Dear Stephen,
COMP is basically a variant of the familiar "Problem of Other Minds", which
is not just philosophical esoterica but something we have to deal with in
everyday life. How do you know that all your friends and family are really
conscious in the way you are conscious, and not merely zombies who behave as
if they are conscious? There isn't any empirical test that can help you
decide the answer to this question conclusively; in the final analysis, you
assume that other people have minds as a matter of faith. This troubles me
as much as it troubles you, but alas, there is nothing we can do about it.
--Stathis Papaioannou
>From: "Stephen Paul King" <stephenk1.domain.name.hidden>
>To: "Stathis Papaioannou" <stathispapaioannou.domain.name.hidden>
>CC: <everything-list.domain.name.hidden>
>Subject: Re: Everything Physical is Based on Consciousness
>Date: Sat, 7 May 2005 10:27:45 -0400
>
>Dear Stathis,
>
> It is exactly this seeming requirement that we accept COMP by faith and
>demand no possibility of empirical falsification that troubles me the most.
>For me, a theory must make predictions that "might be confirmed to be
>incorrect" otherwise all one has, at best, is the internal consistensy of
>the theory. In light of Goedel's theorems, the utility of such theories to
>answer questions is in doubt.
> There must be always some way for independent observers to agree upon
>the falsifiable implications of a theory. Here we are considering a theory
>of observers themselves...
>
>Stephen
>
>----- Original Message ----- From: "Stathis Papaioannou"
><stathispapaioannou.domain.name.hidden>
>To: <stephenk1.domain.name.hidden>
>Cc: <everything-list.domain.name.hidden>
>Sent: Saturday, May 07, 2005 9:13 AM
>Subject: Re: Everything Physical is Based on Consciousness
>
>
>snip
>>OK, I agree. AI research is an experimental science. It may or may not be
>>possible to build and program a computer so that it behaves like an
>>intelligent and self-aware entity. Even if this difficult feat is
>>eventually accomplished, there will then be the philosophical questions
>>casting doubt on whether it is *really* conscious. This is the old problem
>>of possibility of knowing whether other people really have minds like us,
>>or whether they are just zombies acting like conscious beings. Ultimately,
>>and regretfully, we can only be sure that we ourselves are conscious, and
>>we have to take the existence of other minds on faith. However, if we
>>believe that other humans are conscious because they seem to behave like
>>we do, but refuse to believe that a computer which behaves in the same way
>>(i.e. passes the Turing test) is conscious, then we are being
>>inconsistent, and it is this inconsistency which I have called biological
>>chauvinism.
>>
>>Having said that, it was not the purpose of my original post to show that
>>observer-moments are Turing emulable. Rather, it was to show that Bruno
>>Marchal's UDA can work without explicitly defining or explaining
>>consciousness. I believe Bruno himself has aknowledged that the
>>computational hypothesis (which he calls "comp") may ultimately have to be
>>taken as a matter of faith. This sort of bothers me because I spent a
>>large part of my adolescence heaping scorn on religion and other
>>faith-based belief systems, but I can't do anything about it.
>>
>>--Stathis Papaioannou
>
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Received on Sun May 08 2005 - 02:43:00 PDT