|
One of the difficultires with computer models of consciousness is that consciousness is, almost by definition, transcendent. I don't mean spiritual transcendence or anything like that; when it comes to human persons, I'm pretty damn materialist. But there's something about human persons that always escapes our understanding. Husserl puts it like this. In experience, there's always something that escapes our perception. I can see a certain side of the chair I'm looking at, but I only infer [from things like previous experiences with chairs] the existence of the rest of the chair. Other persons aren't like that. When it comes to consciousness, you can't turn a person around to see the other side. There is always something about another person that escapes our experience, and not merely because we don't ever have enough experience with another. There's simply an infiniteness about the other that always eludes us.
Now, with computers, I don't think this is the case. If we know a computer's code and its experience, we know what it will do in any given situation. This isn't the case with people. We can know a person as well as it is possible to know a person, and they can still surprise us. It might be possible to predict, with some accuracy, a person's actions, but we can never know them.
__________________
"Die Deutschen meinen, daß die Kraft sich in Härte und Grausamkeit offenbaren müsse, sie unterwerfen sich dann gerne und mit Bewunderung:[...]. Daß es Kraft giebt in der Milde und Stille, das glauben sie nicht leicht."
"The Germans believe that power must reveal itself in hardness and cruelty and then submit themselves gladly and with admiration[...]. They do not believe readily that there is power in meekness and calm."
-- Friedrich Nietzsche
|