X-Message-Number: 11779
From: Thomas Donaldson <>
Subject: about devices which are aware
Date: Wed, 19 May 1999 23:43:14 +1000 (EST)

Hi everyone!

To Brook Norton: 
What you have shown is not that we cannot come back in a nonbiological
device but that we cannot come back solely in a computer. I liked your
image of the vibrating rod; but I will say that your version is too
symbolic. We must somehow interact with the world. This is even true
for human consciousness (I am stating a matter of fact, not just my
own theory. References provided if requested). To come back in a computer,
isolated from all interaction with the world, is basically to come back
as a program or subprogram, which only has meaning because those who
wrote it interpret it as a person. Yes, we now have ACTIVE symbolic
systems --- by using computers, but they do not become any more real
than an INACTIVE symbolic system.

As for awareness, after a long hiatus (yes, caused by the dominance of
behaviorism) there has recently been a good deal of research and thought
about awareness. While some neuroscientists would disagree, the best
notion suggests that some part of our lower brain, getting and sending
impulses from the rest of our brain, plays a major role in our awareness.
If isolated from the rest of the brain awareness fails; that brain region
does still seem to play a big role in awareness as a kind of crossroads
for impulses from many different brain regions. (Yes, this is my
personal opinion based on lots of reading of neuroscience).

I see no reason why such systems cannot be reproduced in nonbiological
form, though I will add that doing so is likely to be much harder than
most computer people (even computer experts) believe. (The main issue
is that of producing neural nets which work like those of a brain. If
you do not reproduce the activity of brains exactly, a problem may
arise because the device simply won't work like a human being or even
as well as one). The neural nets in our brain GROW and change just as
do other biological systems.

Do we or should we want to come back as such a device? One major problem
is that if we want improvements in how our brain works, we must grow
into them by one means or another. Just providing a brain able to 
do more than our own brains, and somehow moving ourselves into it,
tells us nothing about how to OPERATE those new features. 

			Best and long long life to all,

				Thomas Donaldson

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