contracycle

So you keep claiming, despite multiple counterpoints.

Why? Methinks you are putting the cart before the horse.

boneyard bill

contracycle writes:

BB:


contracycle:


But in this case counterpoints aren't points. You can either produce a reductive explanation for sentient experience or you cannot. You haven't produced one. But don't feel bad. Neither has anyone else.

contracycle

I have on occassions advised you that it seems eminently reasonable to me to see mind as a property of ciomplexity, no more and no less. It is a physical reaction, that is all.

What you have yet to explain is why you find this explanation unsatisfactory. All I see is some pseudo-mystical mumbo jumbo about "qualia" and unsupportable claims to the non-spaciality of the mind.

VivaHedone

It is unsatisfactory because it does not explain how flow of electrons and magnetic fields lead to subjective experience, and it does not explain what exactly a sensation is. However complex a computer programme becomes, it will not produce a subjective entity. It may react to light, but it will never see.

contracycle

What is the basis for this statement?

Once again we are back at some mysterious "spirit" that animates the dumb matter. That is the necessary implication of the suggestion that a computer will never "see". If that is true, then you or I do not "see " either, as we have no discernable equipment that is qualitatively distinct from that of a silicon brain.

One wonders how this mysterious, undetectable, unobserved spirit appears and inhabits the mere computer that is the brain. Does it also inhabit the brains of chimpanzees? orang utans? Sharks? If not, why not? If so, why will it not similarly inhabit a silicon brain?

I think your error lies in the statemnent that " a comuter programme will not produce a subjective entity". Yes and no - a sufficiently complex computer programme will BE a subjective entity (although I suspect that we will more likely be looking at a chaotic nest of programmes rather than one uber-prog).

You say "it does not explain how flow of electrons and magnetic fields lead to subjective experience, and it does not explain what exactly a sensation is." In another thread, I gave the example of a cars CPU and the tyre pressure indicator. Perhaps a mopre complex scenario will help.

Imagine the beast in question is a mars rover equipped with a valu driven decision system. The sensors take raw input and rank their importance to the next decision the cPU is going to make. The value weightings of sginificance, represented electronically, are queued and provided to the CPU. The CPU makes a decision, even if that decision is no more complex than a statistical selectiopn of a particular option.

To the silicon chip that is this processor, the process will "feel" like intellection. The evidence and concerns will "mount up"; the selection process will necessarily be an "educated guess". If the chip was so sophisticated as to be *aware of its own internal states*, and exercised oversight of those states, then it recieves a data input that is itself the output of (at least) one its own processes.

That provides, in my eyes, a perfectly reasonable account of subjectivity. Subjectivity is "self state monitoring" if you will, and its purposes is no different than any other evolutionary developement - it allows better odds of surviving an procreating than not having it. There is no basis for claiming that some other factor must be introduced to explain subjectivity.

Please provide som basis for the argument that a robot will never "see", and what you mean by "see" in this context. The bald assertion that This Is True will not do.

theophilus

Except this statement?

boneyard bill

contracycle writes:

And I will take this occasion to advise you that haven't got the slightest interest in what opinions you happen to hold as a dogma.

boneyard bill

contracycle writes:

I find it unsatisfactory because it is a claim that, if true, should be easily proven. Yet is hasn't been proven. Ergo, it is very likely false.

boneyard bill

contracycle writes:

Wow! Talk about putting the cart before the horse. If computers can't see then we must be blind too. Materialism must be true at all costs. We no longer even have to consider the facts.

boneyard bill

contracycle writes:

Once again the argument from faith. Materialists are more dogmatic than fundamentalists. At least the fundamentalists admit that they are arguing from faith.