From: Samantha Atkins (samantha@objectent.com)
Date: Wed Jul 25 2001 - 01:54:56 MDT
Damien Broderick wrote:
> What is it, then? Information, he concludes. Not an answer to give the
> faithful any comfort, admittedly. Chalmers believes a complex artificial
> intelligence system would be conscious. So he is not proposing to
> reinstate an immaterial soul. He puts it neatly: `Experience is
> information from the inside; physics is information from the outside.'
Ah, but are we sure that "immaterial" means something
other-worldly? What is more "immaterial" than the actual program
itself although it may at the moment be encoded in the circuitry
of a computer or a brain? Is the information qua information
not immaterial relative to the signal carrying that
information? If it turns out the "myself program" can be easily
tranferred or stored and replayed or replicated in many
bodies/forms then I am not sure what mileage some thought to get
from the "immaterial soul" would remain missing.
- samantha
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