On 22 avr. 2013, at 19:44, John Clark <[email protected]> wrote:
> On Mon, Apr 22, 2013 Telmo Menezes <[email protected]> wrote: > > >> Without the axiom that intelligent behavior implies consciousness it would > >> be entirely reasonable to conclude that you are the only conscious being > >> in the universe. > > > Now we're getting to the heart of it. > > Yes. > > > That axiom is a religious belief. > > Call it any bad name you like but the fact is that both you and I have been > measuring consciousness by intelligent behavior every minute of every hour of > our waking life from the moment we were born. Not me, I remember being confused by the idea that things are not conscious and being frustrated that my father couldn't explain me why not. Even in developmental psychology I believe it's known to be a learned concept. I also believe that some isolated tribes assume everything is conscious. > Any logical system must start with unproven axioms and the fewer and the > simpler the better, and I can't think of a better axiom to start with than > that one. Why? All of current science works fine without it. Its only function is religious. > > > Unlike other scientific axioms, it doesn't help us in building new gadgets, > > True. > > > so not even useful > > False, at least for me. I find it very useful indeed because I could not > function if I thought I was the only conscious being in the universe and, > provided that you really are conscious, I doubt if you could either. Maybe the universe is the conscious being. Doesn't change my experiences either way, I still have to pay the bills. > > > > I might very well suspect the computer is conscious, but I wouldn't claim > > to be sure > > Do you know for sure that I am conscious? No. > For that matter all you know about me is the ASCII sequences I have produced, > so do you even know for sure that I'm not a computer? No. > > John K Clark > > > > > -- > 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.
