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From: ziane@nuri.inria.fr (ziane mikal @)
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
Subject: Re: Conciousness
Message-ID: <2102@seti.inria.fr>
Date: 24 Apr 91 18:51:22 GMT
References: <1991Apr16.061532.10775@panix.uucp>
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In reply to the article cited above, I agree that conciousness
may be a more interesting problem, since intelligence has
kind of lost SOME of its mystery.
However I don't see any problem with the recursion mentionned.
I think you probably make the common mistake of assuming that
such a recursion implies an infinite amount of memory or time !
It's only an intentional mechanism ! 

On the other hand, I have another puzzling problem,
namely pleasure and pain.
If a computer can simulate pain or pleasure, does it really mean 
that it really suffers or feels pleasure.
Why is pain, painful ?!
Pain almost seems an absolute measure of bad.
I mean that one may not care about somebody else's pain
but that guy cannot deny that this is really a problem for the
suffering being.

I agree that this is not very rigorous, and that one may quite
easily ask for better definitions of my terms.
However if someone understands what I mean I would appreciate
some hint of where I am wrong.
I have the intuition that there may be a very simple answer
to the question.

Mikal.