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From: pindor@gpu.utcc.utoronto.ca (Andrzej Pindor)
Subject: Re: Quantum Mechanics, Consciousness, and AI
Message-ID: <CzHA9x.CHH@gpu.utcc.utoronto.ca>
Organization: UTCC Public Access
References: <BILL.94Oct21154212@cortex.nsma.arizona.edu> <Cyrs9B.Hp2@cogsci.ed.ac.uk> <39r5bv$2ci@walton.maths.tcd.ie> <CzFroG.9ME@cogsci.ed.ac.uk>
Date: Fri, 18 Nov 1994 19:32:21 GMT
Lines: 45

In article <CzFroG.9ME@cogsci.ed.ac.uk>,
Jeff Dalton <jeff@aiai.ed.ac.uk> wrote:
>In article <39r5bv$2ci@walton.maths.tcd.ie> ftoomey@maths.tcd.ie (Fergal Toomey) writes:
>>jeff@aiai.ed.ac.uk (Jeff Dalton) writes:
>>
>>>In article <BILL.94Oct21154212@cortex.nsma.arizona.edu> bill@nsma.arizona.edu (Bill Skaggs) writes:
>>>>zlsiida@fs1.mcc.ac.uk (Dave Budd) writes:
>>>>
>>>>   I read a report in my newspaper yesterday of some experiments at a UK 
>>>>   university which appear to support the theory that quantum effects are 
>>>>   involved in consciousness.  [ . . . ] A paper is forthcoming, but I 
>>>>   negelected to note which journal, though it's one I'm sure several 
>>>>   readers of comp.ai.philosophy will read.
>>>>
>>
>>What is the basis of the belief that the discovery of quantum effects
>>in the brain would cast doubt on AI? Is it that people think quantum
>>effects cannot be reproduced by a computer?
>>
>>If so, this belief is surely false, since quantum phenomena are
>>described by the mathematical theory of quantum mechanics and can
>>therefore be simulated on a computer. 
>
>So?  What does the simulation accomplish?  Simulating an effect
>doesn't involve that very effect happening.  So if that very effect
>is required, simulating it isn't enough.

How would we ever know if the very effect is required for, say, consciousness?
Do we (or you) have or even can imagine any direct way of testing for it?
Simulation could perhaps accomplish the same net final result as the
real effect (say QM correlations) and what sense would it be then to say
that one system is "thinking" and the other is not?
Would you say that only a "real" piano plays music, those electronic keyboards
make similar sounds, but this is not really music? And what about sounds
coming out of loudspeakers of your CD system? Is this not music, because it
is produced in a different way?

>-- jd

Andrzej
-- 
Andrzej Pindor                        The foolish reject what they see and 
University of Toronto                 not what they think; the wise reject
Instructional and Research Computing  what they think and not what they see.
pindor@gpu.utcc.utoronto.ca                           Huang Po
