X-Message-Number: 8080
From: 
Date: Tue, 15 Apr 1997 11:21:11 -0400 (EDT)
Subject: CRYONICS Chinese feeling

Still another thought experiment, which may help highlight problems with the
info paradigm:

Searle's Chinese Room example fails to convince the die-hard info people that
the room as a whole doesn't understand Chinese. However, let's focus on
feeling rather than "understanding," and use a routine computer-type
simulation, as follows.

An operator (in principle could be a person of ordinary intelligence, or a
series of them) is supplied with a data store that adequately describes you
and your environment at present; and with a program that translates the laws
of nature into a computer algorithm; and with a very large stock of blank
paper and pencils, with which to write down the sequential algorithm
operations and changes in the data store. On signal, the operator begins to
compute and record all subsequent predicted changes in you and your
environment, using longhand notations.

Needless to say, the operator has little or no idea of what his calculations
signify in ordinary descriptive/predictive terms; and his progress will be
EXCEEDINGLY slow compared with real-time phenomena. Nevertheless, the info
people, if they are consistent, will have to claim that this system somehow
not only understands what is (would be) going on, but has the appropriate
FEELING or subjectivity--that it actually EXPERIENCES events, with qualia
essentially like yours and mine. If some new pencil marks simulate the birth
of a child, for example, the system will feel love (which further pencil
marks will duly simulate) etc.

They admit it isn't the operator that has the experience, nor the pencils,
nor the paper, nor the squiggles on the paper, old or new; but the system as
a whole does. There isn't any "seat" of feeling, they claim; the feeling is
just an "emergent" phenomenon distributed over space and time (or perhaps
over phase space).

But how do they get around the time problems? In the real world, many events
are simultaneous, not sequential. Furthermore, we have placed no restrictions
on the operator's work schedule; he may work fast (for him), or slowly, or
intermittently with lots of R & R breaks. WHEN does the system feel a quale?
What happens during the operator's breaks? What happens (subjectively) during
the progress of a calculation or notation? What happens if the operator just
stops after a while and never completes a sequence of calculations? 

True enough, partly similar questions arise in the ordinary course of natural
events in the brain--but only PARTLY similar. One of the dissimilarities is
that, in the brain, we DO allow simultaneities. 

Another dissimilarity is that, in the brain, qualia can be causes as well as
effects. In the simulation (as it would have to be written with current
knowledge) what is the story? Well, we don't understand qualia, but (just
possibly, with a great big stretch) we could base our data and program on the
"first principles" of quantum mechanics and allow observable results to flow
therefrom. But again we run into a profound difference between world and
simulation, viz.:  In the world, effect flows inevitably from cause, with no
time outs and no exceptions allowed. In the simulation, the operator can
pause, or stop, or he might make a mistake--and in such cases, what does the
system "feel"? What does it "do"? If there is a mistake, and the new marks on
the paper are just nonsense, what can one say about the system's subjectivity
and subsequent activity? Did the simulated person just cease to exist the
moment the operator made a mistake (a major mistake, incompatible with any
realistic representation or history)? 

No, I don't expect to change anyone's mind on this subject; but I'm near the
end (you're welcome) of one of my projects, trying to get a better feel for
the logic (?) and psychology of the information paradigm.

P.S. Old refrain again: Mike Perry and others keep saying that certain
disagreements represent (just?) different "points of view." This seems to me
much like "Everyone is entitled to his own opinion." But nobody is entitled
to a wrong opinion, except in the social or legal sense. Values are NOT
arbitrary, I contend; if we apply rigorous logic to well established
premises, we arrive at valid values--otherwise not, except by accident.

Robert Ettinger

Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=8080