Re: advantages of uploading (was Re: re [2]: What is "New Age"? )

Brent Allsop (
Mon, 16 Jun 1997 14:35:43 -0600

Jules Arntz-Gray <> replied:

> You should look into the Turing test. Exactly how do you
> confirm your spiritual perception of colour as such and how do you
> know that a simulation wouldn't as well? Do you believe in the
> ghost in the machine idea or are you neuroncentric?

I am neuroncentic. But, there must be a bit more to the
neural process than we can now abstractly observe. When we are
consciously aware of something, like a tree that we are looking at,
neurons are producing some kind of real phsycial phenomenon that is
this conscious awareness. This awarenes is something tangible and
real in our subjective experience.

Any physical process that can assume various distinguishable
states can abstractly represent or model informaion. For an abstract
machine the particular nature of the physical process isn't important.
It can be magnetic flux in a hard disk or a voltage state of a
transistor. But, we use a very specific kind of physical phenomenon
to represent conscious information. A conscious qualia such as red
can abstractly represent a one or a zero or light of a particular wave
length. And a pattern of voltages on a bus can abstractly represent
the same thing. An important thing is that a quale representing
information is fundamentally very different than a pattern of voltages
on a bus. When talking about consciousness, the particular qualities
of the particular phenomenal physical process being used (i.e. what it
is like) to represent the information is important. There is
phenomenally more to the representation than just the abstract data.

Just as we can now look into a computer and see if it
represents data in a big or little indian format since we have the
proper tools and understanding, when we have the proper tools and
understanding of this phenomenal process which neurons use to
consciously represent informaiont, we will be able to objectively see
the particular sets of qualia a brain uses to represent information.
Hence, the Turing test will not be a problem once we understand or
discover the physical process that neurons use to represent
information in our consciousness.

Brent Allsop