On Monday, 8 July 2013 at 13:05:55 UTC, John Colvin wrote:
> ..

> Problem A) Understanding how the human brain processes certain types of information.
>
> Problem B) Making a decision about what constitutes self-awareness and where to draw the line.
>
> Those are not equivalent problems in the slightest.

Well, second one is not really a scientific problem, it is a philosophical one. Self-awareness is a very vague term with a lot of space for personal interpretation. I don't even think it is worth speaking about.

On Monday, 8 July 2013 at 13:31:41 UTC, Dicebot wrote:
> ...

And, yeah, the very point I wanted to mention - while concept of self-awareness is useless on its own, it is quite interesting in scope of first problem - "how does a human brain reason about someones self-awareness" :)

On Mon, Jul 08, 2013 at 03:34:43PM +0200, Dicebot wrote:
> On Monday, 8 July 2013 at 13:31:41 UTC, Dicebot wrote:
> >...
> 
> And, yeah, the very point I wanted to mention - while concept of self-awareness is useless on its own, it is quite interesting in scope of first problem - "how does a human brain reason about someones self-awareness" :)

I love you guys. A thread about the merits of adding path append operators to strings turns into a discussion about self-awareness. Brilliant. ;-)


T

-- 
It only takes one twig to burn down a forest.

On Monday, 8 July 2013 at 14:28:33 UTC, H. S. Teoh wrote:
> I love you guys. A thread about the merits of adding path append
> operators to strings turns into a discussion about self-awareness.
> Brilliant. ;-)

I don't care about path append operators but tricks of human consciousness is a an important hobby interest to me :) And I doubt I can easily find any better community out there to speak about it judging by friendliness and intelligence level :P

On Monday, 8 July 2013 at 13:34:44 UTC, Dicebot wrote:
> On Monday, 8 July 2013 at 13:31:41 UTC, Dicebot wrote:
>> ...
>
> And, yeah, the very point I wanted to mention - while concept of self-awareness is useless on its own, it is quite interesting in scope of first problem - "how does a human brain reason about someones self-awareness" :)

Without compile time reflection !

On 7/8/2013 6:05 AM, John Colvin wrote:
> Problem A) Understanding how the human brain processes certain types of
> information.
>
> Problem B) Making a decision about what constitutes self-awareness and where to
> draw the line.
>
> Those are not equivalent problems in the slightest.

I'm not so sure at all about the validity of your last statement. It presumes, for example, that the brain is two separate things with a line dividing them.

On 7/8/2013 6:31 AM, Dicebot wrote:
> Well, second one is not really a scientific problem, it is a philosophical one.
> Self-awareness is a very vague term with a lot of space for personal
> interpretation. I don't even think it is worth speaking about.

If you consider that our brains evolved, and self-awareness was a result of evolution, then self-awareness presumably offers some sort of survival benefit.

Following that line of reasoning, self-awareness becomes a real phenomenon with a scientific basis.

On Monday, 8 July 2013 at 18:37:30 UTC, Walter Bright wrote:
> If you consider that our brains evolved, and self-awareness was a result of evolution, then self-awareness presumably offers some sort of survival benefit.
>
> Following that line of reasoning, self-awareness becomes a real phenomenon with a scientific basis.

I do not consider that self-awareness is result of an evolution. I am not even sure it actually exists. It is a very abstract term with no clear meaning, using it just obfuscates the idea.

On 7/8/2013 11:54 AM, Dicebot wrote:
> On Monday, 8 July 2013 at 18:37:30 UTC, Walter Bright wrote:
>> If you consider that our brains evolved, and self-awareness was a result of
>> evolution, then self-awareness presumably offers some sort of survival benefit.
>>
>> Following that line of reasoning, self-awareness becomes a real phenomenon
>> with a scientific basis.
>
> I do not consider that self-awareness is result of an evolution. I am not even
> sure it actually exists. It is a very abstract term with no clear meaning, using
> it just obfuscates the idea.

Just because we have difficulty defining something is not a reason to dismiss it as irrelevant or non-existent.

I'm sure you're self-aware, as I'm sure Siri and Watson are not.

It's like somewhere between a fertilized egg and your current form you became a person. Just because we are unable to definitively point to the moment when you became one, doesn't mean you didn't become one, nor does it mean that personhood is not a very useful and meaningful construct.

Walter Bright:

> Except that we have no idea how brains actually work.
>
> Are fruit flies self-aware? Probably not. Are dogs? Definitely. So at what point between fruit flies and dogs does self-awareness start?
>
> We have no idea. None at all.

There are many things that are not yet known in neurobiology and in the higher organizational patterns of the brains, both in their computational structure and the dynamic interactions between their parts.

But we are not totally ignorant. Neurobiology and other brain sciences have discovered many things. This old guy  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerald_Edelman  has proposed several theories (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neural_Darwinism ), done simulations; and generally all kind of researchers are increasing our knowledge of such topics every day, so currently we are not in the full dark as you say.

The differences in the brains of different animals are slowly getting understood, including what's the difference between the consciousness of dogs, self-consciousness of humans, simpler brains of reptiles, and cabled aggregates of bodies inside tiny insect brains (as it often happens in biological sciences, what we discover is that even the 'simplest brains' are quite more complex than previously believed. Today we know how a fruit flies learns and remembers scents, how its tiny brain copes with the needs of a complex body able to fly in a very complex environment, etc).

Bye,
bearophile