On 01/02/2008, Mike Tintner <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > The philosophical conceit that we do not really know that there is a table > (or a penis) in front of us, is just that - a fanciful conceit. It shows > what happens when you rely on words and symbols as your sole medium of > intellectual thought - as philosophers mainly do. > > In reality, you have no problem knowing and being sure of those objects and > the world around you - except in exceptional circumstances. Why? Two > reasons. > > First, all sensations/perceptions are continually being unconsciously tested > for their reality - a process which I would have thought every AI/robotics > person would take for granted. Hence your brain occasionally thinks: "was > that really so-and-so I saw?"...or: "where exactly in my foot *is* that > pain?" Your unconscious brain has had problems checking some perception. > > Secondly, your brain works by *common sense* perception and testing. We are > continually testing our perceptions with all our senses and our whole body. > You don't just look at things, you reach out and touch them, smell them, > taste them, and confirm over and over that your perceptions are valid. (Also > it's worth pointing out that since you are continually moving in relation to > objects, your many different-angle "shots" of them are continually tested > against each other for consistency). Like a good journalist, you check more > than one source. Your perceptions are continually tested in a deeply > embodied way - and in general v. much "in touch" with reality.
I'm not suggesting that there is any reason to believe there is no real world out there. What I am saying is that *if* the world you perceive were due to computer-generated data at an arbitrarily high level of resolution fed into your brain, it would respond in the same way as if it were in an intact body interacting with a real environment and you would have no way of knowing what was going on. Thus your claim that it is *impossible* for an intelligence to function in a virtual environment is false. (The weaker claim that it might be easier for an intelligence to develop and function in a real environment using a robot body, for example because this is computationally cheaper than building a virtual environment of comparable richness, may yet have merit.) The other point I was trying to make is that even if the world is real, the picture of the world your brain creates from sensory data is an abstraction that exists only in the computational space that is your mind. The map is not the territory. -- 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=92524190-74820c
