This article was fairly interesting up to the final "question" he addressed, of machines and consciousness. Most of that was incredibly superficial and not very insightful. The quantum elements were slightly interesting, thouh hardly novel.
However, where this really fell apart to me was at the end, when he described Agent Smith's questioning of Morpheus as an example where Smith "appeared" conscious but "betrayed" his lack of consciousness.
First of all, he claims the statement, "The smell, if there is such a thing..." shows that Smith logically must question whether taste exists, not being able to experience it himself. However, that seems to be at best merely an assumption that that's what Smith was doing and, at worst, a huge stretch. I might, myself, say that, "This city has a smell of fear. That smell, if such a thing exists, is everywhere." That doesn't mean I question the existence of the concept of smell, but merely am not sure if there is such a thing as a "smell" of fear. It's the attempt to descibe an undescribable sensation and, at the same time, questioning your attempt at description's validity.
He goes on to say that Agent Smith saying he can "taste your stink," is an example of Agent Smith being unable to differentiate sensations and that, being unsentient, automatically works from the premise that sensations are all fungible, like raw information. Talk about taking prose incredibly literally. It makes me wonder whether the author is, in fact, an android. If speaking of manipuating one sense with another was an example of inhuman lack of understanding of subjective experience, then half a million poets that live among us are actually non-human computers, which is extremely disturbing. A poetic request of a woman to "Give me one last taste of the sweet tones of your voice," should attract Turing police to take away the requestor for android destruction, beyond the crime of trite poetry. This is another incredibly weak piece of evidence.
Finally, the author justifies all these things Agent Smith says thusly: "Smith is mimicking human behavior as a tactic to trick Morpheus into cooperation."
Wanting to trick Morpheus into cooperation suggests motives and desires. It suggests wants and long-term goals. These seem like rather conscious aspects. In fact, the author leaves completely unaddressed why, if all these Matrix adminstration are unsentient programs, they want to rule Earth, why they want to win out over the human rebels, or even more basically, why they want to survive. All these wants seem like the desires of a conscious entity. It definitely seems like a troubling enough problem to his premise that he should have addressed it.
Had he not delved into those issues of the consciousness, or lack thereof, of the Matrix administration, the article would have been an interesting read on the ideas behind some of the plot devices. The discussion on the phone booths to enter and exit was quite well executed. However, this final part to his essay seemed amateurish and incomplete, which ruined the overall subjective experience of the paper!:)
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This article was fairly interesting up to the final "question" he addressed, of machines and consciousness. Most of that was incredibly superficial and not very insightful. The quantum elements were slightly interesting, thouh hardly novel.
:)
However, where this really fell apart to me was at the end, when he described Agent Smith's questioning of Morpheus as an example where Smith "appeared" conscious but "betrayed" his lack of consciousness.
First of all, he claims the statement, "The smell, if there is such a thing..." shows that Smith logically must question whether taste exists, not being able to experience it himself. However, that seems to be at best merely an assumption that that's what Smith was doing and, at worst, a huge stretch. I might, myself, say that, "This city has a smell of fear. That smell, if such a thing exists, is everywhere." That doesn't mean I question the existence of the concept of smell, but merely am not sure if there is such a thing as a "smell" of fear. It's the attempt to descibe an undescribable sensation and, at the same time, questioning your attempt at description's validity.
He goes on to say that Agent Smith saying he can "taste your stink," is an example of Agent Smith being unable to differentiate sensations and that, being unsentient, automatically works from the premise that sensations are all fungible, like raw information. Talk about taking prose incredibly literally. It makes me wonder whether the author is, in fact, an android. If speaking of manipuating one sense with another was an example of inhuman lack of understanding of subjective experience, then half a million poets that live among us are actually non-human computers, which is extremely disturbing. A poetic request of a woman to "Give me one last taste of the sweet tones of your voice," should attract Turing police to take away the requestor for android destruction, beyond the crime of trite poetry. This is another incredibly weak piece of evidence.
Finally, the author justifies all these things Agent Smith says thusly: "Smith is mimicking human behavior as a tactic to trick Morpheus into cooperation."
Wanting to trick Morpheus into cooperation suggests motives and desires. It suggests wants and long-term goals. These seem like rather conscious aspects. In fact, the author leaves completely unaddressed why, if all these Matrix adminstration are unsentient programs, they want to rule Earth, why they want to win out over the human rebels, or even more basically, why they want to survive. All these wants seem like the desires of a conscious entity. It definitely seems like a troubling enough problem to his premise that he should have addressed it.
Had he not delved into those issues of the consciousness, or lack thereof, of the Matrix administration, the article would have been an interesting read on the ideas behind some of the plot devices. The discussion on the phone booths to enter and exit was quite well executed. However, this final part to his essay seemed amateurish and incomplete, which ruined the overall subjective experience of the paper!