Matt Mahoney wrote:
--- On Tue, 11/11/08, Richard Loosemore <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
Your 'belief' explanation is a cop-out because it does not address
any of the issues that need to be addressed for something to count
as a definition or an explanation of the facts that need to be
explained.
As I explained, animals that have no concept of death have
nevertheless evolved to fear most of the things that can kill them.
Humans have learned to associate these things with death, and
invented the concept of consciousness as the large set of features
which distinguishes living humans from dead humans. Thus, humans fear
the loss or destruction of consciousness, which is equivalent to
death.
Consciousness, free will, qualia, and good and bad are universal
human beliefs. We should not confuse them with truth by asking the
wrong questions. Thus, Turing sidestepped the question of "can
machines think?" by asking instead "can machines appear to think"?
Since we can't (by definition) distinguish doing something from
appearing to do something, it makes no sense for us to make this
distinction.
The above two paragraphs STILL do not address any of the issues that
need to be addressed for something to count as a definition, or an
explanation of the facts that need to be explained.
Richard Loosemore
-------------------------------------------
agi
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