What is self?

[Subsymbolic]

I can't help wondering who this jumped up twat might be...

In that case, allow me to make my priorities in that post a little more explicit.

It's quite alright, Sub, don't take the trouble on my account. I'm a paranoid person of late. Pay me no attention...

Sorry, I see you already edited your post. I need to stay out of these threads, at least until I come out of rehab.

I suspect you are in better mental health than you think.

 

[WAB]

It's quite alright, Sub, don't take the trouble on my account. I'm a paranoid person of late. Pay me no attention...

Sorry, I see you already edited your post. I need to stay out of these threads, at least until I come out of rehab.

I suspect you are in better mental health than you think.

Thanks. But I do actually get very paranoid, which is not a good sign by and large.

Anyway:

Steve: What say you to the Heraclitus and/or Aristotle? Do you think the ancient Hindu/Buddhist thinkers were superior? Granted, from what I've read, I think some of them were absolutely brilliant, but so were the ancient Greeks.

 

[Speakpigeon]

No Spinoza, Interpreting Hebrew for meanings does not interest me.

What is self is a perennial question going far back.

There is no metaphysical answer, the best you can do is adopt a philosophy or religion that satisfies you. I take a physical science view. We are essentially a biocomputer. Any attempt to answer the question is self referential, I look at it like a dog chasing its tail. To define something requires a reference point, and it is always subjective.

I don't think that's really true. Obviously, we talk about ourselves and there's something at least apparently self-referential about that but that may not be the case at all. In essence, your assertion here is based on the unsupported assumption that the thing doing the description is the same as the thing being described. Well, personally, I certainly don't know that this is true and I doubt very much that anybody does. If one assume for example the existence of something like a deterministic physical world, then the description of the self we're talking about isn't done by the self, and so it isn't self-referential.

Doesn't mean that the description can be true or even better than you think but at least it's not self-referential.

Assuming, that is, a deterministic physical world, which may be seen as a really huge assumption.

But we don't need to assume that. We just have to recognise that your assertion is based on a prior, unsupported, assumption.


You didn't realise that because you are yourself much too self-referential.
EB

 

[Jobar]

So, is it (or will it eventually be) possible to instill a sense of self into a sufficiently powerful computer, and make a true artificial intelligence?

I've seen good arguments that the self is a survival mechanism, and only occurs in social organisms to allow individuals to differentiate themselves from all other similar organisms. Can we program a computer to perceive itself as in some way individual from other computers, and human beings?

This may constitute a derail, but it's certainly relevant.

 

[WAB]

So, is it (or will it eventually be) possible to instill a sense of self into a sufficiently powerful computer, and make a true artificial intelligence?

I've seen good arguments that the self is a survival mechanism, and only occurs in social organisms to allow individuals to differentiate themselves from all other similar organisms. Can we program a computer to perceive itself as in some way individual from other computers, and human beings?

This may constitute a derail, but it's certainly relevant.

Not a derail at all, in my opinion.

Some people think were are right on the verge of actual, sentient AI; others believe it to be centuries or even millennia away (like sci-fi author Greg Egan, who by the way is not a scientist but an author of sci-fi, as he states); and still others, like my father, an atheist-cum-eternal universe ("It Just IS") retired civil servant, think it will never be possible.

I would like to think that it might be possible, but that doesn't really mean that I think it will be possible. I think conscious robots, like Sonny in the film version of I, Robot,, would be awfully cool to have around, albeit, slightly worrisome, since one would have to wonder what their sense of empathy could possibly be, not having had any childhood to adulthood experience, and primarily, the fact that they would not, presumably, be able to experience pain, which IMhO, is the chief reason humans are able to sympathize and empathize.

My advise: Install, or program in any AI, pain sensitivity, nerve centers, or even a capacity for a good electrical shock, when they fu.k up, so that they learn not to fu.k up.

Lastly, I appeal to the high court in Peanutland that I am an amateur, and that someone like Sub or Cop could address the issue of AI to a far greater extent and with far greater overall utility, from folk to professional.

 

[steve_bank]

So, is it (or will it eventually be) possible to instill a sense of self into a sufficiently powerful computer, and make a true artificial intelligence?

I've seen good arguments that the self is a survival mechanism, and only occurs in social organisms to allow individuals to differentiate themselves from all other similar organisms. Can we program a computer to perceive itself as in some way individual from other computers, and human beings?

This may constitute a derail, but it's certainly relevant.

We can develop a system that is aware of itself in a broad sense sense, but self aware as we think of us humans, no. See Neural Networks on science, someday for better or worse it will probably happen.

