Stig Hemmer HEMMER@NORUNIT (11/01/88)
First a short quote from David Harvey > But then why in the world am I writing this >article in response? After all, I have no guarantee that you are a >conscious entity or not. >dharvey@wsccs I think mr. Harvey touched an important point here, as I see it the question is a matter of definision. We don't know other people to be conscious, we DEFINE then to be. It is a very useful definition because other people behave more or less as I do, and I am conscious. Here it is possible to transfer to programs in two ways: 1) Programs are conscious if they behave as people, i.e. the Turing test. 2) Find the most useful definition. For many people this will be to define programs not to be conscious beings, to avoid ethical and legal problems. This discusion is therefore fruitless because it concerns the basic axioms people can't argue for or against. -Tortoise