Identity (Identity)

by xeno6696 , Sonoran Desert, Monday, September 07, 2009, 16:20 (5555 days ago) @ David Turell

If the suspicion of many a researcher is correct and a consciousness arises from this machine without direct intervention by a human being, it will resolve the origin of consciousness question. This, is a big deal. Do we then grant such sentient machines the same rights as humans?
> > > 
> > > I'm sorry. I'm with Penrose. If a Pet scan lights up the amygdala, you still don't know all the connections,or exactly how it functions. Pet scans tell us functions of areas. Not how to connect the billions upon billions of neurons thru trillions of synapses. 
> > Faith. And raw, at that. The work here hasn't been done yet. > 
> > Optimistic? I'm a technologist after all... only one way for me to be...
> 
> And a prediction pops up: making a brain: 
> 
> Funny he isn't quoted discussing consciousness, but I as interpret it, he is thinking about supercomputing, but implying that how we view reality might be discovered.
> 
> http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/09/090904071908.htm
> 
> Apropos of my comment that recognizing a brain area that lights up for a given stimulus doesn't really tell you how it is working 'inside':
> 
> http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/09/090904165447.htm-His idea ultimately is to build a computer model of a human brain. One of the theories of consciousness thrown out by neural net computing is that consciousness is like the act of bird flight--an emergent property consisting of multiple individual elements, just like the stock market, and just like ecosystems. What causes our consciousness to NOT be flighty, something that is always with us? That's something that we can only understand by modeling the human brain via computing. -Research done on ethics actually has shed some light of approval on neural net theories. It was from a radiolab episode on ethics, but they talk with a (Harvard or Yale ethicist) about some research done on the old-fashioned train scenarios. It seems that when asked to do something morally reprehensible, neurons across the brain act in a discordant and agitated state, as if screaming NO! There are still neurons that seem to light up for "YES!" but the decisions of respondents always side with whichever of the two signals are strongest. This strongly suggests that the mind IS an emergent property of cells. But before you can discount that theory, we need to actually do the work, which is why I pretty hotly contested you last night. The question is not closed.

--
\"Why is it, Master, that ascetics fight with ascetics?\"

\"It is, brahmin, because of attachment to views, adherence to views, fixation on views, addiction to views, obsession with views, holding firmly to views that ascetics fight with ascetics.\"