> > What would you say about this setup: > > Computer Simulation->Physical Universe->Your Brain > > That is to say, what if our physical universe were simulated in some > alien's computer instead of being some primitive "physical" world? >
This setup doesn't sound very convincing to me: - I believe that simulated objects (agents) can't be conscious - I believe that I am consious => I'm not simulated and all the universe is not simulated. > And another interesting thought experiment to think about: > What if a baby from birth was never allowed to see the real world, but > instead were given VR goggles providing a realistic interactive environment, > entirely generated from a computer simulation. Would that infant be > unconscious of the things it saw? This argument sound better, but still: 1. Goggles are not enough - baby learns via "active" interaction with the outside world, i.e. motor function matters and you should provide baby with a "full-body armor" that completely simulates the environment and makes interaction consistent (so haptic, proprioceptive and visual experiences don't contradict each other). But that's hard and maybe impossible - you can't (or can?) completely prevent the "contaminating" influence of the world - for example, you should feed the baby. 2. The most important is that baby has nervous system that evolved for a very long time and already somehow encodes "external symbols". You just substituting "real" input with "virtual" input but that virtual input is already properly encoded and speaks the symbolic "language" that is grounded in real world and comprehensible by baby's brain. 3. Baby, itself, is real and made from matter and, maybe, "real baby in VR" != "virtual baby in VR". In the other words, there is a special class of "real" Turing machine implementations that posses the meaning grounded in the environment. OK, i agree that it's very tempting to accept computationalism, but i'm still not ready, maybe gotta try harder ) -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To post to this group, send email to everything-l...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
