[ExI] The symbol grounding problem in strong AI

Stathis Papaioannou stathisp at gmail.com
Fri Jan 1 00:50:37 UTC 2010


2010/1/1 Gordon Swobe <gts_2000 at yahoo.com>:

>> The brain or computer is the physical object instantiating the mind,
>> like a sphere made of stone is a physical instantiation of an abstract
>> sphere. You can destroy a physical sphere but you can't destroy the
>> abstract sphere
>
> It seems then that you suppose yourself as possessing or equaling this "abstract sphere of mind" that your brain instantiated, and that you suppose further that this abstract sphere of yours will continue to exist after your body dies. Correct me if I'm wrong.

After I die my mind can be instantiated again multiple times, with
different matter. If the brain were identical with the mind this would
not be possible: a copy of a brain, however faithful, is a different
physical object. The function of the brain can be reproduced, but not
the brain itself, and this is consistent with the mind being
reproducible and being a function of the brain.

These metaphysical musings are interesting but have no bearing on the
rigorous argument presented before, which showed that whatever the
mind is, if the function of the device generating it is reproduced
then the mind is also reproduced. You did not come up with a rebuttal,
other than to put forward your feeling that some magic would happen to
stop it being true.


-- 
Stathis Papaioannou



More information about the extropy-chat mailing list