I refer readers to the numerous examples to be found in this page and the archives thereof. Paul Beardsell 01:02, 4 May 2004 (UTC)

Of course, what I wrote in the article, I explained somewhere on this page or the archives. Paul did it also, and there were things in what we did agree. It could been a very good discussion if here was enough respect to each other, just an elementary respect to other's humble personality. Tkorrovi 01:15, 4 May 2004 (UTC)

But Tkorrovi's persistent trolling and dishonesty destroys any good will which arises from time to time. Paul Beardsell 11:35, 4 May 2004 (UTC)

Because I'm persistently treated like that for a long time, I think that this is a plan to discredit me and push me out of here, maybe just to have the honor to be major editors of artificial consciousness. How that can be solved by agreement? They only agree when they themselves drop the plan, but they have no reasons for this while they still can discredit me in the eyes of the others. Now also all links to this article were deleted by these two. But I stay, I have my rights of Misplaced Pages editor as everybody else to edit any article, and I never go away. Even only because I don't allow to violate the rights of people and I don't allow overtaking the articles or gaining power with such methods. Tkorrovi 14:08, 4 May 2004 (UTC)

How that can be solved by agreement? For instance, by going through the questions that have been asked and then answering them, ideally in plain English, and without mentioning yourself in any context, i.e. by keeping it objective, as you allege is good scientific practice. For example, what is wrong with bringing the emotional component of artificial consciosness into the article, as indicated by Igor Aleksander? Matt Stan 15:59, 4 May 2004 (UTC)

Who was against it? Tkorrovi 16:03, 4 May 2004 (UTC)

Why you didn't link to artificial consciousness article from synthetic consciousness article what you and Paul recently created, this supposed to be related. This is also not a Misplaced Pages policy to create parallel articles. Tkorrovi 16:09, 4 May 2004 (UTC)

And he's paranoid. Paul Beardsell 14:25, 4 May 2004 (UTC)

As you see, he never stops, and has not a slightest wish to agree with me, or even respect me. Tkorrovi 14:36, 4 May 2004 (UTC)

That is correct. Tkorrovi is worthless troll. Paul Beardsell 14:42, 4 May 2004 (UTC)

Towards NPOV

In accordance with the guidelines, I am placing here statements culled from the article which fall foul of the guidelines at NPOV. What we do now is repair them into NPOV form here and, if that was possible, replace them into the article. Paul Beardsell 02:17, 5 May 2004 (UTC)

Ability to predict

One aspect is the ability to predict the external events in every possible environment when it is possible to predict for capable human.

OK, this is but the first of many. What scholar says this? Paul Beardsell 02:20, 5 May 2004 (UTC)

Igor Aleksander states in his paper Artificial Neuroconsciousness: An Update : Relationships between world states are mirrored in the state structure of the conscious organism enabling the organism to predict events. This is Corollary 5 of his fundamental postulate: The personal sensations that lead to the consciousness of an organism are due to the firing patterns of some neurons, such neurons being part of a larger number which form the state variables of a neural state machine, the firing patterns having been learned through a transfer of activity between sensory input neurons and the state neurons. Aleksander goes on to say Prediction is one of the key functions of consciousness. An organism that cannot predict would have a seriously hampered consciousness. It can be shown formally that prediction follows from a deeper look at the learning mechanism of corollary 4. This Aleksander article is quite dense and, though its outline thesis is quite straightforward it would seem to require considerable study to understand all his algebra. I would much appreciate a lay person's interpretation and summary of Aleksander's thesis, putting it into context with that of other researchers. Unfortunately the contributors to the AC article don't seem quite to have got a handle on this subject and I am forced to reflect on the Bertrand Russell quote cited elsewhere. Matt Stan 09:35, 5 May 2004 (UTC)

I note that the discussion in which I quoted Bertrand Russell has been archived. What he wrote was "A stupid man's report of what a clever man says is never accurate because he unconsciously translates what he hears into something he can understand." Matt Stan 11:00, 5 May 2004 (UTC)

As a clever man, Matthew, do you think I fairly (as in NPOV "write for the enemy" exhortation) represent the Aleksander view?

Thanks for the Aleksander quote. But I think that the article has this as it stands. We have no specific support for "capable human" here. I will add the reference to the article. Paul Beardsell 11:07, 5 May 2004 (UTC)

This issue is, I think, resolved. Is anybody unhappy with the new paragraph in the article? Paul Beardsell 11:28, 5 May 2004 (UTC)

Without commenting here, depite the above questioning, Tkorrovi has edited the paragraph. The procedure I followed here, to resolve difficulties with the paragraph, is that layed out in NPOV, Misplaced Pages:NPOV_tutorial and elsewhere. The statement that Tk has inserted is practically identical to one we had here before which (i) nobody but Tk wanted and (ii) which Tk could not provide a source for. I am atempting to lead a para by paragraph clean up of this article. This one I thought we had resolved. I am going to revert this particular paragraph to the non-controllversial version. Paul Beardsell 15:26, 7 May 2004 (UTC)

what should be in the article

This was an interpretation of the provided source, by original research it is allowed to interpret sources in Misplaced Pages. Also that I was an only user who wanted to write that is not in contradiction with NPOV and Misplaced Pages:NPOV_tutorial. You may say that it was in contradiction with original research, but this guide is also in contradiction with NPOV and Misplaced Pages:NPOV_tutorial what allows even new theories with the condition that they should not be given equal importance, as to widely accepted theories. So in that sense we may proceed from main guide, just when it is stated so that it clearly is not a widely supported view. The requirement that the opinion of the small minority cannot be written in Misplaced Pages may be reduced to absurd that no single individual cannot write anything in Misplaced Pages when it doesn't directly come from sources, but interpreting sources in their own way is what most of the Misplaced Pages users do, and allowed to do when they allow other opinions. For AC there is also a problem that it is new field and people who study that are by themselves a small minority compared to AI researchers or other scientific community. So there a single not well known study or researcher means a lot. So I think we should take it reasonably, not the way that anything written by me or you should be deleted just because not exactly that was said by any known scientist. Tkorrovi 18:22, 7 May 2004 (UTC)

From NPOV "...the task is to represent the majority (scientific) view as the majority view and the minority (sometimes pseudoscientific) view as the minority view." This is in contradiction with original research. My statement was just one possible interpretation of the argument provided in source, and not obviously wrong interpretation. But I changed it stating clearly that this is not widely accepted. So it is in accordance with NPOV guidelines. Tkorrovi 18:40, 7 May 2004 (UTC)

Thi Misplaced Pages is not a place to publish original research nor is it the place to publish the personal controversial interpretations of the editors. Please just find the "capable human" in an appropriate source and the arguing will stop on that point. Note, however, that NPOV does not state that every POV be given equal weight. Nor does it say that every POV has to be represented. If, e.g., Aleksander turns out to be some quack then we might have to tone down his POV. And if the "capable human" point is so outlandish that only one person on Earth thinks it then it need not be included. Why are you so keen on it anyway? Paul Beardsell 19:15, 7 May 2004 (UTC)

