Consciousness in a robot? (believe, reject, scientific, contradiction)

[MysticPhD]

Originally Posted by MysticPhD

Mystic has been enjoying Gaylen's efforts to elucidate the philosophical abstractions essential to understanding the issues to concrete-minded thinkers, like you and KC, Arq. It is a vain effort because he is essentially trying to redefine "being alive" in a way that would enable the attribution of consciousness to a dead machine. It is preposterous. Consciousness IS the "stuff" that reality is comprised of . . . NOT material.

Originally Posted by AREQUIPA

Ah.Glad you're around. Gaylen is rather over my head,(as you know ) and I wondered whether my objections to the Zombies were fair as they are intended to illlustrate a point by analogy, rather than (I hope)prove it.
I do see the idea that consciousness rather than solid matter is the basis of everything, but, in considering it,the basic attribute of knowing, let alone intelligence, seems to be lacking. That's why I feel the term 'material' (or "stuff" in avoiding a distinction between energy particles and matter-particles) is more appropriate than consciousness.

Originally Posted by AREQUIPA

Ok. Frankly that made no sense to me, but it must in philosophical terms or Chalmers would have been howled down. I'm going to have to look further at that since the zombie just seems to be an illustration of a possible other world where our ideas of qualitative experience do not hold.
If that implies that materialism is false, maybe (rather like flat denial of the possibility of God is logically false) a re-examination of what materialism means. In philosophical terms it may be making a claim too far. Which would certainly explain why a full explanation of consciousness in materialism terms is required right now, and i may have an inkling of why you said it never can be.
", did God have to do something further in order to provide for consciousness? Answering yes to this question implies there is more to consciousness than the purely physical facts can supply. I" (stanford)
I would say 'No'. Not in this world nor a copy of it identical (unless some aspect was removed to make consciousness impossible in the way I'm going to explain - which would be a different world and not proving anything about ours in any way that I can see). I have argued with Mystic phd that consciousness is inherent in matter. It doesn't signify that we can't explain (now or ever) to the Nth degree the reactions we get in particles, molecules, compounds, minerals and biochemicals and in the end life (given that abiogenesis is not only possible but feasible) then primitive and basic animal reactions to threat or food becomes more complex in higher animals. I argued with Mystic that our consciousness is the same Thing as that of dogs or chimps. Though more developed in problem -solving. Thus I probably sound as though I accept his 'Field' but in fact though the whole universe is consciousness in very basic terms or potential at least (as is indeed Life) it is not intelligence of the sort that would be needed to apply the term "God" (in any definition that relates to our preconceptions of what God is) and is nothing like the thinking of higher animals.
Perhaps that is why Chalmer's argument did not make sense to me. Is a universe without emergent consciousness possible? anything is possible but again I reject (in practical terms, anyway) this idea that because it is possible to imagine something, it must exist.

Gaylen has been holding his own admirably in this onslaught of concrete thinkers who seem to be out of their realm in the abstract. This is unfortunate and ironic, both . . . because the abstract is where consciousness resides. It is what consciousness is "made of." Physicality or materiality is so totally constraining and conditioning of our experiences and, hence . . . our thinking . . . that some of us simply cannot remove ourselves from the illusion of materiality. Even those who are comfortable within abstractions like Gaylen, Chalmers, et al. find themselves inevitably trapped into material conceptions.

Arequipa seems to have an intuitive grasp of the essential issue but his concrete mind refuses to engage it fully because of the "God thingee." I could be wrong . . . but I am reading the responses to Gaylen's efforts in order to see the main stumbling blocks to understanding the issues. Sophronius is trying to inject the mathematical abstractions into the discussion. They parallel the verbal ones Gaylen is elucidating because the artificial mathematical rubric is entirely a construct of our abstract consciousness. Both the verbal and the mathematical constructs are limited by their derivative nature.

