[ExI] The symbol grounding problem in strong AI

[Aware]

On Tue, Dec 29, 2009 at 3:06 PM, Gordon Swobe <gts_2000 at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> But seriously I see that we have two categories of things and objects 1) the real kind and 2) the computer simulated kind.
>
> I make a clear distinction between those two categories of things. Computer simulations of real things do not equal those real things they simulate, and some "simulate" nothing real in the first place.

To use a thought-experiment familiar to this list, how would you know
(experientially) whether or not you're being run as a simulation right
now?  As an embedded observer of whatever local environment of
interaction you inhabit, you fundamentally LACK THE CONTEXT that would
make any difference.

It seems that through this protracted thread you consistently and
simply beg the question, as does Searle.  Functionalism aside (as I've
said twice now, it's not the issue and needs no defense) you spin
around the flawed premise that "consciousness" is indisputably
(according to all the 1st-person evidence you might ever as for)
instantiated in, at least, the human brain, but not within the
workings of any formally described system.

Well, It's not "in" either system (formal or evolved.)  As I've said
before, the semantics/intentionality/meaning is a function of the
observer, EVEN when that observer happens to be a functional
expression of the same brain/body of that which it observes.  It
simply expresses its evolved nature, "meaningful" as a result of
adaptive selection that rejected all manner of behavior at all scales
that was not "meaningful" in the evolutionary environment of
adaptation.

Of course it refers to itself as "I".  Of course it perceives its
experience as true and complete--IT LACKS THE CONTEXT to know
(experientially) otherwise.  Of course the illusion is convincingly
seductive; it's the result of thousands of generations of selection
based on survival and reproduction.

And making it harder for you, even though you're a kind of programmer
by trade, it's clear you're not comfortable with recursion.

- Jef