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Originally Posted by Topher As long as the conventionally perceived situation is identical (psychological factors being important) it seems in no way more difficult to call a target that exists only as a complex pattern of electrons in silicon encoding the target choice as a cryptographic hash of an ASCII description of something, than if the target is an actual photograph of a scene printed on high quality paper and sealed in an opaque envelope in the next room (this isn't a description of an actual experiment but just something to get the idea across). Cognitive decoding and interpretation of some set of "sensory" data just does not seem to be part of the process. |
Then there must be some mechanism that presents the target to my brain, fully formed, as if it were the downstream result of seeing an image of the target without actually seeing anything. Or as if it were the downstream result of reading a description of the target without actually reading anything.
Something has to interpret the bits in the computer.
The other possibility is that there is a representation of reality, including the target, "in the ether" (akashic record?) that results in both the computer's internal representation and my cognizing the target. Now we need an infinite number of mechanisms to interpret the akashic record.
Either way, we have a hugely complex piece of machinery to discover. And I didn't even mention the temporal aspects of it.
~~ Paul