Author: Dan Ellwein
Date: 14:21:45 03/19/01
Go up one level in this thread
On March 19, 2001 at 01:45:25, Christophe Theron wrote: >On March 18, 2001 at 23:19:24, Robin Smith wrote: > >>On March 18, 2001 at 21:47:16, Christophe Theron wrote: >> >>>On March 18, 2001 at 15:29:12, Dan Newman wrote: >>> >>>>On March 16, 2001 at 22:18:23, Robin Smith wrote: >>>> >>>>>On March 15, 2001 at 05:41:33, Dan Andersson wrote: snip >>>Sounds like chinese to me. :) >>> >>>Nice chinese BTW, but still... :) >>> >>>Seriously, I probably need to introspect a little bit more in order to try to >>>understand what some people find mysterious about "conscience". >> >>Imagine an alien race that flys to earth in a UFO and is studying humans. They >>hear humans talk about things being "funny", or "falling in love", or something >>is "beautiful" or that they are "afraid". But the aliens have no idea of these >>concepts. They have no equivalent to these concepts in their home world. So >>they decide they will disect a human to find out the meaning these words. But >>will they find "love" by disecting a brain or a neuron? Maybe, but not unless >>their technology is more advanced than ours. And if not, and when that doesn't >>work, lets say they study humans by doing a brain scan (MRI) of someone who is >>experiencing the emotion of fear. Will the brain scan help them understand >>fear? Sure, it will show what areas of the brain are active, or that the pupils >>of they eye have responded by dilating or that the sweat glands become active. >>But will they know what fear is like when it is *experienced*? Again, not >>unless their technology is more advanced than ours. Do you remember when you >>were young, learning the "facts of life" i.e. the mechanics of sex? You then >>knew all about what happens ... first you do this, then this happens ..... But >>when you *experience* it, it is something else again. >> >>Another way to think about it is in terms of computer programming. How would >>you go about programming a computer to feel afraid? Of course you have no idea, >>since no one does. You could program a robot to exhibit the same behaviors as a >>human that is afraid, but does this mean that the robot experiences the emotion >>of fear? Who knows. All we can see is the behavior. We don't know how to peer >>into and see the subjective experience of others. >> >>My grandfather used to pooh-pooh the idea of gravity. He would say "down is >>down and that is why things fall". Most people just accept the facts presented >>to them by their experiences without question. "Everyone knows" things fall >>down. But then someone asks "why" and if an answer to the mystery of why things >>fall is found, suddenly we have Newtons laws of gravitation. >> >>We all have these subjective experiences. But why? Brains, sensory organs, >>hormones, DNA; these all explain the mechanics of our existance, but NONE of >>this knowledge would lead us to inevitably conjecture the existance of >>subjective experiences unless we already knew about them. There is something we >>don't yet understand going on. >> >>Robin > > > >Subjective experiences are defined by the states of the information processing >entity. > >It's no wonder they cannot be transfered "as is" in another entity (which has a >different structure). So you are bound to look at "feelings" from the outside >and deduce what these feelings are only by the behaviour of the entity. > >Your examples about love, fear, humour, beauty are certainly very romantic, but >it - again - sounds very old fashioned to me. > >Some of these "feelings" will probably appear in very complex computing machines >and it will be possible to see it from the outside. > >At the time there were no computers, and machines were made of gears, people >could have wondered how a machine could gather informations and do anything >useful with it, but now that we have computers of such complexity and that we >are foreseeing gigantic advances in this complexity, I think it is time to >update our way of thinking... > >I'm not trying to contradict you by all means. It's just that I don't see >mysteries where you see them. > > Christophe hmm... maybe Gambit Tiger is really the human... and Christophe is the computer... :) PilgrimDan
This page took 0.02 seconds to execute
Last modified: Thu, 15 Apr 21 08:11:13 -0700
Current Computer Chess Club Forums at Talkchess. This site by Sean Mintz.