Human Connection

I'm not sure if the AI is sophisticated enough that one can fall in love with it that you can't say it loves back. Consider the AI in the movie She, or the holographic companion in Bladerunner 2049.

Those are fictional stories.

No machine ever made can be said to be aware, or conscious, to have experiences.... This is -- or should be taken as -- a fact.

Consider a pair of scissors (perhaps the simplest of machines ever made) or a kitchen toaster for example. Can your toaster love you? Can your toaster feel kindness or warmth toward you? How about scissors.

As far as anyone knows, only biologically based beings have ever been aware in any sense which we humans are aware. That is, only animals (maybe plants? Or other living creatures) have experiences and awareness.

Does a brick or a stone have experiences, feelings, awareness? It is doubtful.

Machines are being made which can resemble humans in various respects. Including having what we call "intelligence" (i.e., artificial intelligence). But we have absolutely no reason to believe these machines are experiencing, having feelings, cares, concerns, awareness.... They may even say to us "Darling, I have a headache and am not in the mood right now." But that's either programmed behavior or it arose out of some kind of program or algorithm. Remember those dolls which had a string with a ring extending from their backs? You pull the string and the doll begins to speak. But all it is is a kind of tape recorder, a mere machine. It isn't really talking any more than your home stereo system is talking. Examine a piece of recording tape, or a vinyl disk... and learn how it reproduces sounds. It's just a machine, like an adjustable wrench or a bicycle.

For centuries "the machine metaphor" has been employed to try and explain living beings as nothing more than "a machine". But it is not an apt metaphor. Life has properties which machines should not be expected ever to evolve into. Indeed, we simply don't know how or why we are aware, experiencing beings. It's the least understood question in science. We simply don't know how experience and awareness arises.
 
Why can’t the world’s greatest minds solve the mystery of consciousness?

https://www.theguardian.com/science...ds-greatest-minds-solve-mystery-consciousness

Excerpt:

"It was a puzzle so bewildering that, in the months after his talk, people started dignifying it with capital letters – the Hard Problem of Consciousness – and it’s this: why on earth should all those complicated brain processes feel like anything from the inside? Why aren’t we just brilliant robots, capable of retaining information, of responding to noises and smells and hot saucepans, but dark inside, lacking an inner life? And how does the brain manage it? How could the 1.4kg lump of moist, pinkish-beige tissue inside your skull give rise to something as mysterious as the experience of being that pinkish-beige lump, and the body to which it is attached?"

Comment from me, River:

I've read a bunch of cognitive science and philosophy of mind and such, and honestly, I'm quite skeptical of the premise that the brain is the center or cause of the arising of awareness as consciousness. I think the whole body is absolutely involved, and making the brain the center of this is nothing more than an unsubstantiated, passing fad. Indeed, our unique human consciousness is not even best imagined (as a metaphor) as arising just within individual human bodies! It arises as a connected field which includes, at least, the entire biosphere. To wall it off inside of anything larger than Existence Itself seems ... just wrong.

And here's another interesting excerpt:

"As late as 1989, writing in the International Dictionary of Psychology, the British psychologist Stuart Sutherland could irascibly declare of consciousness that “it is impossible to specify what it is, what it does, or why it evolved. Nothing worth reading has been written on it.”

And...



"The zombie scenario goes as follows: imagine that you have a doppelgänger. This person physically resembles you in every respect, and behaves identically to you; he or she holds conversations, eats and sleeps, looks happy or anxious precisely as you do. The sole difference is that the doppelgänger has no consciousness; this – as opposed to a groaning, blood-spattered walking corpse from a movie – is what philosophers mean by a “zombie”.

Such non-conscious humanoids don’t exist, of course. (Or perhaps it would be better to say that I know I’m not one, anyhow; I could never know for certain that you aren’t.)"


I dunno. A case can be made for Donald Trump actually being a zombie. And most of the Republicans in Congress.
 
