On 4/22/2019 4:24 PM, Jason Resch wrote:
On Tue, Nov 6, 2018 at 3:16 AM Bruno Marchal <marc...@ulb.ac.be
<mailto:marc...@ulb.ac.be>> wrote:
On 5 Nov 2018, at 02:56, Martin Abramson
<martinabrams...@gmail.com <mailto:martinabrams...@gmail.com>> wrote:
Consciousness is a program.
Consciousness might be related to a program, but is not a program,
that would identify a first person notion with a third person
notion, like a glass of bear and its price.
It explores whatever entity it finds itself within and becomes
that creature's awareness of the world. For humans it becomes the
identity or soul which responds to anything that affects the
organism. It can be uploaded into a data bank but otherwise it
dissipates with death.
How? We can attach a soul to a machine, but a machine cannot
attach its soul to any particular computations, only to the
infinity of (relative) computations, and there is at least
aleph_zero one, of not a continuum.
Bruno
The above reminded me of this quote from Alan Turing:
Personally I think that spirit is really eternally connected with
matter but certainly not always by the same kind of body. I did
believe it possible for a spirit at death to go to a universe entirely
separate from our own, but now I consider that matter and spirit are
so connected that this would be a contradiction in terms. It is
possible however but unlikely that such universes may exist.
Then as regards the actual connection between spirit and body I
consider that the body by reason of being a living body can
``attract´´ and hold on to a ``spirit,´´ whilst the body is alive and
awake the two are firmly connected. When the body is asleep I cannot
guess what happens but when the body dies the ``mechanism´´ of the
body, holding the spirit is gone and the spirit finds a new body
sooner or later perhaps immediately.
It seems otiose to postulate a separate spirit. A pitiful attempt to
grasp immortality. Isn't it plain that what is "immaterial" and
distinguishes a brain of a rock is that the brain instantiates processes
which incorporate memory, purpose, perception, and action.
Brent
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