X-Message-Number: 4093 Date: Sun, 26 Mar 1995 21:17:43 -0800 From: John K Clark <> Subject: SCI.CRYONICS Uploading -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- In #4088 (Thomas Donaldson) Wrote: >In your original definition of symbol you chose to use events >in our brain, which you said depended on a "convention". >You still haven't specified where this convention occurs. Your correct, I haven't. I'm not into religion or other superstitions so I'm confident the brain has some physical mechanism for encoding memory (LTP?) and symbols ( Active symbols? Sub symbols?), but if I could prove to you exactly how the brain does this I'd be writing my Nobel prize acceptance speech right now and not blabbing on Cryonet. >As for DNA being a code, the entire process still works >because of the particular chemistry of the parts. If you change the parts you change the code, it's already been done in the lab and Crick proved that some codes produce fewer errors than natures. We are able to communicate right now using the ASCII code because the physical parts, your computer and mine, agree on a convention but if we both change the convention another code would work just as well or better. The ASCII code is arbitrary as is the genetic code. >As for Turing machines, I've never questioned that they could >do any computationat all. But just how long will they take? >to be downloaded into a computer that will take millions of >years to do the thinking that we do in a day, well, you're >welcome. We've talked about this before but your statement still mystifies me. The architecture is identical, the parts are a billion times faster yet the whole operates billions of times slower. Something does not add up my friend. >you must have a really strange notion of how ANYTHING in the >universe works if you think that I would have to have the Sun >somehow inside me to think about it without using symbols. You don't use the object itself and you don't use a mental model of the object, what do you use when you think about the sun? >A reptile can lie out in the Sunand seek to do so without >containing the Sun in its brain; so can people. I'm not sure I understand your point, but I will say that if you strip down the concept of symbol enough it becomes a mere reflex, hit your knee and it jerks, close the contact and the door bell rings, but I don't think you'll find much enlightenment about intelligence or consciousness taking that route. >As you know, they thought the same in Ptolemaic times. And >before that. This time I'm sure I don't understand your point. >When I awake in the sunlight am I thinking about the Sun? I don't know, why ask me, are you? >We come straight back to my original question. Please give a >NONCIRCULAR definition of symbol. NO. I already gave my definition; I'm quite found of it and see no need for revisions, I realize you don't like it but you have not been clear why. I'm glad to hear you say that we at least occasionally use symbols when we think so I retract my previous statement that you don't believe symbols exist. I would very much like for you to give a NONCIRCULAR definition of symbols so I could see how it differed from mine. Also I wish you would explain why all this talk about symbols is so terribly important when discussing the possibility of uploading. In #4089 Wrote: >Turing-testers insist that I cannnot know ANYTHING about >another individual except what I can infer from his external >appearance and behavior. No they don't. You can learn all sorts of things about an individual by studying their internal structure. I'll even go so far as to say that if you understood my physiology well enough you could predict my behavior in any environmental situation. You wouldn't need to wait for my reply to your post, you'd already know exactly what I was going to say. >I can also learn a good deal about him personally >(increasingly including some mental processes) through X-rays >and NMR and PET and CAT scans and EEGs etc., and surely >this is not "external behavior." You can perform all the tests you want, you might even come to the point where you understand me better than I understand myself , you might know how I'd react in certain situations when I'm not sure how I'd react, but NONE of that proves I'm conscious. To be honest I must admit that behavior can't do that either, but I'm convinced it's a much better test of consciousness than metabolism. Matter that produces intelligent behavior uses the exact same physical and chemical processes that trees do, or even non living matter. In intelligent material it's only when we look at these dull as dishwater process as a whole and how they influence each other that wonderful things start to happen, the word we use for this is "behavior". The Turing Test has not been proven and will never be proven, so it's logically possible that biology and only biology produces some sort of mystical soul that generates consciousness. It's logically possible that anything that has biological molecules in it is conscious, even a corpse. It's logically possible that I'm the only conscious being in the universe. I don't loose a lot of sleep worrying over any of these possibilities. John K Clark -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6.i iQCzAgUBL3ZCt303wfSpid95AQHZgQTvd2De6Ok5dfIZ+rikDt8iwqRMDpoFAezX efR8kFPIufyLhmzghGuM+phz3yykyDXT/7ghuIJsX+HVTdLOPGWBgMvxru3i3Hly 4Ikj1AMqw4wiiI6JxRLhsIbV5XaGHz9h8MJge9qZ46kKKspJl7TKaexEt7kXFeqE 0IJDI2ogIVwwP5YL0Pz4S0ZJuadWfMZ/VfJI4LyWziBjLs0BncY= =JQdo -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=4093