From: David Fendrich (f96dafe@dd.chalmers.se)
Date: Thu Mar 09 2000 - 08:30:25 MST
Dan Fabulich wrote:
> Build it big enough, one would suppose, and it would
> be conscious, too, just like your imagined computer chips. Does this
> imply that consciousness must in some way involve gears and rods?
The point is the recording...
It seems like many strange things happen as soon
as you are allowed to record and play back a consciousness.
The multiple minds arising from the two (surely you
must agree that at least some of the other chip-combinations
would behave coherent and thus in some sense subjectively 'feel')
are only one example.
Another:
What if I took my neuro-chips and spread them all over the
universe (still just playing what I previously recorded, so
they would not have to be connected).
When would they cease to be an individual? Never?
Since the mind itself would stop existing if I destroyed half
the chips, would that not mean that the information that they
were destroyed would travel faster than light.
Hal Finney said something about "counterfactual reliability",
as a way of explaining why one cannot be allowed to record
conscious states, but (at least to me) that sounds like
resorting to mysticism.
Perhaps I should just become an ascriptionist (if the behaviour
of something can be more easily predicted by saying it is
conscious, then it is conscious) and deny subjectivity (even my own)
altogether.
It's a compelling thought.
//David Fendrich
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