Philosophy Now Forum

Ginkgo wrote: This can be done with, or without the need for a "self". In other words, it is not a prerequisite.

yes but i guess self can not be built (properly) without having data of relative position of the robot in external world. i meant that.

I don't know quite where 1 & 2 come from; but the 'self' perceives the self just like it perceives the cat - as a physical object with such and such properties. End of story. Some people get stuck with the seeming paradox of 'well then, who is it that perceives the self(as physical object)?' - ...

I'm sorry if I've misunderstood you, but many of your posts seemed to me that you were searching for a "conscious understander", by which I interpreted "self" as a defined property in an animal or a machine. Now you say that by "self" you mean a self-referential proper...

Hi nonenone , In my opinion, "self" emerges from entity's relations to the external world. Primary relations concern the entity's physical limits ("body"), thus recognizing its physical existence and identity in the world. By "understanding" something you relate yourse...

@Ginkgo

I actully mean that it seems to me that it is the way that we got "self" through the evolution. So basically if computers (powerfull enough ones) are artificially subjected to this process, they can get "self" too.

@Ginkgo Hmmm...actually i didn't say those quotes, Wyman did. but as for my position let me make it clear:Of course now computers do not have self. but what i am theorizing is that they can have one, if they are subjected to the evolutionary process that i described at the first post. i simply mean ...

@Wyman

"On this reading, nonenone, I don't see any mystery in how the concept of self came about. It is just a concept. It is perhaps a mystery how conceptualization came about in the evolutionary process."

what is ur theory of how it came about?

@Ginkgo "You seem to be saying that if I think or believe that my computer has a sense of self then it does." if you have a computer that makes you believe that is has a self, and if you are considered a typical human being, then we can say that your computer has someting that makes many p...

@Wyman thank you for your help. but let me ask a question. are you sure that it is just about "understanding"? for example take these sentences: 1- I saw the boy. 2- Robot saw the boy. 3- the mechanical device saw the boy. from my experience, i would say that in all three cases you uninten...

@Ginkgo "but only humans can ever understand those rules. It is the understanding of the rules that in non-computational." i guess it is not true. what is understating? as i told you before the difference between "understanding" and "mechanistically processing" data is ...

@Ginkgo "How about saying that in order to by-pass the algorithmic loop one needs a non-algorithmic computation to evolve? This is where some of the thinking is at the moment." 1. what is non-algorithmic? do you mean that the algorithmic loop doesn't exist in the first place? if so, what d...

@wyman Let me make it more clear: A- How network goes into the loop is as follows: 1- Network can categorize "redness","if a then b", "he is here" and all others with some format, as "though". 2- For any thought, it searches for an object inside the category o...

@Wyman and Ginkgo "This is all terribly circular. If I said 'How do I tell if the zombie has a heart?' I am assuming that you know what a heart is and that they exist. You can't ask 'How can I tell if something is conscious' unless you tell me what consciousness is. And to say that it is 'self'...

@Ginkgo As i told before, unfortunately i am not professionally related to philosophy and also not a native english speaker. Also add to this the fact that i am so busy. So i actually thought about your comments but still haven't enough time to answer it in details. But i guess i have to stat from s...

@Ginkgo "If you are saying there are two separate entities with ALL their properties in common then this might be a problem." the hypothesis has some tricky aspects. one of them is that Note that "thinkers" are not direct objects from the outer world. they are "representatio...