X-Message-Number: 14727
From: 
Date: Wed, 18 Oct 2000 13:08:43 EDT
Subject: more explanations

John Clark (#14716) repeats a couple of ancient questions, so I'll repeat the 
answers for the benefit of newcomers. First he asks how my suggestion about 
standing waves and the self circuit answers any questions, in particular 
about duplicates as self.

I have never said the self circuit addresses all the philosophical problems 
such as identity of duplicates. It is simply a possible mechanism (very vague 
and general at this point) to explain subjectivity, i.e. feelings or qualia 
or experiences. Several philosophical problems remain open. 

John also asks, yet again, ignoring my previous answers, how evolution could 
have produced the self circuit if it "doesn't affect behavior"--and again 
mixes up and drags in behaviorism and the Turing Test.

First, the Turing test is baloney in its own right and on its own terms. It 
is neither necessary nor sufficient to prove sentience. A non-sentient system 
might easily fool an observer, and a sentient system might easily fail the 
test.

The self circuit DOES affect behavior and improve chances of survival--even 
though primitive "living" organisms may lack it or lack some aspects of it. 
It could provide rough-and-ready or quick-and-dirty solutions to problems of 
living, bypassing complicated calculations. "Smell good--eat." "Smell bad--me 
outa here."    

Could an unfeeling automaton develop behavior similar to that of a sentient 
organism? Certainly. We already have examples of computer programs that no 
one claims to be sentient, yet which (in limited areas) can fool those 
interacting with them. The automaton might also substitute speed of 
processing for the efficiency of the self circuit. Much more likely, however, 
the living (feeling) being will act differently--more efficiently in some 
ways, less efficiently or even pathologically in other ways.

Next question (also from Henri Kluytmans)--exactly what is my suggested 
standing wave, or set of standing waves? It's presumably three dimensional, 
and may involve electric currents, magnetic fields, and chemical fields. But 
that's not my department--I don't have the brains or the time to figure it 
out. I'm just a big-picture guy. 

Henri Kluytmans also asks:

>What was the scientific motivation for introducing such a model of  standing 
waves?
 
The universally recognized "hard problem" in neuroscience or cognitive 
science is accounting for subjective experience in objective terms. Nobody 
has done it, or come close. I think this opens a path.

On another topic, Mr. Kluytmans pushes the 
"information-processing-is-everything" point of view. But I think he 
sometimes confuses what is necessary and what is sufficient, what is 
substantive and what is merely descriptive. 

Everything important that the brain does (everything that happens anywhere, 
in the view of some) can be regarded as information processing. But it does 
not follow that any old isomorphism is "just as good" or "the same" as the 
original. No matter how high the fidelity, in general the map is not the 
territory, except for restricted purposes.

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

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