Dear Herbert, you wrote:
'I think subjective experience could be produced by computer (and I hope that will forever remain a thought experiment) is the following: if the complete human genome becomes known, and if it then becomes possible to synthesize it in a computer-guided process, the resulting human being would be conscious in the same way as everybody else.'

I would carefully differentiate the meaning of 'the complete human genome to become known': the proteins, nucleoid, hydrogels, lipids - the biochemical inventory does not render the 'total' complexity, which is 'more than the parts'. Your condition is wishful: 'and if it then becomes possible to synthesize it in a computer-guided process,' because it takes care of the 'more', simply putting it into the invoked possibility - now unknown. To date a computer (guided) process is phys/chem reactions on analytically reduced matter, which analysis destroys the qualia emerged by the totality of the dissected unit. You can 'analyse' the components, a model or abstraction maybe part of the composition, not the complexity of the assemblage.

Similarly: if a human genome resulted, (allowing that the computer provides the complete assemblage and makes the qualia of a human genome emerge) then the development of a human being still depends on the complexity-increasing gestational environment, process and adjustment. Let us suppose (I'm generous to your thought-experiment) that your super-duper-hyper computer can do all this. Why not? In that case it is up to any sci-fi author to imply what personality will develop from the environment of a computer- personality? Mother it will be not. The adaptive-recursive-chaotic living environment is beyond my thought-experiment generosity. If computers have that, we may call them humans.

There is one question left: 'conscious in the same way as everybody else.' Can you describe how?

Sorry for the short remark, next time, I promise, I won't give in below 1000 lines.

John Mikes
<ami_kes@juno.com>



REPLY:

John Mikes refers to my paragraph [5], where I say, in answer to Hubey's statements about computer models of mind or brain function, that

'the only way I think subjective experience could ever be produced by computer' is via a computer-guided genome synthesis.

I agree with Mikes' qualifications as stated. The complexity would in large part result from the interaction of genes and their environment. The closest example we have at present is the one of Dolly the Scottish sheep. This could in principle be paralleled (for sheep, humans, or others) after the genome has been computer-produced.

Could I describe how it would be conscious ? The same way as everybody else. If such a somewhat artificial human could indeed be assured to have all the necessary biological characteristics, he would from there have to construct his reality like all of us do. My main point is that even in such a far fetched case, the computer itself would not able to have subjective experience, only a computer-generated biological being would. By the way, it is somewhat misleading to talk about my wishful thinking, since I do not wish for this.

Herbert Muller
<mdmu@musica.mcgill.ca>