In chimp and other non human cultures males are clearly aware of their position in the structure and limits on behavior. Seems like self awareness, awareness of consequences.

 

[bilby]

So, is it (or will it eventually be) possible to instill a sense of self into a sufficiently powerful computer, and make a true artificial intelligence?

I've seen good arguments that the self is a survival mechanism, and only occurs in social organisms to allow individuals to differentiate themselves from all other similar organisms. Can we program a computer to perceive itself as in some way individual from other computers, and human beings?

This may constitute a derail, but it's certainly relevant.

If we reject substance dualism (and we surely should do so), then the possibility of an artificial intelligence indistinguishable from human intelligence seems unavoidable. Right now we cannot do it, but in principle all that is needed is to accurately build a copy of a human brain. That copy might need to be accurate down to the molecular level, but I suspect that all we really need is a network of artificial neurons that respond to each other the way that biological neurons do - and such networks can be simulated by ordinary computers, given sufficient processing power and memory/storage.

It would be pretty expensive, but likely the biggest technical challenges would be in determining the detailed structure required (presumably by examining existing human brains). Of course, there are also ethical considerations, which could be very thorny.

And if we really just want some more human brains, these can be manufactured in nine months by unskilled labour (although such systems then require in the order of a couple of decades of programming before they can produce useful output).

 

[Jobar]

I hope it's one day possible to transfer the 'sense of self' from an organic brain to an electronic one; while that wouldn't really make you immortal, since your biological body would still die, personally I would go for it like a shot. And no doubt the ability to do that (presuming it's ever possible) would teach us a great deal about individual consciousness.

(I know some here are fans of the webcomic Questionable Content; many of the characters are self-aware AIs in robot bodies. Reading it is what made me bring this up. See for instance http://questionablecontent.net/view.php?comic=3239, and the next couple of installments after that. And the most recent episodes are about what happens when one of the flesh-and-blood characters falls in love with one of the AIs.)

 

[bilby]

I hope it's one day possible to transfer the 'sense of self' from an organic brain to an electronic one; while that wouldn't really make you immortal, since your biological body would still die, personally I would go for it like a shot. And no doubt the ability to do that (presuming it's ever possible) would teach us a great deal about individual consciousness.

(I know some here are fans of the webcomic Questionable Content; many of the characters are self-aware AIs in robot bodies. Reading it is what made me bring this up. See for instance http://questionablecontent.net/view.php?comic=3239, and the next couple of installments after that. And the most recent episodes are about what happens when one of the flesh-and-blood characters falls in love with one of the AIs.)

I would go for that too - But I would expect the experience to be more like suddenly having a twin, than like suddenly being a machine. Just as an identical twin is not another version of 'you', so an AI with your sense of self would not be another version of 'you' either - Twins both have an individual sense of self; They don't share one, or have to option to decide which twin to "be" at any time. The experience for the machine would be similar - presumably if it had your memories, it would feel rather strange, suddenly being a machine, after growing up human.

 

[WAB]

Just to mention:

There are a lot of people who think maybe Jesus of Nazareth was actually a spaceman. He offered people the opportunity to be "saved", i.e. saved to hard-drive. This ties in with the train of thought twigging from the OP. Hence, the 'Savior'. He always talked about One greater than Him. "I come from the Father." Abba, Yahweh, Jehovah, God, El, I Am That I Am, etc.

Not I yam what I yam: that was Popeye. Let us keep our ducks in a row, and our fictional and/or nonfictional characters in order.

I appeal to the high court of this small pond in the vast webuverse and to you, milord, and to all present, be you angels, or just bored and terribly underpaid British solicitors, as opposed to our grossly over-compensated liars...ooops, I mean lawyers, here in Rome, er...sheesh, I mean Amerika, that I do not necessarily buy into the Jesus as spaceman theory, but I'd be lying if I said I didn't think it was fun to think about.

Don't forget, in the Gospels there was a bit about Jesus transforming from a presumably regular looking fellow—since there is virtually no description in the canonical texts about Christ's physical appearance—to a rather beautiful Being, and being taken back to the Father, later, after He was mercilessly killed, which was usually reckoned as upward. Might it have been that Jesus had not quite died at the time of the Deposition, and was revived by modern medical technology, in a nifty spaceship, zipping back to wherever the heck Jehova hangs out?

