PHIL 1000 Lecture Notes - Lecture 4: Light Switch, Universal History, Molecular Nanotechnology
17 Jan 2017
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1 of three propositions is likely to be true (1) humans won"t reach a posthuman stage (2) humans won"t run sims (3) we are almost certainly living in a computer simulation. Being in carbon material in a human body isn"t an essential property. Substrate independence: personality is not unique to human flesh and can be created by a machine. Diamond- shiny rock, carbon arranged, unique structure. Wouldn"t adequately describe mouse trap by its structure. Material isn"t necessary for that function then. What function is a certain correlation between inputs and outputs. Mouse trap: input-mouse takes cheese output-traps mouse. Inputs and outputs is conscious- implies that since we are conscious we contain inputs and outputs. More complex systems like computers could be conscious. We don"t need human flesh to be conscious. Almost possible to create computer that can contain conscious minds or an entire human civilization. Once we could upload our consciousness to a computer program.
