From: Nick Tarleton (nickptar@gmail.com)
Date: Sun Mar 02 2008 - 12:06:01 MST
On Sat, Mar 1, 2008 at 1:28 PM, John K Clark <johnkclark@fastmail.fm> wrote:
> That would be very odd indeed, but as we have no way of communicating
> with such an alien or it to us there is little more that can be said
> about
> the matter.
>
> Somewhere in the universe there may be a language where this Email,
> without changing a single character, expresses in perfect grammar the
> instructions on how to operate a new type of can opener; but as neither
> of us knows that language there is little danger of this conversation
> being diverted into a discussion of can opener technology.
The point, I think, is that it seems like there should be an objective
fact of the matter as to whether some physical system is having
conscious experiences; but if computation is sufficient for
experience, since what a physical system is computing is subjective,
this can't be the case.
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