On Sunday, November 1, 2015 at 8:39:12 PM UTC+11, Russell Standish wrote: > > On Sat, Oct 31, 2015 at 08:55:09PM -0700, Pierz wrote: > > > > Anyway it seems that if we're committed to computationalism plus Church > > thesis, then we have to consider the possibility that evolution may be a > > conscious process - indeed the onus should be on us to say why it > *wouldn't* be > > conscious. > > I don't think we know enough about consciousness to really say one way > or the other, so no the onus is not on anyone. > > "Onus" or not, computationalists should at least attempt to be consistent. If genetic algorithms are considered potentially conscious, then it is legitimate to ask why evolution itself would not be. One should examine all the ramifications of a theory and not simply wave the uncomfortable ones away by saying "we can't know." It's often in the pursuit of the implications of a theory to the last possible limit that things get interesting - think Einstein pursuing the constancy of the speed of light to its logical conclusion. It's also where the theory's flaws are likely to be exposed. It seems to me though that computationalists are generally mainly interested in explaining away the apparent mystery of the Hard Problem of consciousness in the brain, rather than overturning the conception of nature as an unconscious machine. But that *is* what it leads to ISTM - at least the Putnamesque, functional type version of CTM.
> Nevertheless, I highly suspect that our human consciousnesses are in > fact evolutionary processes, which I know is an answer to a very > different question. > > > -- > > ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- > > Prof Russell Standish Phone 0425 253119 (mobile) > Principal, High Performance Coders > Visiting Professor of Mathematics [email protected] > <javascript:> > University of New South Wales http://www.hpcoders.com.au > ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- > > -- 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 [email protected]. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
