3 ms·
> No amount of lego will make a lego brain. No amount of oscillation in an electric field will make a thought. We can never build a Lego brain that is indistin
by sjy 9y ago
> No amount of lego will make a lego brain. No amount of oscillation in an electric field will make a thought.
We can never build a Lego brain that is indistinguishable from a physical brain because brain cells are distinguishable from Lego, but this doesn't mean that a computer can't think. We accept that distinct humans share the property of sentience even though there are observable differences between them. Why is 'thought' required to occur in a cluster of brain cells that share the physical and chemical properties of human brains in general, but not the specific properties of any one person's brain in particular? Using your terminology, what is the 'causal structure' of thought?
- mjburgess 9y agoI don't think there are relevant difference between thinking things. Thought is just a particular set of biochemical reactions occurring across particular kinds of biological systems (nervous systems). When you get hungry, you start thinking of food. These thoughts are, literally, products of the innervation of your stomach. I don't know what "thinking" is if computers are the kinds of things which can do it; I'd guess it would be nothing we are, in fact, doing. Two pieces of glass may differ in size, but not in what makes them transparent. Two people may differ in all sorts of ways, but not in what makes them conscious.
- mcguire 9y agoThat "consciousness" is limited to "people" results in a very limiting definition of consciousness. At some point, it's probably better to at least pretend that something you regard as a non-person is conscious, if only in order to make reasonably accurate predictions about the world.