On 21 Oct 2012, at 21:37, Roger Clough wrote:
On 20 Oct 2012, at 13:55, Roger Clough wrote:
Hi Bruno Marchal
I think if you converse with a real person, he has to
have a body or at least vocal chords or the ability to write.
BRUNO: Not necessarily. Its brain can be in vat, and then I talk to
him by
giving him a virtual body in a virtual environnement.
I can also, in principle talk with only its brain, by sending the
message through the hearing peripherical system, or with the cerebral
stem, and decoding the nervous path acting on the motor vocal cords.
ROGER: I forget what my gripe was. This sounds OK.
As to conversing (interacting) with a computer, not sure, but
doubtful:
for example how could it taste a glass of wine to tell good wine
from bad ?
BRUNO: I just answered this. Machines becomes better than human in
smelling
and tasting, but plausibly far from dogs and cats competence.
ROGER: OK, but computers can't experience anything,
it would be simulated experience. Not arbitrarily available.
But that's what the brain does, simulate experience from the point of
view of the owner or liver of the experience. According to some
theory. You can't talk like if you knew that this is false.
You are right, it is not the material computer who thinks, nor the
physical brains who thinks, it is the owner (temporarily) of the
brain, or of the computers which does the thinking (and that can
include a computer itself, if you let it develop beliefs).
Same is true of a candidate possible zombie person.
BRUNO: Keep in mind that zombie, here, is a technical term. By
definition it
behaves like a human. No humans at all can tell the difference. Only
God knows, if you want.
ROGER: I claim that it is impossible for any kind of zombie
that has no mind to act like a human.
OK. No problem. You should live comp as it makes the notion of zombie
senseless, indeed.
But comp + materialism can lead to zombie, but then it can lead to 0 =
1 too.
IMHO that would
be an absurdity, because without a mind you cannot know
anything. You would run into walls, for example, and
couldn't know what to do in any event. Etc.
You couldn't understand language.
Ah, but your computer right now understands already many things you
tell him, so you agree that your laptop is already not a zombie? Nice.
Bruno
http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/
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