On 5/3/2017 1:29 PM, David Nyman wrote:
On 3 May 2017 9:16 p.m., "Brent Meeker" <meeke...@verizon.net
<mailto:meeke...@verizon.net>> wrote:
On 5/3/2017 12:31 PM, David Nyman wrote:
On 3 May 2017 8:11 p.m., "Brent Meeker" <meeke...@verizon.net
<mailto:meeke...@verizon.net>> wrote:
On 5/3/2017 6:21 AM, Telmo Menezes wrote:
Brent argues that AI will dissolve the hard question. I
think that
people know intuitively that it will not. This is what
pop-culture
works such as "Blade Runner" are about.
People knew intuitively that the Earth was flat, God was
needed to explain morality, and chemistry couldn't explain
life. Ask yourself this: You're designing a new Mars Rovers
to explore Mars for years and you want them to be able to
learn and act intelligently and to interact with one
another. Do you deliberately make it conscious?...if so,
how? Might you make it conscious inadvertently?...and what
difference would it make? Having formulated these questions,
do you think modal logic will answer them?
IMO the problem is already in the formulation. The way you've set
it up obviously leads to a conflation of consciousness and
intelligent behaviour.
No, I'm not conflating them. That's the point of the questions -
are they separable and what do you do about it. I think Bruno
already thinks they are not separable. Although it's known a "the
hard problem", realizing consciousness should, according to
Bruno's theory, be easy. It's why he thinks jumping spiders are
conscious. I think so too, but I don't think consciousness is a
simple binary property, like lobian or not.
But in my view the thing is incoherent unless expressed in a way
that is able to handle the first person view directly in
something like its own terms. And yes, modal logic may be able to
give us at least an inkling of how this might go, at least in its
most basic form. But you don't like where this idea leads it
would seem, although perhaps you will just say the case hasn't
been made. Maybe I'm wrong, but even so I can't help feeling that
you're just out of sympathy with the whole idea.
I don't think sympathy for a theory is a scientific attitude.
Perhaps not, but a certain sympathetic connection with a particular
way of thinking may still lead to a breakthrough in a quite unexpected
direction. Or indeed the opposite. I need hardly point out that what
one sees as data is in the first place theory driven and lack of
sympathy with a particular mode of explanation may make one discount
or fail to recognise any evidence in its favour.
I have sympathy for Bruno, who has apparently been treated
unfairly by some in academia - but none for his theory.
If that is the case why do you continue to debate it?
Why not? I'm not sympathetic ( or antipathetic) to string theory
either, but I discuss it because it might come to something.
Brent
"Some of my friends are string theorists, but I wouldn't want my
daughter to marry one."
--- Lawrence Krauss
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