[QUOTE=Bat-shit;44298207]Uh no, after all the arguing I would expect people to at least finally realize that afterlife is not in fact possible.. by any reasonable thought anyway. Or that afterlife is just a synonym for death, and we know practically everything about it.[/QUOTE]
So are you waiting for every single participant in this thread to just flat out go "guys there is no proof of an afterlife and it's not possible in our frame of reality." Which is easily the most repeated line here, and possibly in the history of Facepunch now, right between "Fuck off, B-Hazard" and "the avatar above you".
[QUOTE=xZippy;44319859]So are you waiting for every single participant in this thread to just flat out go "guys there is no proof of an afterlife and it's not possible in our frame of reality." Which is easily the most repeated line here, and possibly in the history of Facepunch now, right between "Fuck off, B-Hazard" and "the avatar above you".[/QUOTE]
"our frame of reality?"
also you don't seem to realize that the afterlife (any version of it) is practically the same as any other abstract human notion like.. the Bat-cave, or.. Secret Moon Base or.. just about anything, the Underworld, etc, etc...
[editline]25th March 2014[/editline]
On a later notice this felt like bit of a rushed post, and those examples that I compared to afterlife sound really weird out of context. But still all of those things have something in common, as in they're made up by us..
[QUOTE=Bat-shit;44350027]also you don't seem to realize that the afterlife (any version of it) is practically the same as any other abstract human notion like.. the Bat-cave, or.. Secret Moon Base or.. just about anything, the Underworld, etc, etc...[/quote]
...Uhh, yeah. I actually [I]do[/I] realize that. We get it, there's no proof of an afterlife. Totally nothing more than an assumption and all that. How many times are you going to repeat that? That's been well established more than once in this thread.
Does the belief in an afterlife piss you off? Does it annoy you to some extent? What is your goal in returning to this thread? These aren't rhetorical questions by the way.
[QUOTE=xZippy;44358050]...Uhh, yeah. I actually [I]do[/I] realize that. We get it, there's no proof of an afterlife. Totally nothing more than an assumption and all that. How many times are you going to repeat that? That's been well established more than once in this thread.
Does the belief in an afterlife piss you off? Does it annoy you to some extent? What is your goal in returning to this thread? These aren't rhetorical questions by the way.[/QUOTE]
Yes, I suppose you could say that it pisses me off to an extent, like granting the idea of afterlife a chance, or a possibility to exist for no apparent reason, you know?
But since we've established that then I guess the goal has been achieved.. until someone else less familiar with this thread jumps in and sort of takes the discussion back again, but it's fine.
[QUOTE=Bat-shit;44369267]Yes, I suppose you could say that it pisses me off to an extent, like granting the idea of afterlife a chance, or a possibility to exist for no apparent reason, you know?[/quote]
Fair enough I guess. Though could you truly be pissed at someone who believes in an afterlife - not out of religion or opinion, but because some people can't fathom someone having a horrible life, then dying young, [I]then[/I] getting absolutely nothing afterward?
[quote]But since we've established that then I guess the goal has been achieved.. until someone else less familiar with this thread jumps in and sort of takes the discussion back again, but it's fine.[/QUOTE]
Dude, that goal was achieved in this thread pretty much at the start. No matter well you state your case, you're still gonna have people who A.) believe in life after death and B.) try to prove an afterlife exists with anecdotes and non-factual things.
So in short, you'll be trapped in this thread for eternity.
I certainly hope not :v:
To be honest, the concept of life after death as depicted by the bible scares me. Even if you go to Heaven, you will live forever in a perfect place. A place of no sin. And since most of the joys in life are a sin, then an eternity in heaven seems like something really, really boring. Because in Heaven everything is perfect, you don't have needs, therefore you don't need to eat- there goes the joy of eating a delicious hamburguer- you don't have a need to reproduce, and because sex for fun is a sin, then there goes the whole sex pleasure, you won't need amusement, so there goes the pleasure of listening to an album or playing a video game, etc.
Because of that, Heaven must be the dullest place ever.
Life after Death will be just like Life before Birth.
