From: Henderson Ian (irh196@ecs.soton.ac.uk)
Date: Thu May 24 2001 - 13:22:06 BST
In reply to: Kyriacou Elias: "Re: Dennett: Making Conscious Robots"
>> Mo:
>> At this present date, animal cloning has been possible, and human clones
>> are becoming reality. A robot's silicon chips, wires, tiny motors and
>> cameras can all represent parts of the human anatomy, so you can build a
>> robot to mimic human functions. A consciousness is different, a human
>> clone can have exactly the same functionality as its cloned image.
>> Someone's consciousness is individual to themselves.
> Kyriacou:
> I agree totally with the statement that each person has
> their own unique conscious. Furthermore, if the goal of science
> is to artificially create a thing which has a conscious, then
> cloning a human being achieves this task.
Henderson:
The goal of cognitive science is to reverse engineer intelligence. If we
just wanted to create intelligence beings, we can use cloning or
procreation, but neither of these necessarily provides any insight at all
into *how* the mind *works*. Science, whether physical or social, is
concerned with *mechanism* -- finding out *how* things work. It is not
primarily concerned with creating wondrous artifacts, although such
artifacts may be a means to the end of understanding (as is the case with
Cog): the products of science are not ends in themselves.
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