X-Message-Number: 21729
Date: Fri, 09 May 2003 08:16:04 -0400
From: Francois <>
Subject: About my thought experiment

For Robert Ettinger

What exactly is qualia, and why couldn't the digital version of a human
brain express it as well as it's biological version?

For Mike Perry

The inhability to prove that an artificial system has real self awareness is
an often used argument, and a very strong one. But to those who use it I
would ask to prove to me that THEY have real self awareness. They can't. I
accept that they do because I have self awareness and I observe them to look
and behave like me. It's a "proof" by analogy. If the internal and external
behavior of an artificial system were to match a human's behavior, I would
have to accept that it is self aware. Of course, the debate could be settled
once and for all if we figured out exactly what gives rise to self
awareness. All we would need to do then would be to verify that an
artificial system has the requiered characteritics.

Francois
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