On Friday, September 28, 2012 2:44:32 PM UTC-4, Stephen Paul King wrote: > > On 9/27/2012 11:57 PM, Craig Weinberg wrote: > > Are you saying that you expect replacing someone's brain would be no >> more problematic than replacing any other body part? >> >> Craig >> >> Hi Craig, >> >> I kinda have to side with Stathis a bit here. The problem that you >> are hinging an argument on it merely technical, it is not principled. My >> opinion is that a neuron is vastly more complex in its structure than a >> transistor, heck its got its own power supply and repair system and more >> built in! Nature, if anything, is frugal, there would not be redundant >> stuff in a neuron such that we only need to replace some aspect of it in >> order to achieve functional equivalence. >> >> The point is that the brain is a specialized biological computer >> > > Yes and no. It is biological and one of the things that it does is > compute, but computation is not sufficient to describe the brain (or any > organic cell, tissue, or system). > > > Hi Craig, > > I agree. It does not "just compute". > > > >> that has achieved computational universality because it learned how to >> process language. >> > > The role of language is controversial. It's important, no doubt, but it > isn't clear that human language is the killer app that enabled the rise of > Homo sapiens. We don't really know which organisms have language, nor can > we say for sure that any species has no language as far as I can tell. > Quorum sensing is bacterial language. Prairie dogs have language, birds, > crickets, trees. It depends how we define it. > > > Any representational and (at least potentially) sharable form of > interaction is language, in my thinking. >
That's what I think too. The entire universe can be considered language really. Texts. > > > It is because it can figure with symbols and representations that it >> can do what it does. This does not make it "special" in any miraculous way, >> it just shows us how Nature and its evolutionary ways is vastly more >> "intelligent" than we can possibly imagine ourselves to be. >> > > I agree it's not special in any miraculous way. I have never advocated > human exceptionalism. > > > I do advocate it. Humans are exceptional if merely because we can make > the claim and make attempts to demonstrate the possibility! The fact that > we can question whether we are or not and seek answers to the question of > consciousness, is exceptional! > I agree. I mean exceptional in the sense of that some people consider humans as being not really animals but special beings that happen to have an animal body. I see human beings as a clear product of the animal kingdom. > > What does that have to do with acting being a perfectly appropriate > counterfactual for the zombie assumption? > > > My point about zombies is that if we are going to stipulate their > existence as being exactly like humans except that they have no qualia > (first person percepts and all that), then we have to be consistent to the > definition in our discussions of them. > > If you had the technology to augment your acting skills in the way I described, then that is exactly what it would be. You would have a zombie mask that functions entirely by comparing detected brain data. Craig > > > -- > Onward! > > Stephen > http://webpages.charter.net/stephenk1/Outlaw/Outlaw.html > > -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msg/everything-list/-/L4kqKE1luIMJ. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected]. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
