X-Message-Number: 11649 Date: Fri, 30 Apr 1999 15:11:55 -0400 From: Daniel Crevier <> Subject: On consciousness in a simulated world References: <> How about the following thought experiment to cast another light on the question? I adapt it freely from Hans Moravec's Mind Children, Harvard University Press, 1988, p. 109. Step 1: You are interfacing with a virtual reality setup that lets you experience a simulated outdoors environment. This is sometimes in the next century, so the quality is far and away better that what we get today. The clouds and grass are not 'really real', but there can be no doubt that you are conscious of them just as if they were. Step 2 : Sometimes in the next century again, you are operated upon by a robot surgeon which analyses a small part of your brain (say a piece of your auditory cortex), and constructs an electronic circuit with the same input-output properties. He then installs the circuit in your brain in such a way that you can switch between it and the original tissue. In this way, you can verify the accuracy of the simulation, which is tuned until the circuit and the original tissue feel exactly the same to you. When this is achieved, the robot removes the original tissue and wires in the circuit permanently. This procedure can be repeated on all parts of your brain, little bit by little bit, in such a way that at every step you are in a position to verify that you are still really you. At the end, all of your brain will have been replaced by circuitry, and you will have become a 'simulation' of yourself. Yet there can be no denying that you will still be conscious. If not, at what point in the substitution process did you lose this awareness? So if you go outdooors and look at the sky and clouds, you'll enjoy them just as before. Step 3: Instead of going outdoors, interface with the VR setup. Since you are still yourself, there is no reason you shouldn't be conscious of this virtual grass and clouds. But you are now a simulated being interfacing with a simulated reality. Which goes to show, in my view, that there can be consciousness in a machine that does not interface with the real world. Daniel Crevier Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=11649