Can a computer know more than 0’s and 1’s, can a brain know more than electrical signals?
Surely the computer only knows everything in terms of 01 number sets? It doesn’t know that it is shaking your hand [as say a robot]?
So how can a brain know more than collocative info from electrical signals?
They say that the best way to solve a problem is to formulate it so that the solution is apparent. You go a long way here with the introduction of the term collocative.
This is precisely what computers, digital ones, don’t embody.
Collocativity is a combination of semantic and contextual relation, related to (al)chemical reaction as much as to logic. It operates on different levels of truth-value at once.
Complex compounds of causality, “affect” are result of this.
Meaning is hidden in these parts and value is how we allocate it.
A computer only identifies on one level, gives no cause to such compounds of higher information density, as such are only possible at a level of consequentiality not predictable through digital (yes/no) logic. The dimension of quality is missing, its axis tied to that of quantity.
I am looking forward now for what must be around twenty five years for what I was told by a processorarchitect was on the design table - the quantumprocessor. It is strange that I never since heard the explanation that he gave me, nor actually heard a lot about the project at all. But if it works like he said it should, this could be a breakthrough in making computers more similar to the brain.
In the computers we use one pulse is used as one bit, which means to say that one quantum represents one quality. But the quantumprocessor (is what I heard) uses the precise measure of imperfect certainty, of a particle to be at several places at once, so as to convey several parts of an instruction, or even parts of different instructions (?) - one quantum may represent different qualities at once. As in life.
I will leave it at this, because this is bizarre enough and needs to be verified.
Fixed Cross
Good point! The brain doesn’t think digitally or logically, but as chemical and electrical objects ~ which in complex brains may derive info as we know it. …though part of the question remains, how?
How do electrical signals derive ‘quality’?
I was wondering if the objects [nerves/electrons] themselves collocatively form pattern type information [like DNA is], but from my limited knowledge I don’t think that’s what occurs. Even if it does we then have a jump to non collocative info ~ conceptual, visual and linguistic. Hmm though the visualisations in our brains could be such patterns perhaps.
I have read about quantum computers, and some chap on a documentary appeared to have a simple version of such a machine. I don’t know if neurons work like that? Nerves have positive, neutral and negative three-way polarity, then in neurons assumedly [?], and neuron bundles the chemical goo - if I may, perhaps creates a variable medium something like as with quantum computers.
I think that even after that, and if we made a computer comparable to the brain, its difficult to get past the mechanics and onto qualities, especially as we experience them. Any kind of machine/brain appears to be limited to what it is, just as current computers can only know binary code.
I am thinking as like d63 here…
It’s the emergent property principle which is the key, as you say quantum computers may be able to derive that as much as the brain does. …but what is it!
Last night on a rebroadcast of Nova questions like this were probed with respect to Watson’s triumphant victory over human beings on Jeopardy.
Even with the advent of “machine learning” there appear to be limits to what a computer can “know”. Can it emote? Can it self-consciously convey psychological states? Can it be ironic? Can it fall in love? Can it respond to music? Can it critique art?
Watson only knows questions and answers as binary patterns, in fact I don’t think it ‘knows’ anything.
I expect that a learning computer can match number sets [like Watson matches answers to questions by correlation], kind of like it’s a library and librarian, it can pick books and info within them. It could probably mimic most things we do but I doubt if it will ever critique art except where it is programmed with the info of an art critique. With some art one can say it has this n that meaning ~ if say it was portraying war and death in a simple manner, but most art is very much in the eye of the beholder, and that’s where you would have to program it with the info in your head.
Basically, whatever we think linguistically in our heads, can be mimicked. If we have a technique for understanding art, then surely that technique [as it’s a mechanistic thing in a way] can be programmed into a computer.
It’s the fundamental ‘not knowing’ at route, that computers must address.
For me Watson shows us what human intelligence/intellect is [size=150]not![/size]
I think you are probably right. But what then does it mean for the human brain to know something? How is a computer being programmed by the mind of man different from the mind of man being programmed by nature?
Mind is always the mystery here for me. The mind feels in a way the computer does not. The mind “wills” in a way the computer does not.
The computer can answer questions about sex but it can’t want sex. The computer can differentiate folks who are dead from folks who are not dead…but it can’t fear death.
When nature shows us 01 we know what it is. There is recognition, but for me it must build from the base up, and at that point a computer only ever performs mechanistic binary tasks. It doesn’t even know that there are gates opening and closing, where perhaps the brain only knows that its gates are opening and closing ~ nerves/neurons are firing.
Perhaps if we imagine that a mind is like a screen, and many inputs are projected upon it, then something sees the screen ~ which is after all a recognition device, so seeing is an extension of that. The will is that seer taking its choices about what it watches out of the selection on the screen [or if it wants to take anything at all from that].
more thoughts…
The atom of evolution and consciousness.
Take three red lights, you can turn any light on/off in patterns or randomly and it quickly becomes repetitive. You can add as many lights you want to the equation and simply get greater patterns.
I think you must have constant change greater than randomness, such that consciousness may arise, as this is what delivers plasticity. With neurons we could perhaps imagine that as the lights were being switched on in a pattern, by the time most of the lights have turned on/off in the given pattern, the first light/s have changed from red to green. Then the lights keep changing at a faster rate than a pattern takes to occur.
This would break repetitive patterns, and surely plays a large part in the self animistic nature of life and later conscious life.
Ants require a collective to work as conscious living organism, alone they are probably organic robots without consciousness. If you put them in a jar they tend to wander around aimlessly, a small animal would slow then become increasingly non respondent and sleep most of the time. As would a larger animal. People put in solitary confinement with no light or sound etc, go off their heads and become depressed very quickly, essentially the more deprived of input consciousness gets, the more it shuts down.
Just a note:
As I understand it all, a quantum processor can compute (at this point) simple algorithms using qubits for coding rather than 01 bits. The problem is getting the qubits to retain their quantum properties for any length of time. The qubits in the 2009 processor only lasted for a microsecond. So it’s going to be a while before a quantum processor can equal the human brain in terms of speed. Also, remember, even a quantum processor does nothing more than compute answers to questions given it in mathematical algorithms–it just has the potential of doing so at quantum speeds using complicated algorithms. Here are two interesting sites:
.technologyreview.com/computing/38495/
.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/06/090628171949.htm
Sounds interesting liz, perhaps the brain is doing something like that in every neuron, then the brain finds a way to interface all those computations - if you like, with the consciousness. It can also use some of the for processing and send others to memory. So yes the trick is utility, and for that the quantum computer will need to have some perhaps chemical way to store the results of its processes. Then the fact that the processing only lasts a microsecond wont matter, in fact its probably better to keep performing new processes.
We would have to design a computer/computation beyond mere 0s and 1s, and I’m sure that Computer Scientists are working on such a beast right now…
Indeed, and they also have to get beyond whatever symbols and patterns are used, such that it it is more than that ~ like human consciousness is more than biological and polarised electrical patterns.
…a network of computational assumptions and assertions to arrive at a decisive point in time…?
I studied A-level Computer Science and Programming way back in 86-88 and there was already talk of neural-based computers back then, and there are glimpses of it in the medical and military worlds… and that’s a world I want to be a part of - doesn’t progress just do it for you…
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…a network of computational assumptions and assertions to arrive at a decisive point in time.
What more?
Well if we use neurons then we only arrive at the same questions about what we are ~ and to the latter part of the op question.
yes I do like progress.