On Wednesday, March 20, 2013 7:32:11 PM UTC-4, stathisp wrote: > > On Thu, Mar 21, 2013 at 1:51 AM, Craig Weinberg > <whats...@gmail.com<javascript:>> > wrote: > > >> You say "it doesn't make sense" that intentional could come from > >> unintentional but I don't see that at all, not at all. You claim to > >> have an insight that other people don't have. > > > > > > Lots of people have had this insight. You say that intentional could > come > > from unintentional, but anyone can say that - what reasoning leads you > to > > that conclusion? What leads an unintentional phenomena to develop > > intentions? > > How could something non-living lead to something living?
Non-living and living are just different qualities of experience. Living systems are nested non-living systems, which gives rise to mortality and condenses an eternal perceptual frame into a more qualitatively saturated temporary perceptual frame. > How could > something non-computational could lead to something computational? > Easily. You have a bunch of junk in your closet, so you organize it. That is what computation is. A system for organizing experience. > > >> That's right, you can't see consciousness, but you can see if it's > >> deterministic in the usual sense. So do you in fact agree, after all > >> this argument, that the brain could be deterministic in the usual > >> sense? > > > > > > No because some of what the brain does is determined by consciousness > which > > we are aware of and understand. We could write off every spontaneous > change > > in brain activity as random, just as we could write off every unexpected > > change in the traffic flow of a city as random, but that's just how it > would > > look if we didn't know about the contribution of conscious people to > those > > patterns. > > Please show one piece of evidence demonstrating that a physical > process occurs in the brain that cannot be completely explained as > caused by another physical process. Note that it isn't good enough to > point to complex behaviour and say "in there somewhere". > Laughing at a joke demonstrates that semantic content causes physical responses. Any activity in the brain which relates to anything in the world or the mind has nothing to do with neurochemistry. Physical processes can induce experiences, but only because experiences are a priori part of the cosmos. There is nothing about the physical processes which you recognize which could possibly relate laughter to a joke, or anger to an injustice, etc. There is no way for your physics of the brain to represent anything except the brain. > >> >> So you claim that if the hydrogen atoms in my body were replaced > with > >> >> other hydrogen atoms I would stop being conscious? > >> > > >> > > >> > No, I think all hydrogen represents the same experience and capacity > for > >> > experience. > >> > >> So their history is irrelevant: > > > > > > No, their history is crucially important - it's just the same for every > > atom. > > Could you explain this? > It means that it isn't enough that hydrogen is shaped like we think hydrogen should be shaped, or that it reacts the way we think that it should react. What matters is that it knows how to be hydrogen - that it has a continuous history dating back to the creation of hydrogen. The atom is just one presentation of hydrogen, the deeper reality is a collection of capacities to interact with the universe - possibly to generate spacetime. > > >> all the atoms in my body could be > >> replaced with atoms specially imported from the Andromeda Galaxy and I > >> would feel just the same. > > > > > > Yes, but they could not be replaced with tiny sculptures of hydrogen or > > simulations of hydrogen. It has to be genuine hydrogen. > > At least you now agree that the atoms in my body could be replaced and > I would feel the same. What if the atoms were replaced by a person: > would I still have free will or would I, as you claim for a computer, > only have the will of the programmer? > What do you mean by replacing the atoms with a person? Like the China Brain? Quintillions of human beings each pretending to act like hydrogen? That wouldn't work, although you might be able to model chemistry that way. Craig > > -- > Stathis Papaioannou > -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
