>>
>
> I understand that there is a difference between sensing and perception.
> Perception includes sensing and also interpreting the sensations in a
> model of the world. Which is why unusual appearances can literally be
> difficult to perceive. But you still have not said why a digital computer
> cannot have an internal model and modify that model based on sensory data.
>
> Brent Meeker
If all you have is a bunch of numbers (or 4-20mA current loop signals or
1-5V signals) dancing away, and you have no a-priori knowledge of the
external world, how are you to create any sort of model of the external
world in the first place? You don't even know it is there. That is the
world devoid of phenomenal consciousness.
If humans give you a model. You still don't know what it is about. It's
just a bunch of rules (when this input does this, do that...and so on).
None of which is an experience. None of which gives you any innate
awareness of the external world.
That's why a real phenomenon happening in your head that innately connects
to the real phenomemona in the external natural world and constructs an
experienced representation of it, devoid of all knowledge 'about it', is
necessary before you can know anything "about" it _at all_.
There is a natural tendency to anthropomorphise our experiences into the
artifact. Imagine yourself in a black silent room with a bunch of numbers
streaming by and a bunch of dials you can use to send numbers back out.
Now tell me how you can ever deduce the real external world from all those
numbers. You can't. You can say 'when I poke this dial that number over
there does that'. That is your whole universe.
You have to stop thinking like a human and really imagine 'what it is
like' to be a zombie. You don't have any awareness of your own boundary,
let alone the external world. The most exqisitely detailed abstraction you
can possibly imagine won't make the tiniest bit of difference to that
situation.
cheers,
colin
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Received on Sat Nov 25 2006 - 02:15:58 PST