On 9/5/2012 10:44 PM, Craig Weinberg wrote:
On Thursday, September 6, 2012 1:32:21 AM UTC-4, stathisp wrote:
On Thu, Sep 6, 2012 at 2:40 PM, Craig Weinberg <[email protected]
<javascript:>>
wrote:
> I find that the least plausible explanation. It means that if a billion
> people talk to each other and give each other information, that some kind
of
> consciousness must necessarily arise as a side-effect. You could say that
it
> might arise, but the idea that such a side effect is somehow necessary as
to
> accomplish certain kinds of information processing is laughably romantic
to
> my mind. If I recruit people to recruit people to all do math together,
then
> a magical genie will appear. Necessarily. Because of behavior
modification.
> Mm. Yeah. No ghost in the machine, but machine that runs on ghost
> power...because...why?
No, it doesn't mean that at all. If the billion people interact so as
to mimic the behaviour of the neurons in a brain, resulting in the
ability to (for example) converse in natural language, then the idea
is that the billion-person brain would have consciousness. This
consciousness would have nothing to do with the consciousness of the
billion people producing it; I don't know what my neurons are doing
and my neurons individually certainly don't know what I am doing.
You are confirming what I have said. You are saying that a billion people doing the
appropriate computations on paper with pencils and erasers and telephones to talk to
each other would create a magical personality that nobody would know about but
nonetheless would be born into the universe as a thinking, feeling, eating, crapping being.
That's where the hypothetical breaks down. The BPB would not have a body to control or a
world to interact with. Could it have dream? Maybe - but it would need a simulated world
to interact with in order to have human-like consciousness.
Brent
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