[QUOTE=Drakmaar;44501686]To be honest, the concept of life after death as depicted by the bible scares me. Even if you go to Heaven, you will live forever in a perfect place. A place of no sin. And since most of the joys in life are a sin, then an eternity in heaven seems like something really, really boring. Because in Heaven everything is perfect, you don't have needs, therefore you don't need to eat- there goes the joy of eating a delicious hamburguer- you don't have a need to reproduce, and because sex for fun is a sin, then there goes the whole sex pleasure, you won't need amusement, so there goes the pleasure of listening to an album or playing a video game, etc.
Because of that, Heaven must be the dullest place ever.[/QUOTE]
Well better that than get tortured in hell forever
[QUOTE=Deathtrooper2;44573167]Well better that than get tortured in hell forever[/QUOTE]
Habituation would eventually totally numb the pain/pleasures hell/heaven, thus making these afterlives pointless in the vast eternity of endless existence.
[QUOTE=Drakmaar;44501686]Because of that, Heaven must be the dullest place ever.[/QUOTE]
If it was the dullest place, then chances are, it wouldn't be heaven at all. Some might even tell you that any earthly enjoyment is banal and miniscule to what heaven would have because supposedly there is no time there, eliminating any kind of boredom. You might even have the feeling of those pleasures times 1000 without the need to perform them.
Though such a place is gotta exist first.
Do I believe in life after death?
No.
[highlight](User was banned for this post ("Do not just state your position - read the sticky" - Megafan))[/highlight]
[B]>> In no way am I trying to offend anyone! This is my opinion! <<[/B]
I personally believe that we [B]might[/B] be alone, but maybe, just maybe, there is someone or [I]something[/I] up there, beyond the stars, watching, but not revealing.
I might just be crazy, but hear me out. Maybe, if we were created by someone or something, it put us here to find ourselves, and not rely on a god to provide for us. We might of been put here independently, but beyond this world lies (maybe), an afterlife that reveals the truth, now free from Earth, space... life.
It's such a hard topic; a belief system as such is confusing. It overwhelms me that our brains can process a greater power, that we have not found evidence for.
In the end, I can say that I may not be a religious person, but I only hope to myself that beyond this life lies a bliss for eternity.
Again, I'm probably just crazy, but maybe, something lies in wait for us beyond our dark graves.
I don't believe in death, I believe in spiritual transformation. I reject the premise and the complete utter nonsense of there being nothing after death. The body doesn't disappear, it rots in the ground. After that it follows earth's ecosystem, and when the star explodes, we will be out in space as small particles. These remains I would call a soul, and since our personal consciousness will be numbed by the particles not existing together, we would be blind for almost an eternity, but sooner or later, the matter that composes you now, will compose you again at a later date. Take into consideration the axiom: An infinite amount of time concludes an infinite amount of events. I would call the awakening event as reincarnation.
I also have an idea about what christian heaven really is, for example. Every sentient life that have the intellectual ability to modify the surroundings of it's environment, always will try to create a paradise. Reincarnate enough times and maybe you would enter some sort of "heaven". I call the collective will of humankind to create a paradise as God's plan. So who is God? We are, because we are the makers of our own destiny. We are the creators of heaven and hell by committing sinful or ethical gestures towards others.
I'm personally a vegetarian due to this theory, because I realized, that if you promote all living beings as they should be, and not butchered in the most primitive manner, you encourage a form of evolutionary success based on their natural environment. I would call this karma, because the more you encourage a natural form of evolution, the less likely is the chance that a former soul reincarnates in a "hellish" environment. Ask yourself if your particles that composes your body, should have a lesser or more likely chance of ending up in hell. This is why I'm a vegetarian, in Buddhism, my religion, this is called The cessation of suffering.
