On 7/8/2011 6:40 PM, Craig Weinberg wrote:
Conscious is an informal term, so it depends how you want to use it. I
think of consciousness as the top level meta-awareness of a hierarchy
of levels which might be called awareness, perception, sensation, and
detection, where another person's idea of consciousness would equate
all of those terms. In my usage, the awareness that one is aware,
which would include something like dreaming or hallucinating. A more
medical use of the word might distinguish consciousness as the ability
to respond to external stimuli or produce electrical activity in
particular areas of the brain, etc.
I agree that there are different kinds and degrees of consciousness.
Also it seems that a lot of our thinking takes place with consciousness,
c.f. Poincare' effect.
Replacing parts of the brain depends what the artificial circuits are
made of. For them to be experienced as something like human
consciousness then I think they would have to be made of biological
tissue.
Why? Biological tissue is made out of protons, neutrons, and electrons
just like computer chips. Why should anything other than their
input/output function matter?
Awareness isn't calculation, 'information', or
'interpretations'. Those are high-level cognitive abstractions.
Awareness is visceral, concrete, low level sense experience - a
primary presentation rather than a representation.
Just assertions. The question is whether something other than you can
have them?
I'm only using computer screens as an example, but if you extend the
example to include other human devices like an airliner or hospital,
those things still have to be filled with human beings to give them
human meaning. A computer autopiloting an empty plane in a post-
apolcalypse world devoid of life would only have electronic and
physical meaning - circuits pushing toward equilibrium, meaningless
bodies of mass hurtling through the atmosphere. It doesn't know what a
plane is. A hospital without any people is an archeological ruin, no
matter how many computers are still connected to it.
A computer flying an airliner is not very smart, but it would know what
a runway is, what a storm is, the shape of the Earth. A computer that
runs a hospital would know whether there were patients, doctors, or nurses.
Meaning is not only conferred by interaction with the world, meaning
is the world. If you are a human, then your world is a world of human
meaning, which includes condensed reflections of all other meanings to
which our technologically extended neurology permits us access.
You beg the question by specifying "human meaning". Do you suppose that
there is something unique about humans, or can there be dog meaning and
fish meaning and computer meaning?
Brent
On Jul 8, 2:44 pm, meekerdb<meeke...@verizon.net> wrote:
On 7/8/2011 5:46 AM, Craig Weinberg wrote:
That's what I thought he said. But I see no reason to suppose a UD is
running, much less running without physics. We don't know of any
computation that occurs immaterially.
All computation occurs materially and immaterially. An abacus doesn't
count itself. You ultimately have to have a conscious interpreter to
signify any particular text as quantitatively meaningful. Unplug all
monitors from all computers and what do you have left? Expensive
paperweights.
But the question is what makes a conscious interpreter conscious.
Would replacing part of your brain by artificial circuits that are
computationally equivalent preserve your consciousness? Your example of
computers without monitors makes a good point, but one I think different
from your intention. Computation must have some meaning, at least
implicitly. Meaning is conferred by interaction with the world.
Computers with monitors interact rather narrowly via humans. But
consider a computer that runs the utilitIies in a hospital or flies an
airliner. They don't need humans to look at a screen to give meaning to
their computation.
Brent
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