It is difficult to use constructs derived from our abstract consciousness to explain that consciousness. The "I" is inevitably forgotten and left in the penumbra of our considerations as we consider the objects and constructs our consciousness has created. We simply do not "think about our thoughts as something to be thought about when thinking of things to be thought about." In so many ways . . . our consciousness is treated as if it does not exist as something that inheres in reality itself . . . hence, the illusion nonsense that is so prevalent. But consciousness is the ONLY thing that inheres in reality itself . . . it simply manifests in different degrees and ways some of which are accessible to our sensory systems . . . most (95+%) are not.

Originally Posted by monumentus

You say this - but every single challenge to have you explain why a machine could not "be alive" has resulted in verbal tumble weed scenes from the wild west. It appears you are sure there is an argument to be made there and "alive" is somehow a special knock all word to win all debate - you just seem unable to explain why.
That sentence requires some explanation. Reality is not made of matter but just consciousness? What does this mean? Assuming all biological life on this planet were to die tomorrow - are you suggesting reality would cease? This sounds a bit like when Deepak Chopra told us the Moon is only there when people look at it and when no one looks at it - it ceases to "be".

This reference to Deepak is unfortunate because Deepak comes from a specific tradition that clouds and misinforms his views . . . as do most such traditions. Starting with a clean slate as I did is the only way to approach these issues. None of you seem inclined or disposed to do so . . . particularly because of your antipathy to my express beliefs about God. Too bad. Such bias will simply continue to make the issues incomprehensible to you.

Originally Posted by AREQUIPA

Yeah. The issue is not 'being alive' but having consciousness. In principle, one could grow an android in a vat and there would be no problem about being alive as an objection to downloading consciousness into it.
So in principle, why is impossible to to download consciousness into a machine? Whether it could be called alive or not or whether it needs to be seems to me irrelevant.

But that is NOT true, Arq. It is THE central issue.

Consciousness is not (as Mystic said) the stuff that material is made of, material is the stuff the consciousness is made of. Both are opinion statements, I suppose, but the existence of mine means that Mystic's is far from being a done deal. And the known physical and biological processes of evolution that (I argue) develop consciousness along with life. Thus there is evidence for my suggestion. I haven't seen anything to support Mystic's view other than analogies about 'Fields' a statements of unsupported opinion.

Originally Posted by Arach Angle

The problem is that when you get down to the fundamental layers they treat particles as fields many times. So that is not an unsupported opinion. I don't mean to be confrontational either but at some point we have to understand what is being said. If we don't we shouldn't called it unsupported should we.
See dr physics alevel physica for more. He is on you tube. It basic but does a nice job of explaining things.

Thank you Arach. Arq acknowledges that he has information deficits that hinder his attempts to come to grips with the issues. That is just one of them.

Originally Posted by Gaylenwoof

I believe you addressing Mystic with this question, but I'd like to jump in with a few pennies worth of my thoughts: Based on my approach, this would be an open question. I certainly see downloading as a logical possibility, but without a good theory of consciousness, it is just guesswork as to whether or not downloading is a natural possibility or a technical possibility.
BTW - a quick note about 3 levels of possibility:
(1) Logical possibility: An event is logically possible so long as the terms of reference for the event do not imply a logical contradiction.
(2) Natural possibility: An event is naturally possible so long as it does not violate the laws of physics.
(3) Technical possibility: An event is technically possible so long as it can be achieved using a specified level of technology. (It is naturally possible to accelerate a one-pound payload to 99.99999% the speed of light (no law of nature is violated), but the energy requirements for doing this might be greater than any technological society - no matter how advanced - can ever realistically achieve. And, of course, some things that are technically impossible now, might become possible later.)

Thank you Gaylen. Your talent as an educator is legion. I am just surprised at how ineffective it seems to be . . . probably because of the topic itself and its relationship to the "God-thingee." Gldn would call it "God-o-phobia."

