Queen bans fox hunting!

[Kuciwalker]

Originally posted by chegitz guevara
Only in theory, not in reality. The proof is in the pudding, big boy.

Plenty of people have built robots exactly as I described. You lose.

[alva]

Originally posted by MrFun
IW, no -- even adult lynxs with no offspring will wound their prey sometimes to "play" with it, AFAIK.

House cats do the same thing.
-
Lions will kill other cats and even hyena's to eliminate competition too.

[chequita guevara]

Originally posted by Kuciwalker
Plenty of people have built robots exactly as I described. You lose.

No they haven't. No existing robot yet does a convincing imitation of life, at least not that isn't a puppet.

[Kuciwalker]

I didn't say made a convincing imitation of life, I said exhibited pain.

And the fact that, so far, we haven't built one, doesn't have any effect on a theoretical discussion.

[Sandman]

Since Kuciwalker thinks that societies evolve like living creatures, it should be apparent that the most advanced societies also have the most animal rights legislation. Animal rights has obviously been selected by nature, over the 'only humans feel pain' line.

Please note I don't hold this view.

[Kuciwalker]

Since Kuciwalker thinks that societies evolve like living creatures, it should be apparent that the most advanced societies also have the most animal rights legislation. Animal rights has obviously been selected by nature, over the 'only humans feel pain' line.

It's a byproduct, rather, of the aspects of modern societies that are the most successful - social liberalism, and fundamentally an almost arbitrary ability to extend the concept of "tribe" or "self" to others. That there are relatively minor downsides to this (I don't see animal rights legislation as anything more than a very minor detriment to our society's success) does not prevent it from being a highly useful trait.

[Sandman]

There's no reason to assume that animal rights is a side-effect of social liberalism. It could just as easily contribute to the effectiveness of it.

[General Ludd]

Originally posted by Kuciwalker

Originally posted by General Ludd
What is the point of training someone to do a task which is already in their nature?

Learn to think within the context of a conversation, rather than relying on text books for preconceived thoughts.

This is rich, coming from you.

A robot can be trained to do something "outside its nature".

Feel like backing up any of your statements with examples or explanations today, or should I even bother to ask?

I'll just say "nuh-uh " and be done with it.

They often don't do as a human says. It doesn't change the fact that they operate mechanically. Unless you want to postulate some non-deterministic (or probabilistic, if we want to get into quantum theory) mechanism, so we can laugh at you?

And will you be explaining this "fact" of how a fox operates mechanically (and a human not) - or will it be another round of repeated assertions and "read what I said!!!"?

It doesn't. Humans behave deterministically true.

However, the term choice is meaningless for a non-self-aware being.

Oh, but wait. Are you, afterall, saying that a human does behave mechanically aswell - or am I misunderstanding you?




Eitherway, I see that you where still unable to adress my argument. But atleast you have been kind enough to indulge my taunts.

[General Ludd]

Originally posted by Sandman
There's no reason to assume that animal rights is a side-effect of social liberalism.

For instance, what about all that talk of Hitler being a vegetarian (not true ) and concerned about animal welfare (probably true)?

[Gangerolf]

He was very kind to his dog Blondie

[Kuciwalker]

Originally posted by Sandman
There's no reason to assume that animal rights is a side-effect of social liberalism.

Why not? It seems to take its philosophical roots directly from social liberalism (or they both take their roots from the same source).

It could just as easily contribute to the effectiveness of it.

I honestly don't see how.

[Kuciwalker]

Originally posted by General Ludd
Feel like backing up any of your statements with examples or explanations today, or should I even bother to ask?

Ever heard of neural networks?

And will you be explaining this "fact" of how a fox operates mechanically (and a human not) - or will it be another round of repeated assertions and "read what I said!!!"?

Actually, you should, but I'm reposting everything together in just a second as a reply to Spiffor.

Oh, but wait. Are you, afterall, saying that a human does behave mechanically aswell - or am I misunderstanding you?

YES I AM! I've said exactly that several times already! Read my posts!

[Kuciwalker]

Now, because there seems to be some disconnect in communication between me and Spiffor (btw, I take back the "dense" remark, I was just incredibly frustrated) I'm going to go over my meaning and understanding of consciousness/self-awareness/sentience.

Now, first, it should be obvious that by "consciousness" I don't mean "being awake". Also, when I say that someone is conscious of something or aware of something, I do not refer to merely having the information in the brain/whatever computational device the organism/machine uses. It's hard to phrase it properly, because it's such a fundamental concept... it's feeling your sensations... Spiffor, I'd like you to tell me if I'm making any sense here. I really don't think there are words to describe it.

(By the way, self-awareness is no the same as being aware of self, in the general sense of aware - that is, recognizing oneself in the mirror does not make one self-aware. However, in my use of "aware" and "conscious", self-awareness is awareness of self, sort of in the sense of cognito ergo sum.

As a corollary to this, merely responding to "pain" (really just an electrochemical signal originating from a certain class of nerve endings, in biological organisms) is not proof of self-awareness.)

To explain further, I kinda have to go on a tangent. Basically, the universe operates by various rules. An electron, when a certain force is applied to it, behaves in a particular way. (The probabilistic nature of particles in quantum physics isn't really relevent to my point, here, btw.) Quarks, etc. all also have this property. Clearly, the behavior of any system made out of these fundamental particles would be determined, and in principle could be determined by a computer of sufficient size. In fact, the behavior of such a system is determined by such a computer (actually, many, many computers running in parallel) - the system itself. A system is a computer for determining its own behavior - and it obviously figures out the "right" answer! All organisms are made out of these fundamental particles, and are thus systems whose behavior is determined exactly by the initial conditions of that system, plus whatever outside influences are applied to that system. Atoms behave as they do as an emergent property of the particles that make them up, as do molecules, even very, very large ones like proteins or DNA, as do cells, since every component of a cell behaves mechanically. This chain can be carried on to higher and higher levels, and so it is apparent that all systems, even living beings, even human beings, behave mechanically.

