Stathis Papaioannou wrote:
> 2009/8/24 David Nyman <david.nyman.domain.name.hidden>:
>
>> In the example of the alien brain, as has been pointed out, the
>> context of meaning is to be discovered only in the its own local
>> embodiment of its history and current experience. In Stathis' example
>> of *our* hypothesized observation of the alien's behaviour - whether
>> simulated or 'real' - any meaning to be found is again recoverable
>> exclusively in the context of either its, or our, historic and current
>> context of experience and action. It is obvious, under this analysis,
>> that information taken-out-of-context is - in that form - literally
>> meaningless. The function of observable information is to stabilise
>> relational causal configurations against their intelligible
>> reinstantiation in some context of meaning and action. Absent such
>> reembodiment, all that remains is noise.
>
> Wouldn't the meaning (to the alien) still be there if the brain did
> its thing without us understanding it, creating its own context? You
> can divide it into two interacting parts, one the brain proper, the
> other the virtual environment. The brain finds meaning in and
> interacts with the environment, but to an outside observer it all just
> looks like noise.
>
>
I think so, IF the alien brain were given the stimuli it evolved to
interpret - otherwise the alien might just experience noise. But, as
I understand it, the MGA still relies on the context of some external
physics to provide the intuition that it is realizing consciousness.
Hypothetically, one can include more and more context within the
simulation, but then it seems that one is creating consciousness
relative to a new simulated physics. It's like the conundrum of the
rock that is conscious because it implements all computations...in
some interpretation.
Brent
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Received on Mon Aug 24 2009 - 09:00:38 PDT