I understand now where comes the controversy between what is stated in NPOV and in original research. What is said in original research can only be applied when there is some new theory written in the article. This article doesn't describe any new theory, it describes and gives possible interpretations of different views about AC based on different sources. The aim is to provide all human knowledge there is about AC as NPOV advises, not any full theory. Concerning "personal controversial interpretations of the editors" the NPOV policy says that "we should fairly represent all sides of a dispute, and not make an article state, imply, or insinuate that any one side is correct." This means that all interpretations should be included. It's obvious that most of such interpretations come from one or another single editor. It seems that by policy it should be said then that "this and this editor said that...", but this would mean emphasizing the name of the editor in the article, what would be an unfair promotion of a small person. Therefore, as Misplaced Pages users should be considered a small persons, none of them should be considered so special that what he says, nobody else could never think. So considering your personal view, only your personal view is somewhat arrogant as well, you only represent one person who thinks in some particular way. Therefore we can only say that certain point of view or interpretation is not widely accepted. Concerning "capable human", how else would you determine a human who is fully conscious, having all what is necessary for consciousness, with enough mental resources for that? Not everybody thinks that any mentally disabled person is conscious. But if you have another approach, then write it, as far as it is not wrong, my view, or similar view by other people, should not dominate. I'm not so keen to write my particular sentence mentioned into the article, most importantly I want it to become clear how writing the article fairly should be done. Tkorrovi 21:10, 7 May 2004 (UTC)

As you said, we are small people in this field. But we do have an interest in the field. Unfortunately perhaps as many as 1% of all people would be prepared to express an interest in this field! Surely we cannot put everybody's (or 1% of everybody's) opinion here? If I can avoid the arrogance to which you refer then I will stop giving my own opinion overly much importance but I find that difficult. I hear you saying something similar above. It's the same for all of us. Essentially we must act as journalists and editors. Somewhere there is a Misplaced Pages article that tells us to write as if we are writing a news story. In newspapers they (are supposed to) make a distinction between reportage (the facts) and editorial (opinion). We are supposed to be doing reportage. I sympathise with you even while I deeply disagree about that sentence: That particular sentence says something true about AC to you. Find somebody authoritative to agree with you! (Newspapers do this too but if they are caught out it is called bias!) I would like to try for a not too long, snappy article that says all the main points. Paul Beardsell 21:33, 7 May 2004 (UTC)

It's not so big problem to consider all opinions here, by far not every person has different opinion, and unfortunately Misplaced Pages can only include the views of these people who edit it, this is why everything is done to increase the number of editors, even to allow to edit anonymously. The article what recommends to write in news style is news style. But this is only a recommendation, not a compulsory policy. In Manual of Style it is recommended to write event articles in news style, but AC article is not event article. It is not obligatory to write such articles as reportage. This should be good for many articles, especially these what should report the facts or events, but articles as AC article should rather give all knowledge there is about the topic, and give idea to reader how different people may look at these issues. "Ideally, presenting all points of view also gives a great deal of background" (NPOV), this is not the same as reporting the facts, and is especially important for such controversial topic as AC. Also, as there is not so huge amount of information about AC, acting as reporters would not provide enough reported events to form any complete representation of the knowledge there is. So this reporting style is a matter of opinion, not obligatory rule. There is also not so strict policy concering bias in some particular views "But experienced academics, polemical writers, and rhetoricians are well-attuned to bias, both their own and others', so that they can usually spot a description of a debate that tends to favor one side" (NPOV). Misplaced Pages should be unbiased by presenting all views. Misplaced Pages should present all views, and all possible interpretations, and it is allowed to interpret the sources, not demanded that every sentence we write must come from some authoritative person. NPOV is rather "representing disputes, characterizing them, rather than engaging in them", not deleting one disputed interpretation because no authoritative person didn't say exactly that. A lot of how you and others interpret the views are also not said exactly so by an authoritative person. Tkorrovi 23:03, 7 May 2004 (UTC)

The opinion "unfortunately Misplaced Pages can only include the views of these people who edit it" is wrong. Of course we can represent the views of others. When acting as your copy-editor I do it all the time.  :-) Paul Beardsell 00:17, 8 May 2004 (UTC)

To correct, I meant only the views put there by the people who edit it, these may be their views, or the views of the others. Tkorrovi 00:37, 8 May 2004 (UTC)

By news reportage I did not mean (and, I think, Misplaced Pages does not mean) news articles as such (dated day by day) but rather the type of news feature article that you might read should a clued-up journalist write it. Imagine if there were an Artificial Consciousness article in New Scientist. What would that look like? What would we want in it? Do you think we could do that here? Paul Beardsell 23:20, 7 May 2004 (UTC)

Misplaced Pages is not New Scientist, New Scientist only represents the most established views, there is a rigorous peer review before anything is published there. Articles about AC have not much chance to get there, as there are not much peers in the field, and even almost no peer-reviewed articles. Misplaced Pages aims to include all views, not only the most established, as I mentioned above, even the pseudoscientific views can be included, when it is mentioned that these are minority views. It's not desirable though to include something what is obviously wrong (or, say, having a lot of negative peer review what confirms that). In what wikipedia is not is also said that "you don't have to get all of your information on entries from peer-reviewed journals", what I'm not sure that is allowed in New Scientist, or your article would not get a positive peer review then. So by all that, Misplaced Pages is very different from New Scientist. In NPOV is also stated that Misplaced Pages should not adopt a "scientific point of view" instead of "neutral point of view", so Misplaced Pages is clearly not such scientific publication as New Scientist, by NPOV it is a general encyclopedia, a "representation of human knowledge", not a publication for widely accepted scientific research (peer review etc). And one more thing. New scientist is a very good journal, containing only research, correctness of what is thoroughly checked. But peer review may take a year or two. Can you imagine how many years (or centuries) it did take for example to develop Linux operating system, if nothing could be used before it was published, say, in New Scientist. Tkorrovi 23:53, 7 May 2004 (UTC)

This is an encyclopaedia, not an operating system. AC is a scientific subject - the appropriate place to see an exposition on AC is New Scientist or Popular Psychology. But, I agree, some views that either journal would ignore we should include. BUT it seems to me that you yourself prefer the scientific approach, no? Paul Beardsell 00:11, 8 May 2004 (UTC)

Linux was built based on knowledge as well, and knowledge is what Misplaced Pages should represent. I certainly prefer scientific method, but not peer-reviewed style rigor for just everything, I think that every knowledge in science should be available for users of this knowledge to decide. And AC, some want rather to put it under philosophy than science. I want it to be science, and more precise science than psychology, under what they once created this article. Tkorrovi 00:32, 8 May 2004 (UTC)

You are right, lots of my points and paragraphs need the same rigorous treatment I am giving yours. It just so happens that I started at the top. Someone(!) put more of your paragraphs at the top than they put mine. The idea was to do every paragraph but it is very hard work and I fear I will lose enthusiasm at this rate. Paul Beardsell 23:20, 7 May 2004 (UTC)

attentiveness

Another test of AC, in the opinion of some, should include a demonstration that machine is capable to learn the ability to filter out certain stimuli in its environment, to focus on certain stimuli, and to show attention toward its environment in general. The mechanisms that govern how human attention is driven are not yet fully understood by scientists. This absence of knowledge could be exploited by engineers of AC; since we don't understand attentiveness in humans, we do not have specific and known criteria to measure it in machines. Since unconsciousness in humans equates to total inattentiveness, an AC should have outputs that indicate where its attention is focused at any one time, at least during the aforementioned test.