Now, this leads to the question of free will - if your actions are determined, then you has no control over them and no free will and cannot be blamed for them. Clearly an electron cannot be blamed for anything, so why can a person? The problem with this thinking is that your behavior, while determined, is under your control, because your behavior is determined by yourself. If some other person were "mind-controlling" you, you would be blameless, but you are not. The reason there is no free will in electrons is because they are not self-aware - and it is meaningless to assign will to something that is not self-aware. Only a consciousness can have a will. We may say a robot, for instance, behaves "as if it had a will of its own", but it doesn't, it just has a chip designed to act in a certain fashion.

Where does this consciousness come from? How do we know we have it? Well, I believe (though it is not entirely provable right now) that there is no dualism, no “spiritual” world to complement the “physical” world*. If you took a computer and ran a simulation of the behavior of all the particles in a human being, you would find that it would behave exactly as the actual human being would. This means it would also, if prompted, claim that it was conscious, and without prompting it would have the thoughts, in its mind, of consciousness. You can say that maybe electrons are conscious, but their consciousness has no effect on reality, but it’s clear that consciousness does have an effect on reality, because I know that I am conscious! Even if I did not speak a word of it, the evidence would be in the triggering of nerve impulses in my brain representing thoughts about consciousness. From this I conclude that consciousness isn’t just an emergent property of matter, but an emergent property of computation itself - a simulation of a conscious being would also be conscious.

If consciousness is an emergent property of computation, or of matter performing computation, then it seems reasonable to assume that, since I am conscious, those whose brains operate practically similarly to mine (i.e. other humans) are also conscious. Also, if a being tells me it is conscious (or even has thoughts about consciousness), without ever having been conveyed the idea “consciousness” before, I would probably conclude that it is conscious, because that seems the simplest explanation. But a being is not “partly conscious”, it is either one or the other. If it has any awareness of the self (again, my meaning for awareness, no the general meaning), then it is conscious, if it has none, it is not. The various “levels” of self-awareness mentioned by others in this thread are talking about the general meaning of awareness (in particular, the experiments with animals recognizing themselves in a mirror; that indicates that the animal can recognize itself as opposed to other objects, but not that it is aware of itself in the sense of cognito ergo sum. I could easily design a robot that could identify itself in a mirror.). I do not have such evidence in the case of animals, except possibly closely related primates, which I concede might very well be conscious.

(A thought just occurred to me, that the evolution of consciousness may be closely related to the evolution of empathy and the dynamic concept of society, which allows in humans an almost arbitrary expansion of the idea of “self” or “tribe” to anything. This strengthens my suspicions that advanced primates may be conscious, but would not make other organisms, even other mammals, conscious.)

* Such a distinction seems to me useless anyway, because I could merely expand my understanding of the physical world to include the spiritual world, since anything in it would also behave according to determined rules. Everything behaves according to rules; else, how would it determine how to behave? These rules may be probabilistic, like the behavior of particles in quantum theory, but they are still rules.

[General Ludd]

Originally posted by Kuciwalker

YES I AM! I've said exactly that several times already! Read my posts!

Up untill now you've been claiming that foxes where machines, and humans where different. But if you're now saying that humans are equally mechanic and have no more choice or awareness, ect, ect.... then, fine.



....


But, reading your other post, I see you're not saying that. You're now claiming that humans are "machines" which control themselves and have the ability to make conscious choices, while foxes are machines with no control overthemselves and are slaves to their environment.

And yet this still does not adress any of my scenarios, like the obvious choice a dog has in deciding to obey it's master or not. Why is the decision a dog makes when presented with multiple courses of action not a conscious choice, but when a human makes the same choice, it is?

If a dog was not capable of choice, how could it be trained? It should mechanically behave acording to it's species and, as a result, either all dogs would be untrainable or all dogs could be easily "trained" in exactly the same method by quickly exposing them to a series of "stimuli". Neither is true.

Unless, of course, every dog's brain is a vastly different machine and opperates on different principles (or perhaps laws of physics, as you suggested previously ). But if you believe this, why would you also believe that "If consciousness is an emergent property of computation, or of matter performing computation, then it seems reasonable to assume that, since I am conscious, those whose brains operate practically similarly to mine (i.e. other humans) are also conscious."



And, since I'm thinking about it, why do you find the thought of consciousness so signifigant? Couldn't it just be dismissed as the mechanical answer to the question of life, being, or self? What's so special about a "machine" being able to answer that yes, it is infact a machine?

Going by your argument (that consciousness is an "emergent property of computation itself ") , someone thinking that they are conscious is merely an acknowledgement that they are basically a computer and their thoughts - including this realization - are merely the results of computations and outside of their control. And, in turn, this thought that it is outside of their control is again merely another answer, and a further acknowldgement that they are nothing but a computer acting on calculations. Shouldn't it be assumed that any "machine" whether it is human or fox, should be able to come to these same basic, mechanical, answers?

[Dauphin]

I'm still interested to know (I have had no post respond to my original question) if you, Kuci, think that during the evolution of man there were (or are) sentient (proto-)humans living alongside non-sentient humans. Assuming you do not retract the quantised concept of either having or not having sentience.