[QUOTE=Memnoth;44595099]I don't believe in death, I believe in spiritual transformation. I reject the premise and the complete utter nonsense of there being nothing after death. The body doesn't disappear, it rots in the ground. After that it follows earth's ecosystem, and when the star explodes, we will be out in space as small particles. These remains I would call a soul, and since our personal consciousness will be numbed by the particles not existing together, we would be blind for almost an eternity, but sooner or later, the matter that composes you now, will compose you again at a later date. Take into consideration the axiom: An infinite amount of time concludes an infinite amount of events. I would call the awakening event as reincarnation.[/QUOTE]
This doesn't make much sense to me. Surely whichever specific configuration of your component parts from which your conscious experience emerges is lost when your mind decays, so any future sentient structures that use a subset of your fundamental particles are not a continuation of your conscious self in any meaningful way.
You presuppose that a supernatural soul exists to facilitate your notion of reincarnation, but such an assumption is unfounded and unscientific.
[QUOTE=Ziks;44598120]You presuppose that a supernatural soul exists to facilitate your notion of reincarnation, but such an assumption is unfounded and unscientific.[/QUOTE]
Any conversation of what happens to consciousness after death is unscientific, yes including the naturalist perspective of the mind.
So you would say there's no way science can deal with it?
Or would you just say you would disregard that science because you might disagree with it?
You've already stated in your own words evidence is secondary to what you'd like to believe.
[editline]20th April 2014[/editline]
it seems to me that drawing the line in the sand so that it can never be crossed is really only a benefit to you and your side of the argument and is a really great way to basically say "well science can't deal with this it's for us to talk about and you guys to be wrong about".
[QUOTE=HumanAbyss;44598329]So you would say there's no way science can deal with it?
Or would you just say you would disregard that science because you might disagree with it?
You've already stated in your own words evidence is secondary to what you'd like to believe.
[editline]20th April 2014[/editline]
it seems to me that drawing the line in the sand so that it can never be crossed is really only a benefit to you and your side of the argument and is a really great way to basically say "well science can't deal with this it's for us to talk about and you guys to be wrong about".[/QUOTE]
I`m saying that any perspective on the matter that you could possibly have is unscientific, apart from no conclusion of course.
If you conformed strictly to the scientific perspective on the origin of the mind you would have no perspective on the matter as there is nothing suggesting what it is on a strictly scientific basis. If that is all there is to your perspective, then there`s nothing to be added to the discussion anyway.
However, if you have a non-scientific perspective then I am not drawing any lines.
it sounds like to me any unsupported philosophical theory on the brain and sentience to you is fine, but the second science tries to breach that, it's worthless junk science
which is just simply not true. the brain is not beyond our understanding and claiming it is is saying we shouldn't waste time trying to understand it and just go with whatever religion says rather than trying to actually understand it.
[QUOTE=Ziks;44598120]This doesn't make much sense to me. Surely whichever specific configuration of your component parts from which your conscious experience emerges is lost when your mind decays, so any future sentient structures that use a subset of your fundamental particles are not a continuation of your conscious self in any meaningful way.[/QUOTE]
If the theory explained is nonsensical to you, you are proposing a dogmatic appeal to simply reject the notion of something that therefore may not be explainable to you.
[QUOTE=Ziks;44598120]You presuppose that a supernatural soul exists to facilitate your notion of reincarnation, but such an assumption is unfounded and unscientific.[/QUOTE]
That's an incorrect viewpoint, there was no presumption included since my definition of a soul differs from others in the sense that it is based on empirical observations of the universe. I simply used that particular name for the sense of semantic value.
[QUOTE=bIgFaTwOrM12;44598278]Any conversation of what happens to consciousness after death is unscientific, yes including the naturalist perspective of the mind.[/QUOTE]
I still don't entirely understand the viewpoint that it is rational to claim that because we can't currently fully explain how consciousness functions we should assume there is a supernatural element to it. Surely it is by definition scientific to pursue the assumption that a system which is currently not well understood has a natural (scientific) explanation?
I also wish to express my belief that consciousness isn't all that special or mystical. It's just an extremely useful system for processing, storing and generating information using a neural network that implements a hybrid supervised and unsupervised learning mechanism. Any additional "special" phenomena such as the appreciation of beauty, happiness, love and so on can be penned down as emergent subjective baggage until proven otherwise.
I think the thought experiment that really worked for me was to imagine a sufficiently advanced automaton with a sophisticated percept processing and categorisation system, revisable pattern matching and rudimentary logical derivation mechanisms.
