[Serious Phil] Eray's Essay on Brain Simulation

[SWM]

I don't suppose you'd consider making this easier, like posting directly to this list would result in a post actually showing up on the list? -- SWM 

--- In Phil-Sci-Mind at yahoogroups.com, "seanwilsonorg" <ludwig.sean at ...> wrote:
>
> Stuart:
> 
> The system is quite easy. For a new thread, simply press our email address at the end of any post. 
> 
> http://ludwig.squarespace.com/storage/reply.png
> 
> Or, shoot an email to philscimind at ...
> 
> --- In Phil-Sci-Mind at yahoogroups.com, "SWM" <Philscimind@> wrote:
> >
> > My response to Eray's first post on this list hasn't shown up so I'm guessing that Eray may have initiated it incorrectly. That DOES seem to be an artifact of Sean's sometimes overly complicated lists which have a rather intricate set of relations that are not always fathomable! Ah well, it's something we must learn to live with I suppose.
> > 
> > To ensure my response gets through this time, however, am using a pre-existing thread that's been working so far and simply changing the title (above) and replacing the existing material it contained with my response to Eray:
> > 
> > ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
> > 
> > Welcome aboard, Eray. Your paper's interesting and am reading it slowly to fully digest it but I note that it makes some intriguing points.
> > 
> > If I am reading you correctly you're taking a kind of panpsychist position:
> > 
> > "If Ben Goertzel and I are right, experience is one of the basic features of the universe. It's all around us, however, most of it is not organized in an intelligent way, and therefore we don't call them conscious. This is the simplest explanation of experience. It doesn't require any special stuff. Just "stuff" organized in the right way so as to yield an intelligent functional mind. Think of it like this. If today, some evil alien came and shuffled all the connections in your brain, would you still be intelligent? I think not. However, you should accept that even in that state, you would have an experience, an experience that is probably meaningless and chaotic, but an experience nonetheless. So, perhaps that's what a glob of plasma experiences."
> > 
> > So your view is that, as Chalmers would have it, experience is part of physical phenomena at every level? Chalmers' view is that we have to posit something more in our explanation of the universe, namely "an extra ingredient" whereas you're saying that's not necessary because experiencing, being a function of physical phenomena is already present wherever there are physical phenomena although it is often so different from what we recognized as experience as to be unrecognizable to us.
> > 
> > I don't see that this position differs much from Chalmers' view except in terminology although it may finally just boil down to a descriptive or conceptual issue re: what we mean by "experience." After all, experience that is simply not recognizable to us as what we mean by "experience" can hardly BE experience, can it? Is it just that what you want to call "experience" wouldn't be called that applying the usual usages?
> > 
> > If so, isn't this more like a Dennettian view? Like you, Dennett thinks that experience is physically explainable, in his case I would say that it would be the events in operation that underlie it (or at least that's MY view of his view). Whether Dennett means a one to one correlation with particular physical events at a very fine grained level of detail or just a general correlation with system operations is another question (interesting but not, I think, critical to the issue of whether experience is intrinsic to physicality in the universe).
> > 
> > One issue that really jumps out here though is one that has been raised on and off by people like Joe who have suggested that there is little daylight between the view of someone like Chalmers and someone like Dennett. Both apparently agree that experience is natural to the universe. But Chalmers thinks that it is an irreducible attribute (property) of physical phenomena. Given his emphasis on the information principle as the "extra ingredient" he presumably believes that it is whenever information happens between physical phenomena that experience happens, a corollary (perhaps?) of the information's occurrence.
> > 
> > On the other hand it seems reasonable to say that Dennett thinks that what we know as "experience" is just one of the things some physical systems do. On this view, it's not that experience is found everywhere that physical phenomena or information processing physical events occur but only where a certain kind of information physical events occur.
> > 
> > It seems to me that distinction essentially draws the line between a kind of panpsychism (Chalmers has called his view, at least in some of his writings, a kind of "proto-panpsychism". But I expect Dennett would have a problem with that nomenclature if applied to him.
> > 
> > So, given your position that experience is a ubiquitous aspect of the physical, where would you come down in this dispute? On Chalmers' side with a view that experience, being ubiquitous, is also basic (and thus inexplicable in any terms but itself) or Dennett's view that it is explainable as a system level phenomenon?
> > (Still reading the rest of your paper but I thought I'd start things off with this!)
> > SWM 
> > 
> > Http://log.examachine.net
> > 
> > There are some entries related to Phil of mind.
> > 
> > Especially the one on upload experience may be very relevant to the group. I am looking for reviewers, there is a paper version of it that I'll present at IASB this year.
> > 
> > Best,
> > 
> > Eray
> > 
> > -- 
> > Eray Ozkural, PhD candidate. Comp. Sci. Dept., Bilkent University, Ankara
> > http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ai-philosophy
> > http://myspace.com/arizanesil http://myspace.com/malfunct
> >   
> > 
> > 
> > _______________________________________________
> > Philscimind mailing list
> > Philscimind@
> >
> 
> 
> _______________________________________________
> Philscimind mailing list
> Philscimind at ...
>