[ExI] Wernicke's aphasia and the CRA.

[Alfio Puglisi]

On Sat, Dec 12, 2009 at 7:38 PM, Gordon Swobe <gts_2000 at yahoo.com> wrote:

> --- On Sat, 12/12/09, Alfio Puglisi <alfio.puglisi at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> >> It follows also that because biological brains have minds,
> > they must do something besides run formal programs.
> >
> > Do you also expand this statement to "something
> > besides moving molecules around and shuffling electrical
> > charges?" Because that's what a biological brain
> > does.
>
> Good question, and I think the answer is a qualified "no".
>
> That shuffling of molecules and electrical charges to which you refer may
> very well have something to do with how brains cause consciousness. But
> Searle would qualify my answer by adding, "We don't yet know if only the
> activities of the brain cause it to become conscious. It may also have
> something to do with the substances of which it is made. We simply don't yet
> know if anything other than a real organic biological brain can have
> consciousness."
>
> The upshot is that until we understand exactly how real organic brains
> become conscious, we run the risk (of concern at least to philosophers of
> the subject) of creating a non-organic AI that appears to have consciousness
> but which in fact only mimics it.
>

Then we roughly agree, except that I take the opposite default position:
that non-organic AI will have consciousness unless proved otherwise, the
same criterion we apply to biological intelligence.


Alfio
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