Hi Bruno Marchal >From the standpoint of Leibniz's metaphysics, God is necessary because He runs the whole show. In that case, the concept of "gap" is irrelevent.
Roger Clough, rclo...@verizon.net 8/31/2012 Leibniz would say, "If there's no God, we'd have to invent him so that everything could function." ----- Receiving the following content ----- From: Bruno Marchal Receiver: everything-list Time: 2012-08-30, 13:11:51 Subject: Re: Two reasons why computers IMHO cannot exhibit intelligence On 29 Aug 2012, at 20:09, Craig Weinberg wrote: On Wednesday, August 29, 2012 1:22:38 PM UTC-4, William R. Buckley wrote: Cells are indeed controlled by software (as represented in wetware form ? i.e. DNA). It isn't really clear exactly what controls what in a living cell. I can say that cars are controlled by traffic signals, clocks, and calendars. To whatever we ascribe control, we only open up another level of unexplained control beneath it. What makes DNA readable to a ribosome? What makes anything readable to anything? Encoding and decoding, or application and abstraction, or addition and multiplication, ... Sense is irreducible. >From the first person perspective. Yes. For machine's too. No software can control anything, even itself, unless something has the power to make sense of it as software and the power to execute that sense within itself as causally efficacious motive. This seems to me like justifying the persistence of the physical laws by invoking God. It is too quick gap filling for me, and does not explain anything, as relying on fuzzy vague use of words. I might find sense there, but in the context of criticizing mechanism, I find that suspicious, to be frank. Bruno http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