If each of those facilities were sufficiently formulated (while always abiding to a natural implementation) it would be able to convert the visual percepts of an apple to a natural language sequence equivalent to "I perceived an apple in front of my visual sensor". It would do this by pattern matching its learnt expected attributes of an object constituting an apple to recent percepts. This language sequence would be stored in working memory, which would then serve as an additional percept. The automaton could then generate the sentence "I perceived an internal natural language sequence stating 'I perceive an apple in front of my visual sensor'". Again, this sentence would also be stored in memory.
Now if this automaton had been given the definition of self awareness, it could also perform a pattern matching operation to recognise that because it can perceive its own internally generated natural language sequences it meets the requirements of experiencing "thoughts" as a self aware entity. It could then generate and store the natural language sequence "I can perceive internal thoughts".
Is such an automaton actually self aware? Is a supernatural element required, or can we say that any natural information processing system that can apply pattern matching mechanisms to itself is self aware?
Humans have a few extra mechanisms on top of the automaton I described (a supervised learning mechanism to reinforce / discourage some types of behaviour through qualia like physical pleasure and pain, and an unsupervised learning mechanism to manipulate other types of behaviour through subjective emotional qualia), but those mechanisms are ones we know can be manipulated through things like electrode stimulation which strongly suggests a natural implementation. However, the thing that I think the thought experiment demonstrates is that there is no functional difference between a sophisticated natural automaton that can generate natural language expressions based on both external percepts and recollections of previously generated expressions, and an entity that is self aware through unexplainable supernatural means. If an automaton is able to pattern match and derive the statement "I am self aware", why not call it self aware? What else is needed?
[QUOTE=HumanAbyss;44598626]it sounds like to me any unsupported philosophical theory on the brain and sentience to you is fine, but the second science tries to breach that, it's worthless junk science
which is just simply not true. the brain is not beyond our understanding and claiming it is is saying we shouldn't waste time trying to understand it and just go with whatever religion says rather than trying to actually understand it.[/QUOTE]
I am not fine with any philosophical theory on the matter, a person must draw their perspective on this matter from their own world view (as there is currently little else to draw a perspective from), so their idea of where the mind comes from and where it goes after death is only as good as their world view.
Also I never proposed that trying to understand the brain is junk science, I have simply stated that the current scientific perspective on where the mind comes from is inconclusive. So anyone who has a purely scientific view on the matter will likewise be inconclusive. To deviate from that view is to go beyond what scientific discovery has shown us thus far. I personally do not think that understanding the brain will offer sufficient explanation for every facet of the human mind, but I have no objections to further studying of it.
[QUOTE=Memnoth;44598921]If the theory explained is nonsensical to you, you are proposing a dogmatic appeal to simply reject the notion of something that therefore may not be explainable to you.[/QUOTE]
I did explain my perceived logical inconsistencies with your hypothesis with an appreciation of the possibility that you would perhaps clarify your position to explain why those perceptions may be incorrect.
[QUOTE]That's an incorrect viewpoint, there was no presumption included since my definition of a soul differs from others in the sense that it is based on empirical observations of the universe. I simply used that particular name for the sense of semantic value.[/QUOTE]
What you implicate is some property that binds your conscious existence to the fundamental particles of which you are constituted, a binding that persists after your death and somehow resumes your conscious existence when those particles are in some favourable configuration in the future. To me that sounds quite a bit like a supernatural soul is required, whereas naturally there would be no rational reason to define a relationship between prior conscious instances using the same component parts unless some propagation of memories was involved.
[QUOTE=Ziks;44599078]What you implicate is some property that binds your conscious existence to the fundamental particles of which you are constituted, a binding that persists after your death and somehow resumes your conscious existence when those particles are in some favourable configuration in the future. To me that sounds quite a bit like a supernatural soul is required, whereas naturally there would be no rational reason to define a relationship between prior conscious instances using the same component parts unless some propagation of memories was involved.[/QUOTE]
I want empirical data on the premise that consciousness is separate from it's defining cerebral matter.
