[ExI] Do digital computers feel was Re: Is the wave function real?

[William Flynn Wallace]

in fact I have no proof that you or anybody else have any subjective
experiences at all.  john

It may be that your standards of proof are in question, at the least.  You
seem to be able to believe that only you, out of over 7 billion people, can
be conscious, think, feel, and so on.  In other words, the most basic of
human qualities.

I would have to ask you:  *what proof do you have that you are this unique?*
 How likely is this?  It is far, far less likely than that others
experience things in the external world much like you do.

Ask ten million people, excluding the colorblind, to view a red thing.  All
ten million call it red.  What else do you need?

bill w

On Thu, Dec 15, 2016 at 8:05 AM, John Clark <johnkclark at gmail.com> wrote:

> On Wed, Dec 14, 2016 at 10:51 PM, Brent Allsop <brent.allsop at gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
> ​> ​
>> Let me ask you what you think I mean when I talk about a "redness
>> quality"?
>>
>
> ​Come on Brent, this isn't my ​first day at the rodeo! I am quite
> familiar with the
> qualia
> ​ idea and I know the difference between objective and subjective.​
>
> ​> ​
>>  And would you also agree that an abstracted work like "red" does not
>> have this quality?
>
>
> ​I would agree that red is a subjective experience and "red" is just an
> ASCII sequence. ​
>
>
>
>> ​> ​
>> And would you agree that something in our brain has this quality when we
>> experience it?
>>
>
> ​What's with this "our" and "we" stuff? I have a subjective experience
> when I experience red but I have no proof that you do, in fact I have no
> proof that you or anybody else have any subjective experiences at all. ​
>
> ​If somebody believes that a digital computer ​behaving as if it is
> conscious is insufficient evidence to conclude that it really is conscious
> and if he wishes to be consistent in his beliefs then there is no
> alternative but to embrace solipsism.
>
>   John K Clark
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> extropy-chat mailing list
> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org
> http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat
>
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.extropy.org/pipermail/extropy-chat/attachments/20161215/15f8e325/attachment.html>