Things for atheists to think about

Surely the point is there is no difference from a physics point of view.... so where does the difference originate?   One can alays deny there is a difference, but that strikes me as feigning blindnstress to avoid addressing a tricky question beause there is something intrisically different about breaking a manequin and killing a person.

my partial solution is to think of 'reality' as consisting of the physical and the mental.  Traditionally, science has always concerned itself with only the physical (ie u1).   The result is that we are pretty good at explaining the physical world, but pretty awful at at explaining the mental.   We have good theories for quarks and supernova, no theories at all for qualia.   As humans, love and duty are as much causes forces as are gravity and magnetism (perhaps even more so), but traditional science has steered well clear of them!

The focus on physicalism has served us very well - its given us the modern world.  But it fails in acoulpe of ways.  One is that science gives no insight into moral issues.  Science is - by design -amoral.  That is not a defect of science; science is (in my vocaulary) the study of u1.  If there was no consciousness in the universe, science would tell you all there was to know about it.   But in a universe with consciousness (u2, our universe) it does not tell us 'what is a good life'?.

The reason I introduced the notion of u2 is to illuminate the difference between a universe with and a universe without consciousness.   Because consciousness exists, desciptions in terms of u1 only describe only part of reality.

Theists are right about one thing - a purely physical universe has no meaning or purpose.  They are wrong to think the solution is the eistence of a god.  The reason the universe gained meaning and purpose is that matter self-organised into structures that manifest consciousness - ie sentient brains.   If no brain existed, things would still happen, but nothing would matter, nothing would be good or bad.

But consciousness DOES exist.  I think that is why one-eyed physicalism can appear empty of meaning and nihilistic.

A longer, more coherent exposition of my ideas will have to wait until I write my book!

The difference is that we subjectively attached more meaning to a human than a mannequin. Even dropping a dead human body feels wrong somehow while I will happily drop mannequins all day long. This makes no sense as the dead body doesn't mind being dropped any more than tbe mannequin does but its true.

I submit therefore that we devided there was a difference and that is the only difference.

We have evolved (generally advantageous) social instincts that include amplified empathy for human beings.

The difference is Qualitative and these subjective value judgments (axiology) are manifestations of our biological programming blended with our primary experiences.

So how do I program a robot to feel about killing the way do?   If you aren't a c# coder yourself, a flowchart would do!   Don't forget I have no problem with it being easy to create a functional copy... it's implementing your subective feelings that is what Chalmers calls the hard problem.

There is no pracrical application intended...it's the purely theoretical question of how subjectivity works - without hand waving!

Let's say you did succeed at creating an artificial consciousness with the capacity for subjective feeling. How would you know you had succeeded?

What measure of consciousness do we have other than the behaviors that we usually associate with consciousness? 

You say you believe that I am conciousbut if you could see my mental processes as computer code wpuld you still feel that way? Perhaps all that takes the magic away is understanding how the trick was done.

sometimes a stage magician does a trick that is truly baffling.   You know its a trick, but you can't think how it was done.  Kowing it is a trick but not knowing how it works can be very annoying, and thatshow I feel about subjectivity.   I'm not a dualist or a woo-woo fan - but subectivity/consciousness is a trick I can't work out!

Let me put it another way. What is it exactly that disqualifies an AI that you and I possess and how can you be sure it was still lacking if you made a program so sophisticated that it seemed concious?

Forget what consciousness is for a moment and let's talk about what it is not.

I'm not sure I am ambitious enough to tackle the whole of consciousness!   For many decades my pet problem is that of 'qualia'.   When I see something couloured - blue, or yellow whatever - I have an experience in a modality called colour.  There is a way blue appears to me that isdifferent from the way yellow appears to me.   I'm sure it is the same for you!

But when I learned about computers, I found that to a computer blue is a pattern of bits (FF0000 say) and yellow is 0000FF.   it was clear that if acomputer was aware of colours at all, it was not in the same modality that I am aware of colour.

What the brain appears to do is translate physical quantities (what brutal calls quanta) into qualia (subjective experience).  For example wavelength of light (quanta) is translated colour (qualia).   It is quite general - air vibrations are turned into noises and musial notes, tempertaures into feeling of warmth and cold, chemical interactions into tastes and smells.  I don't know if doing that sort of translation is necessary,but it is how the brain has evolved to work,and it seems to work quite well - we do survive in a potentially very hostile world!

When we try to dosoething similar using a computer we use a different technique.  We do not translate information about theoutsideworld intoqulia but into numbers and apply numerical techniques to them because we know how to do that!   For example if you usethe flood fill tool in a paint prograam it operates on quale-free numerical values in a way that mimics identifing qualia. The comupter flood fiils a region because the pixels have the same numers, not the same colour.

Now I happen to believe the brain is a meat computer.  But the meat computer in my skull supports qualia, but my expensive laptop most definitely does not,  I now that because I know it works purely numerically.   So unless meat computers a magical powers by virtue of being made of meat, it should be possible to get a silicon computer to support qualia.  

40 or 50 years ago it would have sounded obviously true that conscious computers were ust around the corner.   When Space Odyssey came out in 1968 nobody though its conscious computer (HAL) was the least likely part of the story - but many people might well do so now!

In my view the lack of a decent theory of subective consciousness is a major lacunae in the physicalist world view.  It's not enough to make me doubt the validity of physicalism... not on most days, anyway! 

   

Subjectivity/consciousness is nothing more than data processing.

Though one could add, that consciousness is having the computer switched on.

Subjectivity is analysing acquired data and formulating a response.

Computers already do this.

Though how much longer we can remain in control of the on/off thing, is another matter.