Re: Free will/consciousness/ineffability

From: Brent Meeker <meekerdb.domain.name.hidden>
Date: Thu, 04 Oct 2001 22:24:16 -0700

On 05-Oct-01, Marchal wrote:
...>
>> Seeing that there is no rigerous way to define what actually
>> constitues a physical computer, and what does not, does it make any
>> sense to say "my desktop computer" has become conscious?
>
>
> Your desktop computer cannot be conscious, nor can my brain.
> If you succeed putting my mind (software) in your desktop
> computer, your desktop computer will still not be conscious, but
> it will make possible for me to talk with you (as my brain does
> now). Only a person can be said conscious. And person, like
> nation, or game are immaterial (with comp), and not absolutely
> "singularisable" (only relatively).

This confuses me, Bruno. You always postulate 'comp', i.e. that the
brain can be emulated. I had always assumed that this entailed the
emulation being conscious. Now I see that you regard consciousness as
not only as immaterial (as a computer program or mathematics is
immaterial) but also independent of material - a soul - and at the same
time you regard the material as independent of consciousness so that a
material structure, such as a brain, can have related consciousness or
not. This seems to be dualism - which as you must know has many
problems related to the interaction of spirit and material.

Brent Meeker
  As far as the laws of mathematics refer to reality, they are not
certain, and as far as they are certain, they do not refer to reality.
        -- Albert Einstein
Received on Fri Oct 05 2001 - 10:31:32 PDT