An Afterlife? - Richard's 5th Post - Thinking and Experience

Richard's first reply to me agrees that computer thinking is a process whereas human thinking is an experience.

Richard's post was made on 11 May 2008 at 05:55 pm:

Hi there Peter, I cam across your post with a huge interest, as I studied Philosophy of mind a little in my first year at University, we also covered a question you asked in your post, about whether computers can think. The conclusion I came to back then was that the aim of a computer is to speed up the processing and memorising abilities us humans have, of which these do not neccessarily need a conscious subjective mind like us humans have.

The other thing I gathered a few thoughts on was the meaning of thinking, as to answer this question it is vital you can say what it means. The definition I come up with is that to think, one must have at least one experience of anything not being able to read thoughts in one's head. This is the difference between the processing ability of a computer, and the thinking of a human. A computer's processes can be logged and read like a book, whereas a human's thoughts can never be realistically confirmed until the person says what their subjective thoughts were.

I hope you find some things in there that strike chords of interest with you, and I look forward to hearing from you.

Tags: afterlife process thinking experience philosophy of mind computers

Richard Debnam