[ExI] Newbie Question: Consciousness and Intelligence

Ben Zaiboc bbenzai at yahoo.com
Sun Feb 14 13:41:48 UTC 2010


Stathis Papaioannou <stathisp at gmail.com>

> On 14 February 2010 11:02, Gordon Swobe <gts_2000 at yahoo.com>

> > If and when someone builds a human-like nervous system
> in a box with sense organs, I'll call that box conscious but
> I won't call it a digital computer. Neither will you,
> because it won't be one.
> 
> That's what is being attempted by Henry Markram's group.
> They may
> fail, but probably only because they are taking shortcuts
> in the
> modelling in order to reduce by orders of magnitude the
> required
> amount of processing. If they model a complete mouse brain,
> connect it
> to a mouse avatar or robot mouse, and it displays mouselike
> behaviour,
> that would be indication at the very least that that any
> separate
> mouse consciousness can only be epiphenomenal. As John
> Clark keeps
> reminding us, it would then be very difficult to explain
> how
> consciousness could have evolved.

Ah, but don't you see Stathis?
Blue Brain is a *digital computer*.  Therefore it can't possibly produce consciousness, because, you know, because it's *digital*.
And digital computers can't produce consciousness.
QED.

Ben Zaiboc


      



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