From: Harvey Newstrom (mail@HarveyNewstrom.com)
Date: Sun Dec 10 2000 - 14:51:10 MST
At 12:30pm -0800 12/10/00, Samantha Atkins wrote:
>Ah, but this brings up another can of worms. If the nature of the
>system (in this case consciousness) is dependent not only on the bits
>but on the surrounding and embedding actual context it is "executing"
>within, then this adds fuel to the argument that your consciousness bits
>instantiated and running on some super-computer or within a cloned body
>is NOT you.
Possibly, but I'm not totally convinced.
I think we need to make sure that the new hardware executes the
programming correctly. To use the computer analogy, giving me a
Windows CD is not enough. I need a PC that runs it correctly.
Running an iMac with VirtualPC is probably close enough, even if not
identical. Loading the disk images under Linux and examining them in
a binary editor is not the same thing. Printing off the information
onto paper and binding it into a notebook is not good enough.
Although the programming may be the important part of consciousness,
it is not alive unless it is running correctly (or mostly correctly).
I would even argue that a decapitated head contains most if not all
of the same information that the live head had moments before. It
has the same software, hardware and memories, but it is still not a
working copy.
This implies that we need FIVE characteristics of a good copy:
- Hardware
- Software
- Data (or memories)
- Activity (not halted or crashed)
- I/O ports for sensory perception
- Self Awareness (maybe? hard to define?)
-- Harvey Newstrom <HarveyNewstrom.com>
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Fri Nov 01 2002 - 15:32:17 MST