Human and Machine Consciousness
March 7, 2018
David Gamez
Chapter 3 tackles some of the ‘hard’ problems with consciousness. First, it is impossible to imagine the relationship between consciousness and the invisible physical world. Second, we find it difficult to imagine the connection between conscious experiences of brain activity and other conscious experiences. Third, there are brute regularities between consciousness and the physical world that...
Human and Machine Consciousness
March 7, 2018
David Gamez
Scientists measure consciousness through first-person reports, which raises problems about the reliability of first-person reports, the possibility of non-reportable consciousness and the causal closure of the physical world. The fourth chapter addresses these issues by making assumptions that explain how consciousness can be measured. First, we need to identify the systems that we believe are...
Human and Machine Consciousness
March 7, 2018
David Gamez
Some people believe that consciousness is linked to the execution of computations. They claim that some computations are linked to consciousness regardless of whether they are executing in a brain or a digital computer. Chapter 8 argues that computations cannot be linked to consciousness by themselves because computing is a subjective use that we make of the world. Computation theories of...
Human and Machine Consciousness
March 7, 2018
David Gamez
Chapter 9 explains how theories of consciousness can be experimentally tested. This can only be done on systems that we assume are conscious, such as normally functioning adult human brains. We can also use theories of consciousness to make deductions about the consciousness of brain damaged people, animals and robots. These deductions cannot be verified because we cannot measure the...
Human and Machine Consciousness
March 7, 2018
David Gamez
In daily life we treat colour, sound and smell as objective properties of the world. Over the last three hundred years science has developed a series of interpretations of the world that have stripped objects of their sensory properties. Apples used to be red and tasty; now physical apples are colourless collections of jigging atoms, probability distributions of wave-particles. The physical...
Human and Machine Consciousness
March 7, 2018
David Gamez
When we have developed a reliable theory of consciousness, we will be able to use it to modify and enhance our consciousness. For example, we could change the shape of our conscious body or increase our level of consciousness. Chapter 10 explains how we can use a theory of consciousness to identify the physical state that is linked to a desired conscious state. If we could realize this physical...
Human and Machine Consciousness
March 7, 2018
David Gamez
The eleventh chapter distinguishes between four types of machine consciousness and outlines how a reliable theory of consciousness could be used to create conscious machines and to make believable deductions about the consciousness of artificial systems. Brain implants and consciousness uploading are investigated as forms of machine consciousness, and the chapter discusses whether conscious...
Human and Machine Consciousness
March 7, 2018
David Gamez
The fifth chapter explains how we can develop mathematical theories of the relationship between consciousness and the physical world. Scientists have carried out pilot studies that have looked for correlations between consciousness and brain activity. We are now starting to create compact mathematical theories that can map between physical and conscious states. It might be possible to use...
Human and Machine Consciousness
March 7, 2018
David Gamez
A number of people have claimed that information patterns are linked to consciousness regardless of whether they occur in a brain, a computer or a pile of sand. The seventh chapter shows that this approach fails because information is not a property of the physical world and any given information pattern can be extracted from both the conscious and unconscious brain. Information theories of...
Human and Machine Consciousness
March 7, 2018
David Gamez
Chapter 6 discusses physical theories of consciousness, which link consciousness to patterns in materials (for example, neuron firing patterns). With physical theories the materials in which the patterns occur are critical - if the same patterns occur in different materials, they are not claimed to be linked to consciousness. Physical theories of consciousness are similar to scientific theories...