zen_tom

As I type this, a figure sits at a desk, it's fingers tapping at keys on a plastic keyboard, its eyes monitoring the patterns on the screen in front. A heart beats, blood courses and the lungs rhythmically draw air in and out in order to bring oxygen in from the outside world to help keep the whole thing running.

Behind the eyes, a thing lurks, looking through the eyes, listening through the ears, sensing the world around it, experiencing it, and able to shape it through control of its limbs and actions. A thing that thinks, plans and considers.

Something with an identity, a self-aware thing. Me. What is it? What is this thing that thinks, "I" or "Me"? Trapped inside this shell, with no recollection of ever having been outside of it, and every evening it voluntarily submits itself to non-existence for 6-8 hours.

How did it come to be aware of itself? What is it not aware of? Is it something real, or a self-perpetuating illusion?

This issue continues to confound, confuse, and amaze me. Not least because it is so fundamental to every moment we live, and because so few people have the slightest clue. It just dumbfounds me. I want to understand it, but I can't. I can't seem to remove my own personal experience from an explanation, and come up with a reasonable answer.

I'm not necessarily looking to others for answers - just ideas, or perhaps even just some acknowledgement that we can't even explain what we are. I may be able to comfort myself with "I think therefore I am", but I can't even begin to wonder what it is 'I' is supposed to mean, or even whether it is real or not, it is certainly something tenuous and fragile - how do you measure whether something has an 'I' or not?

tecoyah

You dont measure it....you experience it. In the experience of "bieng" we are what we percieve ourselves to be.

There is no reality....unless we decide to make it so......in this, is the definition of what makes me, "I".

*edit* Yeah...I confused myself with that one as well

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Holding onto anger is like grasping a hot coal with the intent of throwing it at someone else; you are the one who gets burned. - Buddha

asaris

Eh, I'll bite. I'm not sure there are any good answers to be had here, and even less sure that I have them, so take it for what it's worth.

This isn't quite right. There is no "I" hiding inside our bodies. We ARE our bodies. So the eyes are just parts of the lurking thing. (Thought: I lurk, therefore I am?)

This 'thing' is me. Or you, depending on which 'thing' we're talking about. I'm not sure it's possible to speak of the "I" in some sort of abstract sense; perhaps there is no "I", there's just me.

Of course you are real; it's either that or you're a figment of my imagination, and in that case, there are an awful lot of people who are sharing this hallucination. "I", when uttered by you, just means you. I think it's probably very easy to make this a lot more complicated than it really is.

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"Die Deutschen meinen, daß die Kraft sich in Härte und Grausamkeit offenbaren müsse, sie unterwerfen sich dann gerne und mit Bewunderung:[...]. Daß es Kraft giebt in der Milde und Stille, das glauben sie nicht leicht."

"The Germans believe that power must reveal itself in hardness and cruelty and then submit themselves gladly and with admiration[...]. They do not believe readily that there is power in meekness and calm."

-- Friedrich Nietzsche

zen_tom

Hmmm. I think this is going to be a difficult topic to discuss - but will try - please try to accept free usage of 'I' and 'Me' as per normal language usage, and occasionally, in a deeper, more pointed way. I'll try to put emphasis on the words when I mean to use them more pointedly.

asaris, I'm quite happy to accept that the body typing this exists. And for that matter, I'm also happy that out there somewhere, at the other end of a network of cables, your body is out there somewhere, in a very real and existant sense, reading this.

What I'm more concerned about is what this notion of self that I assume we both have actually is. You have to a notion of self in order to have a notion of self - it just pops itself out of nowhere without any causation.

And yes we are our bodies, until various parts of those bodies are chopped off. If I loose my arms and legs, they are no longer a part of me.

