[ExI] Functionalism and Lakoff

[Stefano Vaj]

On 10 February 2012 02:39, Henry Rivera <hrivera at alumni.virginia.edu> wrote:

> This topic brings to mind the phenomenon of when amputees have pain in
> their missing phantom limbs and are able to relieve the pain sometimes
> using "mirror therapy." http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mirror_box
> I think this lends support to idea that the present-day brain to be
> functional/comfortable/balanced needs at least to have the perception of
> (feedback indicating) embodiment. I'd extrapolate that in whatever medium
> the essence of our perception exists, we may require the perception of
> being embodied in an avatar. My belief obviously is that the essence of our
> perception is separable from the body in principle but requires at least
> the feedback mimicking a body to function properly.
>

Yes. I think that major amputations may suggest what "changes" in one's
identity when losing increasing parts of one's body without having them
replaced by transplants or prostheses.

Moreover, the ex-istence, the "being out there", in the world (or at least
"a" world) is considered by some as essential to any accurate emulation of
anthropomorphic or even teriomorphic intelligences (so that AI would be
basically a robotic, rather than a computational, issue).

In the article <http://www.divenire.org/articolo_versione.asp?id=1> I have
circulated the link to yesterday. I remark however that much of a human's
complexity is in his or her brain, so that a full-body emulation should be
just marginally more difficult than a brain-only one. If we crack the first
problem, nothing indicates that the second would be a show stopper...

-- 
Stefano Vaj
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