On 23/03/14 01:08 PM, G.H. Hovagimyan wrote:
>
> Can a computer program inhale and smell Springtime in the air?Can it
> define sexual attraction? How about desire? Can it sense death? Can
> it tell the difference between what is alive and what is not? Can it
> relate on a visceral level to a living thing? Can it say that my
> bones are weary and my memory is failing? Can it admit to a false set
> of beliefs? Can it ask for redemption from it’s friends?
I'm not sure a human being can do all those things. Certainly not every
human being can do every one.
We can program a computer (or robot) to perform any of these tasks
individually, in some cases faster or more reliably than we can.
We cannot yet program a computer to do all these things exactly as a
human being would, as only a human being would do them exactly as a
human being would. Or possibly a full simulation of a human being.
We don't have fully simulated human beings yet but we do have simulated
C. elegans nematode worms:
http://www.openworm.org/
And there's research into simulating the human brain, which would please
Descartes no end:
http://bluebrain.epfl.ch/
This does assume that human experience is a matter of complexity rather
than irreducibility. I don't have a moral or philosophical problem with
that, but I'll leave establishing the truth of it to the experts.
- Rob.
|