[ExI] Digital Consciousness .

[Stefano Vaj]

On 24 April 2013 09:07, Gordon <gts_2000 at yahoo.com> wrote:

> Eugen,
> You certainly know you have intentionality. You know it as surely as you
> can see these words. You're justified in thinking that other beings like
> you also have it. As we go down the food chain, things are not so clear. I
> happen to think that most mammals have it, but probably not some less
> complex organisms. But that is irrelevant.
>

Is it really? I do not see any clear reason to see intentionality or
consciousness as anything other than a "spandrel", an evolutionary artifact
with no real underlying existence. Now, we also know that simple and
complex organisms do exist, so they are possible, so they in principle can
be "built" through some process or other giving place to the emergence of
all related properties. .

Such a project may well be intractable, or even just unpractical, but you
have to admit that in principle it is possible by definition. There is also
no obvious quantum leap in terms of intrinsic complexity, beyond that of
Wolfram's "universal computation", so emulating a human brain is just many
orders of magnitude more complicate and resource-demanding than emulating
the very limited cognitive range of a fruitfly.

--
Stefano Vaj
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