On Tuesday, October 15, 2013 6:50:53 PM UTC-4, Liz R wrote: > > On 16 October 2013 01:26, Craig Weinberg <whats...@gmail.com <javascript:> > > wrote: > >> >> On Monday, October 14, 2013 11:14:36 PM UTC-4, Jason wrote: >> > > >> Thanks for your answer. That was not quite what I was asking though. >>> Let's say the nano-tech did not extend some living organism, but were some >>> entirely autonomous, entirely artificial cell-like structures, which could >>> find and utilize energy sources in the environment and reproduce >>> themselves. Let's say after millions (or billions) of years, these >>> self-replicating nanobots evolved into "multi-cellular" organisms like >>> animals we are familiar with today. Could they have experiences like other >>> biological creatures that have a biological lineage? If not, why not? >>> >> >> No, I don't think that they could have experiences like biological >> creatures. If they could, then we *should *probably see at least one >> example of >> > > Excuse me for butting in, but I'm not sure what "should" means here. Are > you saying these things should *already* exist? But the original > suggestion was about future technology... Though I can't see what else you > could mean, though. > >> >> 1. a natural occurrence of inorganic biology >> > > Why would it occur naturally, when organic biology has done so, and > presumably used up all the food sources that might be available? >
If inorganic biology were possible, shouldn't it use inorganic food sources? > > >> 2. an organism which can survive only on inorganic nutrients >> > > ??? > A bird that can live on rocks, etc. > > >> 3. a successful experiment to create life from basic molecules >> > > Arguably the biosphere counts as this, presumably not an intentional > experiment. > That's begging the question. We don't know that abiogenesis is a fact, or if it was, we don't know that it is possible to reoccur. Our experiments thus far have not supported the idea that biological life can be be created again. > > >> 4. a machine which seems to feel, care, and have a unique and >> unrepeatable personal presence >> > > Arguably a human being is one of these > It's begging the question. I'm saying "people are not like machines, because people are all unique but machines are not". You can't use that fact to claim that people are representative of machines, and then therefore that machines can be like people. If I said "oil and water don't mix", you can't say 'arguably oil is a type of water'. > > >> 5. a mechanized process which produces artifacts that seem handmade and >> unique >> 6. two separate bodies who are the same person >> 7. an organism which reproduces by transforming its environment rather >> than reproducing by cell division >> > > This seems to me to have gone completely off the point. > I would need you to explain more of what you mean. > > >> 8. an organism which emerges spontaneously from Boltzmann conditions in >> the environment rather than seeded inheritance >> > > What?!? (He said billions of years, not googolplexes...!) > I didn't say Boltzmann brain, just a Boltzmann organism. > > >> 9. an event or observation which leads us to conclude that gathering >> energy and reproduction are sufficient to constitute bio-quality awareness. >> >> I don't understand that sentence. > The whole basis of computationalism hinges on the assumption that acting like you are alive is the same as being alive, which I think is demonstrably false. We know for a fact that something that is not alive can seem like it is. We know that a machine can produce strings of language that carry no meaning for it. So what is it, other than pure blue-sky wishful thinking, that leads us to conclude that moving a puppet around in the right way is going to bring Pinocchio to life? > > I may be missing something here but I believe the question is whether > machines can have experiences. Isn't a human being a machine that has > experiences? > No, that's begging the question. A human body may be a machine, but that does not mean that a human experience can be created from the outside in. That's what all of these points are about - a machine does not build itself from a single reproducing cell. A machine does not care what it is doing, it doesn't get bored or tired. A machine is great at doing things that people are terrible at doing and vice versa. There is much more evidence to suggest that human experience is the polar opposite of mechanism than that it could be defined by mechanism. Thanks, Craig -- 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.
