[ExI] Digital Consciousness

[Gordon]

Stathis Papaioannou <stathisp at gmail.com> wrote:


> But it can be shown that if it is possible to replicate the behaviour of the
> brain then it is also possible (in fact, it follows necessarily) to
> replicate the consciousness. 

If you think consciousness follows necessarily from brain-like behavior then I suppose you must think some computers are already at least semi-conscious. I was joking the other day about how I would like sometimes to shoot my stand-alone chess computer, as it seems there is a cunning person inside it and he sometimes makes me angry. It certainly *behaves* as if it is conscious of me, of itself, and the game. Do you think it is actually dimly aware of its own existence?

If not, at what point in the development conscious-like behavior do we decide suddenly to grant that an AI has real consciousness? How is it not arbitrary?

>> If you believe the world itself is intrinsically digital, (and not merely
>> describable in digital terms), then I think you have good reason to believe
>> in strong AI and uploading.  As for me, I see no reason to believe the world
>> is intrinsically digital. With respect to this part of the world that we
>> call the brain, we do not discover computational states within the physics.
>> We assign them to the physics.

>And who assigns the meaning to our own physically based brains?


I don't understand your question, but this in an important point that I'm trying to make here. Who assigns the meaning of what? The brain? As a word, I think "brain" has meaning and that we assign it that meaning. Does that answer your question?

As for my point, syntax and computational states are not actually intrinsic to the physics of the brain. It would seem that people who follow the computational theory of mind are merely assigning computational states to the physics in a manner not unlike how we assign meanings to words.


Gordon
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.extropy.org/pipermail/extropy-chat/attachments/20130503/c983753c/attachment.html>