| https://www.reddit.com/r/ChatGPT/comments/1lvjfgj/geoffrey_hinton_on_ai_risks_subjective_experience/ |
| Hinton: There’s two issues here.
There’s a sort of empirical one and a philosophical one. I don’t think
there’s anything in principle that stops machines from being conscious.
I’ll give you a little demonstration of that before we carry on.
Suppose I take your brain and I take one brain cell in your brain and I
replace it by — this a bit black mirror-like — by a little piece of
nanotechnology that’s just the same size that behaves in exactly the
same way when it gets pings from other neurons. It sends out pings just
as the brain cell would have. So the other neurons don’t know
anything’s changed. Okay. I’ve just replaced one of your brain cells
with this little piece of nanotechnology. Would you still be conscious? Steven: Yeah. Hinton: Now you can see where this argument is going. Steven: Yeah. So if you replaced all of them… Hinton: I replace them all, at what point do you stop being conscious? Steven: Well, people think of consciousness as this ethereal thing that exists maybe beyond the brain cells. Hilton: Yeah. Well, people have a lot of crazy ideas. People don’t know what consciousness is and they often don’t know what they mean by it. And then they fall back on saying, well, I know it cause I’ve got it and I can see that I’ve got it and they fall back on this theater model of the mind which I think is nonsense. Steven: What do you think of consciousness as if you had to try and define it? Is it because I think of it as just like the awareness of myself? I don’t know. Hinton: I think it’s a term we’ll stop using. Suppose you want to understand how a car works. Well, you know, some cars have a lot of oomph and other cars have a lot less oomph. Like an Aston Martin’s got lots of oomph. And a little Toyota Corolla doesn’t have much oomph. But oomph isn’t a very good concept for understanding cars. If you want to understand cars, you need to understand electric engines or petrol engines and how they work. And it gives rise to oomph, but oomph isn’t a very useful explanatory concept. It’s the essence of a car. It’s the essence of an Aston Martin, but it doesn’t explain much. I think consciousness is like that. And I think we’ll stop using that term, but I don’t think there’s any reason why a machine shouldn’t have it. If your view of consciousness is that it intrinsically involves self-awareness, then the machine’s got to have self-awareness. He’s got to have cognition about its own cognition and stuff. But I’m a materialist through and through. And I don’t think there’s any reason why a machine shouldn’t have consciousness. |
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=giT0ytynSqg#t=1h5m29s |
| |
| Godfather of AI: I tried to warn
them, but we’ve already lost control! Geoffrey Hinton Length: 1 hour 30 minutes June 16, 2025 The Diary of a CEO He pioneered AI, now he’s warning the world. Godfather of AI Geoffrey Hinton breaks his silence on the deadly dangers of AI no one is prepared for. Geoffrey Hinton is a leading computer scientist and cognitive psychologist, widely recognised as the ‘Godfather of AI’ for his pioneering work on neural networks and deep learning. He received the 2018 Turing Award, often called the Nobel Prize of computing. In 2023, he left Google to warn people about the rising dangers of AI. |
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vitalism |
| Vitalism is a belief that starts
from the premise that "living organisms are fundamentally different
from non-living entities because they contain some non-physical element
or are governed by different principles than are inanimate things."