Example: Say we had a willing subject, we could continue the subtraction process, asking both separated pieces to 'raise their hand' if they are the part in which the 'me' resides. Would we eventually be able to get down to a single organ, or group of cells? I don't know, but I guess if we could, it would be in the brain - hence my suggestion that the real 'I' lurks somewhere behind my eyes and between my ears, my body simply being a convenient transportation and manipulation tool.

asaris

I'm not really up for a true engagement with your post, zen_tom, but one thought. Don't you contradict yourself when you say "And yes, we are our bodies" and later, when you say "my body simply being a convenient transportation and manipulation tool". Perhaps it's just what I mean when I say that you are your body, but I mean that your body is not simply a tool, .it is you. We all have a complex of ideas that determine our notion of self, and many of the most important of these derive from our body. Certainly certain aspects of our body are more important than others (intelligence and penis length apparently being among the most important). But that's not to say that the whole thing doesn't also contribute to our own self-image.

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"Die Deutschen meinen, daß die Kraft sich in Härte und Grausamkeit offenbaren müsse, sie unterwerfen sich dann gerne und mit Bewunderung:[...]. Daß es Kraft giebt in der Milde und Stille, das glauben sie nicht leicht."

"The Germans believe that power must reveal itself in hardness and cruelty and then submit themselves gladly and with admiration[...]. They do not believe readily that there is power in meekness and calm."

-- Friedrich Nietzsche

Brain2000

I think about this topic quite often. I think that we are probably real, and what our senses pick up are probably, to some degree, what is really happening, (as much as our 3rd dimentional recepticals can discern). I think our brains are a complex processor that react based upon the 5 senses. Perhaps being alive is completely relative to oneself. Perhaps the idea that things "are as alive as they can be" could be thought of here? A tree certainly is as alive as it can be. So is an ant. So we probably are too. Take it to a seemingly non-sensical level, how alive is an inanimate object? Is my computer as alive as it can be? If so, how much is that, or can that even be measured at all? Scale that up to the universe as a whole. Is it alive in any way?

If you think that's so ridiculous, then consider this. We are created from a strand of DNA. Its job is to "make" one of us. It's not much more than a very complex computer program. It takes a bunch of dirt, and rearranges the molecules to form us. So are we really alive? Or is it just a byproduct of the electrical impulses in our brain? Which means it's not really real. An illusion. That we are just a pile of thinking dirt.

Last January, a friend of mine had a bad misfortune, and through a set of physical problems, ended up with hypoxia (lack of oxygen to the brain for a period of time). He was lucky to make a physical recovery, but mentally, has had to relearn all kinds of things that he used to take for granted. For example, at first he could not discern red from blue. And numbers, he knew what the number 1 meant, and the number 10, but if you asked him what was between 1 and 10, he couldn't grasp it. He's come a long way since then, but in a way, it was fascinating to watch someone's knowledge disconnected, and watch them reconnect to it. You could almost see the brain remake certain connections as he progressed.

So maybe the question becomes, how does the collection of electrical impulses in one's head make one self aware?

What would happen if you teleported someone from point A to point B by scanning them at point A and destroying the original, and then recreating an exact replica at point B using raw materials. Obviously, they can't be the same person, because the original was destroyed. But then again, maybe they are the same person, because the new copy will have the exact pattern of particles. The new person would most likely act, talk, and be exactly like the old person. So if they ever made a teleporter like this, and you could travel the world (or to other worlds) instantly, would you do it?

(sorry for all the rambling)

Seeker

I remember taking a course in philosophy a number of years ago. The lecturer used a book called "In Search of the Miraculous" by P.D. Ouspensky. I found it dealt with this topic directly, our consciousness and perceptions of "I".

From memory, it was suggested that to attain the answer is indeed difficult, as we seem to have a series of "I's". To explain this a situation was used... When you are driving and your mind is focused on a specific problem or thought elsewhere in your life, who is driving the car? You go through the mechanical motions, but who is it that sees the red lights? Who gives way to oncoming traffic? Sometimes you find yourself in the driveway and remember nothing of the trip because your mind was on something else.

To work through this series of "I's", a system approach was presented and it was explained that certain Eastern teachings have found that man consists of four bodies to work through;

1st body - Carnal body, the "Carriage" - (body), the Physical Body
2nd body - Natural body, the "Horse" - (feelings, desires), the Astral Body
3rd body - Spiritual body, the "Driver" - (mind), the Mental Body
4th body - Devine body, the "Master" - (I, consciousness, will), the Causal Body

This is an example that was believed to be consistant within most systems and teachings which recognise something more in man than the physical body. There are different levels within our being, and within each body it is possible to learn and grow toward an ultimate "I", one that is not split and fragmented as in the driving senario above.