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No. Not everyone. But certainly a very strong majority do. And in the cases of exception, generally there is trauma and pathology involved.

I'm glad you said "generally." While it's more than likely true that a lot of people who don't want or need human connection have experienced trauma and/or have some type of pathology, that isn't true across the board. My husband neither has a history of trauma nor has any type of pathology; he simply prefers being solitary. He isn't opposed to human connection; as I said, he just doesn't feel any particular *need* for it.
 
I'm glad you said "generally." While it's more than likely true that a lot of people who don't want or need human connection have experienced trauma and/or have some type of pathology, that isn't true across the board. My husband neither has a history of trauma nor has any type of pathology; he simply prefers being solitary. He isn't opposed to human connection; as I said, he just doesn't feel any particular *need* for it.

Ah, but it's quite possible that he's not NOTICING the need for it, because he's not being deprived of it. Put him in solitary confinement or on a deserted island with no one else upon it for enough time and you may have some experimental confirmation for or against your hypothesis.

We rarely notice -- really deeply notice -- our need for air or water, for example, until we're deprived of it. If it is always available for us we may go a lifetime without appreciating how much we truly need these.

Some people exhibit little obvious need for human connection. But I'd posit that at least 99% of these people simply have as much of it as they need.

Oh, and as for your suspicion or guess that your husband has had no history of trauma (zero), I want to ask you what planet he has been living on all of his life. Trauma exists on a spectrum or continuum of both kind and degree, and I doubt any single human has managed not to be scarred by it to some extent. Personally, I think much which we take to be totally normal is, in fact, traumatizing. This includes simply attending -- for example -- a quite normal public school in the USA. Especially if one is any kind or degree of a "bully magnet" -- but even if everything goes quite smoothly. Trauma has two major kinds: acute and relational / developmental. Anytime our most basic human needs are thwarted we experience some relational / developmental trauma. Many very normal schools, if you look at them closely, have deprived people of very basic human needs while emphasizing other "needs" over these. People are wounded in ways we don't often recognize by being forced to live by the bell and the clock in almost air tight, florescent lighting while attempting to listen to the monotonous monotone voice of a bored History teacher who is giving the very same lecture for what seems like the ten thousandth time. And remember, getting at least a B grade is often expected of the student by parents (lest her child be "average" or "worse"). A threat of punishment, ostracism or [some kind of retribution...?] looms in the background of this scene. Meanwhile, just out the window is breathable air, clouds, sunlight... life. And one does not have to sit still on hard plastic or wooden chairs.
 
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Before he met me, he went four YEARS without any close relationships other than his parents and sister. And he only saw his mother and sister a few times a year; he sees his father regularly only because he works for his father. He had roommates at one point before he met me, but says he only talked to them about paying rent and bills.

My husband says he has not been traumatized by anything that has occurred in his life. Given that it's HIS life, I would tend to take his word for it.

I can see that you're going to refute anything I say about my husband because it doesn't fit your worldview, and that's fine. I don't give enough of a shit about your opinion to continue engaging. I've stated the truth as I've experienced it and been told; whether you believe it or not has no bearing on whether it's true.

Enjoy your debate.
 
No machine ever made can be said to be aware, or conscious, to have experiences.... This is -- or should be taken as -- a fact.

Hey River, what about Sophia the robot? AI or elaborate hoax?
 
I can see that you're going to refute anything I say about my husband because it doesn't fit your worldview, and that's fine. I don't give enough of a shit about your opinion to continue engaging. I've stated the truth as I've experienced it and been told; whether you believe it or not has no bearing on whether it's true.

Enjoy your debate.

Firstly, this is less a debate than a discussion or a conversation.

Secondly, yes, I did state my opinions on a few matters, but I don't think I did so in an unkind, insensitive or forcefully dogmatic sort of way. It's often difficult to perceive the intended tone of folks messages in text; I get that. But my interest is not to "win" a debate but to explore a lively conversation. My worldview is not a fixed end product but an ongoing process. Dialogue is at the center of this process, not debate.

