| > There is no proof You need to read this: https://blog.rongarret.info/2024/04/three-myths-about-scient... Focus on myth #3. > That would be immensely groundbreaking Yes, it was [1]. Still is, as this work is on-going [2]. > Have you heard about the so-called Chinese room experiment or the concept of a philosophical zombie? Yes. Have you heard of the Turing test? For the record, the Chinese Room is based on the false premise that the Chinese Room is possible. It isn't. The person inside the room would be dead long before it emitted its first symbol. And philosophical zombies are IPUs [3]. > That’s because you have adopted a philosophical position implicitly. No, I have adopted a philosophical position explicitly [4]. > You have not even attempted to object by providing a counter-argument, though. Perhaps you are unaware that I am the author of TFA [5]? Did you read it? --- [1] https://www.cs.virginia.edu/~robins/Turing_Paper_1936.pdf [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computational_neuroscience [3] https://blog.rongarret.info/2024/04/feynman-bullies-and-invi... [4] https://blog.rongarret.info/2024/03/a-clean-sheet-introducti... [5] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40205012 |
If you don’t like the word “proof” then replace it with the phrase “conclusive evidence”.
> Yes, it was [1]. Still is, as this work is on-going [2].
Sorry, how does any of that show that “minds arise from chemistry”?
> Yes. Have you heard of the Turing test?
Yes, and a Chinese room would pass the Turing test by its very definition.
> The person inside the room would be dead long before it emitted its first symbol.
Replace the person with a powerful CPU.
> And philosophical zombies are IPUs [3].
In this context a philosophical zombie is an instance of a Chinese room, which are fairly real things. Take a sufficiently advanced LLM, or an emulation of human brain, and you get one. (Showing that it is not a philosophical zombie would call for some conclusive evidence showing that the phenomenon of consciousness is caused by whatever entities feature in models from today’s natural sciences—so that manipulating them in a particular way is enough to cause consciousness to magically arise.)
> Perhaps you are unaware that I am the author of TFA [5]? Did you read it?
That slipped my mind after a while, but I don’t think it invalidates the discussion. I skimmed it back when it was posted and generally I have been familiar with the illusionist takes on consciousness for a while. As monistic materialism (as well as cartesian dualism) in general, they always strike me as inelegant and needlessly contrived. (When competing hypotheses cannot be falsified due to limitations of scientific method, beauty and elegance remain as qualities we can judge them on, and I find that beauty inversely correlates with the number of entities a given hypothesis must magically conjure into existence.)