erich@eecs.cs.pdx.edu (Erich Stefan Boleyn) (11/06/90)
lev@suned0.nswses.navy.mil (Lloyd E Vancil) writes: >In article <1990Oct27.070636.4144@wam.umd.edu> reh@wam.umd.edu (Richard E. > Huddleston) writes: >>If we can't define consciousness (not that I'm so sure of that), we can at >>least study it by it's leavings: memories. Anything that can _remember_ is >>in some way conscious. Perhaps the problem with defining consciousness >>is similar to defining life; it doesn't have just one form or one aspect. >Too simple. My computer remembers, better than I do, and I'm 99.999% sure it's >not conscious. I think your second comment was closer to the mark... You're defining memories as something too simple, and on a level our "minds" have no access to. The information states contained by molecular structures in our bodies is also *very* precise, and has a better memory than "we" do, but we have no access to it. Simple addressable memory would have little use to an intelligent entity, as a content-addressable memory would be needed (plus other addressability requirements) at the absolute least. Our memories are dynamically connected with our behaviors and methods of thought, but how much is that in the case of our computers (I'm implying a level very primitive from the intelligence-producing point of view)? A computer, without proper software and the interconnectivity of the "memories" (which I doubt more and more could be done with the state of technology we have now), no more has a "memory" in the intelligent sense than a book does. Erich / Erich Stefan Boleyn Internet E-mail: <erich@cs.pdx.edu> \ >--={ Portland State University Honorary Graduate Student (Math) }=--< \ College of Liberal Arts & Sciences *Mad Genius wanna-be* / "I haven't lost my mind; I know exactly where I left it."