I'm not sure if this helps with your questioning, but this has been my experience with your question... and perhaps something I might re-read as it has been a while.

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To those who wander but who are not lost...

~ Knowledge is not something you acquire, it is something you open yourself to.

ryborg

Here is something interesting you might like to try when you are going to sleep or just have some time to sit and relax. I guess you could call it something of a "mental exercise" that has a strange effect. I discovered it one night when I was just sitting in bed thinking about what it meant to be a “self.”

While you are sitting or laying down, try to relax yourself as much as possible.

Once you are fully relaxed say to yourself "I am me," and picture yourself. You do not have to make the picture realistic, or even worry about the details of your features, just let an image of yourself naturally appear. Don't to force any extra "reality" onto it.

You likely will not feel anything by thinking this, but continue repeating the phrase in your mind, "I am me."

As you continue repeating the statement, try to think harder and harder about the statement itself and what it means.

As you continue to repeat this you may start to feel distanced from yourself. Continue to concentrate hard and you will suddenly become very powerfully self aware, almost as if you are perceiving yourself from the 3rd person, yet are still intensely aware of your self. It is almost as if you realize that you are yourself from the outside in.

When I first “achieved” this state of thought it gave me chills up and down my spine. It was a very unusual feeling to realize that I was myself. It is very difficult to describe in a forum. It feels vaguely out-of-body, yet you still feel your “self” very intensely. If any of you actually give this a try it would be interesting to see what it does for you, if anything.

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Solve two problems at once. Feed the homeless to the hungry.

roachboy

these questions seem really difficult to respond to in a messageboard context--first because they entail more than one analytic direction, second because these directions are heavily sedminented--that is, they have been written over/about extensively.

i would suggest having a look at a book called "the embodied self" by franseco varela et al. it addresses the bio-cognitive questions (what is consciousness) in an interesting manner (biological autonomy) and tries to link this to the ideology of the I" or self. maybe work your way backward from there.

or in a shorthand manner, have a look at this (despite the technical nature of the text):

http://web.ccr.jussieu.fr/varela/hum.../articles.html

the second of them, on the neurophenomenology of time consciouss, is really interesting.

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a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear

it make you sick.

-kamau brathwaite

Jinn

This is not nearly as metaphysical as the above posters, but it still quite Philsophical in its rationality. A noted philosopher (the name escapes me) developed the idea that an idea could only be as perfect as its creator. While I do not think it adequately describes God or other supernatural things, it helps me to answer this idea of "Who am I" and what consciousness is. Computers are, in my humble position, the greatest invention of man to date. It has the most complex subsystem of design and intricate parts that I can think of. As we advance in computer and robotic design, we notice that the behaviors become more and more like a sophisticated organism -- more and more like humans. I do not, however, think we will be able to create a computer superior to ourselves, and for that I give the philosopher his credit.

