Are robots necessarily mindless?

[McCulloch]

I am not a mindless robot like you seem to be claiming to be.

Are robots necessarily mindless? Is it possible that consciousness could emerge from a collection of processing units which individually are mindless? What is mind? Where did it come from? Could it happen again? Can we make it happen?

[Beto]

But this is to divert attention from the fact that no equivalent component of a brain (a single neuron for example) could be expected to understand a conversation either.

I'm probably way in over my head, but the following came to my attention:

"The scientists have made a significant step into the understanding of conscious perception, by showing how single neurons in the human brain reacted to perceived and non-perceived images."

This is from an article about the consciousness study recently carried out at the University Of Leicester.

Would you guys expect this to be observed?

[Furrowed Brow]

I can see that you're going out of your way to explain your position here Furrowed -- I want to thank you for that. I only wish that I could grasp the significance of our apparent ability to process all segments of predicate calculus as easily. Is it absolutely clear that it is true and not an illusion that we have such an ability?

No it is not absolutely clear. But if the human brain has not found a way to compute all segments of the predicate calculus then it must have found a way to generate ad hoc strategies to end computation - and we do that without seeming to miss a beat. Also when we say stuff like “every natural number can be divided without remainder” the logical implication of this proposition must remain beyond our grasp. We can say the words, use them in a way regular enough to satisfy us that we are being fully consistent but really we do not have a grasp of the internal logical relationships at play. Because that requires fully forming the propostion. Which systems with ad hoc intervention policies never do. So I fall on the side that it is not an illusion.

I suppose Siegalman can model reality in systems with Real numbers to arbitrary precision -- as nature does. I can understand the difference this would make in chaotic systems and I can see the difference it would make in neural systems. Is there anything that strikes you about this?

I think there is a difference between system x behaving in a way that follows/mimics reality to some degree of accuracy, and that system forming a proposition that represents reality. Here I think the key word is “forming”. To be able to present reality requires being able to form a proposition, and the form of a proposition is characterised by the predicate calculus - or rather Wittgenstein’s skew on what counts as a logical proposition and how we understand predicate logic in light of Wittgenstein.

So I guess I am saying computation power, and sophisticated "modelling" systems are not sufficient for a mind, what is needed is a genralised logica syntax able to compute all segments of predicate logic and nothing else will do. Otherwise having a mind is an illusion. there would be no such things as meaning, sense, semantics or representation. True there can be sophisticated and complex physical interactions. But no mind.

[byofrcs]

I can see that you're going out of your way to explain your position here Furrowed -- I want to thank you for that. I only wish that I could grasp the significance of our apparent ability to process all segments of predicate calculus as easily. Is it absolutely clear that it is true and not an illusion that we have such an ability?

No it is not absolutely clear. But if the human brain has not found a way to compute all segments of the predicate calculus then it must have found a way to generate ad hoc strategies to end computation - and we do that without seeming to miss a beat.

I'm getting bored with this discussion. Goodbye.

[Furrowed Brow]

I can see that you're going out of your way to explain your position here Furrowed -- I want to thank you for that. I only wish that I could grasp the significance of our apparent ability to process all segments of predicate calculus as easily. Is it absolutely clear that it is true and not an illusion that we have such an ability?

No it is not absolutely clear. But if the human brain has not found a way to compute all segments of the predicate calculus then it must have found a way to generate ad hoc strategies to end computation - and we do that without seeming to miss a beat.

I'm getting bored with this discussion. Goodbye.

People always say that to me at parties....

[Furrowed Brow]

I can see that you're going out of your way to explain your position here Furrowed -- I want to thank you for that. I only wish that I could grasp the significance of our apparent ability to process all segments of predicate calculus as easily. Is it absolutely clear that it is true and not an illusion that we have such an ability?

No it is not absolutely clear. But if the human brain has not found a way to compute all segments of the predicate calculus then it must have found a way to generate ad hoc strategies to end computation - and we do that without seeming to miss a beat.

I'm getting bored with this discussion. Goodbye.

People always say that to me at parties....

I'm lying. I don't get invited to parties anymore...

[QED]

OK, this subject can be a bit of a frustration.
Furrowed Brow is trying to place constraints of computability on whatever mind is. That's a good idea because we haven't really got a clue, and to cap it all we're not really sure that there are such things as minds -- in the way we imagine there to be.

byofrcs says "if naturalism is wrong" by which I think is meant "Descartian Dualism" is right -- but that has been firmly eliminated by deep laws of conservation. [url=http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0026-4 ... 0.CO%3B2-T]Dr. Ward's Refutation of Dualism