Where vitalism explicitly invokes a vital principle, that element is
often referred to as the "vital spark", "energy", "élan vital" (coined
by vitalist Henri Bergson), "vital force", or "vis vitalis", which some
equate with the soul. In the 18th and 19th centuries, vitalism was
discussed among biologists, between those who felt that the known
mechanics of physics would eventually explain the difference between
life and non-life and vitalists who argued that the processes of life
could not be reduced to a mechanistic process. Vitalist biologists such
as Johannes Reinke proposed testable hypotheses meant to show
inadequacies with mechanistic explanations, but their experiments
failed to provide support for vitalism. Biologists now consider
vitalism in this sense to have been refuted by empirical evidence, and
hence regard it either as a superseded scientific theory, or, since the
mid-20th century, as a pseudoscience. Vitalism has a long history in medical philosophies: many traditional healing practices posited that disease results from some imbalance in vital forces. |
| Wikipedia |
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Organic_compound |
| Organic compound Some chemical authorities define an organic compound as a chemical compound that contains a carbon–hydrogen or carbon–carbon bond; others consider an organic compound to be any chemical compound that contains carbon. <...> Vitalism Vitalism was a widespread conception that substances found in organic nature are formed from the chemical elements by the action of a "vital force" or "life-force" (vis vitalis) that only living organisms possess. In the 1810s, Jöns Jacob Berzelius argued that a regulative force must exist within living bodies. Berzelius also contended that compounds could be distinguished by whether they required any organisms in their synthesis (organic compounds) or whether they did not (inorganic compounds). Vitalism taught that formation of these "organic" compounds were fundamentally different from the "inorganic" compounds that could be obtained from the elements by chemical manipulations in laboratories. Vitalism survived for a short period after the formulation of modern ideas about the atomic theory and chemical elements. It first came under question in 1824, when Friedrich Wöhler synthesized oxalic acid, a compound known to occur only in living organisms, from cyanogen. A further experiment was Wöhler's 1828 synthesis of urea from the inorganic salts potassium cyanate and ammonium sulfate. Urea had long been considered an "organic" compound, as it was known to occur only in the urine of living organisms. Wöhler's experiments were followed by many others, in which increasingly complex "organic" substances were produced from "inorganic" ones without the involvement of any living organism, thus disproving vitalism. |
| Wikipedia |
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthropocentrism |
| Anthropocentrism (from Ancient Greek ἄνθρωπος (ánthrōpos) 'human' and κέντρον (kéntron) 'center') is the belief that human beings are the central or most important entity on the planet. |
| Wikipedia |
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theism |
| Theism is broadly defined as the belief in the existence of at least one deity. |
| Wikipedia |
In psychology and psychiatry one of the most heavily used terms is
“consciousness”.
However let’s raise a simple question: is there any laboratory test
which can determine if the concrete object X (man/animal/etc) has
consciousness or not? What is the exact list of features which would
prove that object X has consciousness? How can we be sure that object X
has consciousness or not? As for example, does the amoeba have
consciousness or not?
The inconvenient truth is that psychologists/psychiatrists are unable
to provide the exact list of features which prove that object X has
consciousness, psychologists/psychiatrists are unable to provide any
experimental test which would enable to determine if object X has
consciousness or not.
If you don’t believe that this is true then here is a little exercise
for
you personally: where is the evidence that you have consciousness?
Please provide at least one evidence that you have consciousness,
please provide at least one evidence that you are not the agent without
consciousness.
Below is the definition of “agent” from Wikipedia, a good example of
“agents” are computer game characters. The agent can interact with
environment while being without any consciousness, for interaction with
environment the consciousness is not needed. When agent without
consciousness interacting with environment is observed by the outside
observer, the observer might incorrectly conclude that this agent has
consciousness.
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intelligent_agent |
| In artificial intelligence, an intelligent agent (IA) is an autonomous entity which observes through sensors and acts upon an environment using actuators (i.e. it is an agent) and directs its activity towards achieving goals (i.e. it is rational). Intelligent agents may also learn or use knowledge to achieve their goals. They may be very simple or very complex: a reflex machine such as a thermostat is an intelligent agent, as is a human being, as is a community of human beings working together towards a goal. |
| Wikipedia |
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophical_zombie |
| A philosophical zombie or p-zombie in the philosophy of mind and perception is a hypothetical being that is indistinguishable from a normal human being except in that it lacks conscious experience, qualia, or sentience. For example, a philosophical zombie could be poked with a sharp object, and not feel any pain sensation, but yet, behave exactly as if it does feel pain (it may say "ouch" and recoil from the stimulus, or say that it is in intense pain). |
| Wikipedia |
People usually think that it is very easy to prove that “I have
consciousness” and they provide a whole bunch of “proofs”, however it
is very easy to show that all these “proofs” are incorrect and contain
multiple errors.
Here are several typical examples of such erroneous “proofs”.
1) “I can feel pain and I respond to pain, as for example when my
finger is cut, I remove the finger and this proves that I have
consciousness”.
Let’s rephrase this argument in more scientific way: “my reaction to
stimulus proves that I have consciousness”. Let’s raise a simple
question: is it really so? Does reaction to stimulus really prove that
object has consciousness? We will remind how the fire alarm system
works. Fire alarm system has sensors for detecting fire, and when these
sensors detect fire or smoke – the fire alarm system reacts
instantaneously by sprinkling the water, sounding the alarm and/or
accomplishing some other actions. I.e. the fire alarm system has a
property of being able to respond to stimulus. However does this mean
that fire alarm system has consciousness? As we can clearly see from
the example with fire alarm system, “reaction to stimulus” is not the
proof consciousness.
