On 31/01/2008, Mike Tintner <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > I think the question should reverse - I and every (most?) creature can > distinguish between a real and a virtual environment. How on earth can a > virtual creature make the same distinction? How can it have a body, or a > continuous sense of a body? How can it have a continous map of the world, > with a continuous physical sense of up/down, forward/back, > heaviness/lightness? And a fairly continuous sense of time passing? How can > it have a self? How can it have continuous (conflicting) emotions coursing > through its body? How can it also have a continuous sense of its energy and > muscles - of zest/apathy, strength/weakness, awakeness/tiredness? How can it > have a sense of its posture, and muscles tight or loose?
The fact is, you are already living in a virtual environment. Your brain creates a picture of the world based on sensory data. You can't *really* know what a table is, or even that there is a table there in front of you at all. All you can know is that you have particular table-like experiences, which seem to be consistently generated by what you come to think of as the external object "table". There is no way to be certain that the picture in your head - including the picture you have of your own body - is generated by a real external environment rather than by a computer sending appropriately high resolution signals to fool your brain: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brain_in_a_vat -- Stathis Papaioannou ----- This list is sponsored by AGIRI: http://www.agiri.org/email To unsubscribe or change your options, please go to: http://v2.listbox.com/member/?member_id=4007604&id_secret=92100746-21f656
