[ExI] digital simulations, descriptions and copies.

John Clark jonkc at bellsouth.net
Sun Jan 24 18:35:11 UTC 2010


Since my last post Gordon Swobe has written 9, I shall write one.

> Searle asserts that everything about the brain is computable but that a computation of a brain is not a brain

Well of course it's not a brain, it's a mind. Minds are important, brains aren't. 

> I would consider an emulation of an apple a copy, and yes we cannot create emulations of apples, I already covered that subject in my first post in this thread.

You act as if your post was the Talmud and had forever settled the question, when in reality it's just another in a endless series of pointless thought experiments which implicitly or explicitly always contains the line "and obviously there can't be any consciousness there so...";  and even at their best they can't hope to prove anything except that I Gordon Swobe am puzzled by the link between intelligence and consciousness. In not one of your dozens of thought experiments or hundreds of posts have you been able to explain away the astronomical amount of evidence showing that, understand it or not, there is indeed such a link.

> people say that digitally simulated people can eat and taste digitally simulated apples. Eric has come forth to defend that idea. Will you defend it too?

Yep.
> 
> the simulated thermostat will not regulate temperature in a real room without adding hardware

No thermostat, simulated or otherwise, will regulate temperature in a room without adding other hardware. And all thermostats are simulations, so what is a simulated thermostat, a simulation of a simulation? Don't you think this is getting a little silly?

> Digital simulations of non-digital objects never equal the things they simulate

Who cares? I'm not talking about objects, I'm not even talking about nouns, I'm talking about people.

> digital simulations of things do not equal the things they simulate. Exceptions to this rule may be found in the digital world of software and hardware

That's all the exception I need.

  John K Clark

> 


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