Stathis: I am not 'debating' your position, just musing about expressions. You made a very interesting passage below: SP: >...Perhaps there is a difference between intelligence and consciousness. Intelligence must be defined operationally, as you have suggested, which involves the intelligent agent interacting with the environment. A computer hardwired with "input" is not a very useful device from the point of view of an observer, displaying no more intelligence than a film of the screen would....< JM: What I sense in your discussion with Peter, a certain group of qualia has been picked (computer input) and argued about it being consciousness. Irrespective of other qualia findable in systems outside that circle, which e.g. in 'human consciousness have their input. A limited model quality is matched to a wider background of interactions and assigned to the generalized concept.
Speaking about intelligence may be an improvement: in my wording it requires (beside considerable knowledge-base - memory) an "elasticity" of the mind, to ponder the features according to (counterfactual? I am not so familiar with the term) contradictory 'arguments' and finding one outcome, not necessarily the obvious. In this activity the 'mind' includes 'more' than just the 'data fed into a computer' and may provide a different entailment from a (limitedly) 'conscious' (Turing?) machine. In your earlier post you wrote: SP: >.There are those who argue that human cognition is fundamentally different from classical computers due to quantum randomness, but even if this is the case there is no reason to believe that it is necessarily the case. Brains would have evolved to give rise to appropriate survival-enhancing behaviour, which precludes random or erratic behaviour. A degree of unpredictability would have to be present in order to avoid predators or catch prey, but unpredictable does not necessarily mean random: it just has to be beyond the capabilities of the predators or prey to predict. The unpredictability could result from the effect of classical chaos, or simply from the complexity of the behaviour which is in fact perfectly deterministic. No true randomness is needed....< JM: I dislike the term 'Q-randomness' for 2 reasons: 1. randomness is not part of a totally interconnected deterministic world in which every change is triggered by the movement of the totality (my vision), and 2. the "quantum" refers to a linear reductionist mathematical science in which no randomness is feasible and nonlinear counterfactuals are not contemplated (In My Unprofessional Opinion) as ARE included in the (live?) human cognition. Unpredictability by whom? you mention the participants, but it may be a characteristic theoretically noted. Read on. (Classical?) chaos IMO is a feature not (yet?) explained by our cognition in the reductionist sciences. Like :emergence. Once we learn more, it becomes unchaos. (Or: the emergence: a regular result). So some "model"-terms we use are ambiguous and incomplete, yet we draw 'definite' (generalized) conclusions from them. (cf my previous post to Brent about 'model'). The best John Mikes ----- Original Message ----- From: "Stathis Papaioannou" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: "Brent Meeker" <everything-list@googlegroups.com> Sent: Saturday, August 26, 2006 7:17 AM Subject: RE: computationalism and supervenience Brent Meeker writes: > > What I meant was, if a computer program can be associated with > > consciousness, then a rigid and deterministic computer program can also > > be associated with consciousness - leaving aside the question of how > > exactly the association occurs. For example, suppose I have a conversation > > with a putatively conscious computer program as part of a Turing test, and > > the program passes, convincing me and everyone else that it has been > > conscious during the test. Then, I start up the program again with no memory > > saved from the first run, but this time I play it a recording of my voice from > > the first test. The program will go through exactly the same resposes as > > during the first run, but this time to an external observer who saw the first > > run the program's responses will be no more surprising that my questions > > on the recording of my voice. The program itself won't know what's coming > > and it might even think it is being clever by throwing is some "unpredictable" > > answers to prove how free and human-like it really is. I don't think there is any > > basis for saying it is conscious during the first run but not during the second. I > > also don't think it helps to say that its responses *would* have been different > > even on the second run had its input been different, because that is true of > > any record player or automaton. > > I think it does help; or at least it makes a difference. I think you illegitmately > move the boundary between the thing supposed to be conscious (I'd prefer > "intelligent", because I think intelligence requires counterfactuals, but I'm not > sure about consciousness) and its environment in drawing that conclusion. The > question is whether the *recording* is conscious. It has no input. But then you say > it has counterfactuals because the output of a *record player* would be different > with a different input. One might well say that a record player has intelligence - > of a very low level. But a record does not. Perhaps there is a difference between intelligence and consciousness. Intelligence must be defined operationally, as you have suggested, which involves the intelligent agent interacting with the environment. A computer hardwired with "input" is not a very useful device from the point of view of an observer, displaying no more intelligence than a film of the screen would. However, useless though it might be, I don't see why the computer should not be conscious with the hardwired input if it is conscious with the same input on a particular run from a variable environment. If the experiment were set up properly, it would be impossible for the computer to know where the input was coming from. Another way to look at it would be to say that intelligence is relative to an environment but consciousness is absolute. This is in keeping with the fact that intelligent behaviour is third person observable but consciousness is not. 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