Stathis Papaioannou wrote:
On 20/02/2008, Eric B. Ramsay <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
During the late 70's when I was at McGill, I attended a public talk given by Feynman on
quantum physics. After the talk, and in answer to a question posed from a member of the
audience, Feynman said something along the lines of :" I have here in my pocket a
prescription from my doctor that forbids me to answer questions from or get into
discussions with philosophers" or something like that. After spending the last
couple of days reading all the links on the outrageous proposition that rocks, rainstorms
or plates of spaghetti implement the mind, I now understand Feynman's sentiment. What a
waste of mental energy. A line of discussion as equally fruitless as solipsism. I am in
full agreement with Richard Loosemore on this one.
The possibility of mind uploading to computers strictly depends on
functionalism being true; if it isn't then you may as well shoot
yourself in the head as undergo a destructive upload. Functionalism
(invented, and later repudiated, by Hilary Putnam) is philosophy of
mind if anything is philosophy of mind, and the majority of cognitive
scientists are functionalists. Are you still happy asserting that it's
all bunk?
FWIW, I think that there are many philosophers who are definitely worth
reading, but the problem is just the signal-to-noise ratio.
Eric's quote from Feynmann was right on the money: in these kinds of
discussions, if take Feymann's attitude and pull out the
anti-philosopher prescription, then 90% of the time you are going find a
more productive way of spending the next hour.
Richard Loosemore
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singularity
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