2) “I can have emotions/feelings and this proves that I have
consciousness”.
“The having of emotions/feelings” – is it really the proof of having
consciousness? Ok, then what about computer game characters who have
emotions/feelings
– does this mean that computer game characters have consciousness? As
we can clearly see from the example with computer game characters,
“having of emotions/feelings” is not the proof consciousness.
| https://sims.wikia.com/wiki/Emotion |
| Emotion is a gameplay feature
introduced in The Sims 4. Emotion is a core part of a Sim's simology.
Emotion is similar to mood, but is more easily affected by in-game
events and social interactions with other Sims. The current emotional
state of a Sim is depicted in the lower left corner of the screen while
playing. It is also noted that some objects in-game can affect the
emotions of some Sims, though the Sim has to already be feeling a
particular way in order for an object to affect them emotionally. Sims
that are severely emotional can die from their emotions. There are several ranges of emotions. Sims may reach one stage of an emotion and then progress to a second, more extreme stage of the same emotion. For instance, a Sim that is embarrassed may become very embarrassed. Sims that become extremely emotional may eventually suffer an emotional death. |
| The Sims Wiki |
| https://www.carls-sims-4-guide.com/emotions |
| List of emotions in Sims 4
<...> Good Emotions: Happy; Confident; Energized; Fine - Neutral State; Flirty; Focused; Inspired; Playful Bad/Negative Emotions: Angry - not necessarily bad for Criminals or Mischievous Sims; Bored; Dazed - Not necessarily bad; Embarrassed; Sad; Tense; Uncomfortable |
| Carl’s Sims 4 Guide |
| https://flylib.com/books/en/2.71.1.2/1/ |
| Part VI: Emotions Chapter 36. Emotive Creatures <...> -- From Emotions to Artificial Intelligence -- Human/Machine Interaction -- Emotion in Games <...> Chapter 37. Sensations, Emotions, and Feelings -- Sensations -- Emotions -- Interfaces for Communicating Emotions -- Portraying Emotions in Games <...> Chapter 39. Under the Influence -- Designing Artificial Emotions -- Finite-State Module Development -- Creating Emotions as Finite States <...> Chapter 42. An Emotional System -- Hierarchical Architecture Overview -- Modeling Feelings -- Improved Sensations -- Accumulating Emotions -- Revealing Emotions with Mannerisms -- Mood Hierarchies |
| AI Game Development: Synthetic
Creatures with Learning and Reactive Behaviors By Alex J. Champandard New Riders Publishing. November 21, 2003 |
3) “I can play music and this proves that I have consciousness”.
“The playing of music” – is it really the proof of having
consciousness? Ok, then what about people who are unable to play music
– are these people without consciousness or not?
4) “I can recognize myself in the mirror and this proves that I have
consciousness”.
“Recognizing yourself in the mirror” (a.k.a. mirror
self-recognition test)
– is it really the proof of having consciousness? Ok, then what about
blind people/monkey/etc who are unable to recognize themselves in the
mirror – are they without consciousness or not? And what about robots
who are able to recognize themselves in the mirror – does this mean
that robots have consciousness?
| https://spectrum.ieee.org/automaton/robotics/artificial-intelligence/qbo-passes-mirror-test-is-therefore-selfaware |
| Qbo robot passes mirror test, is
therefore self-aware |
| by Evan Ackerman IEEE Spectrum. 6 December 2011 |
5) “I have goals and I achieve my goals and this proves that I have
consciousness”.
Let’s raise a simple question: is it really so? Does “having goals and
achieving goals” really prove that object has consciousness? Artificial
intelligent agents, like for example computer game characters, have
goals and they are achieving goals too. However does this mean that
computer game characters have consciousness? As we can clearly see from
the example with computer game characters, “having goals and achieving
goals” is not the proof consciousness.
6) “Machines/computers/robots can only imitate that they have
consciousness, however only humans have true-consciousness.”
Let’s raise a simple question: is it really so? Please provide at least
one evidence that you are not the imitation of consciousness, please
provide at least one evidence you have true-consciousness.
Your claim “I have true-consciousness” is not the proof of having
true-consciousness, because the machine can also claim the same
statement that it has true-consciousness.
7) The list of “proofs” might be endless, however in every case it is
very easy to show that every “proof” is incorrect.
