On Sun, Aug 27, 2006 at 09:31:15PM +1000, Stathis Papaioannou wrote: > It seems to me that the idea of a deterministic machine being conscious is > assumed to be > preposterous, for no good reason. I believe that I could have acted > differently even with > identical environmental inputs, which is what the feeling of "free will" is. > However, it is > possible that I might *not* have been able to act differently: simply feeling > that I could > have done so is not evidence that it is the case. And even if it were the > case, due to true > quantum randomness or the proliferation of branches in the multiverse leading > to the effect > of first person indeterminacy, it does not follow that this is necessary for > consciousness to > occur.
It is true that Maudlin's argument depends on the absurdity of a recording being conscious. If you can accept a recording as being conscious, then you would have trouble in accepting the conclusion that counterfactuals are relevant. As regards to free will, in the multiverse we do have genuine free will, not just the illusion of it. As to what this has to do with consciousness, I'm not sure, except that free will and self awareness are complementary concepts (this argument is developed more in my book), and self-awareness appears to be necessary for consciousness to ensure the anthropic principle works. A "house of cards" argument. I would not be relying upon free will as being necessary for consciousness. > > > I thought I had another argument based on creativity, but it seems > > pseduo RNG programs can be creative, provided the RNG is cryptic enough. > > Right, it's the complexity of the program that generates interesting and > perhaps intelligent > behaviour, not its randomness. > And complexity is defined with respect to an observer of bounded computational power. For any observer, a sufficiently crytpic algorithmic number stream will be indistinguishable from random. > Stathis Papaioannou > _________________________________________________________________ > Be one of the first to try Windows Live Mail. > http://ideas.live.com/programpage.aspx?versionId=5d21c51a-b161-4314-9b0e-4911fb2b2e6d > -- *PS: A number of people ask me about the attachment to my email, which is of type "application/pgp-signature". Don't worry, it is not a virus. It is an electronic signature, that may be used to verify this email came from me if you have PGP or GPG installed. Otherwise, you may safely ignore this attachment. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- A/Prof Russell Standish Phone 8308 3119 (mobile) Mathematics 0425 253119 (") UNSW SYDNEY 2052 [EMAIL PROTECTED] Australia http://parallel.hpc.unsw.edu.au/rks International prefix +612, Interstate prefix 02 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
