[ExI] Digital Consciousness .

[Stathis Papaioannou]

On Thu, Apr 25, 2013 at 1:12 PM, Gordon <gts_2000 at yahoo.com> wrote:

> In principle, I think we can digitally sim a brain, even down to the
> molecular level. But at most I think it would result only in weak AI. Or, in
> the case off an attempted upload of a personality, I think it would result
> at most in a sort of unconscious cartoon of that personality. (Cartoon is
> probably not the best word here, but at the moment I can't think of a better
> one.)

That's where you're wrong. If we could simulate a brain we could
simulate part of a brain. We could replace your visual cortex with an
artificial visual cortex, for example, that reproduces the I/O
behaviour of your biological cortex. If the I/O behaviour is
reproduced, than the rest of your brain will behave normally as it
receives the same inputs. You look at a flower, your artificial visual
cortex sends output to the rest of your brain, including your speech
centres, and you describe the flower.

Think about what would happen if, as you claim, the artificial visual
cortex can reproduce the brain behaviour ("I think we can digitally
sim a brain, even down to the molecular level") but not the associated
consciousness. You would be describing the flower, but you would
actually be blind. So either you would not notice you were blind, or
you would notice you were blind but your vocal cords would describe
the flower and declare that everything looked normal despite your
desperate efforts to tell everyone that something was horribly wrong.
Do you believe that is what would actually happen?


-- 
Stathis Papaioannou