How does this relate to "What I am?" Well, many of our behavior and emotions can be mimicked and recreated in solid state silicon devices, without the need for a physical "blood and air" power mechanism. I therefore see no reason to believe there is a "me" beyond a self-aware computing organism. Computers nowadays can easily be "taught" to retain knowledge, much like our brain. The more knowledge they are endowed with, the more effective they become at calculations and relations. Further still, we can endow a computer system with the ability to "defend" itself, in a self-saving mechanism like our own immune system. Antivirus programs and firewalls are perfect metaphors for our skin and our white blood cells. Computers can be "taught" to turn themselves off and on at scheduled intervals to save power (sleep). Computers can be taught to prioritize activites and perform them only when there is available resources to do so. They can be taught to communicate with others via established protocols, and be taught to learn new ways for communicating with previously unreachable devices. Eating and drinking are obviously inherent abilities of all these devices, as their first and only "need" is the power to continue their devices. Risk-taking can even be programmed.. a computer can calculate its odds as well as create pattern-based appraisals of its opponents. Through these calculations, it can determine the value of taking a risk for its own improvement and depending on the capability of the subsystems, act on them. The final piece that many have claimed seperate AI from humans is "emotion". I think emotion is just as artificial of a construct as any other human/animal complex, and can be duplicated as such. The core emotions, fear, anger, and love -- can be programmed. Anger, for example, is simple. If a malicious piece of software is introduced into the computing system, many lines of code can be written to respond to it with different severities. The things that make people angry, such as repeated offenses, can also be programmed. If (attack = 15th time), { attempt to destroy targetting device }, if (attack = 1st time) {appraise attacker's propensity to attack again }. Love can similiarly be programmed. We only truly love those that are close to us, so if (interaction with device) = often, {increase loveCounter}. If (attack}, {decrease loveCounter}. These are obviously simplistic psuedocode, but they can be programmed to behave in a very realistic "human" matter. They will never exceed humans in this capacity, but it can be done. There is no need for a "soul" or anything beyond a very sophisticated set of systems and subsystems interacting together. This is the relationship that we share with computers. It is almost enlightening to consider the hardware similarity between my computer that I'm typing this on and myself. We are obviously much more powerful computers, because our brains are working at quantum calculation speed, whereas conventional PCs are working in binary. Similarly, we have much more hard drive space than RAM space (more permanent magnetic memory than temporary memory). We run with an energy simliar to electircity, snapping from synaptic gap to synaptic gap in the process of calculation. We have "video cards" capable of taking three dimensional space and reproducing its manifestation to our "display device", or the back of our retinas. We have sound cards, capable of recording as well as outputting sound. We have input devices such as our senses which compare (in a rudimentary format) to the mouse and keybord of a computer. Our output can be transferred to other devices through speech and written word, much like CDs and file-sharing. The hardware and software relationship between us and computers is undeniable, which is understandable as our greatest creation.

Looong explanation aside, where does "I" come in? In a computing system, the CPU would perfrom this "I" role, as the controller and allocator of the duties and responsibilites of the individual systems. It's level of "Me"-ness is identical to us as humans - it depends on our awareness of our individual systems. If we were not aware that our arms were attached to our body, and could not "feel them", then we would not consider them part of ourselves. If a CPU could not see the hidden method that allowed it to control power supply, then it would not consider that part of me. It only considers "me' the list of things with which it depends on and can "feel."

So -- we're supercomputers, but nothing more, to me. Sorry for the long post.

EDITED to add: I just thought about it some more, and I think few people realize the similarity between pyschology and computer science in this department. They both study extremely complex systems and work on "reprogramming" people and computers respectively to conform to acceptable standards. They both very often analyze the behavior from the outside, based on its outputs and its method of disposition. They both spend many years learning acceptable reactions and solutions for common problems that occur in complex systems such as they (we) are. Interesting connection, I think.

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"I'm typing on a computer of science, which is being sent by science wires to a little science server where you can access it. I'm not typing on a computer of philosophy or religion or whatever other thing you think can be used to understand the universe because they're a poor substitute in the role of understanding the universe which exists independent from ourselves." - Willravel

Zeraph

My only advice is not to think in words, what you are is not words. If it were so it would have been published long ago and this discussion would not be taking place.

Jinn

Never read a philosophy book? Many "words" are indeed published and yet discussion still occurs.. 100s, 1000s of years later.

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"I'm typing on a computer of science, which is being sent by science wires to a little science server where you can access it. I'm not typing on a computer of philosophy or religion or whatever other thing you think can be used to understand the universe because they're a poor substitute in the role of understanding the universe which exists independent from ourselves." - Willravel

zen_tom

Jinnkai - as confident as I am that conscious AIs will one-day walk and work among us, they wont follow the type of instruction sets you describe. However, you do raise a good point, emotion can be simulated or modeled.

It raises the question, how good does the simulation have to be before it crosses the line into 'real' emotion? Does a single-byte variable angerInt holding 256 discrete 'shades' of anger do it? Or a 12-byte Double Long Int do the job?

My personal slant on this is no - emotion is an emergent property of the system - it's something experienced, like consciousness. I can't code my computer to become conscious, no matter how many if-then-else clauses I put in.

