On 5/19/2014 2:38 AM, LizR wrote:
His main interest is the mind-body problem; and my interest in that problem
is more
from an engineering viewpoint. What does it take to make a conscious
machine and
what are the advantages or disadvantages of doing so. Bruno says a machine
that can
learn and do induction is conscious, which might be testable - but I think
it would
fail. I think that might be necessary for consciousness, but for a machine
to
appear conscious it must be intelligent and it must be able to act so as to
convince
us that it's intelligent.
That is fair enough, but it (of course) assumes primary materialism -
No it doesn't. Why do you think that? I think "assuming primary materialism" is a
largely imaginary fault Bruno accuses his critics of. Sure physicists study physics and
it's a reasonable working hypothesis; but nobody tries to even define "primary matter"
they just look to see if another layer will be a better layer of physics or not.
otherwise a conscious machine, as commonly understood, might have other attributes that
can't be deduced from its structure, and hence the engineering approach will fail.
(Hence to be fully confident in this approach you should perhaps show what is wrong with
Bruno's starting assumptions, or his deductions.)
I'm assuming it doesn't and that I can make conscious machine from any assemblage that can
interact with the world in a certain way.
And I have shown what I think is wrong with Bruno's deductions. In his MGA he relies on
the MG being isolated, not part of a world - or when challenged on the point he says it
can be expanded to be as large as the whole universe, i.e. to be a world. But I think it
makes a difference. I think the MG can only be conscious relative to a world in which it
can learn and act. Bruno (being a logician and mathematician) thinks that consciousness
doesn't need any external referents. It's not a conclusive refutation, but a point of
evidence is that humans in sensory deprivation tanks tend to have their thoughts enter a
loop - which I would say shows that they need external reference. I tend to agree with
JKC that intelligence is harder (and more important) than consciousness.
Brent
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