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From: DOCTORJ@SLACVM.SLAC.STANFORD.EDU (Jon J Thaler)
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
Subject: Re: Conciousness
Message-ID: <91119.140920DOCTORJ@SLACVM.SLAC.STANFORD.EDU>
Date: 29 Apr 91 22:09:20 GMT
Organization: Stanford Linear Accelerator Center
Lines: 16

In article <2124@seti.inria.fr>, z>
>I can easily immagine an intelligent computer and I can also immagine
>a computer with a conciousness. However I have some difficulty to immagine
>a computer having pain. I have some difficulty to understand what it means.

I'm not criticising Ziane Mikal in particular, but this theme seems to underly
about 99% of the discussion.  Namely, no one knows what consciousness, pain
or other subjective phenomena actually are (in terms of brain function).
Given this, how are we ever going to decide whether a computer is doing
"the real thing" or merely a simulation.  The situation is not the same as
with computer simulations of the weather, where we know (more-or-less) what
the real entity is.  Given this unfortunate state of affairs, what is the
point of this line of discourse?

Of course, maybe someone out there really *KNOWS* what we're talking about, in
which case I'm eager to be enlightened.