On Sun, May 17, 2009 at 2:03 AM, Brent Meeker <[email protected]> wrote: > > Do you suppose that something could behave just as humans do yet not be > conscious, i.e. could there be a philosophical zombie?
I think that somewhere there would have to be a conscious experience associated with the production of the behavior, THOUGH the conscious experience might not supervene onto the system producing the behavior in an obvious way. Generally I don't think that what we experience is necessarily caused by physical systems. I think that sometimes physical systems assume configurations that "shadow", or represent, our conscious experience. But they don't CAUSE our conscious experience. So a computer simulation of a human brain that thinks it's at the beach would be an example. The computer running the simulation assumes a sequence of configurations that could be interpreted as representing the mental processes of a person enjoying a day at the beach. But I can't see any reason why a bunch of electrons moving through copper and silicon in a particular way would "cause" that subjective experience of surf and sand. And for similar reasons I don't see why a human brain would either, even if it was actually at the beach, given that it is also just electrons and protons and neutrons.moving in specific ways. It doesn't seem plausible to me that it is the act of being represented in some way by a physical system that produces conscious experience. Though it DOES seem plausible/obvious to me that a physical system going through a sequence of these representations is what produces human behavior. > > The information processing? > Well, I would say information processing, but it seems to me that many different "processes" could produce the same information. And I would not expect a change in "process" or algorithm to produce a different subjective experience if the information that was being processed/output remained the same. So for this reason I go with "consciousness is information", not "consciousness is information processing". Processes just describe ways that different information states CAN be connected, or related, or transformed. But I don't think that consciousness resides in those processes. --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ 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?hl=en -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
