"We know it feels like something to be that animal"
Daniel Dennett and others have shown that this is not generally true. Nagel's arguments have been repeatedly refuted, so they are not a good foundation for an argument.
What is it like to be a smartphone?
61–68 of 68 posts
Re: What is it like to be a smartphone?
#62What is it like to be the Internet? That structure resembles our brain: a reactive, resilient, shifting network of connections among billions of individual human brains using smartphones and other technological devices, storing, aggregating and routing information in complex and arbitrary ways. If consciousness is to be found in our technology, I wouldn't look at the individual smartphone, but at the network of all s…
100%. I disagree with the article in that there’s nothing inherently mysterious or “hard” (like the “hard” problem of consciousness) in the inner machinations of a smartphone. In the inner machinations of a mind, yes, but not in a smartphone. Everything that goes on within it is designed and controlled and can be explained by a human. Large networks, e.g. the brain or the Internet, on the other hand, are exponentiall…
The hard problem of consciousness, as philosophers of mind use the term, is not to understand how the mind works or how it produces consciousness, but rather to explain how it could possibly produce consciousness--it's a metaphysical problem.
(Physicalists such as Daniel Dennett [and myself] deny that there is such a problem--that dualists like David Chalmers are operating off of erroneous intuitions, not sound arguments.)
Re: What is it like to be a smartphone?
#63What is it like to be the Internet? That structure resembles our brain: a reactive, resilient, shifting network of connections among billions of individual human brains using smartphones and other technological devices, storing, aggregating and routing information in complex and arbitrary ways. If consciousness is to be found in our technology, I wouldn't look at the individual smartphone, but at the network of all s…
Could society be a body, the internet its nerves and the economy its blood?
You're asking if a metaphor could be reality. Obviously not ... it's just a metaphor.
Re: What is it like to be a smartphone?
#64The question "does X have subjective experiences" could be addressed by a theory of consciousness. Such theory should be able to tell what physical systems, and to what extent, are conscious. Interestingly, attempts of such theory already exist: Integrated information theory is a good example.
IIT is really just a definition. And like all such definitions, it includes some things that are intuitively not conscious and excludes some things that are intuitively conscious, which is why such "theories" don't go anywhere.
Re: What is it like to be a smartphone?
#65What is it like to be the Internet? That structure resembles our brain: a reactive, resilient, shifting network of connections among billions of individual human brains using smartphones and other technological devices, storing, aggregating and routing information in complex and arbitrary ways. If consciousness is to be found in our technology, I wouldn't look at the individual smartphone, but at the network of all s…
100%. I disagree with the article in that there’s nothing inherently mysterious or “hard” (like the “hard” problem of consciousness) in the inner machinations of a smartphone. In the inner machinations of a mind, yes, but not in a smartphone. Everything that goes on within it is designed and controlled and can be explained by a human. Large networks, e.g. the brain or the Internet, on the other hand, are exponentiall…
> Everything that goes on within it is designed and controlled and can be explained by _a_ human.
Emphasis on _a_ human.
I've heard that there's so many layers of abstraction and obfuscation, that there is no one person who can explain thoroughly every layer of a modern computer, from the volts in the bits, to the web front end, through the cloud.
Re: What is it like to be a smartphone?
#66Earlier quoted context omitted.
Blindsight by Peter Watts.
Yep, great book. All of his work in fact is great. Checkout Echophraxia if you liked Blind sight.
I've got them both in hardcover as Firefall. :)
I must confess I couldn't make it through the third Rifters book with all the torture. :S But yeah, overall his stuff is great. If it's uncomfortable, that's because it's all too plausible.
Re: What is it like to be a smartphone?
#67Earlier quoted context omitted.
Please tell us more
I think the relationship is more of a symbiotic one, like wheat. On the other hand, we get to pick the meaning of "domestication", and I believe the definition leans heavily on the traits a domesticated dog exhibits, so there is not much to discuss here.
Eh, the guy studied dogs. I'm sure he has something to say
Re: What is it like to be a smartphone?
#68Do smartphones "die" when they run out of battery or is that merely "sleep" for them? RAM needs power, but ROM is preserved so ... amnesia? Comma? I'm never letting my phone battery drain again.
Ted Chiang's SF story collection "Exhalation" has a wonderful story on digital life forms ("digients"): The Lifecycle of Software Objects.
It raises many questions, among them the ethics of putting such beings to sleep, or restoring them from a previous checkpoint.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Lifecycle_of_Software_Obje...
Full text of the novella:
https://web.archive.org/web/20130306030242/http://subterrane...