Re: Conciousness [OT]
Al,
----- Original Message -----
From: "Al Getz" <Xaxo at aol.com>
To: <EUforum at topica.com>
Subject: RE: Conciousness [OT]
Dan Moyer wrote:
>
>
> Ricardo,
>
> Just my opinion, but sometime back when I first read the beginning of
> that
> book, I wasn't at all impressed. It doesn't seem to be as "ground
> breaking"
> as it says, since it seems to just recapitulate Plato's "shadows on the
> cave
> wall" idea (ie, we don't really see the real things, we see "shadows" of
> them, namely our perceptions of the real things), with a kind of
> addition of
> the old idea of a "little man inside the brain" (from Medieval times?).
> Didn't seem worth wading through the whole book, so I suppose it's
> possible
> that it could be more interesting than I thought. Looking again at the
> beginning, it still seems ho-hum.
>
> Dan Moyer
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: <rforno at tutopia.com>
> To: "EUforum" <EUforum at topica.com>
> Sent: Sunday, September 07, 2003 7:22 PM
> Subject: Conciousness [OT]
>
>
> > To all:
> > In relation to what I call "the mystery of conciousness", I've found
> > enormously
> > interesting the PDF book available at this site:
> > www.InnerLightTheory.com
> > Regards.
> >
> >
> > TOPICA - Start your own email discussion group. FREE!
> >
> >
Dan, maybe this will be a little more interesting then...?
Not more then two weeks ago a friend an i were talking about
something kind of similar to this i think. I brought up a
question that i think is pretty interesting to think about.
Before i ask this question though, i have to bring up a little
background info.
[1]
First, i believe that robots could be invented that act on
their own. With enough subroutines and a large data base,
the robot could be doing anything including learning.
It seems like it's all a matter of programming and proper
external sensor design.
Now sooner or later that robot is going to come across a mirror,
and discover it's own self (if it wasnt already programmed in).
It will then make judgements about what it has found out.
This doesnt seem that extraordinary to me really.
It might start to think about the ramifications
of being an individual and at some point stop because it's using
too much energy for a problem that has perhaps a too distant
event horizon.
[2]
Second, sooner or later there will probably be enough
known about a human brain so that every transfer of energy
will be understood within a given brain. Every memory will
be able to be captured just like a computer memory only larger.
Now here's the interesting questions...
Given that [1] and [2] are completely true and have occurred so
that one persons memories etc were copied into a robot with the
needed hardware, would that robot suddenly 'know' itself
as once being a human and now is a robot?
Probably.
Even more interesting though...
Would that robot really "BE" that same person?
Absolutely absolutely ABSOLUTELY NO. (I presume you mean something like, if
a "recording" of the person's total neuronal/synaptic network, including all
cellular metobolic functioning were made and copied into a robot brain, &
then the person died, would that person somehow be "in" the robot? No, of
course not; easy to see: what if the person did NOT die? In one corner you
have the living person, in the other you have the robot that is cognitively
"identical", thinking it's that person, but that person is actually over in
the other corner.)
A slightly more difficult question might be:
remove a persons brain, put it in a robot body; make a copy of the brains
neural network, copy that into a "synthetic" brain, put that into the human
body; where's the real person? I'd say in the robot body, because the
physical brain is the only actual "container" of any original human mind, as
far as I can see.
Take care for now,
Al
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