On Mon, Oct 15, 2018 at 10:05 PM Brent Meeker <meeke...@verizon.net> wrote:
>> you know for a fact you're not conscious all the time, you know you're >> not conscious when you're sleeping or under anesthesia or before you were >> born and, although you don't know for certain, you probably suspect you >> won't be conscious after you're dead. And you may have also noticed a >> pattern here, you seem to only be conscious when you have the ability to >> behave intelligently. > > > > *"Having the ability to behave intelligently" is not something I can > know. * I don't think very intelligently when I'm sleeping and I've known that for as far back as I can remember. Are you any different? >> Structurally the difference between you and you're recently deceased >> twin brother is at only one point, your unfortunate sibling has a hole in >> his heart and you do not, but you're still more similar to your twin than >> you are to me, and yet I bet you believe I am more conscious than your >> brother because one of us can still behave intelligently and one can't. > > > > *Really?? * Yes really. *> Ever heard of decay? * Yes, that's why I said recently deceased. > > *And why only "structure"? What happened to chemistry, neurons, > hormones,...?* Nothing happened to them because neurons and hormones also have structure as do all complex objects, about the only things that don't (as far as we know) are electrons, positrons, photons, neutrinos and possibly quarks and Black Holes. > *> I don't know what any of that has to do with my similarity to other > human beings providing evidence that they are conscious. Octopuses act > intelligently too, * Yes. *> but this bit of evidence in favor of their consciousness is missing. * The Genetic Code that the octopuses uses is not similar to the one you use it is IDENTICAL to it, and both you and the octopus rely on the same laws of organic chemistry. Oh and the octopus is squishy and so is a human brain. > *So I'm a little less sure that they are conscious.* As a practical matter it will make no difference if you think a super intelligent computer is conscious but it will make a huge difference if the intelligent computer thinks you are conscious because nothing can feel empathy for something they don't think is conscious and in the future it will be the computer who is in the position of power not the human. > As I said neither you nor other people act that way [intelligently] all >> the time > > > > *No, what you said was they are conscious when they know they can act > intelligently.* Yes, because everybody knows they don't act intelligently all the time, not when they're sleeping or under anesthesia, and those times correspond to the times they know they are not conscious. >>If evolution found it easier to make a conscious intelligent being than a >> non-conscious intelligent being why would human engineers find the exact >> opposite to be true? > > *> Possibly because human engineers can start from scratch * I don't see your point. Evolution also started from scratch, simple amino acids and nucleotides. *> and don't have to evolve their solution from pre-conscious biology. * I don't think you intended it but you seem to be arguing that human engineers would find it even easier to build a conscious mind than evolution did, but I don't understand that argument either because engineers had to start with the pre-conscious physics of silicon atoms. *> Your point isn't wrong, but it's only weak evidence.* I admit it's not proof, we'll never have that, but its enormously powerful evidence. And whatever people say when they're philosophizing, in everyday life whatever its shortcomings may be intelligent behavior is the *ONLY* tool they have for distinguishing between conscious matter and non-conscious matter. 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 everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
