[ExI] consciousness and perception

[John K Clark]

"Damien Broderick" <thespike at satx.rr.com>

> Yes, but that doesn't tell us a whole lot, because green and
> elephant and testy and funny and hungry and in the mood to
> dash off an email are also ways matter reacts when organized
> in a johnkclarkian way.
> Could you be a bit more precise about this?

No Damien, unfortunately I can't be more precise about this. If I could be
more specific I'd know how to build a conscious AI, and right now instead of
writing this two bit Email I'd be writing my Nobel Prize acceptance speech.
I freely admit that my words were so general that it was a little like
explaining physics by saying "stuff happens"; but even that remark would
have value to somebody who believed that stuff didn't happen.

In the field of cognition it's astounding that well educated and otherwise
intelligent people believe in the equivalent of stuff doesn't happen; that
subjective experience is not a function of the way atoms are organized.
They even like to talk about "free will" and say that we don't do things
because of cause and effect AND we don't do then at random either;
that is to say, stuff that is NOT created by cause and effect is NOT the
reason we do things either. So X is not true and (not X) is untrue also,
even when X is as clearly defined as anything in human experience.
To such a person the information "stuff happens" is profound and useful.

  John K Clark