Joe Jenkins <joe_jenkins@yahoo.com> asked:
> Does not the fact that we can dream indicate that the compute power
Forget dreaming for a moment! Everything we are consciously
aware of while we are awake is a complete model or simulation of the
reality beyond our senses entirely constructed of phenomenal qualia.
That is why virtual reality works. The proper stimulation of our
sensors via signals generated, not from reality, produces the
conscious representation of the VR world.
There is no color, smell, sound, warmth... or pain beyond our
senses; only the electromagnetic radiation, chemical content,
acoustical vibrations, kinetic energy of molecules... and bodily
damage our brains merely arbitrarily represent with such phenomenon.
Obviously color, smell, sound, warmth, and so forth can also be caused
by computer generated stimulation of the proper neurons and this
proves they have nothing to do with what we usually think they are.
These differing phenomenon, the ones we sense and our
conscious representations of them, though they do a good job of
representing each other, are nothing like each other. One is the
initial cause of the cause and effect perception process and is beyond
our senses. The other is the final result and inside our brain. The
fact that we can dream, or produce very similar conscious awareness
worlds inside our brain without external input is simply yet more
proof of this. What we experience or consciously know when we are not
sleeping is at least as much proof of the representational power of
our brain than what we experience in dreams.
If you consciously know something, whether dreaming or not;
that, alone, is proof that your brain has the computational, or more
accurately the representational power, to simulate whatever it is you
know. If you don't know it, you must not be representing it. If you
do know it, that knowledge is in your brain. The senses collect data
and from this produce a gloriously phenomenal conscious world or as
you called it an "artificial environment" inside your brain. You
don't really know anything about what is beyond your senses. After
all, for all you know, it might not really be there but only virtually
so.
Brent Allsop
> of our minds includes the compute power needed to run artificial
> environment simulations?