I drew a quick crucifixion scene in the mirror last night, when it was foggy after a shower, and quickly wiped it away. When I looked back at the big smear, it struck me immediately that it looked like a profile view of the famous Predator character from the films. Which, I suddenly thought, was perhaps the reason God told Moses he could only see His 'back side', since to see His face would be altogether too much for Moses and might even scare the living sh.t out of him. (Manic bi-polar stuff happening then, but at least I knew it, and know it.)

Not to mention God tells Moses to hide in the rocks on a mountain, and that he will see the 'back parts' of God as God goes zooming by, and that even that will be astonishing for Moses. Spaceship? Nah, couldn't be! But let's not forget that Moses has a tan when he comes back from his visits with the scary Almighty. And what about that BIG finger that machines things into stone?

/kooky derail over

 

[steve_bank]

It's quite alright, Sub, don't take the trouble on my account. I'm a paranoid person of late. Pay me no attention...

Sorry, I see you already edited your post. I need to stay out of these threads, at least until I come out of rehab.

I suspect you are in better mental health than you think.

Thanks. But I do actually get very paranoid, which is not a good sign by and large.

Anyway:

Steve: What say you to the Heraclitus and/or Aristotle? Do you think the ancient Hindu/Buddhist thinkers were superior? Granted, from what I've read, I think some of them were absolutely brilliant, but so were the ancient Greeks.

In the 70s I dwelled on Tibetan Buddhism. There were several books by Evans-Wentz an anthropologist who immersed himself in the culture in the early 1900s. They should be in print. I was reading a chapter in Tibetan Yoga And Secret Doctrines called Yoga Of The Psychic Heat. It was about keeping warm without fire. I puzzled through a section until I realized they were talking about sexual imagery to get excited short of ejaculations. The book is a translation of Tibetan texts. The point is the metaphors and language are different, but there is nothing special about Buddhism.


After a while I realized Buddhism was about a psychology that mapped into modern psychology. I believe a book was written about it. I see Buddha as the first 'self help guru'. It was about understanding the roots of your personal troubles and pain. He went from comfort and luxury to extreme asceticism and denial. His solution was a balanced middle path. The problem as he saw it was all the causal emotional links that comprise our self image. Karma. I see nothing in Buddhism that does not map into western thought.

The western metaphysical debate on self is ancient, and it has no single solution. It is what you define it to be. It will always be based on set of assumptions from which a metaphysics is built. It is all thought, thought has meaning only in what we assign to it. You are using thought to define thought, somewhere you have to drive a stake in the ground with an improvable assumption.

There is an obscure group called General Semantics from the 30s. I read the book by a guy named Korzibski(?). It ended up being a little like Scientology but it made some points.

'The map is not the countryside'. Meaning we substitute thought forms as reality itself and from that flows psychological troubles.

Self has whatever meaning we assign to the term. Self referential bootstrapping.This why we have the wide variety of religious and philosophical world and life views.

Pick a definition that satisfies, or make your own.

 

[WAB]

Just a fly by:

That Tibetan "Yoga Of The Psychic Heat", as you go on to describe it, sounds exactly like edging, which is what I do whenever I need to write fiction, not naughty fiction, mind you, just any good, creative fiction. I can do poetry without that, but to write fiction I need to get all edgy.

From what I gather, fappers galore around the world can and/or will edge for hours, even days. There are some extremists who deny themselves ejaculation period, like extreme cucks, who bind their willies down while they serve their bulls. Sado-masochism, and every other variety of sexual fetish or pleasure, from vanilla (I'm pretty much vanilla, so I was told) to brutal, seems to be a worldwide phenom, now finally out in the open due to the advent of the web.

There is a scene in the Di Nero Film Raging Bull where the boxer gets it going with his wife (or girlfriend, I forgot), right before a big fight, but stops right before climbing that mountain. He needs that edge to have more power and force in the ring.

*

As for the self: to tell the truth, I find the discussion boring now, and I hashed it all out for myself (there I go with that word again!) years ago, with DBT, two-who-shall-remain-nameless-since-they-are-on-ignore, Speakie, fast, kennethamy, my friend Kharakov, and a host of others who have long since left the building, that I know myself, have a perfectly fine and usable sense of myself, and don't think for a minute that other humans do not have the same dang thing. I believe that to really think otherwise is irrational.

I'm an Aristotelian at heart, though I love a lot about Plato, especially his time reckoning of a 'great cataclysm' that he believed happened some six or so millennia before his time, which ties very nicely into the very destroyed ruins of Pumapunku in Bolivia, at least according to Archaeologist Karl Schmidt, who has of course been mostly ignored by the usual suspects...ain't goin' there.