Hi Telmo Menezes Agreed, computers can be, or at least seem to be, intelligent, but they are slaves to mathematical codes, which are not material. A turing machine is not material, it is an idea.
----- Receiving the following content ----- From: Telmo Menezes Receiver: everything-list Time: 2013-02-02, 06:05:53 Subject: Re: How can intelligence be physical ? Hi Roger, I don't really understand how people can object to the idea of physical/mechanical intelligence now that we live in a world where we're surrounded by it. Google searches, computers that can beat the best human chess player, autonomous rovers in Mars, face recognition, automatic stock traders that are better at it than any human being and so on and so on. Every time AI comes up with something that only humans could do, people say "oh right, but that's not intelligence - I bet computer will never be able to do X". And then they do. And then people say the same thing. It's just a bias we have, a need to feel special. WIth all due respect to Leibniz, he didn't know computer science. On Sat, Feb 2, 2013 at 10:02 AM, Roger Clough <rclo...@verizon.net> wrote: Hi socra...@bezeqint.net and Craig, and all, How can intelligence be physical ? How can meaning be physical ? How can thinking be physical ? How can knowing be physical ? How can life or consciousness or free will be physical ? IMHO You need to consider what is really going on: http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/leibniz-mind/ One is obliged to admit that perception and what depends upon it is inexplicable on mechanical principles, that is, by figures and motions. In imagining that there is a machine whose construction would enable it to think, to sense, and to have perception, one could conceive it enlarged while retaining the same proportions, so that one could enter into it, just like into a windmill. Supposing this, one should, when visiting within it, find only parts pushing one another, and never anything by which to explain a perception. Thus it is in the simple substance, and not in the composite or in the machine, that one must look for perception. Leibniz's argument seems to be this: the visitor of the machine, upon entering it, would observe nothing but the properties of the parts, and the relations they bear to one another. But no explanation of perception, or consciousness, can possibly be deduced from this conglomerate. No matter how complex the inner workings of this machine, nothing about them reveals that what is being observed are the inner workings of a conscious being. Hence, materialism must be false, for there is no possible way that the purely mechanical principles of materialism can account for the phenomena of consciousness. In other writings, Leibniz suggests exactly what characteristic it is of perception and consciousness that the mechanical principles of materialism cannot account for. The following passages, the first from the New System of Nature (1695), the second from the Reply to Bayle (1702), are revealing in this regard: Furthermore, by means of the soul or form, there is a true unity which corresponds to what is called the I in us; such a thing could not occur in artificial machines, nor in the simple mass of matter, however organized it may be. But in addition to the general principles which establish the monads of which compound things are merely the results, internal experience refutes the Epicurean [i.e. materialist] doctrine. This experience is the consciousness which is in us of this I which apperceives things which occur in the body. This perception cannot be explained by figures and movements. Leibniz's point is that whatever is the subject of perception and consciousness must be truly one, a single “I” properly regarded as one conscious being. An aggregate of matter is not truly one and so cannot be regarded as a single I, capable of being the subject of a unified mental life. This interpretation fits nicely with Lebniz's oft-repeated definition of perception as “the representation in the simple of the compound, or of that which is outside” (Principles of Nature and Grace, sec.2 (1714)). More explicitly, in a letter to Antoine Arnauld of 9 October 1687, Leibniz wrote that “in natural perception and sensation, it is enough for what is divisible and material and dispersed into many entities to be expressed or represented in a single indivisible entity or in a substance which is endowed with genuine unity.” If perception (and hence, consciousness) essentially involves a representation of a variety of content in a simple, indivisible “I,” then we may construct Leibniz's argument against materialism as follows: Materialism holds that matter can explain (is identical with, can give rise to) perception. A perception is a state whereby a variety of content is represented in a true unity. Thus, whatever is not a true unity cannot give rise to perception. Whatever is divisible is not a true unity. Matter is infinitely divisible. Hence, matter cannot form a true unity. Hence, matter cannot explain (be identical with, give rise to) perception. If matter cannot explain (be identical to, give rise to) perception, then materialism is false. Hence, materialism is false. Leibniz rejected materialism on the grounds that it could not, in principle, ever capture the “true unity” of perceptual consciousness, that characteristic of the self which can simultaneously unify a manifoldness of perceptual content. If this is Leibniz's argument, it is of some historical interest that it bears striking resemblances to contemporary objections to certain materialist theories of mind. Many contemporary philosophers have objected to some versions of materialism on the basis of thought experiments like Leibniz's: experiments designed to show that qualia and consciousness are bound to elude certain materialist conceptions of the mind (cf. Searle 1980; Nagel 1974; McGinn 1989; Jackson 1982). ----- Receiving the following content ----- From: socra...@bezeqint.net Receiver: Everything List Time: 2013-02-02, 01:39:35 Subject: Re: Science is a religion by itself. On Feb 1, 7:51?m, Craig Weinberg <whatsons...@gmail.com> wrote: > On Friday, February 1, 2013 12:26:43 PM UTC-5, rclough wrote: > > > ?i socr...@bezeqint.net <javascript:> > > > Feynman was wrong. ?ife isn't physics, > > it's intelligence or consciousness, free will. > > If we understand that physics is actually experience, then life, > intelligence, consciousness, free will, qualia, etc are all physics. How > could it really be otherwise? > > Craig ====== In the name of reason and common sense: How could it really be otherwise? -- 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 everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. ____________________________________________ DreamMail - New experience in email software www.dreammail.org -- 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 everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. -- 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 everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. -- 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 everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
