Colin Geoffrey Hales wrote: > >> > >> so....yes the zombie can 'behave'. What I am claiming is they > >> cannot do _science_ i.e. they cannot behave scientifically. > >> This is a very specific claim, not a general claim. > > > > You're being unfair to the poor zombie robots. How could they > > possibly tell if they were in the factory or on the benchtop > > when the benchtop (presumably) exactly replicates the sensory > > feeds they would receive in the factory? > > Neither humans nor robots, zombie or otherwise, should be > > expected to have ESP. > > Absolutely! But the humans have phenomenal consciousness in lieu of ESP, > which the zombies do not.
PC doesn't magically solve the problem.It just involves a more sophisticated form of guesswork. It can be fooled. > To bench test "a human" I could not merely > replicate sensoiry feeds. I'd have to replicate the factory! As in brain-in-vat scenarios. Do you have a way of shwoing that BIV would be able to detect its status? > The human is > connected to the external world (as mysterious as that may be and it's not > ESP!). The zombie isn't, so faking it is easy. No. They both have exactly the same causal connections. The zombie's lack of phenomenality is the *only* difference. By definition. And every nerve that a human has is a sensory feed You just have to feed data into all of them to fool PC. As in a BIV scenario. > > > >> > >> Now think about the touch..the same sensation of touch could > >> have been generated by a feather or a cloth or another finger > >> or a passing car. That context is what phenomenal > >> consciousness provides. > > > > But it is impossible to differentiate between different sources > > of a sensation unless the different sources generate a different > > sensation. If you close your eyes and the touch of a feather > > and a cloth feel the same, you can't tell which it was. > > If you open your eyes, you can tell a difference because > > the combined sensation (touch + vision) is different in the > > two cases. A machine that has touch receptors alone might not > > be able to distinguish between them, but a machine that has > > touch + vision receptors would be able to. > > > > Phenomenal scenes can combine to produce masterful, amazing > discriminations. But how does the machine, without being told already by a > human, know one from the other? How do humans know without being told by God? > Having done that how can it combine and > contextualise that joint knowledge? You have to tell it how to learn. > Again a-priori knowledge ... Where did we get our apriori knowledge from? If it wasn't a gift from God, it mus have been a natural process. (And what has this to do with zombies? Zombies lack phenomenality, not apriori knowledge). > >> > >> Yes but how is it to do anything to contextualise the input other than > >> correlate it with other signals? (none of which, in themselves, generate > >> any phenomenal consciousness, they trigger it downstream in the > >> cranium/cortex). > > > > That's all we ever do: correlate one type of signal with another. > > The correlations get called various things such > > as "red", "circular", "salty", or perhaps "a weird taste" > > I have never encountered before, somewhere between salty > > and sweet, which also spills over into a sparkly purple > > visual sensation". > > See the above. Synesthetes corrlate in weird ways. Sharp chees and purple > 5. That is what humans do naturally. Associative memory. Sometimes it can > go wrong (or very right!). Words can tast bitter. > >> Put it this way.... a 'red photon' arrives and hits a retina cone and > >> isomerises a protein, causing a cascade that results in an action > >> potential pulse train. That photon could have come from alpha-centuri, > >> bounced off a dog collar or come from a disco light. The receptor has no > >> clue. Isomerisation of a protein has nothing to do with 'seeing'. In the > >> human the perception (sensation) of a red photon happens in the visual > >> cortex as an experience of redness and is 'projected' mentally into the > >> phenomenal scene. That way the human can tell where it came from. The > >> mystery of how that happens is another story. That it happens and is > >> necessary for science is what matters here. > > > > I don't think that's correct. It is impossible for a human to tell where > > the photon came from if it makes no sensory difference. > > That difference may have to involve other sensations, eg. if the > > red sensation occurs simultaneously with a loud bang > > it may have come from an explosion, while the same red sensation > > associated with a 1 KHz tone may have come from a warning beacon. > > You're talking about cross-correlating sensations, not sensory > measurement. The human as an extra bit of physics in the generation of the > phenomenal scenes which allows such contextualisations. Why does it need new physics? Is that something you are assuming or something you are proving? --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
