Brent meeker writes:
> >>I don't think "intelligence" is meaningful without an environment with
> >>which it can interact. The same for computation: what distinguishes
> >>computation and noise is a context in which it interacts with its
> >>environment.
> >
> >
> > What about an intelligent, conscious being spending its time dreaming?
> >
> > Stathis Papaioannou
>
> You're hypothesizing an intelligent being and then asking me if it's
> intelligent??
Is it a contradiction to hypothesise an intelligent being which only dreams?
> It a computatation only "dreams" then how could you know whether it was
> intelligence, or just noise?
We wouldn't know, but the computation itself would know if it were conscious,
creating its own observer. If we say that noise contains hidden information
that may be true in a trivial sense, but it's meaningless: information hidden in
noise is not accessible to anyone and is no different to no information at all.
But if the information hidden in noise is a conscious computation, then it *is*
accessible to someone: itself, by definition. If you don't like this conclusion
then you have to either reject computationalism (as John Searle does using
this argument) or impose ad hoc limitations on it, which amounts to the same
thing.
Stathis Papaioannou
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Received on Mon Jul 31 2006 - 01:58:03 PDT