Originally Posted by Arach Angle

"You" are stored in the states of the molecules in the brain as far as we know. So there is no reason to think we can't adjust those. I mean we could do it with magnetic fields right now. Or smoke a joint to see it happen. What you really mean is can we adjust that many atoms and/or molecules at one time. Maybe not at one time, but over a reasonable amount of time we will. Heck, mother nature does it in 10 months. We will beat that time. Its just a "supply the pieces fast enough" issue.

This is where we part company, Arach. "We" cannot be stored in the molecules in the brain because "We" are an abstraction that exists in the energy form (not matter) of the unified (consciousness) field. Analogously, you are suggesting that EM radiation is contained in the molecules of the TV set that displays the program.

[TRANSPONDER]

Originally Posted by Arach Angle

The problem is that when you get down to the fundamental layers they treat particles as fields many times. So that is not an unsupported opinion. I don't mean to be confrontational either but at some point we have to understand what is being said. If we don't we shouldn't called it unsupported should we.

See dr physics alevel physica for more. He is on you tube. It basic but does a nice job of explaining things.

I don't disagree. 'Fields' of energy, effect or power are pretty common and often amazingly cosmos extensive. I just don't see it as amounting to anything we would call an intelligent planning mind. That's by the way. The point is that consciousness along with intelligence and biological complexity develops in evolutionary steps and consciousness seems to me to be no more mysterious than instinct - and until DNA and the genome was discovered, nobody had any idea how instinct was passed on.

Therefore I see no reason why consciousness should not be pinned down at least to the stage where we could transfer it from one bod into another, and into a bod grown in a tank, if we have got that far. And indeed why not into a machine?

In principle, I see no reason why not, though in practice it might be trickier than we think.

Now, Gaylen has referred back to Chalmers and the argument as to why materialism fails. The fact is that somehow this works and what we have to do if find out how. Philosophy may well have hit on an important fact - that consciousness is never going to be pinned down entirely to the nuts and bolts. Apparrently because it is possible to imagine a universe with a race of human critters without qualia. Or where consciousness can't develop without God having to push it along.

I may be totally missing the point, but it sounds to either wrong in concept or unhelpful in reaching any conclusions about human consciousness.

[Gaylenwoof]

Originally Posted by Gaylenwoof

• In our world, there are conscious experiences.
• There is a logically possible world physically identical to ours, in which the positive facts about consciousness in our world do not hold.
• Therefore, facts about consciousness are further facts about our world, over and above the physical facts.

Originally Posted by KCfromNC

No, they're further facts about the made-up world where zombies are possible. You know, the facts created out of thin air about the imaginary place being talked about in step 2. That made up world isn't the one we live in - or at least we can't know that it is without a lot more work from the people proposing these things.

You seem to keep missing the central point of the zombie argument. Obviously the possible world in which zombies exist is a "made up" world. No one disputes that. Chalmers does not believe that zombies are naturally possible in our world, and neither do I. The zombie argument is intended to show that zombies are logically possible, given our current concepts of physics (or, given our current definition of 'physical').

The question you need to ask is: How does the logical possibility of zombies cause a problem for reductive materialism? Notice that the zombie world is defined as physically identical to our world. If you are going to defeat the zombie argument, you will need to show why a zombie world that is physically identical to our world is logically impossible. To show logical impossibility, you need to give a logical argument showing that the definitions of the key terms used in the zombies argument (i.e., the terms "physical" and "identical" and "zombie" and "possible") lead to contradiction when you try to claim that a zombie world could be physically identical to our world. If you cannot show how the meanings of the terms imply contradiction in the assertion that a "zombie world could be physically identical to ours" then it is rational to think that the zombie world is a logically possibility. (Basically, we just don't have a good enough definition of 'physical' yet. Any definition of 'physical' that allows the logical possibility of zombies is an inadequate definition.)

