Stathis Papaioannou wrote: ... > I assume that there is some copy of me possible which preserves my > 1st person experience. After all, physical copying literally occurs > in the course of normal life and I still feel myself to be the same > person. But suppose I am offered some artificial means of being > copied. The evidence I am presented with is that Fred2 here is a > robot who behaves exactly the same as the standard human Fred: has > all his memories, a similar personality, similar intellectual > abilities, and passes whatever other tests one cares to set him. The > question is, how can I be sure that Fred2 really has the same 1st > person experiences as Fred? A software engineer might copy a > program's "look and feel" without knowing anything about the original > program's internal code, his goal being to mimic the external > appearance as seen by the end user by whatever means available. > Similarly with Fred2, although the hope was to produce a copy with > the same 1st person experiences, the only possible research method > would have been to produce a copy that mimics Fred's behaviour. If > Fred2 has 1st person experiences at all, they may be utterly unlike > those of Fred. Fred2 may even be aware that he is different but be > extremely good at hiding it, because if he were not he would have > been rejected in the testing process. > > If it could be shown that Fred2 behaves like Fred *and* is > structurally similar
Or *functionally* similar at lower levels, e.g. having long and short-term memory, having reflexes, having mostly separate areas for language and vision. >to Fred then I would be more confident in > accepting copying. If behaviour is similar but the underlying > mechanism completely different then I would consider that only by > accident could 1st person experience be similar. I'd say that would still be the way to bet - just with less confidence. 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 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?hl=en -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---