I'm perfectly willing to entertain the possibility that your husband has not been marked by trauma to any extent, or that his relatively less social way of being has nothing to do with trauma. I'm NOT a knowitall. I'm just a guy who has thought (and read) widely and deeply and who has some opinions. Just like you.

My opinions are not fixed entities which I fight to preserve to the death. They are just ... opinions. They're generally somewhat loosely held and willing to be faced with curiosity or even doubt.

It's worth considering, too, that it is possible for someone to bear the scars of trauma without realizing that this is the case. In fact, I think it is not at all uncommon for this to occur.
 
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Hey River, what about Sophia the robot? AI or elaborate hoax?

I'm certain that there are a number of remarkably "intelligent" machines with characteristics which we name "AI" (Artificial Intelligence), and there's no doubt that Sophia exhibits some of these characteristics. But machine intelligence (which certainly exists! I've played chess with machines which play at a level way beyond my own capacity!) does not equate to conscious awareness and an experiencing being. These two are, in fact, apples and oranges comparisons.

As far as I know, everyone in the AI world would agree with what I just said, without a single exception. Some would arrive at such a confession only begrudgingly, after being educated in the conceptual nuances involved. But no one that I know of would say we have fully sapient artificial beings with awareness and feelings and such. Our inner lives are bright, filled with the richness of experience. The machine's inner life... doesn't exist. It is as dark as dark can be. Nothing... nobody is home. Nothing is happening for Sophia. Her smiles and laughs, her grimaces? Programed machine behavior no different from that of a wind up toy.

On a similar theme, I do consider it quite possible that some (hopefully quite rare) humans so fully lack empathy (which is generally agreed to be at the root of compassion and love, and even human intelligence in particular [See the works of philosopher Evan Thompson on this]), that they are closer to a robot in internal character than to "normal" humans. Sociopaths and narcissists on the extreme end of the spectrum of empathy deficiency may, in fact, be much like the philosopher's "zombie". If I'm right on this, this wildly reframes the relation of feeling to consciousness which our culture has inherited from our traditions of science and philosophy (e.g., Descartes). And, if I'm right, I suspect extreme narcissists and sociopaths basically have a sensory deficiency at the very heart of their condition. Human empathy and compassion are basically felt, somatically. And it's the very lack of a "soma" -- a lived, living body -- which characterizes all machines. This is why in popular culture we compare sociopaths and narcissists to machines. They are "unfeeling" and simply goal and task oriented. They cannot form relationship on the basis of what we might simply call "care".
 
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AGI

Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) -- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artificial_general_intelligence -- may not be (almost certainly isn't) achievable, technically, so long as one of the criteria is that the artificial system embody human-level empathy and compassion as part of its repertoire of intelligence capacities. (Emotional intelligence is among the multiple types of intelligence which humans possess.)

A machine may be able to successfully mimic kindness, affection, warmth, tenderness, compassion, care..., but it is unlikely ever to have these as an actual experience. So unlikely, I would say, that it verges on the preposterous. At least. I'd say "It just ain't going to happen."

"Does it matter?" you may ask. Behaviorally, perhaps not. But would we like ourselves to be generally fooled by the total absense of actual kindness by the mimicry of it? Would we want to give over child rearing, for example, to machines which can mimic kindness and empathy PERFECTLY -- even better than a typical human?

Can such a machine REALLY provide companionship?

My answer to this last question is a resounding NO! And I think it's dangerous to think otherwise. It's dangerous to the best of what we are as human beings to think we are, at bottom, nothing very different from a machine, however sophisticated. We are more than our visible behavior. We are sentient, sapient and alive. Life as machine has been a poor metaphor all along. Life is irreducible to any metaphor.
 
The cuddling, personal physical contact, the intimate emotional attachment are as important to me or more so than the sex in a relationship. In fact, my drive and need for those things is primarily why I am poly.

