>> Colin
>> I'm not talking about invisibility of within a perceptual field. That is
>> an invisibility humans can deal with to some extent using instruments.
>> We
>> inherit the limits of that process, but at least we have something
>> presented to us from the outside world. The invisibility I speak of is
>> the
>> invisibility of novel behaviour in the natural world within a perceptual
>> field.
>
>
> To an entity without a phenomenal field, novel
> behaviour will be phenomenally invisible. Everything
> will be phenomenally invisible. That doesn't
> mean they won't be able have non-phenomenal
> access to events. Including novdl ones.
Then you will be at the mercy of the survivability of thast situation. If
your reflex actions in that circumstance are OK you get to live. If the
novelty is a predator you've never encountered it'll look like whatever
your reflex action interpretation thinks it is...if the behaviour thus
slected is survivable you'll get to live. That's the non-phenomenal world
in a nutshell. I imagine some critters live like this: habitat bound.
>
>> Without a phenomenal representation of the external world we cannot
>> use existing knowledge to predict anything 'out there' that we can
>> reliably be surprised about. There is no 'out there' without phenomenal
>> representation.
>
> That's a claim -- that any projection from internal sense-data to a
> hypothetical
> external source is necessarily phenomenal -- not an argument.
The forthcoming zombie room experiment might help with this. I know it's
hard to get.
>
>> Brent:
>> Are you saying that a computer cannot have any pre-programmed rules for
>> dealing with sensory inputs, or if it does it's not a zombie.
>>
>> Colin:
>> I would say that a computer can have any amount of pre-programmed rules
>> for dealing with sensory inputs. Those rules are created by humans and
>
> Yes.
>
>> grounded in the perceptual experiences of humans.
>
> Not necessarily. AI researches try to generalise as much as possible.
Yes, and they generalise according to their generalisation rules, which
are also grounded in human phenomenal consciousness. It is very hard to
imagine what happens to rule-making without phenomenality...but keep
trying... you'll get there...
>
>> That would be a-priori
>> knowledge. The machine itself has no experiences related to the rules or
>> its sensing, hence it is a zombie. The possession of behavioural rules
>> does not entail zombie-ness. The lack of possession of perceptual fields
>> does.
>>
>> Brent:
>> Or are you claiming that humans have some pre-scientific knowledge that
>> cannot be implemented in a computer.
>>
>> Colin:
>> Yes! Humans have a genetically bestowed capacity to make cellular
>> material
>> which takes advantage of (as yet un-described) attributes of the natural
>> world that enable sensory feeds to create phenomenal fields, thus
>> connecting the human with the external natural world.
>
> You pass easily from "humans are connected to the external
> world phenomenally" to "no entity can be connected to the external
> world except phenomenally".
Yeah I do, don't I? I better be careful with that!
Colin
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Received on Sun Nov 26 2006 - 05:19:01 PST