2009/8/23 Brent Meeker <meeke...@dslextreme.com>: > > Stathis Papaioannou wrote: >> 2009/8/22 Brent Meeker <meeke...@dslextreme.com>: >> >>> That's an interesting question and one that I think relates to the >>> importance of context. A scan of your brain would capture all the >>> information in the Shannon/Boltzman sense, i.e. it would determine which >>> of the possible configurations and processes were realized. However, >>> those concerned about the "hard problem", will point out that this >>> misses the fact that the information represents or "means" something. >>> To know the meaning of the information would require knowledge of the >>> world in which the brain acts and perceives, including a lot of >>> evolutionary history. Image scanning the brain of an alien found in a >>> crash at Roswell. Without knowledge of how he acts and the evolutionary >>> history of his species it would be essentially impossible to guess the >>> meaning of the patterns in his brain. My point is that it is not just >>> computation that is consciousness or cognition, but computation with >>> meaning, which means within a certain context of action. >> >> You wouldn't be able to guess what the alien is thinking by scanning >> his brain, but you could then run a simulation, exposing it to various >> environmental stimuli, and it should behave the same way as the >> original brain (if weak AI is true) and have the same experiences as >> the original brain (if strong AI is true). >> >> > > True. But the point was directed at the MGA. Part of the simulation > must be outside the brain - and possibly are very great deal. So > while it seems intuitively clear that the brain can be emulated, it's > not so clear that the brain + enough environment can be. > > Brent
The point you make about the indispensability of the context of action to recovering meaning from 'information' is at the heart of my response to Peter's question. The 'complete' brain scan is - literally - meaning-less independent of its embodiment in some interpretative context of action (and its environment) . Were we to imagine an 'eliminativist' account of brain events (which to carry meaning for us would inevitably be an account in terms of alternative higher-level concepts) it's all too easy to forget (i.e. the 'fish in water' effect) that the *meaning* of any such reinterpretation is also solely recoverable by re-embodiment in some interpretative context. The ultimate attempt to 'eliminate' this entails the shift to the 'view from nowhere', which results in the complete stripping of meaning from the universe itself, as 'observed' abstracted from any interpretative context whatsoever. What can make this hard to see, in the gedanken experiment, is that we can't help embodying this impossible view in an imagined context that we carry with us, and hence we continue to rely - illicitly - on the historical continuity of our interpretations. In the example of the alien brain, as has been pointed out, the context of meaning is to be discovered only in the its own local embodiment of its history and current experience. In Stathis' example of *our* hypothesized observation of the alien's behaviour - whether simulated or 'real' - any meaning to be found is again recoverable exclusively in the context of either its, or our, historic and current context of experience and action. It is obvious, under this analysis, that information taken-out-of-context is - in that form - literally meaningless. The function of observable information is to stabilise relational causal configurations against their intelligible reinstantiation in some context of meaning and action. Absent such reembodiment, all that remains is noise. David > > > > --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---