[LINK] Machine Learning Was: Re: Robot cars and the fear gap

[Jim Birch]

David Lochrin wrote:

Now if we assume everything runs in accordance with physics, what would we
> expect to see?  Lots of electronic activity, certainly.  But perception?
> By what mechanism could this device possibly perceive green grass, blue
> sky, and a red fire engine?


Aren't you getting religious here?   The brain is obviously a machine,
isn't it?  It is a machine that includes a built-in delusion that there is
a little guy sitting at the centre.  (It is obviously a useful delusion, if
you have it, you can function.  If the brain has failed to the extent that
it can no longer produce the delusion, you end up clawing the walls at an
asylum, or are left to die by the tribe because you are a risk.)   We
assume that we have an "I" doing the perceiving and other people have an
"I" too, but there is ample evidence that things don't work like that.  See
for example http://dericbownds.net/I_illusion_web/I_illusion_web.html

Your argument seems to me to be that since there is no little guy in the
box of electronics, there can be no no perception.  Hello?  Where exactly,
do these quasi-magical perceptions of the brain machine come from then? A
parallel spirit universe?  This is exactly the same error that the Chinese
Room argument makes, it assumes some non-empirical circular nonsense about
consciousness that can only be "demonstrated" from within your subjective
content, content which is clearly chock full of illusions.  You don't
assume that what you see on a computer screen is the inner contents of the
computer, yet you are quite happy to assume that what appears in your
consciousness is some kind of unassailable ground truth.  Why should this
be so?  It is clear that it is evolutionarily adaptive to have the
horrendously complex inner workings of the brain hidden from ourselves,
just like you don't know how to move your heart muscles. (It is not clear
how all the mechanisms of the brain work, but it is clear that we evolved
like this because it is adaptive.)

As far as I can see, the "hard problem" is disappearing step by step with
every advance in neuroscience.  We "perceive" faces in clouds but the
discovery of facial recognition circuits in the brain shows what this
simply a mechanical function, even if we imagine it is an act of
"imagination" in our "consciousness."  You can perceive a face in blank
wall with appropriate electrical brain stimulation.

Jim