I don't think these issues (regarding qualia and the nature of subjective experience) matter for AGI design, but I don't think they're meaningless either
On Tue, Sep 23, 2014 at 10:40 AM, Matt Mahoney via AGI <[email protected]> wrote: > On Mon, Sep 22, 2014 at 6:11 PM, Ben Goertzel <[email protected]> wrote: > > I tend to agree with Imre Lakatos that old points of view are almost > never > > proven false; they > > are just demonstrated to be relatively uninteresting ways of interpreting > > observations and so > > they fall by the wayside. I guess your "subjective experience is an > > illusion" paradigm will > > definitively fall into that category once we can do experiments such as > I'm > > describing here... > > The old point of view is that we have souls that go to heaven. Has > anyone proven this false? > > When I first heard of Skinner's behaviorism, I immediately rejected > the idea as so obviously wrong that I would not even consider it. It > is so utterly obvious that we have conscious experience that cannot be > explained by computation with neurons, right? > > The idea that we have a physical brain and a non-physical soul or > consciousness perceiving and doing exactly the same things in lockstep > is called dualism. Has anyone ever disproved dualism? > > Does any of this matter for AGI design? You build a computer that > duplicates everything the brain does. It passes the Turing test. You > put it in a robot and to everyone it looks and behaves just like a > human. Is it conscious? How are you going to answer that? You can't > even say what the question means. > > Sure, you could toss out 10% or 90% or 100% of your brain and put the > AGI brain in its place and at every step you would say you are > conscious and don't feel any different than you did before. What does > that prove? You already proved to your own satisfaction that you are > conscious, right? > > -- > -- Matt Mahoney, [email protected] > > > ------------------------------------------- > AGI > Archives: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/303/=now > RSS Feed: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/303/19237892-5029d625 > Modify Your Subscription: > https://www.listbox.com/member/?&; > Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com > -- Ben Goertzel, PhD http://goertzel.org "In an insane world, the sane man must appear to be insane". -- Capt. James T. Kirk "Emancipate yourself from mental slavery / None but ourselves can free our minds" -- Robert Nesta Marley ------------------------------------------- AGI Archives: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/303/=now RSS Feed: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/303/21088071-f452e424 Modify Your Subscription: https://www.listbox.com/member/?member_id=21088071&id_secret=21088071-58d57657 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
