On Thu, Mar 21, 2013 at 1:51 AM, Craig Weinberg <whatsons...@gmail.com> wrote:
>> You say "it doesn't make sense" that intentional could come from >> unintentional but I don't see that at all, not at all. You claim to >> have an insight that other people don't have. > > > Lots of people have had this insight. You say that intentional could come > from unintentional, but anyone can say that - what reasoning leads you to > that conclusion? What leads an unintentional phenomena to develop > intentions? How could something non-living lead to something living? How could something non-computational could lead to something computational? >> That's right, you can't see consciousness, but you can see if it's >> deterministic in the usual sense. So do you in fact agree, after all >> this argument, that the brain could be deterministic in the usual >> sense? > > > No because some of what the brain does is determined by consciousness which > we are aware of and understand. We could write off every spontaneous change > in brain activity as random, just as we could write off every unexpected > change in the traffic flow of a city as random, but that's just how it would > look if we didn't know about the contribution of conscious people to those > patterns. Please show one piece of evidence demonstrating that a physical process occurs in the brain that cannot be completely explained as caused by another physical process. Note that it isn't good enough to point to complex behaviour and say "in there somewhere". >> >> So you claim that if the hydrogen atoms in my body were replaced with >> >> other hydrogen atoms I would stop being conscious? >> > >> > >> > No, I think all hydrogen represents the same experience and capacity for >> > experience. >> >> So their history is irrelevant: > > > No, their history is crucially important - it's just the same for every > atom. Could you explain this? >> all the atoms in my body could be >> replaced with atoms specially imported from the Andromeda Galaxy and I >> would feel just the same. > > > Yes, but they could not be replaced with tiny sculptures of hydrogen or > simulations of hydrogen. It has to be genuine hydrogen. At least you now agree that the atoms in my body could be replaced and I would feel the same. What if the atoms were replaced by a person: would I still have free will or would I, as you claim for a computer, only have the will of the programmer? -- Stathis Papaioannou -- 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.
