On 22 Nov 2008, at 22:10, Brent Meeker wrote:
>> If we apply the Conway's Life rule to all the cells, it seems like
>> the
>> creatures in the grid ought to be conscious. If we don't apply the
>> Life rule to any of the cells, but just pull the data from our
>> previously-created lookup table, it seems like the creatures in the
>> grid are not conscious. But if we apply the Life rule to half of the
>> cells and pull the other half from the lookup table, there will
>> (probably) be some creature in the grid who has half of the cells in
>> its brain being computed by the Life rule, and half being pulled from
>> the lookup table. What's the status of this creature's consciousness?
>
> I don't think it's a relevant distinction. Even when the game-of-
> life is
> running on the computer the adjacent cells are not physically
> causing the
> changes from "on" to "off" and vice versa - that function is via the
> program
> implemented in the computer memory and cpu. So why should it make a
> difference
> whether those state changes are decided by gates in the cpu or a
> huge look-up table?
I agree.
Bruno
http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/
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Received on Sun Nov 23 2008 - 09:06:07 PST