X-Message-Number: 14739
From: "John Clark" <>
Subject: more explanations
Date: Thu, 19 Oct 2000 12:59:12 -0400

In  #14727   Wrote:


      >I have never said the self circuit addresses all the philosophical 
      problems


I don't demand it solve all philosophical problems but it would be nice if it 
shed
a little light on something, anything.

      >It is simply a possible mechanism (very vague and general at this point)
      >to explain subjectivity


Explain why a standing wave creates subjectivity. Maybe I'm a little thick but 
it's not

obvious what one has to do with the other. And to repeat, a standing wave of 
what?


      >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 Turing Test doesn't proved anything, it's just the best thing we have,
in fact it's the only thing we have to study consciousness other than our own.

      >the Turing test is baloney in its own right and on its own terms. [...]
      >The self circuit DOES affect behavior


These two statements are contradictory. And if the self circuit does things 
other

than generate a feeling of self as you say then it makes as much sense to call 
it

a self circuit as it does to call the RF generator in my radio a Beethoven 
circuit.


       >The automaton might also substitute speed of processing for the 
       efficiency
       >of the self circuit.

Huh? If a program is efficient it's fast and small.


      >It could provide rough-and-ready or quick-and-dirty solutions to problems
      of
      >living, bypassing complicated calculations.

Interesting, so it would be easier to make a conscious computer than
a non conscious one.

     >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.

I seem to remember Marvin Minsky saying that we already have sentient
computers but we don't have intelligent ones. I don't know it that's true or
not but I certainly can't prove him wrong.

         John K Clark        

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