Blueberry comments on Open Thread: May 2010, Part 2 - Less Wrong

3 Post author: Kevin 20 May 2010 07:30PM

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Comment author: RichardKennaway 26 May 2010 10:30:05AM 6 points [-]

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?

Comment author: Blueberry 26 May 2010 02:41:02PM 0 points [-]

Controlled movement does not require consciousness, memory, learning, or prediction.

It may in fact be possible to drive while unconscious, though not very well.

Comment author: RobinZ 26 May 2010 04:27:31PM 0 points [-]

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.