In your statement above, you seem to already accept that a zombie world is logically possible. IF you accept the logical possibility of zombies, then you've already lost the argument. If worlds X and Y are physically identical, but creatures in X have qualitative experiences whereas creatures in Y do not, then, by logical entailment, qualitative experiences cannot be purely physical (because there is a difference between the worlds that is not captured by descriptions of the physical differences between worlds).

I will assume, therefore, that you do not believe that zombie worlds are logically possible. But then, as I said, you need to show how the terms of the zombie argument lead to logical contradiction. I think that the best approach is to define the term 'physical' in such a way that zombie worlds do, indeed, become logically impossible. To do this, our concept of what counts as a physical object needs to logically entail the possibility of qualitative experience. I believe that qualia are emergent phenomena, and to explain the emergence we will need to be able to track the possibility of qualitative experience all the way down to the fundamental level of reality - presumably the quantum level. (In roughly the way that we can track the possibility of "liquidity" down to the nature of atomic bonds. One or two H20 molecules cannot have "liquid" properties, but large numbers of them can.) This is why I think we need a radically new model of physics at the fundamental level. One requirement of this new model is that it needs to imply that a "zombie world" is, in fact, a logical impossibility, based on the meanings of the terms of our new fundamental theory.

Our current physics is insufficient because it does not imply the logical impossibility of zombies. For physicalism to be true, physics should imply the logical impossibility of zombies. I believe that physicalism is true, so my money is on the idea that future physics will correct this situation. I've been trying to suggest some ways in which a future physics might be able to do this.

[TRANSPONDER]

"But that is NOT true, Arq. It is THE central issue." You may want to make it the central issue, Mystic, but that does not make it so. Are you suggesting that consciousnes is a characteristic of being alive? That is certainly what we have in the natural world but to assume that anything mechanical cannot be given what we would consider consciousness seems to be assuming as a given what you are trying to prove.
You may have a point that I am always keeping the god -aspect in mind. This the AA forum and if the validity of atheism is not the underlying question, the discussion has no place here as it is a purely philosophical discussion.

[MysticPhD]

Originally Posted by MysticPhD

Gaylen has been holding his own admirably in this onslaught of concrete thinkers who seem to be out of their realm in the abstract. This is unfortunate and ironic, both . . . because the abstract is where consciousness resides. It is what consciousness is "made of." Physicality or materiality is so totally constraining and conditioning of our experiences and, hence . . . our thinking . . . that some of us simply cannot remove ourselves from the illusion of materiality. Even those who are comfortable within abstractions like Gaylen, Chalmers, et al. find themselves inevitably trapped into material conceptions.

Arequipa seems to have an intuitive grasp of the essential issue but his concrete mind refuses to engage it fully because of the "God thingee." I could be wrong . . . but I am reading the responses to Gaylen's efforts in order to see the main stumbling blocks to understanding the issues. Sophronius is trying to inject the mathematical abstractions into the discussion. They parallel the verbal ones Gaylen is elucidating because the artificial mathematical rubric is entirely a construct of our abstract consciousness. Both the verbal and the mathematical constructs are limited by their derivative nature.

It is difficult to use constructs derived from our abstract consciousness to explain that consciousness. The "I" is inevitably forgotten and left in the penumbra of our considerations as we consider the objects and constructs our consciousness has created. We simply do not "think about our thoughts as something to be thought about when thinking of things to be thought about." In so many ways . . . our consciousness is treated as if it does not exist as something that inheres in reality itself . . . hence, the illusion nonsense that is so prevalent. But consciousness is the ONLY thing that inheres in reality itself . . . it simply manifests in different degrees and ways some of which are accessible to our sensory systems . . . most (95+%) are not.
This reference to Deepak is unfortunate because Deepak comes from a specific tradition that clouds and misinforms his views . . . as do most such traditions. Starting with a clean slate as I did is the only way to approach these issues. None of you seem inclined or disposed to do so . . . particularly because of your antipathy to my express beliefs about God. Too bad. Such bias will simply continue to make the issues incomprehensible to you.
But that is NOT true, Arq. It is THE central issue.
Thank you Arach. Arq acknowledges that he has information deficits that hinder his attempts to come to grips with the issues. That is just one of them.
Thank you Gaylen. Your talent as an educator is legion. I am just surprised at how ineffective it seems to be . . . probably because of the topic itself and its relationship to the "God-thingee." Gldn would call it "God-o-phobia."
This is where we part company, Arach. "We" cannot be stored in the molecules in the brain because "We" are an abstraction that exists in the energy form (not matter) of the unified (consciousness) field. Analogously, you are suggesting that EM radiation is contained in the molecules of the TV set that displays the program.

