Hi Bruno, ----- Original Message ----- From: "Bruno Marchal" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> You take the "box/brain" analogy to literally. If I rephrase the question > as "I can see how the thing behaves, but what I want to know is 'is there > consciousness there?' . Would you "still" say "But we already know > that there are no consciousness -- so what the question is really > asking?". > Well my remark adds nothing in the sense that Eric Cavalcanti > succeeds apparently to pinpoint the contradiction in Pete's post > (through the use of Frank Jackson's colorblind Mary experiment). > Nice piece of dialog. Actually I do think that the box/brain analogy > is not so bad, once we agree to choose another "topology" > for the information space, but for this I need the modal theory of > knowledge S4 ... I would love to read more about that. Where can I find a good reference? > Of course I mainly agree with Stathis here, and with Eric's > assessment, but Stathis formulates it in just the way which > makes people abusing the box analogy. Indeed, the only way > to actually know/feel/experience the qualia is to "run" the right > software, which really *defines* the owner. > The choice of hardware makes no difference. The owner > of the hardware makes no difference. This is because the owner > is really defined by the (running) software. > To be even more exact, there is eventually > no need for running the software, because eventually the box > itself is a construction of the mind, and is defined by the > (possible) software/owner. > That illustrates also that you cannot see "blue" as someone else > sees "blue" by running the [someone else's software] on > "your hardware", because if you run [someone else's software] > on your hardware, you will just duplicate that someone-else, > and your hardware will become [someone else's hardware!] > And *you* will just disappear (locally). Well, that's just where I guess we come to disagree... :) I am still not sure I believe comp, so I am not yet sure I agree that the hardware doesn't matter at all... Or at least not in that strong sense that one can expect to experience a copy of oneself elsewhere. I am not even sure what 'one' means here... So many doubts... :) -Eric.
