Hey Craig, What is the origin of the quote? Also, what privileges the process of 'introspection' to reveal anything contrary to the hypothesis that we are machines? Isn't introspection a bit of a dubious test for finding out a thing's machinehood?
Finally, I'm not so sure that it is 'consciousness' (yet another word that is frequently thrown around as a symbol with no proper referent) that is responsible for uniqueness and unrepeatability as it is the infinitesimally small chance that all of the quantum correlations that exist in a current observer moment could ever be repeated... and if they could, that would nevertheless include no information about whether the entire state had been repeated or not. I dunno, seems like a lot of hand waving to me... I do feel rather convinced of precisely the sentiment that the quotation you led off with expresses, namely that we are machines made of machines made of machines made of... information eventually. And the information is processed by some set of very fundamental rules. I do get your rejoinder, however.... which I think is something like: If everything is information fundamentally operating according to computational principles, why on earth would there "be something" that it is like to be that computation? Whence the "inner life" and rich inner experiences we have access to in introspection? Whence the qualia? And honestly, I don't have an answer for that. I take it your answer (sorry to rehash some of this, but I find it helpful to deepen my understanding) is that everything is endowed with primitive "sense making" faculties, kind of like a panpsychism. I'm wondering, why can't this axiom simply be added on to the idea that we are machines made of information? i.e. we are machines made of information and information itself has an inner life? It's beginning to sound a lot like woo, so I'd better stop there. Best regards, Dan On Saturday, December 28, 2013 9:40:32 AM UTC-5, Craig Weinberg wrote: > > "humans are machines unable to recognize the fact that they are machines," >> > > I would re-word it as 'Humans are not machines but when they introspect on > their most mechanical aspects mechanistically, they are able to imagine > that they could be machines who are unable recognize the fact." > > I agree that there is an intrinsic limit to Strong AI, but I think that > the limit is at the starting gate. Since consciousness is the embodiment of > uniqueness and unrepeatability, there is no "almost" conscious. It doesn't > matter how much the artist in the painting looks like he is really painting > himself in the mirror, or how realistic Escher makes the staircase look, > those realities are forever sculpted in theory, not in the multisense > realism. > -- 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. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
