[ExI] Digital Consciousness .

[Gordon]

spike,


> do explain why we cannot in principle model a neuron with a bunch of dentrites connected to it and the interconnect and all that stuff.  I know it is a crazy difficult problem...


We could perhaps build a digital model of a neuron or an entire brain, but I think it would be only a model. The model in this case is not identical to the thing modeled, because the thing modeled (the mind/brain) is not in my view like a digital computer.  

It is tempting to think the mind is to the brain what software is to hardware, per the computational model of mind, but I believe that model is misguided.There are no 1's and 0's floating around in our heads, or anything like them. Thoughts are not like programs running in our brains. Consciousness arises through some biological process that we do not yet understand, but it is I think biological and not digital.

In my view digital simulations are, in a sense, nothing more than sophisticated digital photographs. Just as a digital photograph of you is not conscious, neither would be a digital simulation of you.

Of course, if we are already living in a digital simulation then we could in that case make conscious digital simulations of ourselves, but I reject that idea as fantasy. I do not believe the world is fundamentally digital.

-Gordon