X-Message-Number: 30155
From: 
Date: Mon, 17 Dec 2007 10:53:26 EST
Subject: feeling & consciousness

Flavonoid asks where to find my discussion of putative potential computer  

consciousness. Mainly this is in my book Youniverse, which is available from the
 Immortalist Society (proceeds donated to IS research). Email _ 
(mailto:) .
 
In extreme brevity, first of all, there is no agreed definition of  

consciousness and no current understanding of the physics and biology underlying
it or 
characterizing it, hence no current way for an observer to decide  whether an 
observed system is conscious. 
 
Secondly, I suggest that the essence of consciousness is feeling--the  

capacity for subjective experience--and again the physiology of feeling is not  
yet 
known, so we don't know whether an inorganic "brain" could support it. 
 
The pattern people or "upmorphists" assume as a matter of faith or as a  

postulate that thinking is computing and computing is thinking, and feeling is
subsumed in thinking, but the evidence suggests otherwise. An  algorithmic 
computer could match or beat humans in every intellectual  activity, including 

predicting every thought and action of a human and  thus  making a robot behave
outwardly exactly like a human, and still  lack feeling, which means it would 
lack life as we know it. 
 
Your essence lies in your qualia, or subjective experiences. Personhood is  

defined by the existence of qualia, not by intelligence. A dog or cat or parrot
 is a "person" in this sense, while the most advanced computer is not, and  

perhaps no algorithmic computer can ever be.  My (admittedly vague)  suggestion
is that a quale is a kind of standing wave in the brain, with  extension in 
space and time. This also allows a reasonable basis for identifying  with our 
past and future selves, since there is physical overlap between the  current 
self and your predecessors and continuers. (This view also solves the  

homunculus problem, since a quale is not a representation of anything, but a  
thing in 
itself. You do not "have" qualia--you basically ARE your qualia.)
 
Robert Ettinger



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