Brent Meeker writes:
> >>>We would understand it in a third person sense but not in a first person sense, except by analogy with our
> >>>own first person experience. Consciousness is the difference between what can be known by observing an
> >>>entity and what can be known by being the entity, or something like the entity, yourself.
> >>>
> >>>Stathis Papaioannou
> >>
> >>But you are simply positing that there is such a difference. That's easy to do
> >>because we know so little about how brains work. But consider the engine in your
> >>car. Do you know what it's like to be the engine in your car? You know a lot about
> >>it, but how do you know that you know all of it? Does that mean your car engine is
> >>conscious? I'd say yes it is (at a very low level) and you *can* know what it's like.
> >
> >
> > No, I don't know what it's like to be the engine in my car. I would guess it isn't like anything, but I might be wrong.
> > If I am wrong, then my car engine may indeed be conscious, but in a completely alien way, which I cannot
> > understand no matter how much I learn about car mechanics, because I am not myself a car engine.
>
> Then doesn't the same apply to your hypothetical conscious, but alien computer whose
> interpretative manuals are all lost?
Certainly: it might be conscious, but I couldn't even guess at this without some understanding of how it worked
or some ability to interact with it. However, that's my problem, not necessarily the computer's, which might be
happily dreaming or philosophising.
> >I think
> > the same would happen if we encountered an alien civilization. We would probably assume that they were
> > conscious because we would observe that they exhibit intelligent behaviour, but only if by coincidence they
> > had sensations, emotions etc. which reminded us of our own would we be able to guess what their conscious
> > experience was actually like, and even then we would not be sure.
>
> How could their inner experiences - sensations, emotions, etc - remind us of
> anything? We don't have access to them. It would have to be their interactions with
> the world and us that would cause us to infer their inner experiences; just as I
> infer when my dog is happy or fearful.
That's how you infer that your dog has feelings, but your dog's actually having the feelings is not contingent on
your inferences, except insofar as its feelings change according to your reaction to them. However, you did write
"happy" and "fearful" because they are feelings you understand. There may be a special emotion that dogs alone
experience when they are burying a bone and simultaneously hear a 30 KHz tone, for example, and we could never
hope to understand what that is like no matter how much we study it scientifically.
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 Fri Sep 15 2006 - 08:53:56 PDT