X-Message-Number: 4060
From: 
Date: Tue, 21 Mar 1995 14:41:38 -0500
Subject: SCI. CRYONICS carbon & silicon

In #4045 I said I have good reason to believe in John Clark's consciousness,
and do NOT have to rely only on my observations of his external behavior. I
have a great deal of indirect yet pretty reliable information about him, in
particular that his physiology is similar to mine (and therefore he probably
has consciousness as I do).

Now Mr. Clark (#4054) offers some strange reasoning as ostensible rebuttal.
First, he says that all I know about him is that he produced a certain string
of bits, everything else being "theory."

We don't usually characterize our sum total of experience with the world as
"theory," and even if we did, many "theories" are highly reliable as
guidelines for strategy. 

Further, Mr. Clark himself has repeatedly and emphatically emphasized that we
know NOTHING about the external world AT ALL except by interpretation of the
symbols processed in our brains. Surely he cannot seriously doubt that the
kind of inference on which I rely, in imputing humanity and consciousness to
him, is relatively reliable!

If an analogy is needed--it shoudn't be!--suppose I say I believe in the
existence, and think I know some of the characteristics of, the city of
Novosibirsk in Siberia. How can this be, since I have never seen  the city or
even a photo of it? No need to go into detail; the sum total of my experience
convinces me the city probably exists, and shares many city features, and has
statistics close to those in the Almanac, and is not an elaborate hoax of
some kind. 

Further, some of the features of the city are "private" and presumably not
accessible to inspection. For example, every night (and the winter nights are
long there) some of the people are probably engaged in copulation. I am not
allowed to verify this by personal observation inside their bedrooms, but my
general knowledge, including the fact that these people are known to be much
like other people, convinces me without access. 

In much the same way--for the tiresome two hundredth time--I am convinced
beyond a reasonable doubt of John Clark's consciousness, even though I'm not
allowed to saw open his skull to see if his brain looks like mine, and
REGARDLESS of his individual external behavior. My overall experience
convinces me that he has a human physiology much like mine, and since I am
conscious I assume he is too. In other words, this NON-Turing test is
sufficient evidence, while a Turing test (of a black box) would not be.

Would it help to drag in the example of Patricia Wilson's brain? This young
woman was murdered and her brain is in liquid nitrogen at Trans Time. Suppose
you confront me with this frozen brain and with an active, talking tin
woodman, and ask me which is more likely to have (at least potential)
consciousness. Without hesitation I choose the frozen brain--even though it
cannot pass a Turing test and the tin woodman (let's say) can. My knowledge
of the brain's human physiology  is more persuasive than the conversation of
the tin woodman, which might be a deception. 

Mr. Clark drags in a red herring in saying people in earlier times in effect
applied the Turing Test to impute consciousness to other people and to other
mammals. He implies that somehow this validates the Turing Test. But in those
times the possibility of an intelligent robot was unknown or unimportant. For
Pete's sake, in earlier times people ascribed consciousness to the wind and
the sun and the moon and rocks, based (loosely) on the turing Test--i.e.,
e.g., since a high wind might sound like it was "raging," it followed the
wind was angry. (Anthropomorphic fallacy.) Please. We are not talking about
what people HAVE done but about what they OUGHT to do. 

He asks about a situation where an entire race of inorganic beings has been
in touch with us and behaved like people, including expression of ostensible
emotions: wouldn't we ascribe consciousness to them? In all probability we
would--but what of it? In case of doubt, we surely ought to give them the
benefit of the doubt, and treat them as we would people. But that is not the
issue. 

The issue is (1) whether we should put our hopes in uploading, which means
whether we can be sure that consciousness can exist on an inorganic
substrate, and (2) whether we should treat relatively near future computers
as people if they show enough "intelligence." 

(1) mainly concerns the fate of individuals. But it also concerns the rest of
us, if cryonics is ignored or downplayed because of preoccupation with
uploading.

(2) could be tricky, if far-fetched. If an "intelligent" but unfeeling robot
(cf. Saberhagen's "Beserkers") had a program inimical to humanity, it could
deliberately imitate human emotions to trap us. A bit more realistically
(only a bit), some political group might demand emancipation and citizenship
for computers.

I haven't answered every point in Mr. Clark's posting, but I'm not immortal
yet.

Robert Ettinger

Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=4060