<html><head></head><body style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space; "><div><div>On Dec 15, 2009, at 5:25 PM, Gordon Swobe wrote:</div><br class="Apple-interchange-newline"><blockquote type="cite"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: separate; font-family: Verdana; font-size: medium; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; orphans: 2; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 0px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-decorations-in-effect: none; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; ">an artificial neuron must behave in exactly the same way to external stimuli as does a natural neuron if and only if the internal processes of that artificial neuron exactly matches those of the natural neuron. </span></blockquote><div><br></div><div>Now that's just silly, a neuron has no way of knowing what internal process a neighboring neuron undergoes, it treats it as a black box. It's only interested in what it does, not how it does it.</div><div><br></div><blockquote type="cite"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: separate; font-family: Verdana; font-size: medium; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; orphans: 2; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 0px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-decorations-in-effect: none; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; ">To test whether you really believed this, I asked if it would matter if we constructed the zeros out of beer cans and toilet paper. Somewhat to my astonishment, you replied that such a brain would still have consciousness by "logical necessity".<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><br></span></blockquote><div><br></div>I'll be damned if I know why you were astonished, and I'll be damned to understand how it could be anything other than a logical necessity. And I don't understand the point you are trying to make, what's wrong with beer cans and toilet paper?</div><div><br></div><div> John K Clark<br><div><br></div><div><br></div></div></body></html>