Re: UDA revisited

From: Colin Geoffrey Hales <c.hales.domain.name.hidden>
Date: Tue, 21 Nov 2006 10:27:19 +1100 (EST)

Hi,
>
> Firstly UDA is the UD Argument of Bruno's. I assume you just mean UD,
> and your little pinky slips in the extra A out of habit.

:-) yeah... it was a correction I was going to make.

>
> Secondly, zombies technically are meant to indistinguishable from
> conscious beings. So cognitive scientists would be most surprised to
> hear that you've proved zombies cannot do science, since we've
> immediately found an external characteristic distinguishing some
> conscious beings (ie scientists) from zombies.
>
> Of course I suspect you have a different definition of zombie...
>

What has happened is that I think I may have proven the assumtion invalid.
That is, the assumption that zombies are functionally identical. I can
show that a zombie cannot be physically identical because to get a zombie
you have to alter the brain. Everything else stays the same. As a result,
the functional defininitive benchmark behaviour "scientific behaviour",
cannot be done by a zombie. (see below)


<snip>....nobody has ever said UD's are conscious. If computationalism
> is true, then they are executing conscious programs, but they're not
> conscious themselves.
>

Then what use is the UD? If I embody something with a UD (assuming the
computational grunt (and requisite sensing) can be built with the STUFF
(this is the noun I will use to mean a chunk of the natural world) then
the UD cannot do science on the natural world. It doesn;t even know it's
in the natural world. It does science on regularities sensory feeds. It
would look bizarre to us and perform no useful function wahtever. Except
perhaps as a metaphor to use to discuss our place in the real universe,
=================
I am on round 2 of a paper on solipsism in which the proof zombies can't
do science exists. The list is in the acknowledgements. It arose from a
discussion some time back. I will post the latest version on the group
FILES bin and welcome any/all feedback. It will be a .PDF

Meanwhile... I'd appreciate a bit more feedback on the UD... as in what
use is it? If it is not telling us what/where/why of our consciousness
then what exactly is it claiming which is of value to us?

cheeers, col


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Received on Mon Nov 20 2006 - 18:27:45 PST

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