Perhaps AI beings will exist at some point that can fulfill these needs. I'd say we're not there yet though.
 
Perhaps AI beings will exist at some point that can fulfill these needs. I'd say we're not there yet though.

How will these machines come to have an inner life, feelings, care, and that sort of thing? Will they merely mimic such behaviors? Is that good enough? Won't people find their lack of "inner experiencing" a cold, distant chasm between human and machine?

And why might we need machines to provide what at least some humans can so readily offer?
 
That, exactly, is the ultimate test for AI. To become sentient enough to want, need, and have all of those things. At that point, however, would ownership on a bot even be ethical?
 
I don't view life as a mystical thing. We are born with certain instincts. We learn how to control those instincts. Some people learn better than others

Machines are capable of learning. I think they will be able to learn how to be a companion. It's hard to say if we can design a complicated enough computer that it could have random thoughts, or the type of thoughts we call feelings.

The answer to whether or not that would be enough depends on the person. It wouldn't be enough for you. For me it would be akin to having a pet.
 
Machines are capable of learning. I think they will be able to learn how to be a companion. It's hard to say if we can design a complicated enough computer that it could have random thoughts, or the type of thoughts we call feelings.

Does any existing computer, today, have "thoughts"? In your opinion?

I ask in part because I think you're confusing categories. You are calling "feelings" a "type of thoughts".

To my mind, thoughts and feelings are deeply interconnected, of course! But to call feelings thoughts goes a step too far.

Then again, I've spent a lot of time deeply and experientially inquiring into the distinction, something which most people have never done, it seems to me.

Feeling, as I understand it, requires a body. No machine has a living body, or ever has... or ever will. Yes, biological material may eventually blend in with machine parts. But it still won't be a living body, a soma. It won't be a feeling being. A feeling being is a living being.

Every single actual expert on computers will agree on one thing. Computers are machines, not living beings. What they do is "compute," which is to say that they follow instructions given to them on how to divide this from that in a digital way which resembles nothing if not, in essence, a pair of scissors -- the simplest type of machine. A machine is a lot like a cheese grater or a push lawn mower. It feels nothing, cares for nothing, thinks nothing, does ... a lot. It mows grass.
 
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The machine / human distinction is showing itself to be THE crucial philosophical motif of our moment in human history. Amazing! Who would have thunk it?

It is here that poetry and art and science an philosophy all conjoin! What a blessed moment this is in human history! Troubled and blessed.
 
I cannot imagine a robot will ever have what I consider to be a soul.

Thoughts, sensations, experiences, emotions - sure, I can imagine robots getting that far, even androids getting nigh on indistinguishable from humans in their physical appearance, and superior in artificial intelligence, even if that is running outcome algorithms like chess computers do.

But my understanding of the parts of the human soul mean that I do not see this as ever becoming a part of a robot/android and therefore the connection to an android will not be the same as to a human being with whom the souls are attracted (for whatever reason). I recognise that for some, that may not matter or there is no believe in a spiritual existence, but for me it is essential.
 
I cannot imagine a robot will ever have what I consider to be a soul.

Thoughts, sensations, experiences, emotions - sure, I can imagine robots getting that far, even androids getting nigh on indistinguishable from humans in their physical appearance, and superior in artificial intelligence, even if that is running outcome algorithms like chess computers do.

But my understanding of the parts of the human soul mean that I do not see this as ever becoming a part of a robot/android and therefore the connection to an android will not be the same as to a human being with whom the souls are attracted (for whatever reason). I recognise that for some, that may not matter or there is no believe in a spiritual existence, but for me it is essential.

So ... what is this "soul"? Is it material, immaterial... both? Does it exist outside of time and space as a pure abstraction of the strictly philosophical definition of "abstract" (which is the contrast term of "concrete"?

