[ExI] Meaningless Symbols.

[Damien Broderick]

On 1/10/2010 7:27 PM, Stathis Papaioannou wrote:

> Gordon has in mind a special sort of understanding which makes no
> objective difference and, although he would say it makes a subjective
> difference, it is not a subjective difference that a person could
> notice.

I have a sneaking suspicion that what is at stake is volitional 
initiative, conscious weighing of options, the experience of assessing 
and then acting. Yes, we know a lot of this experience is illusory, or 
at least misleading, because a large part of the process of "willing" is 
literally unconscious and precedes awareness, but still one might hope 
to have a machine that is aware of itself as a person, not just a tool 
that shuffles through canned responses--even if that can provide some 
simulation of a person in action. It might turn out that there's no 
difference, once such a complex machine is programmed right, but until 
then it seems to me fair to suppose that there could be. None of this 
concession will satisfy Gordon, I imagine.

Damien Broderick