Re: How would a computer know if it were conscious?

From: Russell Standish <lists.domain.name.hidden>
Date: Tue, 19 Jun 2007 21:31:14 +1000

On Tue, Jun 19, 2007 at 09:40:59AM -0000, David Nyman wrote:
>
> On Jun 19, 5:09 am, Russell Standish <l....domain.name.hidden> wrote:
>
> > David, I was unable to perceive a question in what you just wrote. I
> > haven't a response, since (sadly) I was unable to understand what you
> > were talking about. :(
>
> Really? I'm surprised, but words can indeed be very slippery in this
> context. Oh, well. To condense: my argument is intended to pump the
> intuition that a 'primitive' (or 'reduced') notion of 'sensing' (or
> please substitute anything that carries the thrust of 'able to
> locate', 'knows it's there', etc.) is already inescapably present in
> the notion of 'interaction' between fundamental 'entities' in any
> feasible model of reality. Else, how could we claim that they retain
> any coherent sense of being 'in contact'?

Interaction is in terms of fields - electromagnetic for most of our
everyday examples. The fields themselves are emergent effects from
virtual boson exchange. Now how is this related to sensing exactly?
(Other than sensing being a particular subclass of interaction)

...

> implications. So my question is, do you think it has any merit, or is
> simply wrong, indeterminate, or gibberish? And why?
>

If I have to pick an answer: gibberish. Sensing to me implies some
form of agency at one end of the interaction. I don't attribute any sort
of agency to the interaction between two hydrogen atoms making up a
hydrogen molecule for instance.


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Received on Tue Jun 19 2007 - 07:31:30 PDT

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