I don't see how you can have a brain, but no mind, or at least the potential for mind. Having memory means you have a mind. Many people on this thread are being inconsistent and attributing minds to humans but not to computers. Why? How do we know that humans have minds but computers don't? What is a mind if not memory that stores and processes sensory data?

Having memory means you have a mind. — Harry Hindu

Let's interpret a footstep as a memory of something stepping there. What entity has this memory? Ground? The Earth? Some even larger system? Can any of these be said to have a mind?

What is a mind if not memory that stores and processes sensory data? — Harry Hindu

Sentience to begin with. Conscious experiences.

Many people on this thread are being inconsistent and attributing minds to humans but not to computers. Why? How do we know that humans have minds but computers don't? — Harry Hindu

They don't express any attributes that would imply them having a mind, and neither does their physical structure.

You're missing the reality that the Robot would most definitely need the concept of cupness to operate in the general world of things. Knowing the color of the handle of one particular cup might help with that cup. In the real world the Robot would need to understand cupness in order to find a cup in the first place. Then when it finds a cup it can determine what color it is. — SteveKlinkoSo, we design a robot with templates - a template for cups, for humans, for dogs, for cars, etc. - just like humans have. We humans have templates stored in our memory for recognizing objects. We end up getting confused, just like a robot would, when an object shares numerous qualities with different templates. The solution is to make a new template, like "spork". What would "sporkness" be? Using the word, "cupness" just goes to show what is wrong with philosophical discussions of the mind. — Harry Hindu

I agree about templates but don't understand your objection to saying cupness or even sporkness.

↪BlueBanana I don't see how you can have a brain, but no mind, or at least the potential for mind. Having memory means you have a mind. Many people on this thread are being inconsistent and attributing minds to humans but not to computers. Why? How do we know that humans have minds but computers don't? What is a mind if not memory that stores and processes sensory data? — Harry Hindu

The Computer Mind would be equivalent to the Physical Human Mind (the Brain). But Humans have a further processing stage which is the Conscious Mind. When Humans see the Color Red there are Neurons firing for Red. But with Humans there is also that undeniable Conscious Red experience that happens. You can't really believe that a Computer has an actual Red experience. That would imply some Computer Self having that experience. Science knows very little about Consciousness so who knows maybe even a grain of sand has Consciousness. But you have to draw a line somewhere in order to study the problem.

Let's interpret a footstep as a memory of something stepping there. What entity has this memory? Ground? The Earth? Some even larger system? Can any of these be said to have a mind? — BlueBanana

I don't know what you are asking here. IF we were to interpret a footprint as a memory of something stepping there, then yes, it would be part of the the mind of the Earth, I guess. But we don't call footprints "memories". We call them "evidence". We can also call your recall of a crime as evidence as well, so in a way, yes, memories are effects of certain causes, just like footprints. What makes footprints and memories distinct is that footprints are not used to obtain a certain goal by the same system that it is part of. Footprints are on the ground and part of the surface of the Earth. The Earth has no goals for which to use the memory/knowledge of that footprint, or any footprint for that matter. Organisms and computers (currently only working for human goals) are the only things that use information to obtain goals.

Sentience to begin with. Conscious experiences. — BlueBanana

...and what are conscious experiences?

They don't express any attributes that would imply them having a mind, and neither does their physical structure. — BlueBanana

What attributes would imply that one has a mind? Wouldn't one attribute be that it uses stored information to act for it's own interests?

How do we know that "physical" structure has anything to do with it? What is "physical" anyway?

I agree about templates but don't understand your objection to saying cupness or even sporkness. — SteveKlinko

Then are you sure that you agree with me about templates? My point was that we have better, more accurate terms to use ("cup template") instead of these philosophically loaded terms, like "cupness".

The Computer Mind would be equivalent to the Physical Human Mind (the Brain). But Humans have a further processing stage which is the Conscious Mind. When Humans see the Color Red there are Neurons firing for Red. But with Humans there is also that undeniable Conscious Red experience that happens. You can't really believe that a Computer has an actual Red experience. That would imply some Computer Self having that experience. Science knows very little about Consciousness so who knows maybe even a grain of sand has Consciousness. But you have to draw a line somewhere in order to study the problem. — SteveKlinko

No. You have to study it first to see where you should draw the line, or else that line would be subjective - arbitrary.

