In article <B16A2C7C9668FBB7D at stat13-153.dial.xs4all.nl> tonmaas at xs4all.nl (Ton Maas) writes:
>In article <6hsgmb$lf5$1 at hirame.wwa.com>,
>"Mdg" <Mdg at nospam.com> wrote:
>>>Leads me to a question I always wondered about, say we hit the point where
>>we can actually map a human brain to a fine enough detail that we can
>>simulate it's behavior on a computer. Will the simulation be conscious?
>>According to neurophysiologists Varela & Maturana consciousness is
>restricted to autopoietic systems - which by definition produce their own
>organization by an evolutionary process not unlike "tinkering". Seems like
>the conscious computer will have to invent itself from scrap in order to
>ever attain consciousness :-)
Unfortunately, this definition is immediately and trivially incorrect.
Individual humans do not evolve; evolution is a process restricted to
populations. An individual human (which I assume is conscious) is
largely a copy of prior humans -- and so a sufficiently detailed copy
of a human organism should also be conscious, by a similar process.
-kitten
