Consider that we begin with a living, biological cell.
Next, we begin to remove systems and elements from the cell, and replace them with non-biological alternatives. For example, we replace the genome and nucleic acid production system with a nanotechnology systems that yields the same nucleic acids as products, in the same amounts over time as occurs in the natural cell. At what point does removal of some element yield irrevocable loss of state - it no longer lives but instead ceases all behavior, and returns to the non-living state? Whatever is that element that yields such irrevocable loss of state, that is a vital element. It is not a mystical or deistical definition. wrb From: everything-list@googlegroups.com [mailto:everything-list@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of Craig Weinberg Sent: Thursday, August 30, 2012 8:42 AM To: everything-list@googlegroups.com Cc: johnkcl...@gmail.com Subject: Re: Two reasons why computers IMHO cannot exhibit intelligence On Wednesday, August 29, 2012 3:54:49 PM UTC-4, John Clark wrote: On Tue, Aug 28, 2012 Craig Weinberg <whats...@gmail.com> wrote: > do not think that accusations of vitalism add anything to the issue. It's really nothing but an ad hominem attack. It's not ad hominem if its true. No, it doesn't matter what names you call someone, or whether you think they are true, the point is that name calling is not a logical argument and that it derails the discussion. We can't be talking about anything except vitalism and as one of the most enthusiastic apologists of the idea on this list I'm surprised you consider the term an insult. It is because that you say that I have something to do with defending vitalism that I know you don't understand my ideas. There is nothing special about organic matter that makes life possible. There is nothing about matter that makes anything possible. It is the sense that is made through matter that makes things possible, and that sense has qualitative potentials which are represented in particular ways. The way that biological qualities are represented in space and matter is as living cells, tissues, and living bodies. Being cell like doesn't make something alive, being alive leaves a cell like footprint. > We use certain materials for computer chips and not hamsters Because (you think) hamsters have some sort of horseshit vital force that computer chips lack. Um, no. Because you can't control hamsters. I don't care if hamsters were made of cobalt and zinc, you can't make a computer out of them because they have their own agenda that you can't effectively control. I don't want to sink to your level, but if you continue with your false accusations and ad hominem horseshit, the I'm not going to bother with you. > organic chemistry, biology, zoology, and anthropology present dramatic qualitative breakthroughs in elaboration of sense. That's exactly what I'm talking about, vitalism; a idea that sucked when it was all the rage in the 18'th century and suckes even more so today. Your opinions about what sucks might be interesting to some people. You should find them. To say that there is a qualitative breakthrough between biology and zoology is vitalist how? I would say that the qualitative bump from single cell to animal is even more significant than the bump from molecule to cell, or atom to molecule. I am talking about a punctuated equilibrium of scale and history, not a categorization of substances. > This is not vitalism. How would your above idea be any different if it were vitalism?? Vitalism would be that there are some substances which are used by biological organisms and others that are not. There would be no bump from cell to animal to human being, or even from molecule to cell - vitalism would be that living cells are composed of life-giving molecules which are fundamentally different from non life-giving molecules. I'm not saying that at all. I am saying that you can have all the organic chemistry you like and you still won't get cells unless the molecules themselves figure out how to make them. I don't say that silicon can't make cells, only that they haven't so far, and that if we force silicon to act like cells, they won't be the same as organic cells which generate themselves naturally. Clearly you believe that organic chemistry has something that computer chips lack; Clearly you believe that there is nothing that a ham sandwich has that a bag of sand lacks. perhaps you don't like the phrase "vital life force" for that difference and prefer some other euphemism, but it amounts to the same thing. No, it is not the same thing in any way. I am specifically saying that there are no forces or fields in the universe. None. Not literally anyhow. No more than there is a force which stops my car at a red light. There is only sense: perception and participation on different levels of qualitative depth. > Programs can and do produce outcomes that are not directly anticipated by the programmer Absolutely! > but that these outcomes are trivial If they could only do trivial stuff computers would not have become a multitrillion dollar industry that has revolutionized the modern world. That's like saying 'If soft drinks were just carbonated sugar water with drugs in it, they wouldn't have become a multibillion dollar industry...". It's a fallacy and a misrepresentation of my comment. I didn't ever say that computers can only 'do trivial stuff', only that their capacity to exceed the constraints of their programming is trivial. Computers have capacities that far exceed our own, but only in some respects and not others. They are good at doing boring repetitive shit that we can't stand doing. Why are they good at it? Because they are unbelievably stupid. They will compute Pi to the last digit until they corrode just because someone accidentally pressed the enter key. Dumb. Not sentient. No awareness. They don't care, they don't feel, they don't understand...anything at all. Those are things that we are (supposedly) good at. >Conway's game of life can produce a new kind of glider, but it can't come up with the invention of Elvis Presley, Not true. You can make a Turing Machine out of things other than a long paper tape, you can make one out of the game of life by using the gliders to send information; and if you started with the correct initial conditions you could have a game of life Turing Machine instruct matter how to move so that the matter was indistinguishable from the flesh and blood king of rock and roll. You are missing my point entirely. It is no trick to make Elvis from a machine which has the correct initial conditions to make Elvis. The point is that no amount of GoL transitions strung together will ever become anything other than what it is - recursively enumerated digits. There is nothing to generate any qualities other than that in the machine or the program - any patterns which we project on this data; 'gliders', 'cells', whatever, are nothing but simulacra...the projections of our own psyche. > We only use materials which are subject to absolute control by outside intervention and behave in an absolutely automatic way to sustain those introduced controls. Living organisms are very much the opposite of that The opposite of "automatic way" is random way. That is your completely unsupported prejudice. The legal system of every human group that has ever persisted on Earth would disagree. The opposite of automatic, according to them, is voluntary or intentional. Welcome to planet Earth, where there are things we like to call living organisms who are able to do things 'on purpose' rather than randomly or unconsciously. Craig John K Clark -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. 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