On Tue, Sep 4, 2012 at 7:39 PM, Craig Weinberg <whatsons...@gmail.com>wrote:

>
>
> On Tuesday, September 4, 2012 4:06:06 PM UTC-4, Jason wrote:
>>
>>
>>
>>>     The point that I am making is that our brain seems to be
>>> continuously generating a virtual reality model of the world that includes
>>> our body and what we are conscious of is that model.
>>>
>>
>> I like this description of a brain: that of a dreaming / reality creating
>> machine.
>>
>
> What is it the brain creating this dream/reality out of? Non-reality?
> Intangible mathematical essences?
>


You may be misinterpreting what I mean.  The reality is created in the
sense of the experience of reality.  Each person on earth in some sense has
their own conception of the world (reality) even though there is only one
real planet.  I don't mean to suggest that the brain exists disembodied.



> The problem with representational qualia is that in order to represent
> something, there has to be something there to begin with to represent.
>

When we dream, we have experiences and qualia without the represented thing
have any existence outside the mind.  Blind people can dream in color (if
they had sight at some point in their lives).  Where does the color of red
come from in a blind person's dream?



> Why would the brain need to represent the data that it already has to
> itself in some fictional layer of abstraction? Why convert the quantitative
> data of the universe into made up qualities and then hide that conversion
> process from itself?
>
>
>>
>>
>>>  Does a "machine" made up of gears, springs and levers do this? Could
>>> one made of diodes and transistors do it? Maybe...
>>>
>>
>> No one has shown me a cogent argument that they could not.
>>
>
> They question isn't why they could, it is why they would.
>

We will make these machines and transfer our minds on to them for the same
reason we transfer our photographs off the digital camera that took them.


> What possible function would be served by a cuckoo clock having an
> experience of being a flying turnip?
>

We won't transfer our minds to cuckoo clocks (maybe you will to prove me
wrong ;-) ) but to machines that are more resilient, efficient, faster, and
more reliable.

Jason

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