There is a sense in which a computer knows and acts – but we would say it is not conscious.

Your discussion uses “computer” in a loose, conversational sense. I’m pretty sure you actually mean a computer program.

I agree that it isn’t clear that computer programs have an obvious distinction between concious and unconcious knowledge or action. (Not that the distinction is sntirely cleary clear for humans!)

There are symbolic AI programs that seem to act like Mary while she is in her monchromatic room – they “know” all about color in symbolic terms and can compute the likely reaction of a human subject to a particular frequency distribution of light. (And could perhaps predict the response of bees to frequency distributions in the UV that would leave us unmoved.)

There are also neural network programs which model the response of cells to chemical and electrical stimuli. In these second type of program it would be laborious to construct the first type of progam, but it could be done.

Let’s say we build one of these models and call it ‘Mary’. Mary has been fed visual data to the parts of her database corresponding to the retinal nerves, which have been decoded into symbolic forms, manipulated in the model’s simulated temporal lobes.

Now we begin sending data to both the rod and cone cells – Mary is seeing color! Is she having new qualia? Sure, a whole new part of her brain is being stimulated. Is it a part of the brain she can describe easily? If Mary is a model of a human brain, no. Her subjective qualia are locked away. Since she is in fact a computer model, the program can be reflective and open in ways humans cannot.

Still, that is enough to show that the Mary thought experiment does not undercut physicalism. Mary’s new experience is new knowledge but it is still new physical knowledge. The fact that we need to use models or fMRI to access it doesn’t make it less so, it proves that it is so.

Besides, we built the Mary model to be ready and able to see color. But we know that in real animals, the brain is being rewired based on early life experience. If Mary was trapped in the monochromatic room from birth, it is quite possible that her eyes and brain would no longer be able to respond to color when she was released. In this case she would experience no new qualia.

BTW, I had an interesting discussion recently with a physicist working with surface scattering spectroscopy. He told me that he was jealous of insects and other creatures that could see UV and polarization and phase differences which our visual systems ignore. Like Mary, he knew intellectually that a quartz crytal in polarized UV must be extremely beautiful, judging from the spectrum it generates. But he will never see it.

Yeah dig deeper into your imagination because that is the only place bat transitionals exist.

Are you claiming certain knowledge that bats were flying, echolocating creatures from their beginning?

#41 I agree that it may also be a consequence of Godel’s theorem that there are some things we cannot understand. This is, of course, a topic for philosophical debate.

#42 I am thinking more of the difference between unconscious and conscious knowledge and action. There is a sense in which a computer knows and acts – but we would say it is not conscious. The difference is expressed very clearly in the famous example of Mary’s room.

http://news.nationalgeographic.....e-dyslexia

* What is the difference between a conscious and an unconsious entity.

Are you asking between a rock and human?

Or between a computer and human?

The rock has no ability of understanding and learning. It merely exist as is and cannot create anything knew via accumulated knowledge. Nor is a rock aware its a rock.

What am I missing in your question?

I think the responses to Allen are quite good. Curious if he has anything to add.

<b?We do not know enough about the unknown to know that it is unknowable.

True – but that does not mean that everything is knowable. One of the consequences of common descent is that it connects us directly with creatures who clearly have fundamental limits to what they can know. So it seems plausible that there are things that we also are incapable of knowing.

It is interesting to try and think what the signs would be of a question for which we are incapable of understanding the answer and how we would naturally react to such a situation. To my mind such questions might include:

* How did reality come into existence?

* What is the difference between a conscious and an unconscious entity?

I am not saying that we cannot know the answer to these questions but we should allow that for the possibility that we are incapable of understanding the answer.

Personally, I think that “God” (which I prefer to refer to as “That Which Is”) is quite literally unknowable.

“You cannot take the region called the unknown and calmly say that though you know nothing about it, you know that all its gates are locked. That was the whole fallacy of Herbert Spencer and Huxley when they talked about the unknowable instead of about the unknown. An agnostic like Huxley must concede the possibility of a gnostic like Blake. We do not know enough about the unknown to know that it is unknowable.”
~G. K. Chesterton

“I think that “God” (which I prefer to refer to as “That Which Is”) is quite literally unknowable.”

To quote Geisler “Christian Apologetics”

“Complete agnosticism is self defeating: it reduces to the self destructing assertion that one knows enough about reality in order to affirm that nothing can be known about reality. This statement provides within itself all that is necessary to falsify itself. For if one knows something about reality , then he surely cannot affirm in the same breath that all of reality is unknowable. And of course if one knows nothing whatsoever about reality, the he has no basis whatsoever for making a statement about reality. It will not suffice to say that his knowledge about reality is purely and completely negative, that is, a knowledge of what reality is not. For every negative presupposes a positive; one cannot meaningfully affirm that something is not -that if he is totally devoid of knowledge of the “that”. It follows that total agnosticism is self defeating because it assumes some knowledge about reality in order to deny any knowledge of reality”

Vivid

Me? Against rock n roll? lol… no

Not my point. Music is a fantastic blessing in our lives and comes in all varieties. I have a background in music.

I merely pointed out that it does not take intelligence for an escape clause and where you can find many people that use escape clauses with absolute ignorance of scienctific methods, logic and philosophy.

It is a counterpoint argument to the usual atheist or darwinist screed and rant about stupid, dumb, and uninformed Christians.