[editline]20th April 2014[/editline]
[QUOTE=Ziks;44599078]I did explain my perceived logical inconsistencies with your hypothesis with an appreciation of the possibility that you would perhaps clarify your position to explain why those perceptions may be incorrect.[/QUOTE]
It says "TO you", not "by you".
[QUOTE=Memnoth;44599131]I want empirical data on the premise that consciousness is separate from it's defining cerebral matter.[/QUOTE]
That's not quire what I'm disagreeing with. Are we in agreement that consciousness emerges when matter is organised in a very specific way, such that certain relationships exist between regions of the larger structure that forms the brain? Surely after death those relationships are destroyed as the structure breaks apart, such that the only remaining relationships between the component particles apart from various physical interactions (electroweak / strong force / gravity etc) is the sentimental notion that they once belonged together in a structure we subjectively say is sentient. Are you suggesting each particle has some kind of memory to keep track of which sentient structures it used to belong to?
[editline]20th April 2014[/editline]
[QUOTE=Memnoth;44599131]It says "TO you", not "by you".[/QUOTE]
So essentially I am not intelligent enough to understand your profound and enlightened "theory" of consciousness, and if I think I can spot some fairly trivial logical issues it is because I don't understand it?
[QUOTE=Ziks;44599240]That's not quire what I'm disagreeing with. Are we in agreement that consciousness emerges when matter is organised in a very specific way, such that certain relationships exist between regions of the larger structure that forms the brain? Surely after death those relationships are destroyed as the structure breaks apart, such that the only remaining relationships between the component particles apart from various physical interactions (electroweak / strong force / gravity etc) is the sentimental notion that they once belonged together in a structure we subjectively say is sentient. Are you suggesting each particle has some kind of memory to keep track of which sentient structures it used to belong to?[/QUOTE]
And this barely makes sense to me, because I see no distinguishment between the brain and consciousness. Which leads me to:
[QUOTE=Ziks;44599240]So essentially I am not intelligent enough to understand your profound and enlightened "theory" of consciousness, and if I think I can spot some fairly trivial logical issues it is because I don't understand it?[/QUOTE]
Not unintelligent. Just less able to see what I see. Maybe our backgrounds are so diverse we can't make sense to each-other, that's what I meant.
Edit: Basically what I'm saying is, if time is infinite, an infinite amount of events occur. Therefore, the particles that make up your brain now, does so again in the future.
[QUOTE=Memnoth;44599348]And this barely makes sense to me, because I see no distinguishment between the brain and consciousness. Which leads me to:
Not unintelligent. Just less able to see what I see. Maybe our backgrounds are so diverse we can't make sense to each-other, that's what I meant.[/QUOTE]
Do you appreciate that this is reciprocated? It is also possible that you are unable to see what I see, and so are unaware of the issues I identified with your hypothesis. We are both obviously convinced that our own respective positions are more rational than the other's, but we can't both be correct.
I'll humour you for a bit and assume that somehow the specific particles that make up your conscious mind are important, rather than the relationships between them. For your hypothesis to work, what percentage of the particles that make up your brain are required in some future being's brain for that being to be a continuation of your consciousness (a reincarnation of you)? Do the particles need to be in the same configuration, or just anywhere in the brain? If no memories persist from previous reincarnations, in what sense are they the same individual?
[QUOTE=Ziks;44599447]Do you appreciate that this is reciprocated?[/QUOTE]
That's not how I see the world, I'm both autistic and bipolar, life is facts and numbers, every single situation. My hobby consists of studying thesauruses.
[QUOTE=Ziks;44599447]It is also possible that you are unable to see what I see, and so are unaware of the issues I identified with your hypothesis. We are both obviously convinced that our own respective positions are more rational than the other's, but we can't both be correct.[/QUOTE]
Actually we can, it just takes different semantic values that essentially mean the same.
