We need consciousness to remember, to learn and to do the prediction involved in controlling movement.
Controlled movement does not require consciousness, memory, learning, or prediction. This (simulated) machine has none of those things, yet it walks over uneven terrain and searches for (simulated) food. What controlled movement requires is control.
Memory, learning, and prediction do not require consciousness. Mundane machines and software exist that do all of these things without anyone attributing consciousness to them.
People may think they are conscious of how they move, but they are not. Unless you have studied human physiology, it is unlikely that you can say which of your muscles are exerted in performing any particular movement. People are conscious of muscular action only at a rather high level of abstraction: “pick up a cup” rather than “activate the abductor pollicis brevis”. Most of the learning that happens when you learn Tai Chi, yoga, dance, or martial arts, is not accessible to consciousness. There are exercises that you can tell people exactly how to do, and demonstrate in front of them, and yet they will go wrong the first time they try. Then the instructor gives the class a metaphor for the required movement, involving, say, an imaginary lead-weighted diving boot on one foot, and suddenly the students get it. Where is consciousness in that process?
I believe there is scientific agreement that the memory of an event in episodic memory only can be done it the event is consciously experienced. No conscious experience = no episodic memory
A certain type of learning depends on episodic memory and so conscious experience.
The fine control of movement depends on the comparison between expectation and result, ie error signals. As it appears to be consciousness that gives access across the brain to a near future prediction, it is needed for fine control. Prediction is only valuable in it is accessible.
I am not saying that memory, learning or fine motor control is ‘done’ in consciousness (or even that in other systems, such as robots, there would not be other ways to do these things.) I am only saying that the science implies that in the human brain we need to have conscious experience in order for these processes to work properly.
Yes, consciousness is certainly involved in the way we do some of those things, but I don’t see that as evidence that that is why we have consciousness. Consciousness is involved in many things: modelling other people, solving problems, imagining anticipated situations, and so on. But how did it come about and why?
FWIW, I don’t think anyone has come close to explaining consciousness yet. Every attempt ends up pointing to some physical phenomenon, demonstrated or hypothesised, and saying “that’s consciousness”. But the most they explain is people’s reports of being conscious, not the experience that they are reports of. I don’t have an explanation for the experience either. I don’t even have an idea of what an explanation would look like.
In terms of Eliezer’s metaphor of the Explain/Worship/Ignore dialog box, I don’t worship the ineffable mystery, nor ignore the question by declaring it solved, but I don’t know how to hit the Explain button either. For the time being the dialog will just have to float there unanswered.
We need consciousness to remember, to learn and to do the prediction involved in controlling movement.
Controlled movement does not require consciousness, memory, learning, or prediction.
Concurred. I want to point out that Julian Jaynes presents a lot of evidence for the lack of a role for consciousness for these and many other things in his book The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind. (And yes, I know his general thesis is kind of flaky, but he handles this very narrow topic well.)
One of his examples is how people, under experimental conditions and without even knowing it, adjust muscles that can’t be consciously controlled, in order to optimally contain a source of irritation. They never report any conscious recognition of the correlation between that muscle’s flexing and the irritation (which was ensured to exist by the experiment, and which irritation they were aware of).
I’m fairly sure a friend of a friend was on a similar insomnia drug and held a long, apparently-coherent phone conversation with her sister, to whom she had not spoken in some time. And then woke up later and thought, “I should call my sister—we haven’t spoken in a long time.”
Let me just say I find the stories more plausible than the newswriters seem to.
Controlled movement does not require consciousness, memory, learning, or prediction. This (simulated) machine has none of those things, yet it walks over uneven terrain and searches for (simulated) food. What controlled movement requires is control.
Memory, learning, and prediction do not require consciousness. Mundane machines and software exist that do all of these things without anyone attributing consciousness to them.
People may think they are conscious of how they move, but they are not. Unless you have studied human physiology, it is unlikely that you can say which of your muscles are exerted in performing any particular movement. People are conscious of muscular action only at a rather high level of abstraction: “pick up a cup” rather than “activate the abductor pollicis brevis”. Most of the learning that happens when you learn Tai Chi, yoga, dance, or martial arts, is not accessible to consciousness. There are exercises that you can tell people exactly how to do, and demonstrate in front of them, and yet they will go wrong the first time they try. Then the instructor gives the class a metaphor for the required movement, involving, say, an imaginary lead-weighted diving boot on one foot, and suddenly the students get it. Where is consciousness in that process?
I believe there is scientific agreement that the memory of an event in episodic memory only can be done it the event is consciously experienced. No conscious experience = no episodic memory
A certain type of learning depends on episodic memory and so conscious experience.
The fine control of movement depends on the comparison between expectation and result, ie error signals. As it appears to be consciousness that gives access across the brain to a near future prediction, it is needed for fine control. Prediction is only valuable in it is accessible.
I am not saying that memory, learning or fine motor control is ‘done’ in consciousness (or even that in other systems, such as robots, there would not be other ways to do these things.) I am only saying that the science implies that in the human brain we need to have conscious experience in order for these processes to work properly.
Yes, consciousness is certainly involved in the way we do some of those things, but I don’t see that as evidence that that is why we have consciousness. Consciousness is involved in many things: modelling other people, solving problems, imagining anticipated situations, and so on. But how did it come about and why?
FWIW, I don’t think anyone has come close to explaining consciousness yet. Every attempt ends up pointing to some physical phenomenon, demonstrated or hypothesised, and saying “that’s consciousness”. But the most they explain is people’s reports of being conscious, not the experience that they are reports of. I don’t have an explanation for the experience either. I don’t even have an idea of what an explanation would look like.
In terms of Eliezer’s metaphor of the Explain/Worship/Ignore dialog box, I don’t worship the ineffable mystery, nor ignore the question by declaring it solved, but I don’t know how to hit the Explain button either. For the time being the dialog will just have to float there unanswered.
Concurred. I want to point out that Julian Jaynes presents a lot of evidence for the lack of a role for consciousness for these and many other things in his book The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind. (And yes, I know his general thesis is kind of flaky, but he handles this very narrow topic well.)
One of his examples is how people, under experimental conditions and without even knowing it, adjust muscles that can’t be consciously controlled, in order to optimally contain a source of irritation. They never report any conscious recognition of the correlation between that muscle’s flexing and the irritation (which was ensured to exist by the experiment, and which irritation they were aware of).
It may in fact be possible to drive while unconscious, though not very well.
I’m fairly sure a friend of a friend was on a similar insomnia drug and held a long, apparently-coherent phone conversation with her sister, to whom she had not spoken in some time. And then woke up later and thought, “I should call my sister—we haven’t spoken in a long time.”
Let me just say I find the stories more plausible than the newswriters seem to.