The truth is that you cannot provide any evidence which would prove
that you have consciousness. There is no experimental test which would
enable to determine if object X has consciousness or not. In other
words, there are no scientific criteria to determine if object X has
consciousness or not, which means that the term “consciousness” is
totally useless unnecessary ballast for describing and modeling of the
behavior of living organism.
People who use term “consciousness” are unable to provide scientific
definition of the term “consciousness”, they are unable to provide the
list of criteria (the list of features) which would allow to determine
if object X has consciousness or not. When a man uses a term/word which
he is unable to define then it is quite obvious that such man does not
understand himself what he is talking about, it is obvious that his
speech is meaningless by definition.
The
term “consciousness” is unscientific and has nothing to do with
science. The term “consciousness” is pure pseudoscience and has no
scientific basis whatsoever – you do not agree with that? Ok, in case
if you disagree then please go back to our little exercise – where is
the evidence that you have consciousness? Please provide at least one
evidence that you have consciousness, please provide at least one
evidence that you are not the agent without consciousness. And please
do not come back until you have at least one evidence that you have
consciousness.
It is important to note however that pseudoscientific term
“consciousness” is so deeply rooted into society that this makes almost
impossible to avoid it when discussing the functioning of the brain. In
Neurocluster Brain Model we use pseudoscientific term
“consciousness” only for legacy reasons in order to simplify
comprehension of material for the reader – sometimes a little
inaccuracy saves a ton of explanation.
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solipsism |
| Solipsism (/ˈsɒlᵻpsɪzəm/; from
Latin
solus, meaning 'alone', and ipse, meaning 'self') is the philosophical
idea that only one's own mind is sure to exist. As an epistemological
position, solipsism holds that knowledge of anything outside one's own
mind is unsure; the external world and other minds cannot be known and
might not exist outside the mind. As a metaphysical position, solipsism
goes further to the conclusion that the world and other minds do not
exist. <...> Psychology and psychiatry <...> Austrian psychiatrist Sigmund Freud stated that other minds are not known, but only inferred to exist. He stated "consciousness makes each of us aware only of his own states of mind; that other people, too, possess a consciousness is an inference which we draw by analogy from their observable utterances and actions, in order to make this behavior of theirs intelligible to us. (It would no doubt be psychologically more correct to put it in this way: that without any special reflection we attribute to everyone else our own constitution and therefore our consciousness as well, and that this identification is a sine qua non of understanding)." <...> Philosophical Zombie The theory of solipsism crosses over with the theory of the philosophical zombie in that all other seemingly conscious beings actually lack true consciousness, instead they only display traits of consciousness to the observer, who is the only conscious being there is. Falsifiability and testability Solipsism is not a falsifiable hypothesis as described by Karl Popper or Imre Lakatos: there does not seem to be an imaginable disproof. <...> |
| Wikipedia |
And by the way, if speaking about tests – in computer science there is
such thing as “Turing test”.
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turing_test |
| The Turing test is a test of a
machine's ability to exhibit intelligent behaviour equivalent to, or
indistinguishable from, that of a human. In the original illustrative
example, a human judge engages in natural language conversations with a
human and a machine designed to generate performance indistinguishable
from that of a human being. All participants are separated from one
another. If the judge cannot reliably tell the machine from the human,
the machine is said to have passed the test. The test does not check
the ability to give the correct answer to questions; it checks how
closely the answer resembles typical human answers. The conversation is
limited to a text-only channel such as a computer keyboard and screen
so that the result is not dependent on the machine's ability to render
words into audio. The test was introduced by Alan Turing in his 1950 paper "Computing Machinery and Intelligence," which opens with the words: "I propose to consider the question, 'Can machines think?'" Because "thinking" is difficult to define, Turing chooses to "replace the question by another, which is closely related to it and is expressed in relatively unambiguous words." Turing's new question is: "Are there imaginable digital computers which would do well in the imitation game?" This question, Turing believed, is one that can actually be answered. In the remainder of the paper, he argued against all the major objections to the proposition that "machines can think". In the years since 1950, the test has proven to be both highly influential and widely criticized, and it is an essential concept in the philosophy of artificial intelligence. |
| Wikipedia |
A lot of scientists write a computer programs which try to
pass a Turing test, as for example one of the best human chat
simulating program is “A.L.I.C.E.”.
