On Tue, Apr 23, 2013 at 8:04 PM, John Clark <[email protected]> wrote: > On Mon, Apr 22, 2013 Telmo Menezes <[email protected]> wrote: > >> > I also believe that some isolated tribes assume everything is conscious. > > > If they're right then that certainly solves the consciousness problem and we > can move on to solving the REALLY hard problem, figuring out why some things > behave intelligently.
I don't really understand why you insist that intelligence is a harder problem than consciousness. I think we have very solid hypothesis on why some things behave intelligently, you explained it yourself. The problem becomes easier if we reject meaning, and accept that evolution is just a mindless process of complexification. In any case, through a modern combination of computer science, neuroscience and biology, we know a lot about intelligence. We know nothing about consciousness (scientifically, that is -- I know a lot about my own consciousness). >> >> 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. > > > But as I said before, I personally would not work fine if I thought I was > the only conscious being in the universe Ok, but please notice -- this is exactly the same reason a lot of people claim for being religious. That they couldn't face life without god. > and I very much doubt that you > would either; unless of course you are not conscious now and never have > been. I'll propose a thought experiment on this soon. I've been a bit busy with the annoying logistics of changing cities... >>> >> 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. > > > EXCELLENT! Congratulations your views are consistent, and thus your doubts > about the consciousness of a intelligent computer must not be any greater > than your doubts about the consciousness of a intelligent human being. Ok, we agree on this. Telmo. > 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.