There is no red out there. Red only exists as a representation of a certain wavelength of EM energy. Any system could represent that wavelength as something else - the written word, "red, a sound of the word, "red" being spoken, another color, or even something else entirely. No matter what symbol some system uses to represent that wavelength of EM energy, others that also have a different representation could eventually translate the other's symbol for that thing. That is what we do with translating languages.

What we see is not what the world is. Our minds model the world as physical objects with boundaries and borders, but the world isn't like that. It is all process, which can include "mental" processes, and non-mental (what many might call "physical" processes). When you look at someone you see them as a physical being, but they are just an amalgam of certain processes, some of them being "mental" in nature. What I mean by "mental" is goal-oriented sensory information processing. Brains are what we see, but they are just models of other's mental processes.

YOU are a process. What I mean is, your mind is a process - a mental process. It is what it is like to be your mental process of simulating the world in fine detail so that you can fine-tune your behavior for the extremely wide range of situations you will find yourself in during your lifetime. Your conscious experience is just a predictive model of the world and is not as the world is in real-time. It is continually updated with new sensory information milliseconds after the events in the world.

So to say that computers cannot have minds seems to be out of the question, if we designed them to learn using the information they receive about the world and their own bodies through sensory devices and to represent the world (using the information from it's senses) in a way that enables it to fine-tune it's behavior to achieve it's own personal goals. In other words, the computers you have on your desktop probably do not have minds in the same sense that we do. There may be something it is like with it being a process like everything else, but it is without any self-awareness or independent thought.

I agree about templates but don't understand your objection to saying cupness or even sporkness. — SteveKlinkoThen are you sure that you agree with me about templates? My point was that we have better, more accurate terms to use ("cup template") instead of these philosophically loaded terms, like "cupness". — Harry Hindu

So you are just arguing about symantics? For me Cup Template and Cupness have the same meaning.

The Computer Mind would be equivalent to the Physical Human Mind (the Brain). But Humans have a further processing stage which is the Conscious Mind. When Humans see the Color Red there are Neurons firing for Red. But with Humans there is also that undeniable Conscious Red experience that happens. You can't really believe that a Computer has an actual Red experience. That would imply some Computer Self having that experience. Science knows very little about Consciousness so who knows maybe even a grain of sand has Consciousness. But you have to draw a line somewhere in order to study the problem. — SteveKlinkoNo. You have to study it first to see where you should draw the line, or else that line would be subjective - arbitrary. — Harry Hindu

I think Science will get nowhere if it insists that a grain of sand has Consciousness.

There is no red out there. Red only exists as a representation of a certain wavelength of EM energy. Any system could represent that wavelength as something else - the written word, "red, a sound of the word, "red" being spoken, another color, or even something else entirely. No matter what symbol some system uses to represent that wavelength of EM energy, others that also have a different representation could eventually translate the other's symbol for that thing. That is what we do with translating languages.

What we see is not what the world is. Our minds model the world as physical objects with boundaries and borders, but the world isn't like that. It is all process, which can include "mental" processes, and non-mental (what many might call "physical" processes). When you look at someone you see them as a physical being, but they are just an amalgam of certain processes, some of them being "mental" in nature. What I mean by "mental" is goal-oriented sensory information processing. Brains are what we see, but they are just models of other's mental processes.

YOU are a process. What I mean is, your mind is a process - a mental process. It is what it is like to be your mental process of simulating the world in fine detail so that you can fine-tune your behavior for the extremely wide range of situations you will find yourself in during your lifetime. Your conscious experience is just a predictive model of the world and is not as the world is in real-time. It is continually updated with new sensory information milliseconds after the events in the world. — Harry Hindu

I agree except that the Conscious experience of something like the color Red is more than "Just a Predictive Model of the World". It is a Conscious experience. Science does not know how to explain any Conscious experience yet.

So to say that computers cannot have minds seems to be out of the question, if we designed them to learn using the information they receive about the world and their own bodies through sensory devices and to represent the world (using the information from it's senses) in a way that enables it to fine-tune it's behavior to achieve it's own personal goals. In other words, the computers you have on your desktop probably do not have minds in the same sense that we do. There may be something it is like with it being a process like everything else, but it is without any self-awareness or independent thought — Harry Hindu

I say Computers that we have today don't have Minds but I didn't say that they can never have Minds. We first have to understand how the Human Mind works and only then will we be able to design Conscious Machines. But with Consciousness everything is still on the table. Maybe we should study the Consciousness of a gran of sand first, but I doubt the Wisdom or Logic of doing that..