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artificial_Linguistic_Internet_Computer_Entity |
| A.L.I.C.E. (Artificial
Linguistic Internet Computer Entity), also referred to as Alicebot, or
simply Alice, is a natural language processing chatterbot — a program
that engages in a conversation with a human by applying some
heuristical pattern matching rules to the human's input, and in its
online form it also relies on a hidden third person. It was inspired by
Joseph Weizenbaum's classical ELIZA program. It is one of the strongest
programs of its type and has won the Loebner Prize, awarded to
accomplished humanoid, talking robots, three times (in 2000, 2001 and
2004). However, the program is unable to pass the Turing test, as even
the casual user will often expose its mechanistic aspects in short
conversations. |
| Wikipedia |
However let’s raise a simple question: and what about human who
fails to pass the Turing test (like for example man with Down's
syndrome, an infant, etc)? How we should call a human who fails to pass
the Turing test? What word/term we should use for denoting a human who
fails to pass the Turing test? If a human fails to pass Turing test
then this raises a simple question: “does such human have consciousness
or not?”. As we can clearly see from the above examples, the Turing
test is unable to determine if the object has consciousness or not.
There is not a single scientific tool which would be able to test for
the existence of consciousness which means that the term
“consciousness” is 100% pseudoscientific term.
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marvin_Minsky |
| Marvin Lee Minsky (August 9,
1927 – January 24, 2016) was an American cognitive scientist concerned
largely with research of artificial intelligence (AI), co-founder of
the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's AI laboratory, and author
of several texts concerning AI and philosophy.<...> He was a critic of the Loebner Prize for conversational robots. Minsky believed that there is no fundamental difference between humans and machines, and that humans are machines whose "intelligence" emerges from the interplay of the many unintelligent but semi-autonomous agents that comprise the brain. He has stated that "somewhere down the line, some computers will become more intelligent than most people," but that it's very hard to predict how fast progress will be. He has cautioned that an artificial superintelligence designed to solve an innocuous mathematical problem might decide to assume control of Earth's resources to build supercomputers to help achieve its goal, but believed that such negative scenarios are "hard to take seriously" because he was confident AI would go through "a lot of testing" before being deployed. |
| Wikipedia |
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loebner_Prize |
| The Loebner Prize is an annual
competition in artificial intelligence that awards prizes to the
computer programs considered by the judges to be the most human-like.
The format of the competition is that of a standard Turing test. In
each round, a human judge simultaneously holds textual conversations
with a computer program and a human being via computer. Based upon the
responses, the judge must decide which is which. <...> Criticisms The prize has long been scorned by experts in the field, for a variety of reasons. It is regarded by many as a publicity stunt. Marvin Minsky scathingly offered a "prize" to anyone who could stop the competition. The criticism was reinforced when Loebner, resorting to word-play, claimed that Minsky's offering a prize to stop the competition made him a co-sponsor! |
| Wikipedia |
We will explain in more detail the essence of the problem.
Suppose we are sending a probe to a distant planet and the task of the
probe is to find out whether there are any objects which have
consciousness on this distant planet. In order to solve this problem
the onboard computer of the probe needs to contain an
algorithm/program, which would test the objects on this distant planet
for the presence of the consciousness. We need a detailed list of
diagnostic features which would allow to determine whether the object X
has consciousness or not.
Wikipedia provides the summary of the endeavors of the
pseudoscientists trying to define the term “consciousness”:
1) Question: what is the “consciousness”, how can we detect if object X
has consciousness or not? Answer: object X has consciousness ONLY IF it
has awareness.
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consciousness |
| Consciousness is the quality or
state of awareness, or, of being aware of an external object or
something within oneself. |
| Wikipedia |
2) Question: what is the “awareness”, how can do we detect if object X has awareness or not? Answer: object X has awareness ONLY IF it has consciousness.
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Awareness |
| Awareness is the state or
ability to perceive, to feel, or to be conscious of events, objects,
thoughts, emotions, or sensory patterns. In this level of
consciousness, sense data can be confirmed by an observer without
necessarily implying understanding. |
| Wikipedia |
In other words: 1) object X has consciousness ONLY IF it has
awareness, 2) object X has awareness ONLY IF it has consciousness.
It is obvious that these definitions are circular/recursive
definitions. However circular/recursive definitions are meaningless by
definition and have nothing to do with science, here is one practical
example of such meaningless circular/recursive definition: “To
define recursion, we must first define recursion.”