I am looking for references to support the above. Where something is a truism or plainly logically follows references are obviously not required. But we have to be careful to include relevant material only. Having said that I like attentiveness as a desirable attribute of AC - at least it can be tested! Paul Beardsell 12:28, 6 May 2004 (UTC)

I have nothing against the text above and I don't think it's POV, but it's difficult to back such explanations with references, because every paper is often concerned with a single aspect. Also everything is often very interconnected, like awareness, attention, imagination and prediction. This is from the point of view of conceptual spaces, not perception as the text above. By Antonio Chella from University of Palermo "The mapping between the conceptual and the linguistic areas gives the interpretation of linguistic symbols in terms of conceptual structures. It is achieved through a focus of attention mechanism implemented by means of suitable recurrent neural networks with internal states. A sequential attentive mechanism is hypothesized that suitably scans the conceptual representation and, according to the hypotheses generated on the basis of previous knowledge, it predicts and detects the interesting events occurring in the scene. Hence, starting from the incoming information, such a mechanism generates expectations and it makes contexts in which hypotheses may be verified and, if necessary, adjusted." Tkorrovi 11:47, 12 May 2004 (UTC)

learning

The above example includes "learning". It seems to me that the ability to "learn" is not necessary for consciousness. What scholar says otherwise? Paul Beardsell 12:34, 6 May 2004 (UTC)

Aleksander: Corollary 4: Perceptual Learning and Memory states:

"Perception is a process of the input sensory neurons causing selected perceptual inner neurons to fire and others not. This firing pattern on inner neurons is the inner representation of the percept - that which is felt by the conscious organism. Learning is a process of adapting not only to the firing of the input neurons, but also to the firing patterns of the other perceptual inner neurons. Generalisation in the neurons (i.e. responding to patterns similar to the learnt ones) leads to representations of world states being self-sustained in the inner neurons and capable of being triggered by inputs similar to those learned originally."

Matt Stan 18:06, 6 May 2004 (UTC)

All connectionist systems at least are learning systems, so many scholars say otherwise. Tkorrovi 12:44, 6 May 2004 (UTC)

That is not a (logically) valid argument. You would first have to show that a "connectionist system" is necessary or desirable for AC. Then you would have to show that they learn. First you might have to define "learn". No! We are not here to reason it out for ourselves. If I could do that I would be collecting a big cheque in Stockholm. The method is: Cite the scholar(s). Give references. Paul Beardsell 12:53, 6 May 2004 (UTC)

For example Lloyd considers that connectionist system is necessary for consciousness, he talks about it in the paper http://www.consciousentities.com what was linked to the article. I don't like connectionist view, except that in some sense AC system should be similar to neural network, like learning and connections. Tkorrovi 13:55, 6 May 2004 (UTC)

You say the link supports the view that it is necessary to have a connectionist system for AC. Not that a necessary attribute of AC is an ability to learn. Paul Beardsell 15:10, 6 May 2004 (UTC)

All neural networks are learning systems, trainable systems, and connectionists like Lloyd consider that these are necessary for AC. Tkorrovi 15:17, 6 May 2004 (UTC)

Where does he say this and can you provide a quote? He needs to say either something like "learning is a necessary attribute of consciousness" OR "all connectionist systems are capable of learning and connectionist systems are necessary attr of conc". Paul Beardsell 15:52, 6 May 2004 (UTC) Paul Beardsell 15:34, 6 May 2004 (UTC)

The only AI systems what are not learning as much as I know are cellular automata, and it's not sure that they cannot learn either. Or do you know some other example? (By my 1913 public domain Webster, what is in my computer now, one meaning of "learning" is "To gain knowledge or information of".) Tkorrovi 17:41, 6 May 2004 (UTC)

Find some respected scholar who says this. Paul Beardsell 23:10, 6 May 2004 (UTC)

OK, so ability to learn is not a necessary attribute of AC? Paul Beardsell 19:19, 7 May 2004 (UTC)

Engineering consciousness, a summary by Ron Chrisley, University of Sussex consiousness is/involves self, transparency, learning (of dynamics), planning, heterophenomenology, split of attentional signal, action selection, attention and timing management. Tkorrovi 12:22, 12 May 2004 (UTC)

Daniel Dennett, Consciousness in Human and Robot Minds "It might be vastly easier to make an initially unconscious or nonconscious "infant" robot and let it "grow up" into consciousness, more or less the way we all do."

"Cog will not be an adult at first, in spite of its adult size. It is being designed to pass through an extended period of artificial infancy, during which it will have to learn from experience, experience it will gain in the rough-and-tumble environment of the real world."

"Nobody doubts that any agent capable of interacting intelligently with a human being on human terms must have access to literally millions if not billions of logically independent items of world knowledge. Either these must be hand-coded individually by human programmers--a tactic being pursued, notoriously, by Douglas Lenat and his CYC team in Dallas--or some way must be found for the artificial agent to learn its world knowledge from (real) interactions with the (real) world." Tkorrovi 23:56, 13 May 2004 (UTC)

An interesting article about learning is Implicit learing and consciousness by Axel Cleeremans, University of Brussels and Luis Jiménez, University of Santiago, where learning is defined as “a set of philogenetically advanced adaptation processes that critically depend on an evolved sensitivity to subjective experience so as to enable agents to afford flexible control over their actions in complex, unpredictable environments”. Tkorrovi 11:36, 17 May 2004 (UTC)

AC article should be deleted

I think the AC article on the whole should be deleted. --Wikiwikifast 02:26, 5 May 2004 (UTC)

But that is just my opinion. It makes the AC talk page interesting, though. Wikiwikifast 04:10, 5 May 2004 (UTC)

By definition ?

Simulated consciousness cannot be real consciousness, by definition. says the article. However this may not be true. Consider the following cases: A simulated aeroplane and a simulated author. A simulated aeroplane can simulate the making of a simulated flight. A simulated author can simulate the writing of a simulated story. However note that, although it is easy to tell the difference between a simulated flight and a real flight, it may not be nearly so easy to to tell the difference between a simulated story and a real story. In fact a good enough simulated author will be able to write simulated stories which pass all the tests of real stories. In principle there is no difference between a simulated story and a real story whereas there is an inherent difference between a simulated flight and a real flight. Since it now appears that there are at least two classes of concepts (those in which the distinction between simulated and real examples of the concept is meaningful and those in which it isn't), the question is "Which class does consciousness belong to ?". Mere appeal to the definition of "simulated" is not enough. Perhaps a conscious being, is like a story rather than a flight. -- Derek Ross 20:03, 6 May 2004 (UTC)