[QUOTE=Ziks;44599447]I'll humour you for a bit and assume that somehow the specific particles that make up your conscious mind are important, rather than the relationships between them. For your hypothesis to work, what percentage of the particles that make up your brain are required in some future being's brain for that being to be a continuation of your consciousness (a reincarnation of you)? Do the particles need to be in the same configuration, or just anywhere in the brain? If no memories persist from previous reincarnations, in what sense are they the same individual?[/QUOTE]
You have given me something to think about.
[QUOTE=Memnoth;44599348]Edit: Basically what I'm saying is, if time is infinite, an infinite amount of events occur. Therefore, the particles that make up your brain now, does so again in the future.[/QUOTE]
This is getting a bit closer to what I believe, but there are still a few key issues. For one thing, we don't currently believe this universe will exist in a form that supports life eternally. Current estimates for the life expectancy of the universe under a heat death scenario place that limit at between 1-100 trillion years (at which point stars will no longer form, with the universe cooling to a point that brains such as ours are unsustainable). Depending on your requirements for how similar future structures must be to a past brain for it to be a continuation of its consciousness, this is far too soon for your brain structure to be exactly repeated by a future configuration of its component particles.
However, if you abandon the notion that the specific particles that make up your mind are important and decide that the relationships between them are what matter, then due to the size of the universe/multiverse there are infinitely many instances of conciousness that are indistinguishable from your own far away in this universe in the future, past and present, and also in other post-inflation bubbles (assuming eternal inflation theory is correct).
My own belief is that the important aspect in defining one observer moment to be a continuation of another is that it shares a subset of memories, at least enough for the observer moment to be convinced that it is a continuation of the other. In that sense (and again, assuming a sufficiently large universe/multiverse) we are immortal. If some non-deterministic event causes an instance of my consciousness to end, somewhere in spacetime is another instance of me that shares the same history up to that event but with the difference of surviving with a more fortunate roll of the dice. The instance(s) of me that died due to the event would not experience non-existence, but the instance(s) that survived would experience their fortune. At any moment in time, the only instances of me that exist are the ones that survived each prior non-deterministic diceroll. I can never experience being dead, so I am immortal.
[QUOTE=Ziks;44598971]I still don't entirely understand the viewpoint that it is rational to claim that because we can't currently fully explain how consciousness functions we should assume there is a supernatural element to it. Surely it is by definition scientific to pursue the assumption that a system which is currently not well understood has a natural (scientific) explanation?[/QUOTE]
Rightly so, I have neither claimed that we should assume something to be supernatural in nature because we do not understand it. All that I said was that science has not reached a conclusion about the actual origins of the mind and thus the statement that it is purely natural process is unscientific as well.
Also when I propose an immaterial origin of the mind, I don't mean to inject mysticism into the discussion, to the contrary the features of the mind that are unmatched in nature are rather mundane from our perspective as we make use of them constantly.
Why would science by definition make the assumption that there is only natural process? I've never heard of that as being one of the axioms of the scientific method. It seems rather redundant given that science is meant to be the best method of understanding nature, so of course it would only deal with the natural. However, that does not mean that assuming there is nothing but nature is scientific perspective, that is a conclusion that you can only come to by resorting to other sources of knowledge.
[QUOTE]I also wish to express my belief that consciousness isn't all that special or mystical. It's just an extremely useful system for processing, storing and generating information using a neural network that implements a hybrid supervised and unsupervised learning mechanism. Any additional "special" phenomena such as the appreciation of beauty, happiness, love and so on can be penned down as emergent subjective baggage until proven otherwise.[/QUOTE]
I believe the mind to be non-physical in origin. Expressing itself through a physical base (the body) that contains the inner workings that allow it to do so, but as the mind affects the body the body also affects the mind in a similar fashion. So their existence together is as a single whole instead of the conception of the mind being the pilot of the body. I believe our subjective experiences are not equatable to emergent properties of extreme complexity and that our intentionality is not something that can arise from purely natural means. So essentially I do not think you can gain an exhaustive understanding of a person's mind and thoughts from merely observing the inner workings of their brain.
[QUOTE]I think the thought experiment that really worked for me was to imagine a sufficiently advanced automaton with a sophisticated percept processing and categorisation system, revisable pattern matching and rudimentary logical derivation mechanisms.
