On Tuesday, January 28, 2014 5:23:02 AM UTC-5, Bruno Marchal wrote: > > > On 27 Jan 2014, at 22:22, Craig Weinberg wrote: > > > > On Monday, January 27, 2014 5:57:55 AM UTC-5, Bruno Marchal wrote: >> >> >> On 27 Jan 2014, at 06:07, Craig Weinberg wrote: >> >> >> >> On Saturday, January 25, 2014 11:36:11 PM UTC-5, stathisp wrote: >>> >>> >>> >>> On 26 January 2014 01:35, Craig Weinberg <[email protected]> wrote: >>> >>> >> But that doesn't answer the question: do you think (or understand, or >>> >> whatever you think the appropriate term is) that the Chinese Room >>> >> COULD POSSIBLY be conscious or do you think that it COULD NOT POSSIBLY >>> >> be conscious? >>> > >>> > >>> > NO ROOM CAN BE CONSCIOUS. NO BODY CAN BE CONSCIOUS. NO FORM CAN BE >>> > CONSCIOUS.* >>> > >>> > *Except within the fictional narrative of a conscious experience. >>> Puppets >>> > can seem conscious. Doors, door-knobs, and Chinese rooms can SEEM to be >>> > conscious. >>> >>> Do you think Barack Obama is conscious? If you do, then in whatever >>> sense you understand that, can the Chinese Room also be conscious? Or do >>> you think that is impossible? >>> >> >> Yes, I think that Barack Obama is conscious, because he is different from >> a building or machine. Buildings and machines cannot be conscious, just as >> pictures of people drinking pictures of water do no experience relief from >> thirst. >> >> >> To compare a brain with a machine can make sense. >> To compare a brain with a picture cannot. >> > > It depends what the picture is doing. If you have a collection of detailed > pictures of brains, and you organize them so that they are shown in > different sequences according to some computation, isn't that a simulation > of a brain? > > > It is not. It is a description of a computation, not a computation. The > computation is in the logical relation, which includes the counterfactuals. >
But the counterfactuals are theoretical rather than realistic. The computation is like an Escher drawing, it can do things that would be impossible for a real brain and cannot do or be real in ways that a brain must necessarily be. A picture is just the next step in abstraction toward the sub-theoretical, but it is actually one step more concrete in aesthetic realism. A real picture of a triangle is closer to consciousness than a computation for the Mandelbot Set, which is only a theory until it is presented graphically to a visual participant. > Now, we do describe computation by some description, and so this confusion > is frequent. But it is the same type of confusion between ciphers and > numbers. Ciphers and sequence of ciphers are not numbers. It is the > cionfusion between "345" and 345. > Both "345" and 345 are still pictures. They can only be made meaningful when they are associated by a sensory experience in which some aesthetic content or expectation can be labelled with a string or value. > > > > In either case, consciousness makes no more sense as part of a brain or a > machine than a picture. > > > Right. We agree on that. But a brain can locally manifest a person. > I don't think it can. A tip cannot locally manifest an iceberg. A cookie cutter cannot manifest a cookie. > A picture cannot. You can't implement it in a computer, in the sense of > implementing a program, which then can manifest a person. > Right, because nothing can manifest a person except the complete history of experiences of Homo sapiens. > > > Machines are like 4D pictures. One picture or form leads to another and > another, and if there were some interpreter they could infer a logic to > those transitions, but there is nothing in the machine which would itself > lead from unconsciousness to awareness. > > > No, but the machine can still enact it. > What the machine enacts is an impersonal performance of personhood, not a person. Craig > Bruno > > http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ > > > > -- 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. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
