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Article 5771 of comp.ai.philosophy:
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>From: clarke@acme.ucf.edu (Thomas Clarke)
Subject: Ghost in the Machine
Message-ID: <1992May20.132557.3665@cs.ucf.edu>
Keywords: immortality soul 
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Organization: University of Central Florida
References: <1992May20.024456.29434@news.media.mit.edu>
Date: Wed, 20 May 1992 13:25:57 GMT
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In article <1992May20.024456.29434@news.media.mit.edu> minsky@media.mit.edu  
(Marvin Minsky) writes:
> 
> Now I forget who first spoke of "the ghost in the machine" ...
> To me this is a strange belief, that the present state of a system is
> not enough.  ...
> Perhaps this comes from an unconscious wish to survive after death.
> Each one of the many anti-machine arguments is flavored by a peculiar,
> "man is unique" quality of faith" 

Interesting question:  are there subconcious motivations for people to
various stands on the machine consciousness question.  

I am currently striving to maintain objectivity, dualist on odd days,
quasi-functionalist on even days, and creationist on Sunday (:-)  
In secondary school, I remember striving mightily to believe the then (almost  
un-) fashionable behaviorist psychology, like the queen in Alice TTLG.  
I think I almost succeeded by combining a Zen-like perspective on the
illusion of existence with my elementary knowledge of (not yet limited to
control theory) cybernetics using a dash of existentialism.

Now that the above have been displaced by cognitive psychology with its
explicity computational model of mind, I have a little skepticism as 
to whether cognitive psych has the final answer.

> I think that we *have* just such
> a chance, in building the technology for Moravec-type downloading of
> the self.

Is this possible in principle?  It could be that mind down-loaded 
into a symbolic computer would reproduce the intelligence of the 
downloadee, but not any of the qualia or conscious experience.  
The downloaded mind would be good to consult for ancestral 
wisdom by the living, but would not benefit the downloadee.  
The engineer of the Moravec repository might do well to include some 
quantum/chaotic/physical-transduction effects to maintain the qualia. 
(I recommend allowing metastable states in the flip-flops :-)

Maybe this sort of dualism is vacuuous to an external observer, but 
not from the viewpoint of the downloadee.  To paraphrase:
"What profiteth a man if he gain immortality, but lose his soul?"

Already too long, this post.  But I have to add one odd observation
about immortality.  Consider Everett's many worlds interpretation of
quantum mechanics.  Follow the multi-thread that includes your 
consciousness.  On some parts of the multi-thread something will happen 
to insure your immortality - say the arival of nano-von Neuman machines 
from the lesser Magellinc cloud.  Therefore we are all immortal.

--
Thomas Clarke
Institute for Simulation and Training
University of Central Florida
12424 Research Parkway, Suite 300, Orlando, FL 32826
(407)658-5030, FAX: (407)658-5059
clarke@acme.ucf.edu


