On Sat, Jan 30, 2010 at 8:10 PM, soulcatcher☠ <soulcatche...@gmail.com>wrote:
> Let me explain with example. Suppose, that you: > 1. simulate my brain in a computer program, so we can say that this > program represents my brain in your symbols. > 2. simulate a red rose > 3. feed "rose data" into my simulated brain. > I think (more believe than think) that this simulated brain won't see > my redness - in fact, it won't see nothing at all cause it isn't > conscious. > But if you: > 1. make a robot that simulates my brain in my symbols i.e. behaves > (relative to the physical world) in the same ways as I do > 2. show a rose to the robot > I think that robot will experience the same redness as me. > Would be glad if somebody suggests something to read about 'symbols > grounding', semantics, etc., I have a lot of confusion here, I've > always thought that logic is a formal language for a 'syntactic' > manipulation with 'strings' that acquire meaning only in our minds. > > When I play a video game I am conscious. Presumably I would still be conscious even using a fully immersive system like the vertebrain system described on this page ( http://marshallbrain.com/discard8.htm ). If that is true, and you agree with me so far, do you think a brain in a vat ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brain_in_a_vat ) would be conscious? Would it be conscious whether its optic nerve were connected to a webcam or connected to the TV/OUT port of a video game? What about a human brain that spent its whole life as a brain in a vat from the time it was born (assuming it were given a robot body for input, or assuming it was given a computer game realistic reality)? I am curious at what point you think the consciousness would cease. If you agree that the brain in the vat would be conscious in all cases (even when given input from a video game) and you agree that a robot body with a software brain would be conscious, why would it stop working when you put a software brain in the same position as the brain in a vat? Jason -- 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.
