Stathis Papaioannou wrote: > John Mikes writes: > > >>Stathis, your post is 'logical', 'professional', 'smart', - good. >>It shows why we have so many posts on this list and why we get nowhere. >>You handle an assumption (robot) - its qualia, characteristics, make up a >>"thought-situation" and ASK about its annexed details. Now, your style is >>such that one cannot just disregard the irrelevance. So someone (many, me >>included<G>) respond with similar mindtwists and it goes on and on. \ >>Have you ever ps-analyzed a robot? Professionally, I mean. >>If it is a simple digital computer, it certainly has a memory, the one fixed >>into chips as this PC I am using. Your and MY memory is quite different, I >>wish somebody could tell me acceptably, HOW???, but it is plastic, >>approximate, mixed with emotional changes, short and in cases false. I would >>throw out a robot with such memory. > > > I did put in parentheses "this of course assumes a robot can have > experiences". > We can't know that this is so, but it seems a reasonable assumption to me. If > we > had evolution with digital processors rather than biological processors do > you think > it would have been possible for animals with similar behaviours to those with > which > we are familiar to have developed? If so, do you think these animals would > not > really have "experiences" despite behaving as if they did? Since evolution > can only > work on behaviour, if zombie animals were possible why did we not evolve to > be > zombie animals? > > Stathis Papaioannou
Of course evolution is not some perfectly efficient optimizer. Julian Jaynes idea the consciousness arises from internalizing speech perception would make consciousness a round-about way of recalling complex practical instructions - one that from a final design standpoint could have been done without the consciousness but from an evolutionary standpoint might have been almost inevitable. I don't know that I buy Jaynes explanation - but it shows that there might well be consciousness even if zombie animals would have done just as well. 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 -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