Is your "soul" in accord with Cartesian dualism of the mind / body kind?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jteIKYWAS4A

To my way of thinking, feeling requires a body -- of some sort. It is the body (or soma) which feels. Right? A feeling isn't precisely the same as a thought, but feeling and sensation and thought are all deeply intertwined, right?
 
To my way of thinking, feeling requires a body -- of some sort. It is the body (or soma) which feels. Right? A feeling isn't precisely the same as a thought, but feeling and sensation and thought are all deeply intertwined, right?

Feeling (emotion) requires consciousness. Feelings result from the thoughts we are thinking. Thoughts produce feelings. Feelings are not situational nor the result of behavior. Ten people can have ten different feelings in the same situation and with the same behavior. Feelings result from the particular thoughts of the person about the situation or behavior or whatever abstract concept. A feeling (emotion) is felt by the body when it's extreme. For example, we feel butterflies in our stomach when we are not merely interested or perplexed, but extremely excited or nervous.
 
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A feeling (emotion) is felt by the body when it's extreme.

I practice and teach a form of what might be best called "embodiment somatics" -- or somatics practices which are oriented toward embodiment, or ever greater awareness and sensitivity of bodily presence. I cobbled together what I learned from many traditions, forming my own approach which is informed by a broad array of body-centered meditation techniques and somatics practices.

What is somatics? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Somatics Most people aren't aware of the field of somatics, so it usually needs some explaining. I particularly like Don Hanlon Johnson's explanation of what the field of somatics is about.: http://www.donhanlonjohnson.com/somatics.html

I've been doing this intensively for over four years now. The teaching, that is. The learning toward becoming a teacher began long ago. But the level of engagement with somatics which I have in my life now has only been going on for just over four years. I also attend other people's somatics classes and workshops, etc. It's a broad field with many traditions ... all of which share elements in common. I have read -- and continue to read -- extensively in the somatics field as well. It's a field in which experiential and intellectual inquiry can be brought nicely together. But the experiential part is what is key -- at least as I understand it.

I would like to say that feeling / feelings is/are always felt in the body, or soma. (I say is and are because not all feeling is feelings, per se, but that's another topic. Also, not all feeling / feelings are emotion, per se.) Where else could you possibly be feeling than in your body?

A lot of us really are just not very feeling-aware, honestly. That's why many people think feelings happen somewhere other than in the feeling body or soma. What embodiment somatics reveals to us in actual practice is the whole experiential richness and connectedness of feeling, thinking, sensing... and ultimately all that we experience and are. We stop thinking so much in terms of parts segregated from one another and discover that we are whole. The nature of the soma is wholeness.

In my experience, most of us are relatively insensitive or unaware regards feeling / feelings... even emotions, and this is why it may seem to may of us that feelings only sometimes show up as bodily felt sensations. But I would like to insist that they -- the whole broad swath of kinds of feelings and emotions -- are directly known and experienced as bodily sensation. Sometimes we feel these feelings and emotions in particular locations in our body -- e.g., chest, neck, shoulders, arms, belly, throat.... Sometimes we feel them rather diffusely throughout the whole body, or most of it. We can even learn to be sensitive and aware of those regions of our body which don't quite feel, which are in some sense not fully "inhabited". (This is often the precursor to learning how to re-inhabit this part of ourselves which we've broken conscious relation with, or disinabited.)

In the tradition I belong to in somatics, we regard the body and the psyche (as well as the mind, even awareness itself) as absolutely interwoven. They are not, in this sense, two different things. We sometimes like to say that "When you touch the body you are touching the soul."
 
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So ... what is this "soul"? Is it material, immaterial... both? Does it exist outside of time and space as a pure abstraction of the strictly philosophical definition of "abstract" (which is the contrast term of "concrete"?

If I actually knew, really knew this, I would have accomplished the great work.

But to attempt to answer your question, as unsatisfactory as the answer may be... both. To me, the soul is made up of parts, both temporal and atemporal, and multiple of each to boot, all with their own functions.

But thanks for the philosophy channel link, he's a good presenter.
 
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