Stathis Papaioannou wrote: > Brent Meeker writes: > > >>I think we need to say what it means for a computation to be >>self-interpreting. Many >>control programs are written with self-monitoring functions and logging >>functions. >>Why would we not attribute consciousness to them? > > > Well, why not? Some people don't even think higher mammals are conscious, and > perhaps > some there are true solipsists who could convince themselves that other > people are not really > conscious as rationalisation for antisocial behaviour.
Autistic people don't emphathize with others feelings - perhaps because they don't have them. But their behavoir, and I would expect the behavoir of a real solipist, would be simply asocial. >On the other hand, maybe flies experience > pain and fear when confronted with insecticide that is orders of magnitude > greater than that > of any mere human experience of torture, and maybe when I press the letter > "y" on my > keyboard I am subjecting my computer to the torments of hell. And maybe every physical process implements all possible computations - but I see no reason to believe so. >I don't buy the argument that > only complex brains or computations can experience pain either: when I was a > child I wasn't > as smart as I am now, but I recall that it hurt a lot more and I was much > more likely to cry when > I cut myself. > > Stathis Papaioannou You write as though we know nothing about the physical basis of pain and fear. There is a lot of empirical evidence about what prevents pain in humans, you can even get a degree in aesthesiology. Fear can be induced by psychotropic drugs and relieved by whisky. Brent Meeker --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
