Identity (Identity)

by dhw, Wednesday, September 09, 2009, 14:08 (5553 days ago) @ xeno6696

Matt believes that a man-made machine with consciousness will show that "the difference between us and everything else (in terms of consciousness) is only in degree. It means that consciousness should be relatively common in the universe."-I can't follow the connection with the rest of the universe. One has to bear in mind that our scientists already have a model to copy. If there is no creator or universal intelligence, Nature would either have to keep starting spontaneously from scratch on each planet, or life would have to travel spontaneously between planets and then evolve as it has done on Earth. How would the machine support either eventuality?-This provides an interesting link to your next observation: "It gives me more reason to doubt a creator, because I think the strongest arguments for a creator lie in the concepts of consciousness." I don't see how you can separate consciousness from life. Your Swiss professor says: "When we first switched it on it already started to display some interesting emergent properties." All he had to do was press the button, and the Schweizer Stromversorgungsgesellschaft (or whatever it's called ... I love those compound nouns) did the rest. We not only get switched on and display our emergent properties, but we also manage to reproduce, and to indulge in countless other amazing conscious and unconscious activities. I would therefore argue that the greater the complexity, the stronger the argument against chance, and consciousness is only one part of the equation. -To sum up, I'd say that a man-made, self-aware machine will only prove that consciousness does not require more than the materials of the brain, but that won't tell us anything about (a) there being life or consciousness elsewhere in the universe, (b) how the materials got put together in the first place, and hence (c) the odds for and against there being a creator. But that doesn't make the experiment any the less exciting! -In your latest post to David you comment: "It can't be said you understand something without being able to build a working model of it." (I hope you don't mean my doctor should be able to build a working model of my body!) This echoes the comment in an article recommended by George and quoted by me under "Abiogenesis" on 5 September at 11.50: "The dream of physicists is to create elementary life," Libchaber says. "Then we would know that we understand something." As you so rightly pointed out in an earlier post, the work hasn't been done yet, which means that so far we are not in a position to understand, let alone explain, consciousness or the origin of life. Until we are, I will join you in "not arguing for materialism or immaterialism". -Quick French lesson: "une de mes raisons d'être" would have kept you out of trouble with your wife. Meanwhile, good luck with your Chinese. You'll be pleased to hear that I can't go beyond the parameters of the take-away.