RE: Free will & the Conservation Laws
February 29, 2016 at 5:15 am
(This post was last modified: February 29, 2016 at 5:29 am by I_am_not_mafia.)
(February 28, 2016 at 4:56 pm)Jehanne Wrote: The brain is irreducibly complex in that it is much more than 0s & 1s; after all, has anyone simulated a human or mammalian brain? The answer, of course, is, "Yes," but such have all been very poor to poor simulations. So far, consciousness exists only in brains and not in computers, and in my opinion, computers will never have consciousness. For one, most of the human brain is fat, or myelin, which acts as an insulator but also as a messenger, but, I am not expert. So, whatever makes up consciousness is likely to be found in wetware and not inorganic materials, which make-up computers.
That's not what is meant by irreducibly complex. The term is only used by theists as part of a fallacious argument that if you take any part of it away then it ceases to function. This is not the case with the brain. Surgeons can remove parts of the brain and it will still function albeit at reduced performance. You could argue that this is because the brain is made up of many different functions, but even a very simple three layer biologically plausible neural network is still not irreducibly complex. I once spent weeks removing all the different mechanisms to try and stop it working and it continued functioning but at a reduced level of performance.
There are no 0s & 1s in the brain. At most there are stereotypical spikes but even these are complex phenomena. And when combined they also make up firing rates. We have no reason to suspect that consciousness cannot exist in a computer. There is nothing special about a real brain to suggest that only it can have consciousness. If you think otherwise then the burden of proof is on you to make the case. After all, functionally speaking, what is consciousness? At its minimum it is using the internal state as another input that can be adapted to.
I don't see why you are bringing up the subject of myelin sheathing. It performs a function that can also be replicated on the computer. But you need to be aware that real brains are built from different materials and therefore have different constraints. The purpose of myelin sheathing is to allow faster signals to be carried along nerves. This is not required in a computer.
Free will is an illusion but for entirely different reasons to the one suggested by your original post.
