JohnM
On Mon, Feb 4, 2013 at 11:56 AM, John Mikes <jami...@gmail.com> wrote:
How can be " PHYSICAL" - 'physical'?
(and please, don't tell "because we THINK so")
John M
On Sat, Feb 2, 2013 at 4:44 PM, Telmo Menezes
<te...@telmomenezes.com> wrote:
On Sat, Feb 2, 2013 at 3:07 PM, Craig Weinberg
<whatsons...@gmail.com> wrote:
On Saturday, February 2, 2013 6:05:53 AM UTC-5, telmo_menezes wrote:
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.
When you don't understand what you are doing, it it easy to do it
very fast. This writer gives a good explanation: http://www.thenewatlantis.com/publications/why-minds-are-not-like-computers
Many AI algorithms are intrinsically slow. Most of the examples I've
given are made possible by parallelising large amounts of computers.
They will never understand in the sense you mean unless they have a
1p, but I don't see how that relates to speed or how speed is
relevante here.
Also I'm not claiming that intelligence == mind.
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.
Have you considered that it is a bias you have, to make you feel
special, to be able to say that you are above their bias?
I have and it might be true.
WIth all due respect to Leibniz, he didn't know computer science.
An argument can be made that Leibniz is the inventor of computer
science, particularly AI. http://history-computer.com/Dreamers/Leibniz.html
I honestly had no idea and I'm impressed (and ashamed for not
knowing).
Craig
On Sat, Feb 2, 2013 at 10:02 AM, Roger Clough <rcl...@verizon.net>
wrote:
Hi socr...@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爌m, Craig Weinberg <whatsons...@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Friday, February 1, 2013 12:26:43 PM UTC-5, rclough wrote:
>
> > 燞i socr...@bezeqint.net <javascript:>
>
> > Feynman was wrong. 燣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?
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