Re: Mindless Thought Experiments

From: Stathis Papaioannou (stathisp@gmail.com)
Date: Thu Mar 06 2008 - 02:08:16 MST


On 06/03/2008, Jeff L Jones <jeff@spoonless.net> wrote:

> Ok, that makes sense. Although I think there might be another issue
> here... in order to believe you have experience, you have to know what
> experience is. How could a machine be sure that what is going on in
> its mind is similar enough to what humans call "experience" in order
> to agree that it indeed has experience? Also, how do we know that the
> whole idea of "experience" and "belief" isn't just folk psychology
> that will one day be replaced by a more rigorous formalism that
> describes minds? I agree that it's hard to imagine myself being
> mistaken in the belief that I have experiences... but I wouldn't say
> I'm completely sure it's completely impossible. Maybe I'm mistaken,
> and there isn't any such thing as experience... or there is something
> like what we think of as experience, it's just not what we think it
> is. I'm just throwing these out as possibilities... I think there are
> far too many things we take for granted about our own minds that we
> maybe shouldn't.

I can't be mistaken about having what I personally call "experience",
even if it is different to what you or a computer might mean by that
term. The only way I could be mistaken if there is some objective
standard against which putative experiences could be measured, and
that isn't possible even in theory.

-- 
Stathis Papaioannou


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