Originally Posted by AREQUIPA

"But that is NOT true, Arq. It is THE central issue." You may want to make it the central issue, Mystic, but that does not make it so. Are you suggesting that consciousnes is a characteristic of being alive? That is certainly what we have in the natural world but to assume that anything mechanical cannot be given what we would consider consciousness seems to be assuming as a given what you are trying to prove.
You may have a point that I am always keeping the god -aspect in mind. This the AA forum and if the validity of atheism is not the underlying question, the discussion has no place here as it is a purely philosophical discussion.

At the risk of creating too much of a tangent . . . I think that the experiences of Dr. Eben Alexander more accurately reveal the nature of consciousness as I view it. EBEN ALEXANDER, M.D., has been an academic neurosurgeon for the last 25 years, including 15 years at the Brigham & Women’s and the Children’s Hospitals and Harvard Medical School in Boston. Visit him at Eben Alexander**.

These excerpts from Dr. Eben Alexander's book suggest that what he experienced parallels my deep meditation experiences . . . except that he seemed unable to distinguish between those that were from his unconscious and those that were real. The lack of a functioning neo-cortex due to E-Coli infection is the likely reason for this deficit. Nevertheless, I see his experiences as confirmatory of my own which had the advantage of conscious control and the ability to discriminate between unconscious content and reality. I extracted some pertinent parts from his book . . . but I recommend reading the entire book using the caution that he was unable to distinguish between unconscious content and reality. One of his conclusions follows:

We see the universe as a place full of separate objects (tables and chairs, people and planets) that occasionally interact with each other, but that nonetheless remain essentially separate. On the subatomic level, however, this universe of separate objects turns out to be a complete illusion. In the realm of the super-super-small, very object in the physical universe is intimately connected with every other object. In fact, there are really no “objects” in the world at all, only vibrations of energy, and relationships.

As I have stated many times . . . it is possible to "do science" in these altered states provided you retain conscious control. The drawback is that the only way to get second-hand confirmation is for any reproducer to enter the same altered states under the same conditions with the same control. Alexander experienced the direct "knowing" and certainty that accompanies these experiences and bemoans the same issues I have with skeptics who do not consider their consciousness a relevant aspect of reality itself:

But when I left my physical body behind, I experienced these facts directly. In fact, I feel confident in saying that . . . I was actually “doing science.” Science that relied on the truest and most sophisticated tool for scientific research that we possess: Consciousness itself. The further I dug, the more convinced I became that my discovery wasn’t just interesting or dramatic. It was scientific. Depending on whom you talk to, consciousness is either the greatest mystery facing scientific enquiry, or a total nonproblem. What’s surprising is just how many more scientists think it’s the latter. For many—maybe most—scientists, consciousness isn’t really worth worrying about because it is just a by-product of physical processes. Many scientists go further, saying that not only is consciousness a secondary phenomenon, but that in addition, it’s not even real.

His overall conclusions are cogent about NDE's and other out-of-body experiences and the reason skeptics and other scientists do not even consider them:

Like many other scientific skeptics, I refused to even review the data relevant to the questions concerning these phenomena. I prejudged the data, and those providing it, because my limited perspective failed to provide the foggiest notion of how such things might actually happen. Those who assert that there is no evidence for phenomena indicative of extended consciousness, in spite of overwhelming evidence to the
contrary, are willfully ignorant. They believe they know the truth without needing to look at the facts.

