On 8/20/2014 11:20 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
On 19 Aug 2014, at 21:49, John Mikes wrote:
Stathis:
you wrote Aug.19:
/"What we know is that the brain can generate consciousness. The brain is not a digital
computer running a program, but if it can be simulated by one, and if the simulation is
conscious, and if the program can be "run" in Platonia rather than on a physical
computer, then every possible brain's consciousness will necessarily be instantiated.
I'm not sure whether self-referential computations on their own are conscious - that
would seem a further assumption on top of the three mentioned in the previous sentence
- even though it does seem more elegant than simulating klunky brains./
/
/
Let's skip the question of defining Ccness (maybe broader than BEING ccous) and let me
ask HOW do you know that the brain can generate 'it'? Do you have a brain that never
had 'it' and followed a process BY it(!) generating Ccness?
Those experiments in which computer etc. (NOT some 'brain'-input) 're-started' the
process were all carried out on (live?) "brains" previously capable of doing it
(whatever).
I agree that "/The brain is not a digital computer running a program,...". /
Are ALL details of the so called "brain"(function?) mapped and correlated? Are all
facets of 'brain' even knowable? we think we know some. Then newer items are detected
(or thought so) and included smoothly into the previous setup.
IMO we are far from being able to 'simulating' a human brain in its entirety.
And we will never know if we can do that, but indeed here we can't know much. yet some
people will accept, in the future, such artificial brains, and the rest is a question of
rights. The question will never be does it work, some people will have the religion that
it works, and that it is handy to explore the Solar System at the speed of light.
The only real question is "do you accept that your daughter or son marries a partner who
get an artificial kidney, heart and brain".
We cannot know, but we can make bet. Also, we don't know any laws in nature which is not
computable, so your attitude is more a speculation on some unknown things to prevent
testing a possible, and plausible from the 3p evidences, facts.
We cannot know our level of substitution.
Something like this is possible. The first immortal person, in the technological
relative sense (pursuing the Samsara), will be copied only at a rough incomplete
description of her cortex. Then it will take her 5224 years to recover some stable
sense-full life, recover smell and genuine vision, and it will take her another
millenium to overcome the amnesia.
We will never know, John.
If true, we can't know it.
But people will bet on level, and that's what we always do. Then we can make the bet
precise and deduce consequences, and ask for consistency of the set of beliefs.
Plausibly the mobile will get in the ear and in the yes and then in the peripheral
nervous systems, the cerebral stem up to the cortex, if we made a lapse on the next
millennia.
Many humans will refuse, and it is their right, but others will make the jump. At their
risk and peril.
I think long before that people will be "uploaded" to computers where they will live on
(as much as they can afford) in virtual realities. This will be paid for by their
children and relatives who wish to keep them "alive" so they can converse and reminisce
with them. I think it could be done now, although crudely. One could assure clients that
the well known logician, Bruno Marchal, has shown that the "uploaded" person is
conscious. No need to mention that by his measure spiders are also conscious. :-)
Greg Egan envisioned such a future in "Permutation City". I once wrote a one-act play
on that theme, which sadly I have not gotten performed.
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.
