On 7/9/2014 6:34 PM, LizR wrote:
On 10 July 2014 13:15, meekerdb <meeke...@verizon.net
<mailto:meeke...@verizon.net>> wrote:
That means if the digital brain needed to interact with our environment,
the program
would be linked to sensors giving it inputs to interact with the world "out
there"
(the "sensors" are really only things that write in a shared memory space
that the
program can read)... those "real" sensors can be replaced by "fake"
sensors, that
write in the same shared memory space but not input from the "real" world
but either
from a simulated one, or the recording of a previous session with the "real"
world... If the program is conscious (and it is if computationalism is
true, and you
said yes to the doctor), it is *in every cases* wherever the inputs came
from... and
the "meaning" of these "inputs" are relative to the consciousness supported
by the
computation and nothing else.
No, the meaning is relative to world of perception and action. It's seems
absurdly
circular to say the meaning of computation is relative to the computation
itself.
Even fake sensors have to be faking something.
I think it's fair to say that the meaning of the inputs are hypotheses about the world
outside the consciousness. Obviously they could all be faked in the sense of the
apparent world being a virtual reality, for example, or the inputs being wrongly
interpreted (e.g. seeing a mirage) - but whatever their origin, meaning is what the
consciousness extracts from the inputs by comparing them to an internal model it has
constructed about how the outside world works.
The internal model has been (mainly) built by making educated guesses about previous
inputs, plus it is partly "hard wired" - some of the "guesses about how the world
works", for an evolved organism, are the results of the experiences of its ancestors.
This could give the creature an instinctive fear of heights, or of swooping birds, or
the dark, and an instinctive liking for certain foods, attraction to mates, etc.
Yes, I think that's well put.
Brent
--
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/d/optout.
