On Tue, May 14, 2019 at 9:55 AM 'Brent Meeker' via Everything List < [email protected]> wrote:
> On 5/13/2019 4:18 PM, Telmo Menezes wrote: > > 3) Or maybe it's "what the brain does", as many physicalists like to say. > My body as mass, because the atoms that make up my body amount to that > mass. What amounts to my consciousness? What are the building blocks? There > is no accounting, there is no description in yours or van Neumann's sense. > > > But there are models that work. That was my point in citing AI projects > like Watson and AlphaGO. The building blocks are perception, information > processing, values, and action. You say "there is no accounting" but > that's because you're using "accounting" as a synonym for "explain". The > accounting in scientific theory is in terms of a model that works. You're > demanding of a theory of consciousness that will do for consciousness what > general relativity* does not do* for the metric or for the stress-energy > tensor, what Darwin* did not do* for reproduction with variation. Maybe > someday Bruno's theory will yield some interesting prediction (of the > future), but until then it's a theory doesn't do any work. So far it > doesn't even account for the effect of holding your breathe too long or > ingesting LSD. The physical model that says consciousness is the brain > processing information by neuron's firing at synapses...a very successful > model. But the mysterians of consciousness want to pooh-pooh that because > it doesn't talk about how their consciousness "feels". But neither does > Bruno's . He talks about "arithmetic, seen from the inside" as though > that was more than a Platonic metaphor. > > Brent > Very well said, Brent. I will have to try and remember this. Thanks. Bruce -- 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 view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/CAFxXSLThQZAxGu3RdzrfJqDdB-H%3DAgxR77fGb1JybNz4zindfQ%40mail.gmail.com.