I don't think there is any such thing as a simulated story. A story is just a story. Therefore Derek's question goes to the heart of the issue. There is only one example of consciousness that each of us can draw on: our own. Anything else is theoretical. The assessment of another entity's consciousness is therefore necessarily subjective; there is no exterior (objective) model against which to judge it. The only yardstick for assessment of an implementation of artificial consciousness must therefore be (analogous to the method of the Turing test) whether a set of people judge that implementation to be effective. Artificial consciousness and simulated consciousness are not synonymous. Indeed the idea of simulated consciousness doesn't make sense, in the same way that the idea of a simulated story doesn't make sense. So, yes, indeed, a conscious being is like a story rather than a flight. Matt Stan 11:31, 7 May 2004 (UTC)

Simulated story was considered to be a story generated by a simulated author, for example (Java must be installed to run that). Tkorrovi 13:20, 7 May 2004 (UTC)

Interesting. That seems to be going beyond the standard definition of simulated. It seems to imply that if I were to ask a person with real consciousness for a list of web pages featuring the phrase "artificial consciousness", I would receive a real answer in the form of a list of URLs but if I were to ask a machine with simulated consciousness for the same thing, I would receive a simulated answer in the form of a list of URLs. The two lists might well look identical but apparently one would be real whereas the other would be merely simulated. Is that what you mean to say ? -- Derek Ross 14:41, 7 May 2004 (UTC)

Derek wrote (above): "A simulated aeroplane can simulate the making of a simulated flight. A simulated author can simulate the writing of a simulated story." I would have written: "A flight simulator simulates the making of a real flight. (There is no point in it simulating a simulated flight, unless it is a test simulator intended to show whether the actual flight simulator works, although even this is unlikely.) A simulated author can write a real story. (I do not understand the idea of a simulated story. Like Derek says, a list of URLs is a list or URLs regardless of who or what produced it.)" But although there might appear to be semantic identity between the result of a flight simulator and the result of a simulated author, there isn't really. Although a flight simulator simulates a real flight, its result is a simulated flight. But a simulated author produces real story, come what may. So I don't see where we're going beyond the definition of simulated. In an attempt to substitute consciousness in the argument, we get: "A consciousness simulator either produces real consciousness or simulated consciousness." I'd suggest that there's no way to tell whether the result of the consciousness simulator is simulated consciousness or real consciousness - the manifestation of consciousness is hence more akin to the list of URLs than to a simulated flight. That might seem counter-intuitive, but is there a counter-argument? Matt Stan 16:59, 7 May 2004 (UTC)

Cannot a real author write a simulated story? I reckon a simulated author could write a real story. On the other hand: A real printing press cannot produce a simulated book. And a simulated printing press cannot produce a real book. Weird. What this shows is, I think, that simulated may have more than one meaning. Paul Beardsell 15:47, 7 May 2004 (UTC) Which, Derek, was what you were saying? I'll have another read! Paul Beardsell 16:02, 7 May 2004 (UTC)

What I was trying to say, Paul, is that although English will allow us to discuss simulated stories, brave potatoes, or waterproof fluency, that doesn't mean that these words refer to concepts that are real, useful or meaningful. They may be; they may not be. Referring to the definition of simulated will not tell us whether simulated consciousness is real or not since some simulated things are real and some are not. So I think that the words by definition are inappropriate. They seem to give unwarranted authority to a statement which may be true or untrue but is definitely controversial. In my opinion it's probably untrue but I'm happy to admit that I don't really know and that I don't believe that anyone else does (although they too may have an opinion). -- Derek Ross 20:53, 8 May 2004 (UTC)

I can tell whether a flight is real or simulated by looking out of the window and checking whether I see pixels or the blue and beyond. But how would I discriminate between a real and so-called simulated story? I suggest there is no way of doing this. Therefore there is no such thing as a simulated story and, by inference, there is no such thing as simulated consciousness. That's not to say that there can't be a consciousness simulator (although that is perhaps a misleading name for whatever it might be) just as there might be a simulated author (as Tkorrovi suggests above) who lives somewhere in Java. Matt Stan 16:59, 7 May 2004 (UTC)

Very true. But then again if the definition of an author is one who writes stories, is the author really simulated just because it is artificial ? -- Derek Ross 01:59, 9 May 2004 (UTC)

"There is no such thing as simulated consciousness" is ambiguous. My first reaction was to say yes, that is what I think. In that consciousness is consciousness, simulated, synthetic, artificial or natural. But you could mean that genuine AC is impossible. Paul Beardsell 19:08, 7 May 2004 (UTC)

Derek, do you think the point is irretrievably lost and the sentence needs to be removed or do you have an alternative form of words that might preserve the obvious (only to me?) intent? Paul Beardsell 04:27, 9 May 2004 (UTC)

If the sentence "Simulated consciousness can not be real consciousness, by definition." were to be replaced by the sentence "Simulated consciousness may not always be real consciousness." and the "Yet" replaced by "But", I think that the paragraph would be nearer the truth.

It's as difficult for us to write sensibly on the science of consciousness as it would have been for Victorians to write sensibly on the science of flight and for much the same reason. So if we are going to write on the subject at all, we need to be very careful to describe areas of ignorance in a manner which makes clear the level of ignorance involved. For an interesting parallel to our current article, read Encyclopedia Britannica's 1911 article on the Sun, a fascinating mixture of fact and speculation. -- Derek Ross 16:16, 9 May 2004 (UTC)

One of the things we have been doing here for a while is to discuss semantic differences between different terms. In terms of citations, as indicated above there doesn't seem to be mucch on the internet on 'artificial consciousness' per se, though there is plenty on various aspects of consciousness within an AI context. Therefore the adjective used is not of great significance. Because it is not an established academic discipline in its own right, whereas artificial intelligence is, we find that references to machine consciousness use a number of different terms which mean the same thing. Artificial consciousness is just one of those terms, perhaps claiming closest affinity with artificial intelligence by use of the word artificial. Therefore the artificial consciousness article should be the most rigorously scientific of all the alternatives, and there could happily be a artificial consciousness (alternative theories) page. But let's keep the main page free of anything without citation. Matt Stan 00:10, 10 May 2004 (UTC)

Copy-editing problems

Tkorrovi, please explain what is meant by this. I do not understand it.

This view assumes that anything that cannot be modelled by AC must be in contradiction with physicalism, but in his "What is it like to be a bat" argues that subjective experience cannot be reduced because it cannot be objectively observed, but subjective experience is not in contradiction with physicalism.

Paul Beardsell 12:52, 7 May 2004 (UTC)

This can perfectly be understood, maybe one comma should be added:

"This view assumes that anything whatt cannot be modelled by AC must be in contradiction with physicalism, but in his "What is it like to be a bat" argues that subjective experience cannot be reduced, because it cannot be objectively observed, but subjective experience is not in contradiction with physicalism."

