X-Message-Number: 11172
From: 
Date: Sun, 24 Jan 1999 23:30:48 EST
Subject: Clark comments

John Clark (#11163) says:
In #11143  on Wed, 20 Jan 1999 Wrote:

    [Ettinger] >If a different location raises a real conceptual difficulty
with survival
     >through duplication(as I believe it does),

[Clark] >Location with respect to what? The center of your house? The center
of the
Earth? The center of the sun? The center of the galaxy? The center of the
Virgo
cluster 5 billion light years away? My location is constantly changing yet I
still
feel I'm the same person, and if I feel I'm the same then I don't care if I
"really"
am or not.
 
The question was not whether you are different when your location gradually
changes, in various coordinate systems, in the ordinary course of events. The
question was whether another physical brain, at a different location at the
same time, can also be "you."

  [Ettinger]    >if "your" brain evidences this phenomenon HERE, then the
physical
    >thing HERE that feels is you, and another thing THERE,

[Clark] >If brain experiences have a place at all it is most certainly not
where the
brain is located, it's where the sense organs are located.

"Experience" as the physical event(s) corresponding to subjective feelings are
surely in the brain, not the fingers or eyes. If we really need an example,
you can feel pain "in" an amputated limb. The "you" that feels is a part or
aspect of the brain and its functions.

[Ettinger]    >>The existence of the self circuit is not arguable, because I
define it merely as the part(s) or aspect(s) of the brain or its functions
giving rise to feeling
or subjectivity or qualia.

[Clark] >If that's how you want to define the "self circuit" then I agree, it
most
certainly exists and if you define it in a similar way a "Beethoven circuit"
exists also. However the "self circuit" idea would be about as useful to a
computer scientist or a philosopher as the "Beethoven circuit" would be to an
engineer designing a radio.

The analogy is not apt. A radio doesn't need a "Beethoven circuit" because
Beethoven noises, from the radio's standpoint, are no different than other
noises. But feelings (qualia) are very different from other kinds of brain
activity, so a very special anatomy/physiology must be involved.

[Ettinger]   > >The self circuit could easily act as a kind of fuzzy logic
filter, in effect
    >>providing quick-and-dirty answers to important questions affecting the
survival
    >>of the organism as a whole. Encountering a new situation, a robot, or a
lower
    >>life form that might not have a self circuit, might have difficulty
categorizing
    >>it and devising an appropriate response.

[Clark] >In other words you think the "self circuit" effects behavior, but
then The
Turing Test must work because we could detect this "self circuit" by examining
the quality and the quantity of the organism's answers. You can't have it both
ways, if Turing is wrong then so is Darwin.

No. The self circuit (at least sometimes) affects behavior and likelihood of
survival, but that doesn't necessarily mean a Turing Test could discriminate.
The TT, I believe, is usually envisioned as a tester communicating with a
testee via teletype or email or some such. The tester doesn't know how many
teraflops it took the testee to come up with a sentence, or what algorithm was
used. If the tester had that information, he might indeed expose the testee if
said testee took too much internal time to produce a sentence. 

Robert Ettinger
Cryonics Institute
Immortalist Society
http://www.cryonics.org

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