Stathis (barging in to your post to Mark);
Your premis is redundant, a limited model (machine) cannot be (act, perform,
sense, react etc.) identical to the total it was cut out from. So you
cannot prove it either<G>. As i GOT the difference lately, so I would use
'simulated' instead of 'emulated' if I got it right. Even the 3rd p and as
you restrict it: "observable" behavior is prone to MY 1st p. interpretation
(distortion).
"Of the brain"? if you extend it into "the tool of mental behavior" it
refers to more than just the tissue-machine up to our today's level of
knowledge. Penrose (though not a friendly correspondent) is smart (happens
to Nobelist also) in assuming more than computable. His (if he used it
really) "brain" must be that all inclusive total complexity of all related
networks.
What I really wanted to stress is your expression "purpose" in evolution. (I
am not 'in' for the 'zombie craze' because a person without *anything*
belonging to 'it' is not "the person"), but the *purpose* in conventional
'evolution-talk' points to the ID camouflage of creationism. Evolutionary
mutation does not occur 'in order to' better sustainability (a purpose) -
rather 'because of'' - in variations induced by the changes in the totality
(an entailment).
How intensely some change may influence 'us' is still my terra incognita to
be explored.
(In my 'evolution' term i.e. the history of a universe from occurring from
the plenitude all the way to re-smoothening into it I include a 'purpose: to
facilitate such 're-smoothening from the incipient unavoidable
complexity-formation from the plenitude's infinite invariant symmetry - see
my 'Multiverse-narrative).
John
On 2/18/07, Stathis Papaioannou <stathisp.domain.name.hidden> wrote:
>
>
>
> On 2/18/07, Mark Peaty <mpeaty.domain.name.hidden> wrote:
>
> My main problem with Comp is that it needs several unprovable assumptions
> > to be accepted. For example the Yes Doctor hypothesis, wherein it is assumed
> > that it must be possible to digitally emulate some or all of a person's
> > body/brain function and the person will not notice any difference. The Yes
> > Doctor hypothesis is a particular case of the digital emulation hypothesis
> > in which it is asserted that, basically, ANYTHING can be digitally emulated
> > if one had enough computational resources available. As this seems to me to
> > be almost a version of Comp [at least as far as I have got with reading
> > Bruno's exposition] then from my simple minded perspective it looks rather
> > like assuming the very thing that needs to be demonstrated.
> >
>
> You can't prove that a machine will be conscious in the same way you are.
> There is good reason to believe that the third person observable behaviour
> of the brain can be emulated, because the brain is just chemical reactions
> and chemistry is a well-understood field. (Roger Penrose believes that
> something fundamentally non-computable may be happening in the brain but he
> is almost on his own in this view.) However, it is possible that the actual
> chemical reactions are needed for consciousness, and a computer emulation
> would be a philosophical zombie. I think it is very unlikely that something
> as elaborate as consciousness could have developed with no evolutionary
> purpose (evolution cannot distinguish between me and my zombie twin if
> zombies are possible), but it is a logical possibility.
>
> Stathis Papaioannou
>
>
> >
>
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Received on Mon Feb 19 2007 - 11:18:01 PST