X-Message-Number: 11635 Date: Wed, 28 Apr 1999 23:48:03 -0700 From: Mike Perry <> Subject: A reply to Thomas Donaldson Thomas Donaldson, #11626, writes: >More for Mike Perry: > >The important point behind what I was saying in my previous message (why >Turing machines, or indeed any sequential computer, are quite inadequate >as machines able to act in the world just as well as persons can) is that >persons are much more than computational devices. > I submit that persons are no more than computational systems (in case "devices" bothers you) because everything in our quantum-dominated universe can be viewed as a computational system. A very complex system, perhaps, but a computational system just the same. Not necessarily on the level of something we have built--you need to allow for much more than that. So quantum computers, and even Turing machines, have the relevance I've claimed. A sufficiently lengthy computation by no more than a Turing machine should be able to emulate, not just simulate, a person in full. Of course this is just a thought experiment, not a proposal for a practical implementation. To such a person, emulated rain would be just as wet as "real" rain is to you or me. And I could, in principle, communicate meaningfully with such persons, so I see no reason not to grant them true feeling, not just an "imitation." Again, this has little practical importance, but a deep philosophical significance nonetheless. (And it certainly isn't an original thought with me, but one that seems correct, and I've adopted it.) It tells us something about the nature of personhood and consciousness, that these effects are reducible to digital processing, essentially to bit-flipping, and do not rest either on inscrutable, mystical mechanisms or some other properties of reality, whether known or unknown. To deny this, I submit, is to miss the trees because of the forest. These opinions in turn are not absolute dogmas with me, just working hypotheses, but I think they rest on reasonably good evidence. Mike Perry Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=11635