RE: Mind is the brain?
March 17, 2016 at 2:20 pm
(This post was last modified: March 17, 2016 at 2:31 pm by The Grand Nudger.)
(March 17, 2016 at 1:18 pm)bennyboy Wrote: The state of an electron in its orbit IS changeable, and on multiple but discrete levels. And a galaxy is also processing, since the events that transpire in it affect what light leaves it: its intensity, its direction, etc.-that's all well and good but meeting one criteria for processing no more makes a processor out of an electron that being able to fly makes a bird out of a plane. It doesn't even -begin- to approach a comp system. The galaxy doesn't appear to be a processor either. If you insist on these grand equivocations you are unlikely to find knowledge at their terminus.
Quote:But you are going to special plead, I'm sure, and argue that only those changes in state and resultant behaviors that YOU consider meaningful are actually computation.Am I seeing the beginning of a tq defense? I think I am.
Quote:Even the distinction between a rock and a PC is one of degree. A rock inputs light and outputs heat. It exactly calculates (by which I mean takes an input, processes through chemistry or physics, and ouputs something related but different) the right amount of heat to put out precisely.That would make a rock a gate, not a pc. Nothing I find objectionable there, of course rocks can be used as gates, most things can.
Quote:A PC processes in a much more complex way, but in the end, it's all just physics and chemistry, and the meaning you imbue in one system over the other is arbitrary. In fact, since all things in the universe are related by gravity, you could say that motion is itself a kind of processing.Yet another relevance fallacy combined with a misunderstanding of computation. OFC it's physics and chemistry, and.....? PCs don't process things differently, the principles are the same. It's the architecture of the PC that is more complex, not the process . Did you type up your response to my post on a rock? Clearly there's a difference.
Quote:You wouldn't. But I don't think you will provide a non-arbitrary definition for what IS to be called processing, either.I use the meaning of the term in comp sci when referring to comp sci explanations of mind. You can equivocate upon other uses of the term all you like. My butcher processes meat, does that make his knife a computer? I think not.
As to post above, because I just can't help but comment; The evidence we have, and the system we have for asessing that evidence, leaves us no room but to conclude that brain accounts for mind. You're unsatisfied, and OFC you can be unsatisfied, but there it is. I wish we could actually discuss your objections for what they are..because I feel that we might learn something, if only about each other. Then I might at least understand your position even if I don't agree with it.
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