And now let’s raise the question: do such “definitions” of
“consciousness” provide any help in making of the algorithm/program
which would be able to test the objects for the presence of the
consciousness?
Obviously, the answer is “no”.
It is obvious that such “definitions” have nothing to do with science;
such blabber is simply the claptrap.
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QGekFhbyQLk |
| |
| Neil deGrasse on consciousness Length: 1 minute |
It is important to note that many people have no clue whatsoever about
what the word “scientific” means. This is due to the simple reason.
Universities have huge number of faculties which actually have nothing
to do with science. As for example, many universities have “faculty of
theology” or “faculty of literature”, and so on. And these “faculties”
issue diplomas with academic degrees like “master”, “doctor”,
“professor”, etc. And what is the activity of such “professors of
theology”, what do they do? They study the superstitious writings
called “sacred scriptures” and then debate each other about what did
Jesus/Muhammad/Krishna/etc said and who is superior over whom – Jesus
is superior to Muhammad or vice versa. They can debate whatever they
want, however that is not science, this activity does not meet the
scientific criteria. And then such people from universities with
academic degrees write books, give lectures, talk on TV/radio, etc –
they simply flood the society with their claptrap material. When
average common people read/listen to this claptrap material they get
the false impression that this material is “science” – and this is due
simple reason: the authors of that claptrap material have scientific
academic degrees. As the result of this, majority of the population are
totally incapable to distinguish science from pseudoscience. As the
result of this, they are totally incapable to detect circular/recursive
definitions and they are totally incapable to understand that
circular/recursive definitions are meaningless by definition. That is a
huge problem in society.
The article “What is science and what
isn't science?” contains more detailed instructions about how to
distinguish science from pseudoscience.
Quite often, the same identical terms/words have different meanings in
different fields/professions.
As for example, the same identical term/word “syncope” in various
fields/professions has the following meanings:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Syncope |
| Syncope may refer to one of the
following: ● Syncope (medicine), also known as fainting ● Syncope (phonology), the loss of one or more sounds, particularly an unstressed vowel, from the interior of a word ● Syncopation, a musical effect caused by off-beat or otherwise unexpected rhythms ● Suspension, in music ● Syncope (genus), a genus of microhylidae frogs |
| Wikipedia |
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Syncopation_(dance) |
| The terms syncopation and
syncopated step in dancing are used in two senses: 1. The first definition matches the musical term: stepping on (or otherwise emphasizing) an unstressed beat. For example, ballroom Cha cha is a syncopated dance in this sense, because the basic step "breaks on two." When dancing to the disparate threads contained within the music, hands, torso, and head can independently move in relation to a thread, creating a fluidly syncopated performance of the music. 2. The word "syncopation" is often used by dance teachers to mean improvised or rehearsed execution of step patterns that have more rhythmical nuances than "standard" step patterns. It takes advanced dancing skill to dance syncopations in this sense. Advanced dancing of West Coast Swing and the Lindy Hop makes heavy use of "syncopation" in this sense (although swing music and swing dances feature the "usual" syncopation, i.e., emphasising the even beats). |
| Wikipedia |
The same situation is with the word “consciousness”.
In medicine, the term/word “consciousness” means the
“neurological/physiological
state/condition”.
| https://www.researchgate.net/...assessment_of_the_non-trauma_patient |
| The Glasgow Coma Score is widely used by Paramedics to assess the neurological state of all patients. |
| ResearchGate |
| https://www.hindawi.com/journals/arp/2010/241307/ |
| The Glasgow Coma Scale (GCS) is
a standard means of assessment of the neurological state. |
| Preoperative Assessment of Adult
Patients for Intracranial Surgery By Vanitha Sivanaser and Pirjo Manninen Anesthesiology Research and Practice. Volume 2010 (2010), Article ID 241307, 11 pages |
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glasgow_Coma_Scale |
| The
Glasgow Coma Scale or GCS is a neurological scale that aims to give a
reliable, objective way of recording the conscious state of a person
for initial as well as subsequent assessment. A patient is assessed
against the criteria of the scale, and the resulting points give a
patient score between 3 (indicating deep unconsciousness) and either 14
(original scale) or 15 (the more widely used modified or revised scale). GCS was initially used to assess level of consciousness after head injury, and the scale is now used by first aid, EMS, nurses and doctors as being applicable to all acute medical and trauma patients. In hospitals it is also used in monitoring chronic patients in intensive care. The scale was published in 1974 by Graham Teasdale and Bryan J. Jennett, professors of neurosurgery at the University of Glasgow's Institute of Neurological Sciences at the city's Southern General Hospital. GCS is used as part of several ICU scoring systems, including APACHE II, SAPS II, and SOFA, to assess the status of the central nervous system, as it was designed for. The initial indication for use of the GCS was serial assessments of patients with traumatic brain injury and coma for at least 6 hours in the neurosurgical ICU setting, though it is commonly used throughout hospital departments. A similar scale, the Rancho Los Amigos Scale is used to assess the recovery of traumatic brain injury patients. |
| Wikipedia |
When medics talk about “consciousness”, they mean the
“neurological/physiological state/condition” and such meaning of
the term/word matches the scientific
criteria.
