On Fri, Jan 20, 2012 at 3:48 PM, Craig Weinberg <[email protected]>wrote:
" you will find that the word intelligence never included the possibility > of inanimate objects in the first place. That's because the very word "inanimate" means something that does not do complex things like turn carbon dioxide, water and nitrogen in the air into wood and strawberries and cotton, or behave intelligently like animals and especially human beings. Until very very recently the dividing line between animate and inanimate seemed very sharp and even philosophers, who worry about the damnedest things, didn't worry about it much. But times change and that razor sharp line is fast turning into a big grey blob. And actually in the real world there are very few razor sharp lines between categories. " your your brain is wired to support *your* personal agenda" Then it's deterministic. > "It's heredity, environment, and choice." It's heredity, environment, and randomness. > "They feed back on each other. Your choices can influence your environment > and vice versa." OK, but both positive and negative feedback loops are deterministic. " Where does the 'own free will' come in" > Cannot comment, don't know what ASCII string "own free will" means. > " Haven't you been arguing this whole time that the universe is > deterministic" > I have to ask myself why I bother to continue this debate when you aren't even trying, you aren't even paying attention. From day one I said that some things are not deterministic. I also said something that I would have thought was uncontroversial even if a bit dull, I said everything is deterministic or it is not. But you disagree, you say some things are not deterministic but also not not deterministic, and such fuzzy thinking is not the path to enlightenment. > " and that's why there is no (ASCII expletive deleted)?" > And the ASCII string "free will" does exist and I have never denied that, but I don't know what it means and neither do you. Cows say "Moo" duck say "quack" and people say "free will". " somethings happen because we choose one reason over another." > And we choose one reason over another for a reason or we did not. Is this matter really worthy of debate? > "Didn't I list for you some examples of what free will means?" > Yes you did, and didn't I show that every one of those examples was circular or ended with a word like "pick" or "choose" or "prefer" as if that settled the matter, but that did not settle the matter because there was always a very very obvious question that just begged to be asked regarding them. > " Free will the difference between voluntary and involuntary control of > the body. > Free will is gibberish but consciousness is not. If its voluntary then you have conscious control over what your body does, if it's involuntary then you do not. Thus we must conclude that there is a lot of things going on in the brain that have nothing to do with consciousness; for example, we seldom voluntarily become very sad, but often we do so nevertheless. I can control some things like the muscles in my fingers but I can not control the muscles in my heart. My car's computer can control the air fuel ratio in the engine but it can't control the pressure in the tires. "Free will is the feeling of active participation in one's own life." > Free will is the feeling we get from not knowing what the result of a calculation will be until we have finished the calculation " Free will is the difference between premeditated murder and accidental > manslaughter." > Free will is the gibberish responsible for the criminal justice system being logically inconsistent and thus inevitably ending up being such a bad joke. " Free will is the ordinary process by which we choose to express ourselves > in words and gestures." > Did one mind choose to transfer information from his mind to another mind for a reason, or did one mind choose to transfer information from his mind to another mind for no reason? " Free will is choosing between many ambivalently weighted options or > creating new options" > That's collation and computers are good at that sort of calculation. And a hurricane is the size and intensity it is for many many reasons and all those reasons interact with each other in astronomically complex ways; so does a hurricane have free will? " If a car manufacturer puts a radio in it's cars, does that mean that > radio comes from automotive engineering?" No. > " I have in fact suggested that consciousness is selected for directly by > a chain of recursive qualitative augmentations to > sensorimotive-electromagnetism. Detection of detection --> sensation. > Sensation of sensation --> feeling ---> perception ---> awareness ---> > consciousness." You have a talent for bafflegab and thus could have a bright future in psychology as well as philosophy. "If that were the case then being unconscious should not affect someone's > intelligence" But the only way to test for unconsciousness is by observing if their behavior is unintelligent. In your case you are hamstrung even more because you don't believe that a person doing smart things is any indication that they are smart. So not only don't you have a test for consciousness you don't even have a way of knowing if someone is intelligent. "and someone's IQ should determine whether or not they are conscious." > Perhaps it's true, perhaps people with a boiling water IQ are more conscious than average people, there is no way to know. > " You've got it backwards. You can only be intelligent when you are awake > or aware." > If you say so. Watson acted intelligently, thus Watson was intelligent (for some bizarre reason you refuse to take this step) thus Watson was awake or aware. " everything else being equal a intelligent animal will survive better and >> have more offspring than a stupid one" >> > " If that were true than the overwhelming majority of animals would be > very intelligent. No because everything else is not equal. For 90% of the 4 billion year history of life Evolution didn't know how to make anything intelligent and only in the last .001% did it manage to come up with something very intelligent, like us. Also intelligent animals are big, reproduce slowly, and require much more fuel than small stupid fast breeding frugal creatures; but as I said everything else being equal a intelligent animal will survive better and have more offspring than a stupid one " You and every other intelligence is conscious as far as I know. I have no > evidence or intuition to the contrary." > At last something I can agree with completely and without reservation. 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