X-Message-Number: 11702
Date: Sat, 08 May 1999 14:50:25 -0400
From: Daniel Crevier <>
Subject: consciousness in simulated characters
References: <>

To Tom Donaldson: you said to Mike Perry, in Message #11680 :

>You seem to believe that ANY character in a computer emulation
>(even just the kind in a computer game) must have awareness because
>that character is in some sense active. I will say that in such cases
>you do not have an active character, you have a program which gives you
>images and statements. The same happens no matter how complex your
>program and your virtual characters. 

I take this statement to mean that no virtual character can  have 
conscious experiences. I'd be curious to see how  you reconcile this
conclusion with the thought experiment I described in message 11649: 
On consciousness in a simulated world. I'll repeat it here for ease of
reference.

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have been replaced by circuitry, and you will have become a 'simulation' 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.

To Robert Ettinger: You replied in message #11656 that building 
circuits in this way doesn't count because it constitutes a duplication
and not a simulation. What would you say if, instead of building
circuits, the robot installed terminals connected to a serial computer
that simulates the circuits? In this way, the brain would end up as
a numerical simulation in the computer: it would be software, not hard-
ware. Would you still consider this a duplication?

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