Tkorrovi 13:27, 7 May 2004 (UTC)

It's "that" or "which", not "what". I do not understand "This view assumes that anything what cannot be modelled by AC must be in contradiction with physicalism". Firstly, what is "this view". Many are expressed. Which one are you referring to? Paul Beardsell 13:53, 7 May 2004 (UTC)

"This" refers to something what was mentioned before. If we say "this section" then it means the section where the sentence appears. As the section described a view, and no other view was mentioned, then it means a view discussed in that section. Tkorrovi 14:21, 7 May 2004 (UTC)

Are you saying that the clarity of that sentence has not been improved? Now that it has I will leave you to that view. What view, your view on consciousness? Paul Beardsell 14:30, 7 May 2004 (UTC)

No I don't, I just answered to your question, "Genuine AC view" reminds what view is discussed. Tkorrovi 14:50, 7 May 2004 (UTC)

Point proven! You make it too easy for me! It wasn't "that view" to which I referred. Paul Beardsell 14:54, 7 May 2004 (UTC)

My reply was not to the second half of your question. You should clarify the second question you asked. Tkorrovi 15:00, 7 May 2004 (UTC)

When in a hole, stop digging. Paul Beardsell 15:50, 7 May 2004 (UTC)

Under the Eye of the Clock, A Brief History of Time

Matthew Stannard, an expert of the English language, who constantly criticizes my use of English, interprets in his latest edit "capable human" as a "human deemed to have the capabilities of humanity". In what dictionary did you find such definition? The word "capable" has much more exact meaning, what is widely known to every educated person, in 1913 public domain Webster the first definition is "Possessing legal power or capacity; as, a man capable of making a contract, or a will". The capable person must have enough mental powers and ability to think to make a contract or will, what this means is legally very well determined. Old people who are going to make a will are sometimes asked questions like who is the prime minister of his/her country, to find out whether he/she is mentally able, and carefully checked that every sentence is what he/she really wants. The other definition is "Possessing adequate power; qualified; able; fully competent; as, a capable instructor; a capable judge; a mind capable of nice investigations", but these are mostly the meanings for specific cases (like instructor or judge, not ordinary human). But not "deemed to have the capabilities of humanity". Tkorrovi 17:10, 10 May 2004 (UTC)

Let me, just for the sake of argument, accept that Matthew may have made a mistake. That does not excuse the mistakes of any others. Nor does it invalidate valid criticisms he makes of others. In other words, Tkorrovi, you cannot use someone else's imperfections as an excuse for yours. In my opinion your own supplied definitions scuttle your argument (i.e. that AC must have all the abilities of a capable human) just as well as any of Matthew's torpedos. Imperfectly yours, etc. Paul Beardsell 17:37, 10 May 2004 (UTC)

No, I admit I may make mistakes, as well as you may, and there is nothing wrong in correcting the mistakes of the others. I only want to say that this doesn't justify taking yourself very high and belittle others. Examples from Matthew Stannard: "Ability to learn is, according to some experts, something that can be lost in certain people. The question is whether someone who has lost this ability should nevertheless be deemed conscious. I pick as an illustration someone who has had pointed out to them on numerous occasions that they make an elementary mistake in their written grammar but who nevertheless carries on making the same mistake.", "There is benefit in using a dictionary (any dictionary, but a learner's dictionary in particular) to discriminate between the usage of what and that. One of the benefits of humanity is that people (or at least some people) are able to learn languages. Some people, unfortunately, never master this art." (as a reply on this page to my suggestion to use public domain dictionaries advised in Wiktionary). The other example of hypocriticism by Matthew Stannard was that he recently accused me in public place in making proprietorial claims on the article, what I never did. And you even confirmed that you are not going to have even a slightest respect towards me. I said here in NPOV section in trying to reconcile "It could been a very good discussion if here was enough respect to each other, just an elementary respect to other's humble personality. Tkorrovi 01:15, 4 May 2004 (UTC)", you replied after some talk "And he's paranoid. Paul Beardsell 14:25, 4 May 2004 (UTC)", I said "As you see, he never stops, and has not a slightest wish to agree with me, or even respect me. Tkorrovi 14:36, 4 May 2004 (UTC)" and you replied "That is correct. Tkorrovi is worthless troll. Paul Beardsell 14:42, 4 May 2004 (UTC)" Do you call it criticism? This is attacking another person, and in a way also the article and other people who may want to talk here. Stop acting like that. I know that such behaviour iss tolerated by several people in Misplaced Pages, but this also doesn't justify anything. Based on everything above I have a justified suspicion that you thought that this article is redicilous and came with Matthew Stannard here to make jokes on the article and on me who started the article. Not everybody thinks that this article is redicilous, and if there is something wrong, this is not a way to improve that. Tkorrovi 18:48, 10 May 2004 (UTC)

That's the paranoia I mentioned earluier. Paul Beardsell 07:35, 11 May 2004 (UTC)

I just wanted to find a reasonable explanation. It's humane that something what we don't understand may seem redicilous to us. Smarter people just usually think more. If they find a reason why something is wrong, then they say that, and if they don't find it, and find that they are not at the moment competent to criticize, then they choose to ignore instead of laughing at the people involved and thinking that they would achieve something by that. This can be solved by thinking more, but if the reason of ridiculing others is paranoia, then it's sad. You said me once (in the Archive 8) "I want to use the term artificial consciousness in the same way I might one day have to use natural consciousness to distinguish it from the artificial variety and as a separate subset of consciousness. You must not be allowed to impose some other meaning on the term than what it literally does now mean." Then somene in the Village Pump said to me that what you wanted to say was "I don't want you to". I started to think that maybe you indeed just act like a child who feels hurt when something is not as it likes, and then starts to attack others as a protest. As you may notice, most of the people who have been here don't support your personal attacks. Tkorrovi 12:35, 11 May 2004 (UTC)

Now my criticism again, criticism only, for having a reply to that. Matthew Stannard interprets in his latest edit "capable human" as a "human deemed to have the capabilities of humanity". In what dictionary did you find such definition? The word "capable" has much more exact meaning, what is widely known to every educated person, in 1913 public domain Webster the first definition is "Possessing legal power or capacity; as, a man capable of making a contract, or a will". The capable person must have enough mental powers and ability to think to make a contract or will, what this means is legally very well determined. Old people who are going to make a will are sometimes asked questions like who is the prime minister of his/her country, to find out whether he/she is mentally able, and carefully checked that every sentence is what he/she really wants. The other definition is "Possessing adequate power; qualified; able; fully competent; as, a capable instructor; a capable judge; a mind capable of nice investigations", but these are mostly the meanings for specific cases (like instructor or judge, not ordinary human). But not "deemed to have the capabilities of humanity". Tkorrovi 19:01, 10 May 2004 (UTC)

The sentence you keep on inserting into the article therefore means that any AC must have the capability to enter into legal contracts as that is an ability of a capable human. Your sentence is not backed up with a quote from any scholar or a citation of any article, nor do you demonstrate that it follows logically from any such reference. And it isn't even common sense. Paul Beardsell 07:56, 11 May 2004 (UTC)

"Capable" was just meant to mean a level of development. Maybe we can also say "mentally able". There were many attempts to develop AC what should exhibit human behaviour, not just some behaviour what seems to be conscious for some, like "The system must be able to acquire arbitrary new knowledge and cognitive skills from a human instructor and must understand the acquired knowledge. It must exhibit human-like psychological states, in particular, motivated voluntary behavior and emotional states such as appreciation of a joke." This also shows that learning is deemed necessary for AC. This is not the best paper, just one example. Tkorrovi 17:53, 11 May 2004 (UTC)