What I might be able to do is program a complex system that models firings of individual neurons, and see it behave in ways that might suggest it was experiencing emotions, as an emergent property of the system - but I'm not sure I'd ever be able to definitively tell one way or another.

Jinn

Learning is an emergent property of a system, but it can still be programmed. Since emotion is simply a learned reaction, it too can have algorithms designed to simulate it. Like the OP asks, how do you define consciousness? Being aware of and able to manipulate your surroundings? Robots are better at this than us! Does that make them more conscious? If you define it as having a sense of self, they can do that as well. And it cannot be emotions, since there are conscious/sentient beings that do not feel emotions (as far as we know)..

Additionally, why would you need to simulate neuronal activity? Binary calculation and conventional OOP can achieve this in exactly the same way. Neuron activity is strictly controlled by the chemicals present, ala neurotransmitters. In the same way, some of the methods (areas of the brain) can be limited by the credentials (chemicals) presented to the security algorithm. I don't think consciousness is a strictly human phenomenon at all..

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"I'm typing on a computer of science, which is being sent by science wires to a little science server where you can access it. I'm not typing on a computer of philosophy or religion or whatever other thing you think can be used to understand the universe because they're a poor substitute in the role of understanding the universe which exists independent from ourselves." - Willravel

zen_tom

I'm not saying it is, what I am saying is that it's not algorhythmic - or rather, that because it's emergent, it can't be directly programmed in, but arises unexpectedly from a system based on lower-level interactions.

Brain2000

JinnKai - I like your explanation.

After I posted a reply here two days ago, I was fumbling through O'Reilly's Safari books online, and found a book called "Mind Hacks" that I had been meaning to buy. I was so happy to see it available, I checked it out right there and started reading. I ended up fixated until 5 am reading it (rought day of work the following morning). This is a neat book that summarizes the parts of the brain, how it is programmed, how it reacts based on real life experiments, and experiments that you can do as you read which are amazing!

One really interesting thing I discovered, that I had no idea even existed, is that everyone has a blind spot just to the outside of the center of vision. But you don't notice it because your brain actually "fills in" a fake image around it in based on what you see. The "Mind Hacks" book contains a test (you can also find more extensive tests online) that lets you see first hand your brain filling in your blindspot.

And the section on how our brains can alter the perception of time slightly. And the test that goes along with that... but I don't want to give away too much here.

I found "Mind Hacks" to be a great read, and recommend it to anyone looking to find out more about how the brains works. Understanding what's under the hood is taking a step towards a better understanding of your consciousness.

(end book report)

asaris

One of the difficultires with computer models of consciousness is that consciousness is, almost by definition, transcendent. I don't mean spiritual transcendence or anything like that; when it comes to human persons, I'm pretty damn materialist. But there's something about human persons that always escapes our understanding. Husserl puts it like this. In experience, there's always something that escapes our perception. I can see a certain side of the chair I'm looking at, but I only infer [from things like previous experiences with chairs] the existence of the rest of the chair. Other persons aren't like that. When it comes to consciousness, you can't turn a person around to see the other side. There is always something about another person that escapes our experience, and not merely because we don't ever have enough experience with another. There's simply an infiniteness about the other that always eludes us.

Now, with computers, I don't think this is the case. If we know a computer's code and its experience, we know what it will do in any given situation. This isn't the case with people. We can know a person as well as it is possible to know a person, and they can still surprise us. It might be possible to predict, with some accuracy, a person's actions, but we can never know them.

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"Die Deutschen meinen, daß die Kraft sich in Härte und Grausamkeit offenbaren müsse, sie unterwerfen sich dann gerne und mit Bewunderung:[...]. Daß es Kraft giebt in der Milde und Stille, das glauben sie nicht leicht."

"The Germans believe that power must reveal itself in hardness and cruelty and then submit themselves gladly and with admiration[...]. They do not believe readily that there is power in meekness and calm."

-- Friedrich Nietzsche

Johnny Rotten

As with Asaris, I think it's possible for an identity's observational capacity to be complex enough that its own limits cannot be objectively determined.

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"The idea that money doesn't buy you happiness is a lie put about by the rich, to stop the poor from killing them." -- Michael Caine