[ExI] Digital Consciousness

[Ben Zaiboc]

Gordon <gts_2000 at yahoo.com> wrote:

>Stathis Papaioannou <stathisp at gmail.com> wrote;

>>But if the implants are in the supposed NCC and the subject behaves
>>just the same, what would that tell you?
>
>I believe that if we replaced all the neurons in the NCC with digital implants, the victim of our evil experiment would become comatose. I think something is happening in those parts of the brain that correlate to consciousness that is not equivalent to digital processing. It's a biological process, perhaps electro-chemical in nature, and although we might be able to describe it digitally, and build digital implants using that description as a blueprint, the implants themselves would fail as they are different sort of thing than the biological processes they describe. Just as a digital simulation of a house is not a house in which you can actually live, a digital simulation of the NCC is not the NCC. The map is not the territory when the map is?intrinsically?digital and the territory is not.
>
>However, in answer to your question: if the subject were to behave just the same, that would tell me that I was wrong, that humans are digital computers, and that I should reconsider my philosophy. :)


It might tell you you were wrong, but it /wouldn't/ tell you that humans are digital computers.  As I keep saying (and you keep ignoring), something doesn't have to be digital for a digital computer to compute it.  Why do you think it does?  Is it just an article of faith, or do you have some kind of proof?  There is ample evidence that digital computers can and do compute non-digital processes.  Is this wrong?  If you have good evidence that this is wrong, I'm sure we'd all love to know.  We all NEED to know. All scientists and engineers the world over need to know.  Everyone needs to know.  Come on, Gordon don't keep this to yourself, that would be mean.


Ben Zaiboc