X-Message-Number: 5471
Date: Sun, 24 Dec 1995 21:49:09 -0800
From: John K Clark <>
Subject: SCI.CRYONICS Emotion and Consciousness
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
First, I hope everybody has a merry christmas, but I think it's important to
remember the true meaning of the holiday. Today is the birthday of our savior
from ignorance, Isaac Newton. We should also remember that GOD is the answer.
The question, of course, is "How do you spell "DOG" backwards?".
In #5469 (Thomas Donaldson) On Sat, 23 Dec 1995 Wrote:
>It doesn't matter just how he [Hawking] manages to
>communicate
I agree completely, it's totally irrelevant.
>the point is that he can actually look at the world outside
>his window and tell us what he sees, something which a
>Turing machine in the strict sense cannot do.
A machine couldn't tell you what the view outside a window is if
it didn't have that information, but then, neither could Hawking.
People use electro-chemical photon receptors called "eyes" to gain this
sort of information. I see no reason why a machine couldn't do the same.
>[is] It is part of my behavior that I eat food,
>shit and pee, and breathe out carbon dioxide.
Absolutely, every one of those things is part of behavior.
>If that were counted as "behavior" then you have a big
>restriction just there.
Shitting and peeing are undoubtedly types of behavior, but they
are not the sort of behavior I use to gage the intelligence or
consciousness of my fellow man, so I see no reason to use them
in judging the intelligence or consciousness of a machine.
Turing used text in his test because it was the simplest thing
that would get the job done. You can put in other things if you
want to, (the test will still work because a machine, in principle,
can do anything a person can) but there is not much point in doing so,
it would just complicate things without adding any precision to the test.
The only reason I have sometimes done so is when others have brought up
examples that they claim invalidated the test.
>even without saying a word I can do puzzles, put together
>puzzles into a picture, follow mazes on paper with a pencil,
>and many other such things.
Perhaps you can do these things, but the only way I will ever know anything
about it is if you say so, or write it down, or engage in some sort of
behavior.
>I don't just sit and think. I write things down. [...] I am
>writing notes to myself (and incidentally using the paper
>and pencil as an adjunct to my brain
I do the same thing, it's because our memory is so poor we can't remember
even for a minute the few bits of information that are on the paper.
A brain that lacked this limitation and did not need to scribble on paper
could still be conscious, perhaps even more conscious than you or me.
>Turing made his Turing test: to PRECISELY distinguish just
>the behaviors which would be important in judging
>intelligence from those which are not.
I agree. He didn't include smell for example, because it's not relevant,
he didn't include movement because it's a redundant complication handled by
text more clearly.
>you are saying no more than that we can recognize human
>beings by their behavior... not a surprising or even
>interesting statement at all
Yes, it's not very deep, a platitude almost, that's why it surprises me when
I get so much resistance when I just follow it to it's logical conclusion.
>It is likely that consciousness does help and did not just
>arise by chance.
I'm almost certain that's true, and even if it did arise by chance, evolution
wouldn't let us keep it for long unless consciousness helped us to survive,
and the only way it could do that is by effecting our behavior. I've said it
before I'll say it again, if evolution can "see" consciousness then so can
The Turing Test.
>if we look at current theories in neurophysiology on the
>subject of just what brain regions are responsible [...]
>They are in the thalamus, which ordinarily deals with our
>emotions and not just with our thinking.
Not surprising, I don't see how you could have consciousness without emotion
and I don't see how you could have intelligence without consciousness.
>just what do you mean PRECISELY by intelligence here?
I can't tell you, at least not precisely. I can give you lots of examples of
things that are intelligent and things that are not, but I've never seen a
definition that was better than mediocre. All I can say is that like a
familiar face, I can recognize it when I see it, and that's just what you'd
expect if, as I think, we're more like neural nets than expert systems.
Neural nets aren't very good at definitions but are good at putting things in
categories because they are "like that" or "not like that".
>If you want to talk about "intelligence" more broadly than
>in comparisons among human beings, then you need a much
>better definition of what it is, applicable to ANYTHING.
I don't think we will ever find a good definition of intelligence, at least
not one short enough to write on a piece of paper smaller than the galaxy.
A definition of consciousness would be even more difficult.
This doesn't mean we can't talk about these things however, because we have
lots of examples of both things, examples I am sure we would both agree on,
examples in which we have both independently put the same thing in the same
category.
>As for you, I don't KNOW that you are not a machine. I will
>say though that as someone who has tried to keep in touch
>with the current state of computer technology, if you are a
>machine then someone has done something that deserves several
>Nobel prizes at once.
Thanks, my programmers are quit flattered by your kind words, as are my many
beta testers who made sure that every last bug was completely eliminated
from my system from my system from my system from my system from my system
from my system from my system from my system from my system from my system
from my system from my system from my system from my system from my system
from my system from my system from my system from my system from my system
Error 1821
John K Clark
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: 2.6.i
iQCzAgUBMN40pX03wfSpid95AQEUqATwgzlJV+P3GylYg+2Fe5/4E24aNiYlpELR
mCgfguA/AMwCUW+LxsvCrJYZSXZMu3WlgMyTjmuqtXYIEfBEofsMvmWFs7nDxyn6
9/rcwejQHlFa65PvHir03uyukicGowKmfPfKvrXWrTA3Yvw3IXrd1lkkmXHN4IoV
QjVqzX1SinDZ2KOhSAitk1bkGGiCkvnViKI9MxtzChTw17p4MR8=
=+3m9
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=5471