On 04 Oct 2011, at 23:14, Brian Tenneson wrote:
Hmm... Unfortunately there are several terms there I don't understand.
Digital brain. What's a brain? I ask because I'm betting it doesn't
mean a pile of gray and white matter.
Suppose that you have a brain disease, and you doctor propose to you
an artificial brain, and he does not hide that this mean he will copy
your brain state at the level of the molecules, processed by a
computer. he adds that you can choose between a mac or a pc.
Comp assumes that there is a level such that you can survive in the
usual clinical sense with such a digital brain like you can already
survive with an artificial pump at the place of the heart.
Then you mention artificial brain. That's different from digital?
Well, it could be for those studying an analog version of comp. But
unless the analog system use actual infinities, it will be emulable by
a digital machine. The redundancy of the brains and its evolution
pleads for the idea that the brain is indeed digitally emulable.
Is
digital more nonphysical than artificial?
Not a priori, at all. Sellable computers are digital and physical.
Today the non physical universal machines are still free, and can be
found in books or on the net. You might find a lot by looking toward
yourself, but the study of computer science can accelerate that
discovery a lot.
Bruno
On Tue, Oct 4, 2011 at 7:31 AM, Bruno Marchal <[email protected]>
wrote:
On 04 Oct 2011, at 05:33, Brian Tenneson wrote:
From page 17
"It is my contention that the only way out of this dilemma is to
deny the
initial assumption that a classical computer running a particular
program
can
generate conscious awareness in the first place."
What about the possibility of allowing for a "large number" of
conscious
moments that would, in a limit of some sort, approximate continuous,
conscious awareness? In my mind, I liken the comparison to that
of a
radioactive substance and half-life decay formulas. In truth,
there are
finitely many atoms decaying but the half-life decay formulas never
acknowledge that at some point the predicted mass of what's left
measures
less than one atom. So I'm talking about a massive number of
calculated
conscious moments so that for all intents and purposes, continuous
conscious
awareness is the observed result.
Earlier on page 17...
"its program must
only generate a finite sequence of conscious moments."
I think I agree with you. I think that such a view is the only
compatible
with Digital Mechanism, but also with QM (without collapse).
Consciousness is never generated by the "running of a particular
computer".
If we can survive with a digital brain, this is related to the fact
that we
already "belong" to an infinity of computations, and the artificial
brain
just preserve that infinity, in a way such that I can survive in my
usual
normal (Gaussian) neighborhoods.
Bruno
http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/
--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google
Groups
"Everything List" group.
To post to this group, send email to everything-
[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.
--
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
.
http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/
--
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.
