On 22 avr. 2013, at 19:44, John Clark <johnkcl...@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Mon, Apr 22, 2013 Telmo Menezes <te...@telmomenezes.com> 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 everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. > To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. > 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 everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
