Brent Meeker writes:
> I think we need to say what it means for a computation to be self-interpreting. Many
> control programs are written with self-monitoring functions and logging functions.
> Why would we not attribute consciousness to them?
Well, why not? Some people don't even think higher mammals are conscious, and perhaps
some there are true solipsists who could convince themselves that other people are not really
conscious as rationalisation for antisocial behaviour. On the other hand, maybe flies experience
pain and fear when confronted with insecticide that is orders of magnitude greater than that
of any mere human experience of torture, and maybe when I press the letter "y" on my
keyboard I am subjecting my computer to the torments of hell. I don't buy the argument that
only complex brains or computations can experience pain either: when I was a child I wasn't
as smart as I am now, but I recall that it hurt a lot more and I was much more likely to cry when
I cut myself.
Stathis Papaioannou
_________________________________________________________________
Be one of the first to try Windows Live Mail.
http://ideas.live.com/programpage.aspx?versionId=5d21c51a-b161-4314-9b0e-4911fb2b2e6d
--~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group.
To post to this group, send email to everything-list.domain.name.hidden
To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list-unsubscribe.domain.name.hidden
For more options, visit this group at
http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list
-~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
Received on Mon Sep 11 2006 - 07:57:15 PDT