>> 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.
>
> You could say exactly same thing about a bunch of neurons and chemicals.
Yet they produce consciousness.
Yes. Neurons and their chemicals do contrive to construct phenomenal
scenes. The question to ask yourslef is what is different about their
circumstance that this be so? Or better..what is missing from my way of
thinking that has me unable to imagine how neuron behaviour can produce
such a thing - and what is the difference between that and wired signals,
numbers and rules?
>
>> 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.
>
> If you can learn and act you do know what it is about.
> You're just making an assertion that none of it is
> experience or innate awareness.
Hmmm. OK. So you're 'learning', are you? What rules of learning are there
and how did you get them? How do you 'know' what appropriate action to
take? Rules for learning are rules like the others. Tell me how a system
devoid of a phenomenal representation of the external world could ever
form a representation of the external world without knowing how to do that
already.
>
>> 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_.
>
> Unsupported assertion.
OK...want proof? Let's do a test. You are a scientist. You are about to do
science on a coffee cup in front of you. Close your eyes.
Now explain how you could possibly be as scientifically broad/adept in
your description of coffee cups. (Meanwhile I have filled the coffee cup
with acid, something of which you are completely unaware). The whole
phenomenal scene connecting you with the external world is GONE. What more
support do you want? What more is possible before a simple statement such
as the one I make above becomes reasonable?
Or, put it another way...exactly what is it that you are asserting acts in
its place? Maybe you could tell me what that is I might understand.
>
>> 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.
>
> To imagine is to create an internal model - so imagining what it
> is like to be a zombie seems to be a contradiction in terms.
>
> Brent Meeker
Erm.... I am trying to convey what it is like to be a human contrasted
with a zombie. YES...I am using human imagination to do that. You can't
use that back against me... please try to do the imagining I suggest
instead of criticising the attempt. I KNOW humans have imagination and
zombies don't...sheesh! cut me some slack here!
OK....If you like then....consider this bit
>> 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.
Delete all that as well. NOTHING. No awaness of even the numbers. For that
is what the zombie has...even worse. No awareness even of its own sensing.
nothing. Now put yourself in the zombie's shoes for a while.
Colin
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Received on Sat Nov 25 2006 - 15:12:05 PST