If each of those facilities were sufficiently formulated (while always abiding to a natural implementation) it would be able to convert the visual percepts of an apple to a natural language sequence equivalent to "I perceived an apple in front of my visual sensor". It would do this by pattern matching its learnt expected attributes of an object constituting an apple to recent percepts. This language sequence would be stored in working memory, which would then serve as an additional percept. The automaton could then generate the sentence "I perceived an internal natural language sequence stating 'I perceive an apple in front of my visual sensor'". Again, this sentence would also be stored in memory.
Now if this automaton had been given the definition of self awareness, it could also perform a pattern matching operation to recognise that because it can perceive its own internally generated natural language sequences it meets the requirements of experiencing "thoughts" as a self aware entity. It could then generate and store the natural language sequence "I can perceive internal thoughts".
Is such an automaton actually self aware? Is a supernatural element required, or can we say that any natural information processing system that can apply pattern matching mechanisms to itself is self aware?[/QUOTE]
I'll grant that a purely natural system can create the phrase, "I perceived an apple in front of my visual sensor" but it certainly would not have the capacity of making the statement in consideration of its full meaning.
Instead the statement would essentially mean, "apple" from the perspective of the automaton. The rest of the information in the language is irrelevant to the automaton as the processes by which it came to make the statement only allowed it to identify a stimulus as "apple". By doing so the the automaton is not thinking about the apple, or any apple for that matter, all its doing is fitting stimuli under "apple". Apple being simply the information stored in its memory and not any broad conception of an external object even if it is being applied to what is in fact an external object.
Similarly, the automaton cannot state "I perceived..." in any meaningful way, at least no more than a digital camera can say "I am perceiving a face and will duly center in on it" in a meaningful way. Even if it had information stored about itself, it would be simply an awareness, in the third person as opposed to actual self awareness. So what it effectively means by "I perceived..." is "The automaton observed...". Likewise it could not actually say "...my visual sensor." as all it could actually mean is "...the visual sensors it is equipped with".
What you are essentially left with is a statement like, "The automaton observed apple with the visual sensors it is equipped with." as that would be the most accurate description in language of what it is "thinking". Certainly you can replace words with other words in the statement to make it sound like there is personality to the automaton, but the fact remains that doing so does not resemble the actual processes by which it comes to make that statement.
Now the question comes to what self-awareness is and whether that kind of third person regard is at all comparable to what we experience as self-awareness, I would say no. There is no indication that the stream of data represented by "The automaton observed..." is a reference to some actual conception of a self that you and I have. Not to mention we do not really have to perceive thoughts at all, they are simply present, so can we really say that the automaton is thinking in the same way that we do?
[QUOTE]Humans have a few extra mechanisms on top of the automaton I described (a supervised learning mechanism to reinforce / discourage some types of behaviour through qualia like physical pleasure and pain, and an unsupervised learning mechanism to manipulate other types of behaviour through subjective emotional qualia), but those mechanisms are ones we know can be manipulated through things like electrode stimulation which strongly suggests a natural implementation.[/QUOTE]
The fact that you can make a subjective experience come about through natural means does not mean that the experience is strictly natural. Certainly you can manipulate the nervous system to bring about stimulation that puts a person in the state of mind, but you are not manipulating their experience of of the stimulus, simply what they are experiencing. All stimulus is essentially the same if you go far enough along the nervous system, it can be boiled down to action potentials or graded potentials(depending on how close the sensory organ is to the brain). All that does is make the stimulus natural though.
[QUOTE]However, the thing that I think the thought experiment demonstrates is that there is no functional difference between a sophisticated natural automaton that can generate natural language expressions based on both external percepts and recollections of previously generated expressions, and an entity that is self aware through unexplainable supernatural means. If an automaton is able to pattern match and derive the statement "I am self aware", why not call it self aware? What else is needed?[/QUOTE]
Actual awareness of self is vital, just because it can mimic a self aware being does not mean it has an actual conception of what the self is from its perspective is. True intentionality would be another factor as well, given that it can not actually reference another object, it can only reference a chunk of information that it has stored within itself.
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