On Jan 27, 2008, at 6:18 AM, Mike Tintner wrote:
Samantha: MT: You've been fooled by the puppet. It doesn't work
without the
puppeteer. Samantha:What's that, elan vitale, a "soul", a
"consciousness" that is
independent of the puppet?
It's significant that you make quite the wrong assumption. You too
are fooled. The puppeteer is the human operator/programmer. V.
simple and obvious. Computers do not actually EXIST. All that exists
here are lumps of metal - until human beings come along - and give
them life and meaning. Without humans they lie there, dead.
Not simple and obvious which is why we are having this conversation.
You as conscious self certainly do not operate most of the processes
that allow you as instantiated biological being to exist. You as
conscious self do not even operate those processes that you perceive
as a "self". So who is fooled? It is a bit deeper question, no?
So from whence did human beings come? Was it not from this dead
matter?
All your thinking, I suggest, is predicated on an obvious falsehood
- that computers exist in their own right and are not just tools/
extensions of human beings. And it is still a very large set of
unsolved problems as to what will be required to make a robot or
computer exist in its own right.
I am not sure what you mean by "in their own right"? Computers are
specialized tools designed by us. So? Do you "exist in your own
right"? Do you mean by that autonomous or semi-autonomous decision
making in an experiential domain? If not, what do you mean?
If you are serious either as scientist or technologist, you have to
start from the fact of those unsolved problems, and not just
wishfully assume that they have all been magically answered. You can
be sure that the answers, whatever they are, will transform your
current thinking.
Which unsolved problems are you speaking about? Can you be a bit
clearer?
Re why only a moving body can think, it is still a large
philosophical and scientific problem, and I'm just in the middle of
working it out ! (But I'm increasingly confident it is soluble and
soon).
The idea that only a moving body can think is just a hypothesis and
one that does not seem likely except with a very broad meaning given
to "moving".
The basic biological evidence for that assertion though is obvious
- the only self-sufficient "in-their-own-right" entities that can
actually think are indeed moving organisms/ animals.
You need to define "in their own right" and in what critical sense we
are self-sufficient. There is too much slop here to gain much
purchase in the discussion.
And the classic fact is that when a sea squirt stops moving, it
immediately devours its own brain.
Obviously irrelevant.
The other basic fact here is again obvious if you look at the whole
and not just a part. Above it wasa case of don't just look at the
computer look at everything that happens with and around it, like
the human operator. Here it's a sub-case of that - don't just look
at the thoughts/ideas - the print, say on the screen, or the writing
on the page - look at how they are produced. And - hey - they don't
happen without movement - someone typing/writing them.
Uh, I hope the "thought and ideas" rather preceded the actual
typing. :-) As to how they are actually produced that is fairly
complex and largely much more unconscious and mechanical than you seem
to be crediting.
As Daniel Wolpert says:
"Movement is the only way we have of interacting with the world,
whether foraging for food or attracting a waiter's attention.
Indeed, all communication, including speech, sign language, gestures
and writing, is mediated via the motor system. Taking this
viewpoint, the purpose of the human brain is to use sensory signals
to determine future actions. The goal of our lab is to understand
the computational principles underlying human sensorimotor control"
Sounds a bit like behaviorism.
http://learning.eng.cam.ac.uk/wolpert/
(But that still doesn't solve the problem I referred to which is to
explain why thinking generally is predicated in its very content on
moving bodies - and not just produced by moving bodies).
Says you.
- samantha
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