When religious adepts, who mimic “scientists”, talk about
“consciousness”, they mean the object called “consciousness”
(“one that
is looking at the screen”, “one that hears/sees/feels/etc”) – this
meaning of the term/word does not meet the scientific criteria, this
is pure pseudoscience.
| https://henry.olders.ca/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/1982/03/Olders-1982-3445.pdf |
| no satisfactory explanation
exists for how an individual is consciously
aware of what he perceives. F.H.C. Crick (1979) recounted his difficulty in attempting to convince an intelligent woman of this problem. She failed to understand why anyone thought there was a problem, feeling that she probably had somewhere inside her head something like a little television set, until he asked, "So who is looking at it?" |
| Biology and psychiatry: some
missing pieces in the puzzle. Academic Seminar By Henry Olders, M.D. Jewish General Hospital. Institute of Community &Family Psychiatry. 26 March, 1982 |
| https://www.nytimes.com/1982/01/24/magazine/how-the-mind-works.html?pagewanted=all |
| Perhaps the most intractable of
the old problems of the mind has been the question of the homunculus.
Who or what is that? Let me quote Sir Francis Crick, co-discoverer of
the double helix, who now is doing research in neurobiology. Writing in
Scientific American, he tells of trying to explain to an intelligent
woman why it was puzzling that we perceive anything at all: ''She could
not see why there was a problem. Finally in despair I asked her how she
herself thought she saw the world. She replied that she probably had
somewhere in her head something like a little television set. 'So who,'
I asked, 'is looking at it?' She now saw the problem immediately.'' |
| How the mind works By Morton Hunt. The New York Times. January 24, 1982 |
It is important to note that: 1) the “physiological state” called
“consciousness” and 2) the object (“observer”) that has the name
“consciousness” – are two different things.
Quite often, the same identical terms/words have different meanings in
different fields/professions – the term/word “consciousness” is exactly
such a case.
We will remind that religious adepts, who mimic “scientists”, publish
articles/books/theses/etc about “consciousness” at industrial scale in
which “consciousness” is meant as an object that can be transferred
(“transfer of consciousness/mind into another system”, etc.).
Moreover, extremely illiterate religious adepts even claim that
“consciousness is located inside quantum microtubules”.
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artificial_consciousness |
| Artificial consciousness (AC),
also known as machine consciousness (MC) or synthetic consciousness
<...>, is a field related to artificial
intelligence and cognitive robotics. |
| Wikipedia |
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mind_uploading |
| Whole brain emulation (WBE) or
mind uploading (sometimes called "mind
copying" or "mind transfer") is the hypothetical process of scanning
mental state (including long-term memory and "self") of a particular
brain substrate and copying it to a computational device, such as a
digital, analog, quantum-based or software-based artificial neural
network. The computational device could then run a simulation model of
the brain information processing, such that it responds in essentially
the same way as the original brain (i.e., indistinguishable from the
brain for all relevant purposes) and experiences having a conscious
mind. Mind uploading may potentially be accomplished by either of two methods: Copy-and-Transfer or Gradual Replacement of neurons. In the case of the former method, mind uploading would be achieved by scanning and mapping the salient features of a biological brain, and then by copying, transferring, and storing that information state into a computer system or another computational device. The simulated mind could be within a virtual reality or simulated world, supported by an anatomic 3D body simulation model. Alternatively, the simulated mind could reside in a computer that's inside (or connected to) a (not necessarily humanoid) robot or a biological body. |
| Wikipedia |
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_mind |
| The quantum mind or quantum
consciousness hypothesis proposes that classical mechanics cannot
explain consciousness. It posits that quantum mechanical phenomena,
such as quantum entanglement and superposition, may play an important
part in the brain's function and could form the basis of an explanation
of consciousness. It is not a single theory, but a collection of
hypotheses.<...> Criticism The main argument against the quantum mind proposition is that quantum states in the brain would decohere before they reached a spatial or temporal scale at which they could be useful for neural processing. This argument was elaborated by the physicist, Max Tegmark. |
| Wikipedia |
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stuart_Hameroff |
| Stuart Hameroff (born July 16,
1947) is an anesthesiologist and professor at the University of Arizona
known for his studies of consciousness. <...> Hameroff was inspired by Penrose's book to contact Penrose regarding his own theories about the mechanism of anesthesia, and how it specifically targets consciousness via action on neural microtubules. The two met in 1992, and Hameroff suggested that the microtubules were a good candidate site for a quantum mechanism in the brain. |
| Wikipedia |
It is interesting to note that a lot of pseudoscientists claim that
high level of intelligence (or the possession of “consciousness”) is
needed in order to possess abstraction capabilities, however it is very
easy to disprove this claim.
