From: Nick Tarleton (nickptar@gmail.com)
Date: Sun Mar 02 2008 - 12:07:36 MST
On Sun, Mar 2, 2008 at 2:06 PM, Nick Tarleton <nickptar@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Sat, Mar 1, 2008 at 1:28 PM, John K Clark <johnkclark@fastmail.fm> wrote:
> > That would be very odd indeed, but as we have no way of communicating
> > with such an alien or it to us there is little more that can be said
> > about
> > the matter.
> >
> > Somewhere in the universe there may be a language where this Email,
> > without changing a single character, expresses in perfect grammar the
> > instructions on how to operate a new type of can opener; but as neither
> > of us knows that language there is little danger of this conversation
> > being diverted into a discussion of can opener technology.
>
> The point, I think, is that it seems like there should be an objective
> fact of the matter as to whether some physical system is having
> conscious experiences; but if computation is sufficient for
> experience, since what a physical system is computing is subjective,
> this can't be the case.
(Though unlike Jaron, I don't think functionalism is false, just that
there's something important I don't understand.)
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