On Sunday, September 23, 2012 11:52:40 AM UTC-4, John Clark wrote: > > On Sun, Sep 23, 2012 at 9:13 AM, Craig Weinberg > <[email protected]<javascript:> > > wrote: > > > What I see that he has not considered is that consciousness is a the >> function of uniqueness itself >> > > For me to understand what you mean by this you need to answer one > question, was the Email message that you sent to the Everything list on > Sunday Sep 23, 2012 at 9:13 AM on the east coast of the USA with the title > "Re:Zombieopolis Thought Experiment" unique? >
My experience of sending it was unique. The experiences of people reading what I wrote were unique. The existence of an email message is only inferred through our experiences, but there is no email message outside of human interpretation. > > > the accumulated history of experience, seen to us as matter >> > > Without information to organize it matter doesn't seem like much of > anything, its just a chaotic amorphous lump of stuff containing nothing of > interest. > Without sense to be informed, organization is just a hypothetical morphology containing no possibilities of interest. With sense, you don't need information, you just need to be able to make sense of forms locally in some way. > > > I see only coma and death as the replacement neurons encroach on the >> brain stem >> > > Because you believe that the neurons are doing something magical, > I believe only that they facilitate our human experience. If you think that human experience is magical, then that is your projection, not mine. > even though the scientific method can not find one scrap of evidence that > they are doing any such thing. > Yes, scientific method can find no evidence of consciousness of any kind. If you think that means that consciousness has to be impossible, then again, that is your projection. I see clearly that this view is as obsolete and narrow as some kind of Inquisition era church edict. > No doubt you will say that science doesn't know everything and just hasn't > found the answer, but the problem is that science hasn't even found > evidence that there is a question that needs answering, or if you prefer to > put it another way, science hasn't found any evidence that a intelligent > conscious computer is more impossible than a intelligent conscious human. > Because subjectivity is not an object, and you define science as the objective study of the behavior of objects, then you cannot be surprised when science cannot locate what it is explicitly defined to disqualify. I don't understand how this isn't blindingly obvious, but I must accept that it is like gender orientation or political bias - not something that can be addressed by reason. > Unless you can show at a fundamental level that biology has something that > electronics lacks we must conclude that If computers can't be conscious > then neither can humans. > If you try to live off of electronics then you will not survive. I have now shown that at a fundamental level, biology, in the form of food, respiration, hydration, etc, has something that electronics lack. When we have electronics that can be used as meal replacements, then I will consider the possibility that such an advancement in electronics might have additional capacities. > > irreversible damage would occur just as it would with dementia or a >> malignant brain tumor. >> > > I would say that would be more like a benign brain tumor, in fact given > that it performs exactly like the original brain cells it would not be > going too far to call it an Infinitely benign brain tumor. > I'm saying that it cannot perform exactly like the original brain cells though. It will never be possible for an inorganic system to perform exactly like a living cell - which is why you can't eat glass instead of food. It doesn't matter how great of a computer you have in your brain, or how effectively it suppresses your experiences of hunger, your body will still starve if you don't consume actual food. There is no digital food. Craig > > John K Clark > > > > -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msg/everything-list/-/3JjI-HbHP4wJ. 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.
