On Feb 10, 7:25 am, Quentin Anciaux <allco...@gmail.com> wrote: > 2012/2/10 Craig Weinberg <whatsons...@gmail.com>
> > > > > > > > > How does a gear or lever have an opinion? > > > > > > > > The problems with gears and levers is dumbness. > > > > > > > Does putting a billion gears and levers together in an arrangement > > > > > > make them less dumb? Does it start having opinions at some point? > > > > > > Does putting a billions neurons together in an arrangement make them > > less > > > > > dumb ? Does it start having opinions at some point ? > > > > > No, because neurons are living organisms in the first place, not > > > > gears. > > > > At which point does it start having an opinions ? > > > At every point when it is alive. > > That's not true, does a single neuron has an opinion ? two ? a thousand ? You asked me a question, I answered it, and now you claim that 'it's not true', then you go on asking the same question again. On what do you base your accusation? > > > We may not call them opinions > > Don't switch subject. I'm not in any way switching the subject. I'm clarifying that the question relies on a straw man of consciousness which reduces a complex human subjective phenomenon like 'opinions' to a binary silhouette. Do cats have opinions? Do chimpanzees? At what point do hominids begin to have opinions? When do they begin to have personality? When do humans become human? All of these are red herrings because they project an objective function on a subjective understanding. The point of multisense realism is to show how our default epistemologies are rooted in our own frame of reference so that there is no objective point where a person becomes a non-person through injury or deficiency, or a neuron has a human feeling by itself. These questions make the wrong assumptions from the start. What we do know is that human opinions are associated with one thing only - living human brains. We know that living human brains are only made of living neurons. We have not yet found anything that we can do to inorganic molecules will turn them into living neurons. This means that we have no reason to presume that an inorganic non-cell can ever be expected to do what cells do, any more than we can expect ammonia to do what milk does. > > > because > > we use that word to refer to an entire human being's experience, but > > the point is that being a living cell makes it capable of having > > different capacities than it does as a dead cell. > > Yes and so what ? a dead cell *does not* behave like a living cell, that's > enough. How do you know? What makes you think that things can be defined only by their behaviors? A person can behave like a brick wall, does that make it enough to make them a brick wall? > > > When it is dead, > > there is no biological sense going on, only chemical detection- > > reaction, which is time reversible. Biological sense isn't time > > reversible. > > > > Why simulated neurons > > > couldn't have opinions at that same point ? Vitalism ? > > > No, because there is no such thing as absolute simulation, > > There is no need for an "absolute" simulation... what do you mean by > "absolute" ? A copy which simulates the original in every way. > > > there is > > only imitation. Simulation is an imitation > > no, simulation is not imitation. Please explain. > > > designed to invite us to > > mistake it for genuine - which is adequate for things we don't care > > about much, but awareness cannot be a mistake. It is the absolute > > primary orientation, so it cannot ever be substituted. If you make > > synthetic neurons which are very close to natural neurons on every > > level, then you have a better chance of coming close enough that the > > resulting organism is very similar to the original. A simulation which > > is not made of something that forms a cell by itself (an actual cell, > > not a virtual sculpture of a cell) probably has no possibility of > > graduating from time reversible detection-reaction to other categories > > of sense, feeling, awareness, perception, and consciousness, just as a > > CGI picture > > A CGI picture *is a picture* not a simulation. Neither is an AGI application. That's what I'm saying. Simulation is a casual notion that doesn't stand up to further inspection. > > > of a neuron has no chance of producing milliliters of > > actual serotonin, acetylcholine, glutamate,etc. > > Is it needed for consciousness ? why ? It's needed for human consciousness I think because consciousness is an event, and those molecules are like the BIOS of the whole human OS. Not the molecules themselves, but the band of experiences/qualia which those molecules can tune into. Think of those experiences as the ancestors of our contemporary whole-brain scale experiences. Craig -- 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.