Yes, I think it is vitally important that we restrict discussion of artificial consciousness to instances that are cabable of being judged against the capable human (the usual legal term is actually 'capable person', or perhaps Tkorrovi just means compos mentis). This accords with the overall idiosyncratic nature of this article. After all we wouldn't want to consider an illegal implementation: an instance of artificial consciousness that was incompetent, that perhaps artificially authored graffiti and sprayed it on railway carriages, that simulated a sociopath and killed anyone who came within range, and so on. So let us restrict the discussion to instances that are cabaple of demonstrating integrity and that are eventually so trustworthy that we can hand over world leadership to them. What a noble aim! Matt Stan 08:45, 11 May 2004 (UTC)

We also talked about it earlier. The aim of artificial consciousness cannot be creating an "artificial idiot" what should not necessarily have any mental ability, then we can create just literally nothing and call it artificial consciousness. This would make artificial consciousness a nonsense. Don't know that any scholar ever seriously suggested that. "So let us restrict the discussion to instances that are cabaple of demonstrating integrity..." Not that we should restrict discussion to that, but what is wrong in trying to create AC what demonstrates integrity? "...eventually so trustworthy that we can hand over world leadership to them" This would be a subject of another long discussion similar to "AI taking over the world" what was discussed a lot i the Internet, but recently it seems to me that more and more people who are competent in AI think that this is an absurd idea, often propagated by incompetent people who have no other way to make their ideas interestig. Tkorrovi 11:39, 11 May 2004 (UTC)

You meant hypercriticism, not hypocriticism. But you are hypersensitive to criticism. You seem to understand English with the same lack of precision you write it. You are unable to explain your reasoning. You stubbornly will not give way. You assert you know how Misplaced Pages works yet you contribute to only this one article. You are a pain in the neck to deal with. When the hand of friendship is extended to you, you bite it. Either that or we just do not like Estonians. Paul Beardsell 19:05, 10 May 2004 (UTC)

Yes there seems to be confusion between propriety, proprietorial, and proprietary, which must be very difficult. Is hypocriticism the opposite of hypercriticism, as hypoglycaemic is the opposite of hyperglycaemic? The noun from hypocritical is hypocrisy - not hypocriticism (from below), just one of the idiosyncracies of the English language. But I am still not sure whether Tkorrovi is being sensitive to criticism or accusing me of hypocrisy - both probably, but who cares? A hypocrite says one thing and does another. Is there an equivalent word for someone who says one thing but means another? Perhaps this should be dubbed the 'incapable human'? Matt Stan 08:45, 11 May 2004 (UTC)

Proprietorial means "Of or pertaining to ownership; proprietary; as, proprietorial rights" (1913 Webster) and proprietary means "Belonging, or pertaining, to a proprietor; considered as property; owned; as, proprietary medicine" so the proprietorial claim may mean that something was claimed to be somebodie's property (proprietary claim) or that he has other rights of ownership to it. Why do you accuse me in making proprietorial claims on the article when I never did it? Don't you understand that this is a serious accusation? Tkorrovi 15:35, 11 May 2004 (UTC)

It may be that a dictionary gives proprietary as synonymous with proprietorial, but an important point about English is that there are practically no synonyms in the language (according to Fowler, whom I respect). Proprietorial and proprietary have distinct meanings and usages. If they meant the same thing then there wouldn't be the two words in the languiage. To accuse someone of being proprietorial about a wikipedia article is no big deal. We are all proprietorial about the items we have on our watchlists - it's the first thing we look at when we log in - to see who's been messing with my stuff. It's against the spirit in Misplaced Pages, however, where we are exorted via the open licence to forgo the ownership which we naturally feel about our writing. It's intended to be helpful to warn someone who is being unduly proprietorial to watch out about their own ego. Someone who is in dispute about a page, who complains bitterly about others' edits, and persists in preserving their own form of words is being proprietorial, and they don't need to say they are; it's plainly self-evident, and it's not an insult, just a friendly reflection and a warning not to become obsessed. Matt Stan 23:55, 11 May 2004 (UTC)

I never said and the dictionary doesn't say that proprietorial and proprietary are synonyms. Trying to preserve some phrase is not a proprietorial claim when it is not a copyrighted quote. Accusing me in making proprietorial claims is accusing me in violating the Misplaced Pages copyright (the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License). This is a serious accusation. I never made any proprietorial claims on the article and never considered to have any copyright of the article or the parts of it what I edited. Take back your accusation. Tkorrovi 08:01, 12 May 2004 (UTC)

Of course I take back any accusation you feel I might have made and apologise unequivocally for any offence you might have taken about the notion of your proprietoriality over the content of the artificial consciousness page. It is not rational, however, to infer that you may have violated Misplaced Pages copyright, as I was at pains to ensure you understood the distinction between proprietorial and proprietary, and I never suggested anything to do with the latter term. I was making an observation, which I don't think was inchoate, that you would do well to take a step back, so to speak. Check out Ogden Nash quote. Matt Stan 08:30, 12 May 2004 (UTC)

OK, apology accepted. It is not the exact wording what is important, but it is sometimes important that the description is complete, therefore it cannot always be edited only by taking something out of there. It is not so easy to formulate them, and this is because they don't change very rapidly. Therefore it would be more reasonable to add other interpretations and not delete the others. We may add to every interpretation that it is not widely accepted, but different interpretatations help reader to better understand different ways how some concept can be understood. We may back interpretations with different sources but we cannot replace all interpretations with quotes, there may not be exactly such quotes because this article is like an overview, every source may be specialized only to certain aspect. Maybe the best for article on such not so well established topic would be not to delete anything except what is obviously wrong, and include as many views as possible. This is the best what we can do and is not in contradiction with Misplaced Pages rules. If we try to write a scientifically perfect article, then trying to do it without contradiction we would inevitably decline towards scholars with a certain view, and may even go to wrong direction as the research is still very preliminary. We should discuss more about the way how to write such article. Tkorrovi 11:27, 12 May 2004 (UTC)

A good article

Perhaps a problem with this topic is to know how to build a good encyclopedia article. It could become a meandering piece, essentially an unstructured set of notes about whatever any wikipedians happen to pick up from elsewhere. What is needed, I think, is a vision, a focus, and to which end I suggest that consciousness, whilst difficult to define entirely, is nevertheless a singluar phenomenon. Whatever theories there are about how it works there is probably only one which is right. Which? I.e. What is the leading theory, and to answer that, we need to know who are the leading theorists. If the discipline is too immature to answer this question, i.e. development is of such a nature that no one can tell who the leading theorists are, we should at least ask who is making progress in the field. So we might divide the experts up into those who are active today, those who were once active and whose ideas have been superseded, and those whose ideas, whilst old, provide the bedrock from which modern theories have been built. My feeling is that if we can agree about the structure of the AC article, and define that in this talk area, then we will make better progress on the article itself. Matt Stan 08:00, 13 May 2004 (UTC)

