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Jeff Baldwin <mvcs@gramercy.ios.com> wrote:
> ... Sorry for being rude.

kein Problem.

> Let me try to make a point. Your experience is objective to me in a
> sense. If all there is is molecules and chemicals in dynamic
> operation, then any experience you have is mere alternate
> representation of an identity. Looking at you, then, I should with PET
> or MRI or somesuch be able to watch your experiences in an appropriate
> representation displayed on a monitor.

if we can agree that my experiences are patterns of signals derived from
neuronal cells, then in order to represent the experience you would have to
represent the pattern of activity over all ~10000000000000 neuronal cells.
you cannot fail to see that this is an unreasonable task, since even if you
were to design a screen big enough to display the pattern, you would not
have enough photoreceptors in your eye to see it with in sufficient detail.
besides, the semantics of the patterns are determined over time in a manner
consistent with the actual locations of the receptors. it is astronomically
improbable that you would be able to determine what i was thinking just by
examining the complete signal pattern produced by my neurons.

> ... the pictures I see are all there is. Ergo, your experience is an
> objective fact ...

listen to yourself. *you* subjectively see pictures, so my experience is an
objective fact?

> ... Would you be able to be conscious in
> two places at the same time? 
> ... Would
> both brainstates choose the same random act of will? 
> Has anyone ever asked these types of questions?

many times. i think, however, that the answers will only be known when we
perform experiments. this is the scientific method. build the artificial
system first, then you will find that there is no need to pose the
question.

> ... If there is no
> objective reality to the experiencer who does the experiencing, then
> how did the concept of "objective" come to be? Why?

it is not necessarily that there *is* no objective reality, it is just that
there is not *provably* an objective reality. quantum mechanics has taught
us this lesson, that you cannot remove the observer from the experience:
likewise, you must acknowledge the relativism of scientific generalisation.

> What makes "being able to comprehend abstract objectivity" possible to
> a system which is totally self-contained (if reductionism and
> identity-hypothesis are correct) and only able to experience
> subjectively?

neural nets are pretty good classifiers, which means they are well designed
to perform abstraction tasks. i'm sure abstraction to the concept of
objectivity is not in question here.

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