I am reproducing for your edification, Arq . . . his Appendix explaining the neuroscientific explanations for his experiences that he ultimately had to reject.

Neuroscientific Hypotheses I Considered to Explain My Experience
(In sum: these were rejected because he simply did NOT have a functioning neo-cortex where these experiences arise.)

In reviewing my recollections with several other neurosurgeons and scientists, I entertained several hypotheses that might explain my memories. Cutting right to the chase, they all failed to explain the rich, robust, intricate interactivity of the Gateway and Core experiences (the “ultra-reality”). These included:
1. A primitive brainstem program to ease terminal pain and suffering (“evolutionary argument”—possibly as a remnant of “feigned-death” strategies from lower mammals?). This did not explain the robust, richly interactive nature of the recollections.
2. The distorted recall of memories from deeper parts of the limbic system (for example, the lateral amygdala) that have enough overlying brain to be relatively protected from the meningitic inflammation, which occurs mainly at the brain’s surface. This did not explain the robust, richly interactive nature of the recollections.
3. Endogenous glutamate blockade with excitotoxicity, mimicking the hallucinatory anesthetic, ketamine occasionally used to explain NDEs in general). I occasionally saw the effects of ketamine used as an anesthetic during the earlier part of my neurosurgical career at Harvard Medical School. The hallucinatory state it induced was most chaotic and unpleasant, and bore no resemblance whatsoever to my experience in coma.
4. N,N-dimethyltryptamine (DMT) “dump” (from the pineal, or elsewhere in the brain). DMT, a naturally occurring serotonin agonist (specifically at the 5-HT1A, 5-HT2A and 5-HT2C receptors), causes vivid hallucinations and a dreamlike state. I am personally familiar with drug experiences related to serotonin agonist/antagonists(that is, LSD, mescaline) from my teen years in the early 1970s. I have had no personal experience with DMT but have seen patients under its influence. The rich ultra-reality would still require fairly intact auditory and visual neocortex as target regions in which to generate such a rich audiovisual experience as I had in coma.
Prolonged coma due to bacterial meningitis had badly damaged my neocortex, which is where all of that serotonin from the raphe nuclei in the brainstem (or DMT, a serotonin agonist) would have had effects on visual/auditory experience. But my cortex was off, and the DMT would have had no place in the brain to act. The DMT hypothesis failed on the basis of the ultra-reality of the audiovisual experience, andlack of cortex on which to act.
5. Isolated preservation of cortical regions might have explained some of my experience, but were most unlikely, given the severity of my meningitis and its refractoriness to therapy for a week: peripheral white blood cell (WBC) count over 27,000 per mm3, 31 percent bands with toxic granulations, CSF WBC count over 4,300 per mm3, CSF glucose down to 1.0 mg/dl, CSF protein 1,340 mg/dl, diffuse meningeal involvement with associated brain abnormalities revealed on my enhanced CT scan, and neurological exams showing severe alterations in cortical function and dysfunction of extraocular motility, indicative of brainstem damage.
6. In an effort to explain the “ultra-reality” of the experience, I examined this hypothesis: Was it possible that networks of inhibitory neurons might have been predominantly affected, allowing for unusually high levels of activity among the excitatory neuronal networks to generate the apparent “ultra-reality” of my
experience? One would expect meningitis to preferentially disturb the superficial cortex, possibly leaving deeper layers partially functional. The computing unit of the neocortex is the six-layered “functionalcolumn,” each with a lateral diameter of 0.2–0.3 mm. There is significant interwiring laterally to immediately adjacent columns in response to modulatory control signals that originate largely from subcortical regions (the thalamus, basal ganglia, and brainstem). Each functional column has a component at the surface (layers 1–3), so that meningitis effectively disrupts the function of each column just by damaging the surface layers of the cortex. The anatomical distribution of inhibitory and excitatory cells, which have a fairly balanced distribution within the six layers, does not support this hypothesis. Diffuse meningitis over the brain’s surface effectively disables the entire neocortex due to this columnar architecture. Full-thickness destruction is unnecessary for total functional disruption. Given the prolonged course of my poor neurological function
(seven days) and the severity of my infection, it is unlikely that even deeper layers of the cortex were still functioning.
7. The thalamus, basal ganglia, and brainstem are deeper brain structures (“subcortical regions”) that some colleagues postulated might have contributed to the processing of such hyperrealexperiences. In fact, none of those structures could play any such role without having at least some regions of the neocortex still intact. All agreed in the end that such subcortical structures alone could not have handled the intense neuralcalculations required for such a richly interactive experiential tapestry.
8. A “reboot phenomenon”—a random dump of bizarre disjointed memories.

