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> do you think you are an automaton simply reacting to stimuli in a complicated fashion, no different than machine? Yes. Although it's a fairly advanced machin

by Thiez 5y ago

> do you think you are an automaton simply reacting to stimuli in a complicated fashion, no different than machine? Yes. Although it's a fairly advanced machine, with an architecture that is unlike (most?) machines built by humans. I do believe it may never be possible to import an existing human brain in a computer for practical reasons: you would have to cut the brain into extremely thin slices to copy the layout. But if such a detailed scan were possible and we would have sufficient knowledge about the biological workings of the brain and a sufficiently powerful computer, I don't believe there is any theoretical reason why my consciousness couldn't be simulated with reasonable accuracy on a computer. > Yet, if you are like most people, you know for a fact this is not true; that you experience reality is undeniable. Why wouldn't a machine be able to experience reality (or what it perceives to be reality - human senses have various known flaws, for example various optical illusions)? My robot vacuum detects walls and moves to avoid them. It's clearly perceiving reality, and responding to it. It even responds in ways that I find hard to predict (sometimes it turns left, sometimes it turns right, sometimes it moves backward).

AnIdiotOnTheNet 5y ago
In truth, I'm a panpsychist so I don't actually believe that machines (or anything else for that matter) doesn't have an experience of reality. What I find odd is that you don't recognizing the difference at all between the conception of a p-zombie (an automaton with no experience of reality) and your own experience of reality. Typically we use machines as an example because most people would say that, unlike with people, machines don't really think, or feel, or suffer, so we there are never any moral considerations for dealing with them. Dark Mirror likes to demonstrate this common belief frequently in its episodes about "cookies", or people who are replicated in technology: "it's just code". Given that most people make the distinction, it is usually sufficient to point out that empiricism can make no measurement to determine the difference between an entity that experiences the world, and one that is an automaton. You're purely materialist way of looking at things, where consciousness is a product of being a sufficiently complex system still begs the question: how complex? Again, I do not think there is any satisfactory empirical definition.

by Thiez 5y ago

AnIdiotOnTheNet 5y ago

In truth, I'm a panpsychist so I don't actually believe that machines (or anything else for that matter) doesn't have an experience of reality. What I find odd is that you don't recognizing the difference at all between the conception of a p-zombie (an automaton with no experience of reality) and your own experience of reality. Typically we use machines as an example because most people would say that, unlike with people, machines don't really think, or feel, or suffer, so we there are never any moral considerations for dealing with them. Dark Mirror likes to demonstrate this common belief frequently in its episodes about "cookies", or people who are replicated in technology: "it's just code". Given that most people make the distinction, it is usually sufficient to point out that empiricism can make no measurement to determine the difference between an entity that experiences the world, and one that is an automaton. You're purely materialist way of looking at things, where consciousness is a product of being a sufficiently complex system still begs the question: how complex? Again, I do not think there is any satisfactory empirical definition.