[MD] Heads or tails?

[Hamilton Priday]

[Case]:


> I am not convinced that awareness is necessarily limited to
> organic creatures. I think I agree with Magnus on this one.
> There is every reason to think that self aware artificial
> intelligences are not long in the future.
>
> I think it is even possible for the Internet to actually become
> self aware.  But at the moment even the internet which connects
> millions of computers together all over the planet is simple and
> primitive compared to the number of neurons and connections
> made within the human brain.

I fear that you've been playing too many video games.  To suggest that 
robots can be programmed to be aware, or that the Internet may be 
self-conscious, is a trip through fantasy land.

The test for awareness is not sensibility, analytical ability, or behavior. 
As I said before, awareness is the proprietary capacity to KNOW.  It is not 
objectively verifiable, but it exists only in conjunction with sensible 
object (i.e., what we perceive as beingness).  In other words, awareness is 
being-aware.

Now, I will match your "almost agree" concession in one respect.  What I 
call "sensibility" is not necessarily limited to organic creatures.  Primary 
sensibility is the non-proprietary (undifferentiated or pre-intellectual) 
realization of value.  It is my theory that value is the "force" that 
opposes negation and links the individual self to Essence.  This concept is 
not unlike Pirsig's DQ, except that I don't define value as ultimate 
reality.  Value is realizable only where difference is actualized, that is, 
in the awareness/otherness dichotomy of existence.  Because the 
contingencies of this dichotomy are separated by nothingness, we can only be 
aware of value relatively.  However, prior to any organic identity, value is 
the undifferentiated source of awareness.

I, too, reject the notion of inanimate awareness as 'animisim'.  Since you 
stated previously that "imbuing the mindless with mind and agency seems to 
me to be a regression in understanding not an advance," why are you now 
advocating AI as "self-awareness"?  Processing and compiling data is no more 
an "agency of awareness" than the Encyclopedia Brittanica.

Essentially yours,
Ham