[Will J]

Absolutely no way. Machines thoughts are all built on "yes or no." If you ask a machine how it feels, it's response will be based on a collection of yesses and nos that it senses in itself. That's entirely different from a person saying "I feel a tight sadness in my chest because my spouse left me."

[Arach Angle]

Originally Posted by AREQUIPA

I don't disagree. 'Fields' of energy, effect or power are pretty common and often amazingly cosmos extensive. I just don't see it as amounting to anything we would call an intelligent planning mind. That's by the way. The point is that consciousness along with intelligence and biological complexity develops in evolutionary steps and consciousness seems to me to be no more mysterious than instinct - and until DNA and the genome was discovered, nobody had any idea how instinct was passed on.

Therefore I see no reason why consciousness should not be pinned down at least to the stage where we could transfer it from one bod into another, and into a bod grown in a tank, if we have got that far. And indeed why not into a machine?

In principle, I see no reason why not, though in practice it might be trickier than we think.

Now, Gaylen has referred back to Chalmers and the argument as to why materialism fails. The fact is that somehow this works and what we have to do if find out how. Philosophy may well have hit on an important fact - that consciousness is never going to be pinned down entirely to the nuts and bolts. Apparrently because it is possible to imagine a universe with a race of human critters without qualia. Or where consciousness can't develop without God having to push it along.

I may be totally missing the point, but it sounds to either wrong in concept or unhelpful in reaching any conclusions about human consciousness.

yep, I agree. There is no reason it has to be "planning", weather it is or not is another story. And we do have everything we need to to go on with or without believing we are part of something bigger. For me it comes down to how we treat each other. Gaylen is going in circles. But sometimes going round and round accidentaly hits something. Sometimes, ya get so tired ya just stop and sitdown ...BOOM ... the answer smacks ya in the face.

[Arach Angle]

Originally Posted by Will J

Absolutely no way. Machines thoughts are all built on "yes or no." If you ask a machine how it feels, it's response will be based on a collection of yesses and nos that it senses in itself. That's entirely different from a person saying "I feel a tight sadness in my chest because my spouse left me."

that's today. And we are taking about a lot of 1 + 0's all at the same time. 10^14 per second many. of course it would have to be big for heat or we can go bio tech for size considerations..

[mordant]

Originally Posted by Will J

Absolutely no way. Machines thoughts are all built on "yes or no." If you ask a machine how it feels, it's response will be based on a collection of yesses and nos that it senses in itself. That's entirely different from a person saying "I feel a tight sadness in my chest because my spouse left me."

The binary nature of current digital computers is at a very low level. It's entirely possible for such system to describe a range of states at quite a detailed level of resolution, just as combining those on/off bits in groups can be made to represent arbitrarily large integers and quite detailed real numbers.

In addition, nascent quantum computing systems have qubits rather than bits which can describe a range of values between "completely on" and "completely off" even at the lowest level.

[Mistermobile]

My two cents. Once 'puters become self aware and self programming, I am out of here.