I never mentioned "free-will", one can talk about that till the end of all things and never prove it either way - I was just indicating that my take on "consciousness" is that *if you know the reason you came to do something* then that is a conscious act/decision, but if you don't them it isn't - free-will is not relevant here. "Because I wanted to" may be a baseline but doesn't explain why what you did follows (as in is a suitable/sensible reaction) from what you were reacting to. If the computer is programmed to know it's own logic then it is conscious, otherwise not - on that basis AFAIK so far no-one has built a conscious computer but I see no reason why you couldn't. On 5 Aug 2013, at 21:43, meekerdb wrote:
On 8/5/2013 1:10 PM, David Makin wrote:
On 5 Aug 2013, at 18:27, meekerdb wrote:
Sure. Daniel Dennett makes that point when challenged to explain how a computer could have free will. He says it's very simple, first you program the computer to make intelligent decisions. And then you program it so that when it's asked how it arrived at a decision it says, "I have no idea. It's just what I wanted to do."
Brent
To me what that gives is the difference between a "conscious" decision and an unconscious one - one can describe at least in some way reasons why one came to a conscious decision or perform a conscious action but not for an unconscious one - for instance I decided to write this to add to the thread,
But if you try to push the explanation for your actions back very far, you come to "I just wanted to." I think the point of Dennett's example is that you *could* program the computer to keep a complete record of it's states so that it could answer the question explicitly - but then people wouldn't think it had 'free will'.
Brent "Der Mensh Kann wohl tun, was er will, aber er kann nicht wollen, was er will." --- Schopenhauer
but I can't tell you how I keep my heart beating...or even how I can control my hand so easily to type this....
_______________________________________________ math-fun mailing list math-fun@mailman.xmission.com http://mailman.xmission.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/math-fun
----- No virus found in this message. Checked by AVG - www.avg.com Version: 2013.0.3392 / Virus Database: 3209/6553 - Release Date: 08/05/13
_______________________________________________ math-fun mailing list math-fun@mailman.xmission.com http://mailman.xmission.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/math-fun
The meaning and purpose of life is to give life purpose and meaning. The instigation of violence indicates a lack of spirituality.