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

From: Brent Meeker <meekerdb.domain.name.hidden>
Date: Mon, 25 Jun 2007 12:09:39 -0700

David Nyman wrote:
> On 25/06/07, *Russell Standish* <lists.domain.name.hidden
> <mailto:lists.domain.name.hidden>> wrote:
...
> RS: The conscious entity that the computer implements would know about
> it. It is not imaginary to itself. And by choosing to interpret the
> computer's program in that way, rather than say a tortured backgammon
> playing program, we open a channel of communication with the
> consciousness it implements.
>
> DN: .......you mean that if functionalism is true, then though any of
> the myriad interpretations of the physics might possibly evoke an
> observer world (although presumably most would be incoherent), only
> interpretations we are able to 'interact with', precisely because of the
> consistency of their externalised behaviour with us and our environment,
> are relevant (causally or otherwise) *to us*. And if this can be shown
> to converge on a *unique* such interpretation for a given physical
> system, in effect this would then satisfy my criterion of supervening on
> *some* distinguishable or unique set of physical relations, even if we
> couldn't say what it was. So this, then, would be the 'other mind' - and
> from this perspective, all the other interpretations are 'imaginary'
> *for us*.

If I understand you, I would agree with the clarification that this convergence has been performed by evolution; so that for us it is in the most part hardwired at birth. And this hardwired interpretation of the world is something that co-evolved with sensory and manipulative organs.

Brent Meeker


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Received on Mon Jun 25 2007 - 15:10:39 PDT

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