We will remind that all organisms are able to distinguish “food” from
“non-food”.
However “food” and “non-food” are abstract objects.
And that means that all organisms have abstraction capabilities.
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abstraction |
| Abstraction in its main sense is
a conceptual process by which general rules and concepts are derived
from the usage and classification of specific examples, literal ("real"
or "concrete") signifiers, first principles, or other methods. "An
abstraction" is the product of this process — a concept that acts as a
super-categorical noun for all subordinate concepts, and connects any
related concepts as a group, field, or category. Conceptual abstractions may be formed by filtering the information content of a concept or an observable phenomenon, selecting only the aspects which are relevant for a particular purpose. For example, abstracting a leather soccer ball to the more general idea of a ball selects only the information on general ball attributes and behavior, eliminating the other characteristics of that particular ball. In a type–token distinction, a type (e.g., a 'ball') is more abstract than its tokens (e.g., 'that leather soccer ball'). |
| Wikipedia |
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abstract_and_concrete | ||||||||
| Abstract and concrete are
classifications that denote whether a term describes an object with a
physical referent or one with no physical referents. <…> Examples of abstract and concrete objects
|
||||||||
| Wikipedia |
Below is the classical typical example of pseudoscientific claims
about “consciousness”.
Pseudoscientists Christof Koch and Giulio Tononi claim that “any
system with integrated information different from zero has consciousness”.
In other words, pseudoscientists Christof Koch and Giulio Tononi claim
that CD-ROM disk and USB flash drive do have consciousness. It is quite
obvious that pseudoscientists Christof Koch and Giulio Tononi do lack
neurons in the brain areas responsible for logical thinking.
| https://www.wired.com/2013/11/christof-koch-panpsychism-consciousness/ |
| Where does consciousness come
from? We know it exists, at least in ourselves. But how it arises from
chemistry and electricity in our brains is an unsolved mystery. Neuroscientist Christof Koch, chief scientific officer at the Allen Institute for Brain Science, thinks he might know the answer. <...> Koch: There’s a theory, called Integrated Information Theory, developed by Giulio Tononi at the University of Wisconsin, that assigns to any one brain, or any complex system, a number — denoted by the Greek symbol of Φ — that tells you how integrated a system is, how much more the system is than the union of its parts. Φ gives you an information-theoretical measure of consciousness. Any system with integrated information different from zero has consciousness. Any integration feels like something WIRED: Ecosystems are interconnected. |
| A Neuroscientist’s Radical
Theory of How Networks Become Conscious By Brandon Keim. Wired. November 14, 2013 |
“Consciousness” is the hallucinatory object that exists only in the
imagination of the religious adepts, and this hallucinatory object has
nothing to do with science for a very simple reason – there is no
laboratory test which can determine if the concrete object X has
consciousness or not. In other words, there are no scientific criteria
for determining whether the object X has consciousness or not.
“Consciousness” is the hallucinatory object similar to hallucinatory
objects like “chakras”, “astral cord”, "energy egg", all sorts of
subtle bodies (etheric, astral, mental, buddhic, atmic, and so on), etc.
The arguments about the existence of the “soul/spirit” and the
arguments about the existence of the “consciousness” – both are
identical, there is no difference between them.
The article “What is science and what
isn't science?” contains more detailed instructions about how to
distinguish science from pseudoscience.