Re: Revisiting Kurzweil

"Ray Gardener" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
> [Ray Kurzweil] imagined a patient needing part of his brain replaced with a
> synthetic equivalent -- artificial neurons. The replacement is such that
> the patient feels no differently after the surgery.
> As time goes on, more and more of the patient's brain needs similar
> treatment. It reaches the point where there is only a single original
> organic neuron remaining and the rest are now all synthetic. And yet, at no
> time does the patient feel differently than his usual self.
> So Kurzweil asks, what happens if the last neuron is replaced? Does the
> patient lose the ability to have subjective experience? Does he become
> merely a machine zombie? Or does he carry on, no less human than before?

This is a Turing argument again.  "Merely a machine zombie" reveals that you
don't accept so-called "strong AI", since Turing's original point was that
any mechanism which acted sufficiently intelligent actually _was_ that
intelligent.

> If we define such a neuron to be one that only mimics the measurable
> physical behaviors of organic neurons (electrochemical signals), then I
> think the patient would find himself gradually losing subjective experience.
> Somewhere along the way, for example, he would become color blind as the
> redness of red would be beyond his appreciation.

You think this because you're confusing layers of abstraction.  Imagine a PC
running MS Word.  Imagine replacing each of the transistors, one at a time,
with vacuum tubes instead.  Assuming they have the same functionality, how does
this affect the running MS Word?  Answer: it doesn't.  The organization of
software couldn't care less what kind of hardware you put it on.

Subjective experience is about higher-level organization.  If you replace
organic neurons with ones that "mimic the measurable physical behaviors",
subjective experience will continue unchanged.

        -- Don
_______________________________________________________________________________
Don Geddis                  http://don.geddis.org/               [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Whenever I see a rainbow, at first it makes me happy.  But then I wonder if, on
other planets, they have better ones.
        -- Deep Thoughts, by Jack Handey [1999]