So... at what point does the reductionism end? Or, more specifically, at what point do we decide that the degree of reductionism is just getting silly?
It used to be a mind-boggling claim that "I" was my brain (note: mind-boggling, not brain-boggling). Recently, the "brain in a vat" paradox has more or less replaced Plato's cave, where the original clearly required an entire, bodily "I" for the story to work. Now we are dissatisfied again, apparently because we find "I = my brain" to be too holistic for our tastes? Now we try to determine the minimal specifiable number of brain parts that need to be in the vat? Then, apparently, we are surprised to find out that it is hard to specify? Who really thinks that one day we will find the quarter-inch square in the brain where "I" resides? Is it really any better to look for a small cluster of dispersed neurons? Can it improve anything to say that it isn't the cluster, but a process that occurs within the cluster? Bah! A pox on both your... something... not houses... but something. Eric On Wed, Aug 12, 2009 12:10 PM, "Robert Howard" <[email protected]> wrote: > v\:* {behavior:url(#default#VML);} o\:* {behavior:url(#default#VML);} w\:* {behavior:url(#default#VML);} .shape {behavior:url(#default#VML);} st1\:*{behavior:url(#default#ieooui) } > > > >We are a “strange loop”... > > > > > > > > > > > >I Think --> therefore --> I Am --- > > > >^ | > > > >| | > > > >| | > > > > ------------------------------------------ > > > > > > > > > > > >Rob Howard > > > > > > > > > >From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Victoria Hughes >Sent: Tuesday, August 11, 2009 8:46 PM >To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group >Subject: [FRIAM] not a place but a process- > > > > > > > > > >The self feels like a singular thing - I am me - and yet it comes from no single brain area and depends on a vast network of neurons, distributed across the brain. This means that we are not a place: we are a process. As Daniel Dennett wrote, our mind is made up "of multiple channels in which specialist circuits try, in parallel pandemoniums, to do their various things, creating Multiple Drafts as they go." > > > > > > > > > > > >From <http://scienceblogs.com/cortex/2009/08/identity_delusions.php> > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > >Tory > > >
============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