This would be a work for several months, in fact a work what nobody exactly did before. To start from something, I collected links from first 200 results of Google search for "artificial consciousness" what are about the topic at , this should give some kind of overview at least on the most active research. As you see, several articles are these what we already saw. There is exactly no complete theory, and different papers are mostly about different aspects of AC. Attention, awareness (of processes), imagination, prediction, learning, perception, association, dynamism, adaptability are possible aspects of AC, and they may not be a separate modules of the AC system, but aspects of the same mechanism. Many of them are mentioned in connection with neural networks, but neural network is in essence a simple mechanism. It's restricted to recognizing images though, so it may need some additional software. There are other mechanisms what are less restricted like cellular automata, but nobody could train them yet. And lastly there is my mechanism, what is very simple, but deemed to be more unrestricted than neural networks and by some theoretical reasons (like Dennett's multiple drafts principle) may in some way have all these aspects. But there is no complete AC theory yet. I tend to think that the right theory may be somewhere near to what I talked about, but the article is not for such conclusions. Then there is top down approach, like create the system and input there all human knowledge, seems to be quite infeasible for some, and bottom up approach many AC projects are based on. Not much software except neural networks and artificial emotions systems. Well, what I think. But more importantly it should be necessary to systematize the articles there are. I try to work on it, but it's not very easy. Tkorrovi 21:22, 13 May 2004 (UTC)

I added keywords to AC articles . A lot of articles are a kind of philosophy what we also talked here a lot, unfortunately often quite fruitless concerning how to actually make an AC system. But as there is a lot of such philosophy, then it should be in the article as well. There is no leading theory, but what I like the most is an article by Igor Aleksander and Owen Holland in Guardian Unlimited , this is also the most similar to that how I understand AC, and almost the only theory what really gives an idea what AC is. I think that they would not succeed in building their robot, though I think that at least the given details of the theory are correct. But it most likely would not be able to adapt to any a bit more complex environment because it's not unrestricted enough. I think there are reasons to consider that what concerns the principles of making an AC system, the work of Daniel Dennett and Igor Aleksander is the most essential, then there are many others, whose work add to that. Tkorrovi 22:59, 14 May 2004 (UTC)

Artificial Neuroconsciousness: An Update

For these who wanted me to explain the Igor Aleksander's theory, this is a very preliminary (as I do everything too quickly) description of Artificial Neuroconsciousness: An Update. The neural networks he used as an example are a very primitive preliminary models of AC, but based on these models he derived a quite complete, and I think more or less correct, basic theory of AC, what may also be a basis of AC implementations by mechanisms other than neural networks. The examples may be implemented by a freeware program "Machine Consciousness Toolbox", but unfortunately the download site is off, as well as there is no other AC software (except artificial emotions software) for download, I wonder if my program is the only one.

"Here the theory is developed by defining that which would have to be synthesized were consciousness to be found in an engineered artefact. This is given the name "artificial consciousness" to indicate that the theory is objective and while it applies to manufactured devices it also stimulates a discussion of the relevance of such a theory to the consciousness of living organisms." Igor Aleksander says that the theoretical framework of the theory "has been inspired by Kelly's theory of "personal constructs" which explains the causes of personality differences in human beings."

He defines a perceptual mode "which is active during perception - when sensory neurons are active" and mental mode "which is active even when sensory neurons are inactive". In his model the inputs of both modes are added, and mental mode is modelled as a feedback loop from neural network's output.

The neural network what he used as an example has an inner state, and it can be trained (e.g. by reinforcement signal) to go from certain state qw to certain other state qx when input is ix. This means that after training it goes from qw to qx also when input is similar to ix (the main reason why neural networks are useful). By set theory such learning is described as qx = §( ix, qw ). If we then continue to give a reinforcement signal, but provide no input, then it goes to mental mode, and input comes from output, such way we can teach it to stay in the state qx. As a result of such training, the only "learned" state will be qx, and it only goes to that state from the state qw. It likely cannot be in any other state when it is not in training mode. If, after such training, we put it into state qw, then it stays in the state qw and changes its output, and in time the output would be similar to ix, it goes to the state qx, and would stay there (also Owen Holland proposed a "Recurrent Neural Machine" what does it faster). This is a primitive example of prediction that the state qw is followed by the state qx, a primitive learned model of the environment.

"Prediction is one of the key functions of consciousness. An organism that cannot predict would have a seriously hampered consciousness."

He argues that awareness of self follows from prediction, because by his model the prediction requires a feedback loop. But if prediction is done in accordance with Dennett's multiple drafts principle, then it also requires information from other processes, to find out whether a process fits into its environment, what sometimes may also include feedback loops.

He says that spatial association is necessary for representation of meaning. He also named language learning, will, instict and emotion as aspects of AC. "Language is a result of the growth process of a societal repository from which it can be learned by a conscious organism, given the availability of knowledgeable 'instructors'".

As an answer to Penrose argument he says that "the main aim of the theory is to show that the complex mixture of properties normally attributed to a conscious organism are the properties associated with some computing structures and may be described through appropriate formalisms" and "while it is possible to agree that consciousness cannot be captured by a programmer's recipe (algorithm), the door should at least be kept open for computational models of consciousness based on systems that are capable of building up their own processing structures". Concerning Dennett's multiple drafts principle he says that "While the Cartesian ghost in the machine has been expunged, the ghost of the programmer is still there, and this does little to explain how the machine components come into being and do what they do", implying that there is no mechanism yet to implement that principle other than in a pre-programmed way (my program provides a proposed mechanism and passed one, though a very simple test). "Nagel's suggestion that it is necessary to say what it is like to be a particular conscious organism , can, in ACT be expressed in terms of a taxonomy of state structures (i.e. how does the state structure of a bat differ from that of a human?)".

Tkorrovi 21:51, 18 May 2004 (UTC)

Request for comment

I just read this article for the first time. I don't know what the disputed issues are, but at first glance, I'd say it could use a complete rewrite. Some of the English is not good, and a lot of questions are begged right from the start. Also, there doesn't seem to be any attempt to explain what the literature regards "consciousness" as, never mind artifical consciousness. And no distinction appears to be drawn between consciousness and self-consciousness. Those issues, I would say, have to be the starting point, even if it's quite brief; followed by a history of the inquiry into whether machines might one day be able to think. After the history, the current issues can be examined. That would be a better structure, in my view. I also didn't fully understand the request for comment: someone was making a distinction between a discussion of artificial consciousness and artificial intelligence. I've never heard the term "artifical consciousness" used before. How are you distinguishing it from artificial intelligence? Slim 10:18, Dec 7, 2004 (UTC)

