On Thu, Feb 7, 2013 at 7:12 PM, meekerdb <[email protected]> wrote:
> On 2/7/2013 3:52 AM, Telmo Menezes wrote: > > On Wed, Feb 6, 2013 at 7:04 PM, John Clark <[email protected]> wrote: > >> >> >> On Tue, Feb 5, 2013 at 6:00 PM, Telmo Menezes <[email protected]>wrote: >> >> >>> I'm not claiming that intelligence == mind. >>>>> >>>> >>>> > Do you believe that your fellow human beings have minds? If so why? >>>> >>> >>> > Yes (weakly). >>> >> >> You believe that only weakly?! Do you really think there is a 49% chance >> that you are the only conscious being in the universe? >> > > I don't know how to assign a probability to that. I guess I believe it's > in ]0.5, 1] because I would bet on it, but that's all I can say. > > I say weakly because the only thing I have to back this belief is an > heuristic, which I find to be a weaker form of approximating the truth than > mathematical proof or experimental confirmation. > > >> By the way, I don't believe other people have minds when they are >> sleeping or under anesthesia or dead because when they are in those states >> they don't behave very intelligently. >> > > But that is because you believe that intelligence == mind. I don't. > Certain experiences that you can do on yourself might make you doubt that > belief, but I don't know of any way to convince you except suggesting that > you do those experiences. > > >> >> > Occam's razor. If I'm the only human being with a mind, then, for >>> some mysterious reason, there are two types of human beings: me (with a >>> mind) and the others (zombies). So heuristically I'm inclined to believe >>> that all human beings have a mind, >>> >> >> OK, but if you also believe in Darwin's theory of Evolution then you must >> also believe that consciousness MUST be a byproduct of intelligence because >> Evolution can't directly see consciousness any better than we can and so >> cannot select for it, and yet you and probably other people are conscious. >> Thus you must also believe that if a computer is intelligent then it is >> conscious. Then you must also believe that intelligence == mind. >> > > You are begging the question. You're assuming, to begin with, that > intelligence == mind and then you claim to prove that intelligence == mind. > > By the way, for evolution to generate consciousness there has to exist a > gradient to climb. Unless the evolutionary process just stumbles into > consciousness, but in that case it is not a valid theory of it's origin. So > you are implicitly assuming that there is some measure of consciousness, > where you can say that entity A is more conscious than entity B. What would > that even mean? My cat seems conscious to me (but I can't know for sure). > Is he less conscious than me? Well I know stuff that he doesn't, but he > also knows stuff that I don't -- for example he knows how it feels to be a > cat. > > > But that doesn't mean there's something magic about being a cat. I think > it might be possible to change your brain, and your sensory organs, so that > it implemented consciousness very similar to a cat's (it couldn't be exact > because you'd need a cat's body for that). Of course it wouldn't be Telmo > Menezes any more. > I agree that this might be possible. But the paradox then is the following: to make me feel like a cat you have to strip me of my memories (read/write access), so when I'm back from the experience I won't remember it. In fact I turned into a cat for a while and then back to Telmo Menezes. Telmo Menezes still knows nothing about being a cat. > > And yes I think there are degrees and kinds of consciousness and that a > cat's consciousness differs in both respects. There's consciousness of > being an individual and of being located in 3-space and in time. You and > the cat have both of those (whereas a Mars rover only has the latter). But > there's language and narrative memory that you have and the cat doesn't. > There's reflective thought,"I'm Telmo and I'm thinking about myself and > where I fit in the world". The cat probably doesn't have this because it's > not social - but a dog might. > But is this really a case of "degrees of consciousness" or is it just the general property of "being conscious" instantiated in different contexts? The fact that you believe you can turn me into a cat seems to indicate that ultimately you believe that consciousness is all the same. > > Brent > > -- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups > "Everything List" group. > To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an > email to [email protected]. > To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. > Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en. > For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. > > > -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
