[ExI] Some new angle about AI

[Stefano Vaj]

2010/1/9 Stathis Papaioannou <stathisp at gmail.com>:
> I agree with you, of course. The zombie neurons are just as good as
> real neurons in every respect, so there is really no basis in
> distinguishing them as zombie neurons. But this needs to be carefully
> explained; if it were obvious, Gordon would not still be arguing.

I suspect that Gordon is simply a dualist, with emotional reasons to
think that conscience must be something "special" and different from
the mere phenomena it is used to describe. This is not a rare
attitude, including amongst people with no overtly metaphysical
penchant, but I think that no amount of science can make them to
change their views, which are fundamentally philosophical in nature.

More interesting, if one is not willling to go down this way, I think
one has ultimately to recognise that "conscience" is ultimately a
(rather elusive) social construct, and that organic brains have not
really much to do with it one way or another. Meaning that nothing
they are neither necessary nor sufficient to exhibit the behaviours
required to allow us to engage in processes of projection and
identification.

-- 
Stefano Vaj