X-Message-Number: 11800 From: Date: Sat, 22 May 1999 14:10:28 EDT Subject: duckness & quackery, being & seeming Continuing the Zombie discussion, Daniel Crevier writes (in part): > You must have decided that consciousness in com- >puters and consciousness in humans are completely different matters. >I am saying that they are fundamentally the same, because there cannot >be one kind of mechanisms (the A's) that make physical systems just >behave as if they were conscious, and another kind (the B's) that make >them really conscious. If there were, the A's, which would do less, >would presumably be more simple. If this were the case, as nature pre- >fers simple solutions, we'd be A's. But we're not, since we really >are conscious. No, I must insist that I am respecting the facts and leaving open questions that are not yet answerable, while leaning in one direction; whereas Mr. Crevier (among others) takes an arbitrary stance and fails to label his postulates as such. Please look again at two very simple and unarguable propositions: 1. We do not yet understand the physical basis of consciousness. 2. A sufficiently fast sequential (Turing) computer, supplied with enough information (both about the laws of nature and about the system being studied, in particular a human brain), could in principle predict or describe the behavior or states of that system in all circumstances, even if not in real time. Prop (1) by itself ought to be enough to warn against any assumption that any inorganic system, let alone a computer, coud be conscious. How can you possibly claim, with confidence, that a system has property A if you don't even know what property A is? The various discussions, such as Dennett's, do not constitute proof of anything. Claiming that consciousness is "computational" again is stating your premise as a conclusion; we do not know, and cannot assume, that consciousness is "computational" in your sense. Again I suggest that consciousness may reside in some kind of standing wave which binds space and time--i.e., which includes a non-zero region of space and time. If this or something like it is correct, then a computer could be conscious ONLY if we swallow the "isomorphism is everything" postulate, which once again would lead to the conclusion that a book could be conscious, since nothing matters except relationships between symbols. That last notion seems extremely far-fetched to me, although we don't know enough yet to rule it out entirely. (Mike Perry suggests the isomorphism postulate should be modified to forbid replacing time by symbols, while still allowing replacement of space and matter by symbols. But even if such an ad hoc adjustment were arbitrarily accepted, a Turing computer would still only reflect a small part of real time relationships.......At least, Dr. Perry understands my arguments, and agrees that his isomorphism postulate is only that, and does not claim certainty but only expresses leanings, as do I.) Prop (2) tells us what we already know--that a computer could fool at least some of the people some of the time, and programs with that capability already exist. Further--forgive the redundancy, which seems to be necessary--even perfect prediction or description would still only be prediction or description, not the things or events themselves. Now let's look again at parts of Mr. Crevier's post: >there cannot >be one kind of mechanisms (the A's) that make physical systems just >behave as if they were conscious, and another kind (the B's) that make >them really conscious. Yes there can. The computer predicts or describes behavior, and a book written by a computer could do the same, and a robot controlled by the computer or the book would behave as if conscious. >If there were, the A's, which would do less, >would presumably be more simple. If this were the case, as nature pre- >fers simple solutions, we'd be A's. No. The system (computer) which describes another system (the brain) is not necessarily simpler. In fact, the contrary is true. The putatitive computer would have to be capable of modeling all the brain's structure and function, and then using this capability to control a robot. For those impatient with tortured terminology, it may be enough to think again of Being vs. Seeming. What looks, walks, and quacks like a duck may still be only a decoy. If two things differ in any way at all, then they are not the same. If you choose to define "sameness" by arbitrarily restricted criteria, then you risk abuse of language and you risk misleading yourself and others about important facts or facets of nature. Robert Ettinger Cryonics Institute Immortalist Society http://www.cryonics.org Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=11800