On Mon, Apr 22, 2019 at 7:51 PM 'Brent Meeker' via Everything List < [email protected]> wrote:
> > > On 4/22/2019 4:24 PM, Jason Resch wrote: > > > > On Tue, Nov 6, 2018 at 3:16 AM Bruno Marchal <[email protected]> wrote: > >> >> On 5 Nov 2018, at 02:56, Martin Abramson <[email protected]> >> wrote: >> >> Consciousness is a program. >> >> >> Consciousness might be related to a program, but is not a program, that >> would identify a first person notion with a third person notion, like a >> glass of bear and its price. >> >> >> >> It explores whatever entity it finds itself within and becomes that >> creature's awareness of the world. For humans it becomes the identity or >> soul which responds to anything that affects the organism. It can be >> uploaded into a data bank but otherwise it dissipates with death. >> >> >> >> How? We can attach a soul to a machine, but a machine cannot attach its >> soul to any particular computations, only to the infinity of (relative) >> computations, and there is at least aleph_zero one, of not a continuum. >> >> Bruno >> >> >> > The above reminded me of this quote from Alan Turing: > > Personally I think that spirit is really eternally connected with matter > but certainly not always by the same kind of body. I did believe it > possible for a spirit at death to go to a universe entirely separate from > our own, but now I consider that matter and spirit are so connected that > this would be a contradiction in terms. It is possible however but unlikely > that such universes may exist. > > Then as regards the actual connection between spirit and body I > consider that the body by reason of being a living body can ``attract´´ and > hold on to a ``spirit,´´ whilst the body is alive and awake the two are > firmly connected. When the body is asleep I cannot guess what happens but > when the body dies the ``mechanism´´ of the body, holding the spirit is > gone and the spirit finds a new body sooner or later perhaps immediately. > > > It seems otiose to postulate a separate spirit. A pitiful attempt to > grasp immortality. Isn't it plain that what is "immaterial" and > distinguishes a brain of a rock is that the brain instantiates processes > which incorporate memory, purpose, perception, and action. > Is it otiose to make a distinction between a "story" and a "book", or a "program" and a "computer", or might there be value in that nuance? Clearly a program stops executing locally when a computer executing that program is destroyed, but of course this says nothing about the destruction, existence, non-existence, continuation, quantity, or locations of other instances of that program. I think here Turing was making a similar point, in the nuanced distinction between a mind and a brain. Jason -- 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 https://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
