On Saturday, October 12, 2013 12:27:08 PM UTC-4, Bruno Marchal wrote: > > > On 12 Oct 2013, at 09:49, Stathis Papaioannou wrote: > > > > On Saturday, October 12, 2013, Craig Weinberg wrote: > >> >> >> On Friday, October 11, 2013 11:32:49 PM UTC-4, stathisp wrote: >>> >>> >>> >>> On Saturday, October 12, 2013, Craig Weinberg wrote: >>> >>>> >>>> >>>> On Friday, October 11, 2013 5:37:52 PM UTC-4, stathisp wrote: >>>>> >>>>> >>>>> >>>>> On Oct 11, 2013, at 8:19 PM, Craig Weinberg <whats...@gmail.com> >>>>> wrote: >>>>> >>>>> >>>>> >>>>> On Thursday, October 10, 2013 8:58:30 PM UTC-4, stathisp wrote: >>>>>> >>>>>> On 9 October 2013 05:25, Craig Weinberg <whats...@gmail.com> wrote: >>>>>> > http://online.wsj.com/article/****SB1000142405270230349250457911*** >>>>>> *5310362925246.html<http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702303492504579115310362925246.html> >>>>>> >>>>>> >>>>>> >>>>>> > A lot of what I am always talking about is in there...computers >>>>>> don't >>>>>> > understand produce because they have no aesthetic sensibility. A >>>>>> mechanical >>>>>> > description of a function is not the same thing as participating in >>>>>> an >>>>>> > experience. >>>>>> >>>>>> This is effectively a test for consciousness: if the entity can >>>>>> perform the type of task you postulate requires aesthetic >>>>>> sensibility, >>>>>> it must have aesthetic sensibility. >>>>>> >>>>>> >>>>> Not at all. That's exactly the opposite of what I am saying. The >>>>> failure of digital mechanism to interface with aesthetic presence is not >>>>> testable unless you yourself become a digital mechanism. There can never >>>>> be >>>>> a test of aesthetic sensibility because testing is by definition >>>>> anesthetic. To test is to measure into a system of universal >>>>> representation. Measurement is the removal of presence for the purpose of >>>>> distribution as symbol. I can draw a picture of a robot correctly >>>>> identifying a vegetable, but that doesn't mean that the drawing of the >>>>> robot is doing anything. I can make a movie of the robot cartoon, or a >>>>> sculpture, or an animated sculpture that has a sensor for iodine or >>>>> magnesium which can be correlated to a higher probability of a particular >>>>> vegetable, but that doesn't change anything at all. There is still no >>>>> robot >>>>> except in our experience and our expectations of its experience. The >>>>> robot >>>>> is not even a zombie, it is a puppet playing back recordings of our >>>>> thoughts in a clever way. >>>>> >>>>> >>>>> OK, so it would prove nothing to you if the supermarket computers did >>>>> a better job than the checkout chicks. Why then did you cite this article? >>>>> >>>> >>>> Because the article is consistent with my view that there is a >>>> fundamental difference between quantitative tasks and aesthetic awareness. >>>> If there were no difference, then I would expect that the problems that >>>> supermarket computers would have would not be related to its >>>> unconsciousness, but to unreliability or even willfulness developing. Why >>>> isn't the story "Automated cashiers have begun throwing temper tantrums at >>>> some locations which are contagious to certain smart phones that now >>>> become >>>> upset in sympathy...we had anticipated this, but not so soon, yadda >>>> yadda"? >>>> I think it's pretty clear why. For the same reason that all machines will >>>> always fall short of authentic personality and sensitivity. >>>> >>> >>> So you would just say that computers lack authentic personality and >>> sensitivity, no matter what they did. >>> >> >> Beyond question, yes. I wouldn't just say it, I would bet my life on it, >> because I understand it completely. >> > > Do you believe that computers can perform any task a human can perform? If > not, what is an example of a relatively simple task that a computer could > never perform? > > > I thought Craig just made clear that computers might performs as well as > humans, and that even in that case, he will not attribute sense and > aesthetic to them. > This was already clear with my sun-in-law (who got an artificial brain, > and who can't enjoy a good meal at his restaurant). > > He call them puppets, but he believes in philosophical zombies. >
I don't believe in philosophical zombies. I use puppet because a puppet implies an absence of conscious presence, which is an ordinary condition of macrocosmic objects as we seem them, because the sensation associated with them belongs to a distant frame (microcosm). A zombie is supernatural because rather than the seeming absence of presence (normal), they imply the presence of absence, which is unnatural and cannot exist. There can be no undead, only the unlive. > > He is coherent, but invalid in his debunking of comp. He debunks only the > 19th century conception of machines (controllable physical beings). > I think that I also debunk the 21st century reality of machines. The promissory mechanism offered by comp is purely a theoretical futurism - which I would not object to at all, but in this case, it so happens that it is not applicable to the universe that we actually live in. It is almost applicable, but the hard part is that it is blind to its own blindness, so that the certainty offered by mathematics comes at a cost which mathematics has no choice but to deny completely. Because mathematics cannot lie, it cannot intentionally tell the truth either, and no matter how sophisticated and self-referential a logic it is based on, it can never transcend its own alienation from feeling, physics, and authenticity. Craig > Bruno > > > > > > -- > Stathis Papaioannou > > -- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups > "Everything List" group. > To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an > email to everything-li...@googlegroups.com <javascript:>. > To post to this group, send email to everyth...@googlegroups.com<javascript:> > . > Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. > For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. > > > http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ > > > > -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
