X-Message-Number: 14638
Date: Sun, 08 Oct 2000 14:28:02 +0200
From: Henri Kluytmans <>
Subject: Re: sentience in other media

( Sorry for the late reply ... :(  )

I wrote :

>>According to physics there are no special qualities to organic matter 
>>that should make it the only possible substrate for sentience.

Ettinger replied :

>It would have been more accurate to write, 
>
>"There does not seem to be any physical reason to believe that only organic 
>matter can serve as the substrate for sentience."

Agreed.

>But even that would be misleading, I think. How can one reasonably make such 
>a statement, in the absence of an understanding of sentience?

However probably we will be able to "prove" it in the future, even 
if we still dont understand what sentience is exactly.
Of course, presumed that a consensus can be reached about a 
definition for the presence of sentience...

Assuming that the fundamental functional basis of our brain/mind is 
only the neural network (lets neglect details like the hormonal 
system, etc..), then its sufficient to understand how the building 
blocks (i.e. the neurons) work exactly. In principle its then 
sufficient to replace all the building blocks by articifical 
functional equivalents and keep the same interconnectional 
structure. So in this case a sentience could be transferred 
without knowing how it works.

Just like a programmer can write an emulator for an other computer 
system. He then can run any software written for that computer 
system on the emulator. And he doesnt need to understand how those 
programs function. The same should hold for the biological "computing 
system" the human mind "runs" in.

Another option could be that artificial brains with sentience 
can be evolved, and sub-systems constructed of neural nets 
can be trained. 

So its definitely not required to know what sentience is to 
be able to create one. After all, didn't nature/evolution 
create one without such understanding...


>The chief basis of sentience is FEELING or qualia, 

Is not feeling just an information process...


>anatomy/physiology not yet understood. 
>
>Some types of activity are limited to a subset of the possible types of 
>physical systems. (Electrical conductivity can exist in hot 
>hydrogen--plasma--but not in cold hydrogen. Etc.Etc.Etc.) 

Yes. But how does one determine this complete subset ?


>Qualia my depend e.g. on standing waves in the brain, of a type not possible 
>in other media. 

What kind of standing waves ?

Isn't there consensus among neuro-scientists that all the aspects of 
our mind emerge only from the functioning of the neural networks 
inside our brain. And that it looks like no further (still-unknown) 
mechanisms (e.g. quantum coherence in the micro-tubules) are 
needed to explain certain aspects of our mind.

Grtz,
>Hkl

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