[ExI] free-will, determinism, crime and punishment.

[Vladimir Nesov]

Sunday, August 26, 2007, John K Clark wrote:

JKC> "Vladimir Nesov" <robotact at mail.ru>

>> How do you decide that blood is unimportant?

JKC> I can conceive of an entity that has no blood that nevertheless acts in ways
JKC> that are very interesting, about as interesting as my tiny brain can imagine
JKC> actually. I can not conceive of an entity that lacked emotion doing anything
JKC> approaching that level of interest, or was deserving of the grand name
JKC> "intelligence"; in fact, to my mind such a thing approaches a logical
JKC> contradiction. Ok, maybe my inability to imagine such a thing is a function
JKC> of my tiny brain, but I don't think so.

In essence, you present no explicit argument, but you have a strong
intuition that suggests that [interesting intelligence] must have
emotions. Fair enough. I don't insist that it's wrong, given
flexibility of definition of 'emotions' and 'interestingness of
intelligence' which can be additionally specified to make your point
right or wrong. In definitions specified by my intuition your
assertion is wrong. It might be enough to translate your
assertion through your intuitive specifications of these terms to make
it agreeable. I only assert that on current level of problem's
specification what you present as arguments doesn't work.

>> Absence of immediately  experienceable evidence' argument invoked
>> so far doesn't help with this problem; so why should it help with
>> decision about importance of emotions?

JKC> I don't know what you're talking about; there is experimental evidence in
JKC> this matter. The results are just now coming in of a 4 billion year long
JKC> experiment and the results support my views not yours. You response is
JKC> typical of those who's pet theory is not supported by evidence; it's just
JKC> one experiment, Nature could have made a mistake, the experiment needs
JKC> to be repeated before we know for sure. Do we really have to wait another
JKC> 4 billion years before we can talk again?

We are not talking about properties of natural intelligence. Assertion
that emotions are inherent part of interesting-minds-in-general is not
connected to assertion that emotions are inherent part of
minds-that-evolved. Which is an analogy to what I exemplified: blood
being an inherent part of evil-mind-hardware-in-general is not
connected to blood being an inherent part of mind-wetware-evolved-here-on-earth.

-- 
 Vladimir Nesov                            mailto:robotact at mail.ru