RE: Mind is the brain?
April 16, 2016 at 7:18 am
(This post was last modified: April 16, 2016 at 8:13 am by The Grand Nudger.)
(April 15, 2016 at 12:26 am)bennyboy Wrote:(April 14, 2016 at 9:53 pm)Rhythm Wrote: Excellent. Computers exist. I think that mind is a comp system, not that a comp system is a mind. I don't think my desktop has a mind or is a mind. Glad to clear that up for you. I think they're both comp systems, sure. So is an atari and my pc - quite a difference between them, though, eh?
So your view on mind is that it processes stuff? By George, you've solved it!
If by mind, you mean brain, yes. If by mind, you mean only qualia, then no. It's been a productive way to conceptualize mind and brain thusfar, certainly yielded more concrete results than some other proposals.
I want to make sure that you understood the distinction above, btw. If we were speaking about airplanes, I would consider an airplane a flying thing, but I wouldn't consider every flying thing an airplane. The same goes for minds and comp systems. If you were concerned that I was claiming that comp systems are minds, if that was your objection..... I'm not, so np there, eh?
-My view-.....is that our minds, in the general, are comp systems, leveraging sense data to create representations which are then manipulated by the comp system to achieve a host of functions. Qualia, could be conceptualized as a summary of states, not necessarily a function, or "doing" anything. The aggregate flow of data on shared lines of transmission isolated in a human machine. We know that comp systems are capable of such a summary, and that it can even be built into the architecture as a self referential loop.
Philosophically, the question is only whether or not a description of such a system matches a description of our experience. I think that it does, and there's no -need- to explain the operation of the brain, to "solve it "(as wonderful as it would be to have that full explanation for you) in order to establish the proposition's rational basis. We know what our experience is like. We know what comp systems can do, and we know that neurons are structured in such a way that they would be -capable- of computation.
I'm not sure what the bit above about processing is supposed to refer or object to? I'm proposing comp mind, not processing mind.
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