X-Message-Number: 17495
Date: Sun, 09 Sep 2001 22:58:24 -0700
From: Mike Perry <>
Subject: Confusion of Issues?

Thomas Donaldson, #17481:

>Second, for Mike Perry: miserable explanation. I too believe that the
>structure and operation of our nervous system is critical to our
>survival, and that any device which imitates it in the right way
>will be living. However this has nothing to do with whether or not
>the device itself can tell the difference. Just as Ettinger says,
>if the device lacks the required structural characteristics, then
>whether or not it "thinks" itself real doesn't matter.

I don't think we're talking about the same issue, Thomas (and sorry if I 
was confusing). If you are embedded in a world that world is real to you, 
even though in theory it could be a simulation or some secondary process in 
some other world you don't see. I never claimed that a device that "lacks 
the required structural characteristics" would, for example, make a 
suitable replacement of a natural brain. It is also possible (maybe very 
likely) that you would know if your natural brain had been replaced with an 
artificial device; I don't see that as necessarily disqualifying the 
resulting construct as "you," far from it. But on a certain level the 
artificial device would clearly have to function in just the right ways, so 
the resulting entity would still feel it was you, with appropriate 
reactions, behavior, and so on.

Mike Perry 

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