Consciousness is explained in consciousness article, as well as many others, such as consciousness studies, mind, philosophy of mind, also psychology etc. This article is about implementing artificial consciousness, as well as Artificial Intelligence article is about implementing artificial intelligence, not explaining intelligence. The problem is that many don't know about artificial consciousness, and therefore think that this article is some kind parallel article of Artificial Intelligence. Some also criticize, and even edit it from that point of view. Artificial consciousness (incorporates machine consciousness, simulated consciousness, digital sentience etc) is a separate field of study, look for example at a special edition of Journal of Consciousness Studies (a peer-reviewed journal) dedicated to machine consciousness at The difference comes from the difference between intelligence and consciousness. Strong AI (often considered more as an aspect of AI, not a separate field, so Strong AI article was merged into AI article before) includes an implementation of mind though, but this is because it assumes that intelligence and consciousness are the same. It is not considered so in artificial consciousness, and AC considers aspects of consciousness, such as feelings and others, which intelligence does not include, at least in the narrower meanings of this term. Such approach is also necessary because it may appear, that we cannot implement even a truly working intelligence, without implementing the most important aspects of consciousness, this also comes from the work of Igor Aleksander and others. Tkorrovi 14:45, 7 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Tkorrovi wrote: "This article is about implementing artificial consciousness". I disagree. It is about artificial consciousness, not 'implementing artificial consciousness'. Slim's comments are correct, "there doesn't seem to be any attempt to explain what the literature regards "consciousness" as, never mind artifical consciousness.". The problem with the current article is that it dives into Turing machines before considering the wider issues. This entire Talk section reflects this problem.User:80.3.32.9 8/12/04

Then I'd say you have to start the article by explaining what the difference is between artificial consciousness and artificial intelligence, and why the former is not a subset of the latter; and that explanation is going to require a definition of each, and a rigorous and consistent definition of consciousness, with references to academic papers/books. At present, the article is somewhat unstructured, and the writing needs to be improved. I was going to copy edit it myself, but it's not clear what the authors are trying to say, so I hesitate to try to re-word it. Try to come up with a structure first, perhaps, then fill in content once you have that in place. Slim 15:06, Dec 7, 2004 (UTC)

Yes It's not a bad idea to explain the difference between AC and AI in the beginning, though it was considered that the heading "artificial consciousness" itself says that it is not Artificial Intelligence, and both articles should explain what they are. The definition of Artificial Intelligence though should be in Artificial Intelligence article. You are partly right that the structure of the article is somewhat unclear, it is a problem when the article is edited by several editors with very different understanding of the subject, that it's hard to keep a clear structure. The intended structure was intended to begin with definition, then different interpretations of AC, then different aspects of AC (what one or another system supposed to implement), and then short history, internal and external links. The definition of consciousness was taken from public domain dictionary, as Misplaced Pages recommends, it is therefore from 1913 Webster, which is not the best, but is available for everybody. I preferred one definition in Oxford dictionary before, but my fellow editors strictly disputed whether exactly that dictionary is the best, so I had to delete it, and choose a public domain dictionary, as a neutral solution. Tkorrovi 15:55, 7 Dec 2004 (UTC)

I would say you can't take a definition of "consciousness" from a dictionary. Arguably, if the authors of this article can't write about consciousness coherently, they can't write about the artificial variant of it, either. Also, you do have to say what you perceive the difference to be between AC and AI, because so far as I can tell, what you are describing is a subset of AI. Can you find a reputable reference that backs up your view that AC and AI are two separate categories? Slim 16:35, Dec 7, 2004 (UTC)

The definition of consciousness must be taken from dictionary, because this is the starting point of any explanation of consciousness, this says what is widely considered that consciousness is, ie the meaning of the word. In science, there are so many interpretations of consciousness, just explaining them all gets very long, and is not the subject of this article, but a subject of such articles as consciousness, mind, philosophy of mind, consciousness studies etc. But if we take even the definition from dictionary.com, present in the article "having an awareness of one's environment and one's own existence, sensations, and thoughts", then, considering that the environment also contains the processes outside the subject, then by that, consciousness includes awareness of the processes, also by that definition it includes self-awareness and feelings. So, when interpreted rightly, it is the widest definition of consciousness. It is hard to find a reference which says that AC and AI are two separated categories, as it's not said anywhere that they are the same category. Also, as much as I know, it is even nowhere said that AC is a subfield of AI. But it's possible to conclude that it is not considered a subfield of AI, for example from the fact that a special part of Journal of Consciousness Studies was dedicated to Machine Consciousness, as I already said. As Consciousness Studies is not considered a subfield of Artificial Intelligence, and AC is under it, then we can make a conclusion that Artificial consciousness is also not considered a subfield of Artificial Intelligence, and so AC and AI are by far not the same categories. Tkorrovi 17:13, 7 Dec 2004 (UTC)

I just did a very quick Google search and artificial consciousness seems to be regarded as a subset of AI. Slim 17:21, Dec 7, 2004 (UTC)

Then show where it is said. I did the same search and I see everywhere is explained the difference between AC and AI. Not only that I searched Google, but I wrote all links with a short description to my forum page. It is linked somewhere on this talk page also, but talk page became long partly because unnecessary discussions and trolling. And some didn't want me to give a link to that forum before. Tkorrovi 17:35, 7 Dec 2004 (UTC)

In your previous-but-one reply, you wrote: "It is hard to find a reference which says that AC and AI are two separated categories, as it's not said anywhere that they are the same category." In this latest reply, you wrote: " . . . I see everywhere is explained the difference between AC and AI." Can I ask: do you have expertise in this field? Slim 18:18, Dec 7, 2004 (UTC)

Do you have a simple logic? When it is nowhere said that two categories are the same, and it is said that there are differencies between them, isn't it then that we cannot consider them otherwise than two separate categories? I am an Automatic Control engineer by qualification, and I'm an administrator of an Open Source artificial consciousness project. Can I ask, what is your expertise and qualification? Tkorrovi 18:59, 7 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Yes, I have a simple logic. Do you? If you are finding articles that compare AC and AI, whether saying they are the same thing or saying they are not the same thing, the act of comparison means they are connected. You do not find articles comparing desks to chimpanzees. If AC and AI are regarded by others as connected, this article MUST explain how, and with full third-party references, regardless of your own views. The thing about Misplaced Pages is that it's an encylopedia. No "original research" is allowed. You may only write about issues that are in the public domain, with reference to reputable third-party sources; and in the academic world, peer-reviewed journals. The issue of AI is extremely hard to write about without specific expertise, as is the issue of "consciousness" generally. This is very much the kind of article that should be written by someone doing a PhD in that subject, in my view. It seems to me that this article, as currently written, is "original research" which is not allowed in Misplaced Pages. Anyway, you asked for comment, so I've given it. I'm sorry it wasn't what you wanted to hear. I wish you all the best in working on it further. Slim 19:27, Dec 7, 2004 (UTC)

Valid and correct argument

A valid argument is one where the conclusion follows from the premises. A correct argument is a valid argument where the premises are correct. Neither test applies, of course, when the argument is submitted by Tkorrovi. In all his writings he constantly reminds me of this. My fellow wikipedians should just learn not to argue with him. This is his playpen. I will keep the NPOV tag here. Paul Beardsell 07:42, 8 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Yes only one thing to add, Paul Beardsell's last post was on 3 Dec 2004, and SlimVirgin, as a new user, started posting at 29 Nov 2004. He/she talks the same things as Paul Beardsell, his style is the same, including the same very good English. Stop trolling. Tkorrovi 09:36, 8 Dec 2004 (UTC)