hMichael Gurstein wrote:
>
> I haven't been tracking it very closely, but there is an emerging field of
> Information Systems studies which is looking at what is being called
> Artificial Life. In this there is the designing of artificial organisms
> which live only within computers. They have a variety of the
> characteristics of real organisms including the capacity to reproduce and so
> on. It seems that the most recent development in the field is that the
> organisms are given some of the social characteristics of humans and they
> are left to see how they organize themselves into communities/societies.
>
> (Think Tamagouchi and the Sims as primitive examples)...
[snip]
Given enough processing power, a digital computing system
can mimic the appearances of any phenomena to any desired
level of approximation. The best computer enhanced
astronomical images from the Hubble Telescope are
far more "believable" than the images produced
by a $80 digital camera.
For those who believe that living human experience is
a specific type of empirically observable object,
there can be no doubt that eventually (and sooner rather
than later), a machine will pass the Turing test, i.e.,
present appearances which nobody can tell are not
"the real thing", and, therefore, computers
will *be* persons. But, as various other persons have said,
the map is not the territory, etc.
I always believe in trying to grant people's most cherished
beliefs are true and then seeing what the conseqauences are.
If DNA can produce consciousness, why not silicon? Alan
Turing's mother reported her son said that if ever we
do make a computer that really thinks,
"We shan't understand how it does it."
So the only result of successfully producing
conscious beings via computer programming
would to have 2 instead of 1 incomprehensible
ways of producing consciousness (the other is via the
chemical processes of sperms and eggs).
But the people who are fascinated by computer
consciousness and such have othe fantasies:
to either be God, i.e., to make living beings out
of clay, or to be Boss, i.e., to be able to control
other persons' behavior. Or maybe they just have
such high I.Q.s and are
so massively schooled that solving crossword
puzzles is no longer enough to keep them interested.
--
Where are the computer scientists who study Husserl?
Or who study Habermas? Or who study Susanne Langer?
Or Arnold Gehlen? .... More to the point, where are
the computer science *professors* who study such
works, so as to enable their students [tomorrow's
professors as well as tomorrow's technicians...]
to appreciate these things in a social world
which is some combination of oblivious and
dismissive of them?
\brad mccormick
--
Let your light so shine before men,
that they may see your good works.... (Matt 5:16)
Prove all things; hold fast that which is good. (1 Thes 5:21)
<![%THINK;[SGML+APL]]> Brad McCormick, Ed.D. / [EMAIL PROTECTED]
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