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(September 5, 2009 at 6:55 am)Kyuuketsuki Wrote: What you're talking about is ideas not thoughts (memes?), thoughts are entirely physical (completely reliant on thought-supporting infrastructure) ideas are abstract and can be carried on a variety of media (verbal, visual, books, TV etc.) but again they STILL cannot survive without infrastructure.
Yeah, but because thoughts rely on the infrastructure does not mean that thoughts are the infrastructure. Interpretation [CPU] and memory [HDD, RAM] doesn't produce thought. Thought is independent of both of those.
There's a problem and it's why your passenger bus analogy is inapplicable.
These ideas, memes if you like, are not actually ideas they are source code or recipes of a sort, they have no existence outside of a brain intelligent enough to compile them. I'll try to explain ... I have an idea which I think is worth recording or transmitting somewhere (written, spoken or otherwise done ... it doesn't matter) so I take that idea and I record it. To record it I effectively break that idea down into logical stages or components and store them in some fashion (in effect I decompile the idea). Someone else sees that decompiled idea and reads, hears or watches it effectively uploading that idea into their brain (their personal onboard computer) and in doing so they recompile that source code into an idea but here's the rub ... the idea in their head IS NOT and can probably NEVER BE the same as the idea in mine. This highlights 2 things ... first that ideas ARE NOT truly transferable except in a general sense and that whilst they are in transit or stored they have ABSOLUTELY NO EXISTENCE OF THEIR OWN because all they are is a set of instructions to create the basics of a given idea in someone else.
It also means that your analogy of thoughts as passe3ngers on a bus is inapplicable because it rapidly becomes evident that such ideas (when recompiled) change the person within whom they now exist and passenger son a bus are simply passengers ... they DO NOT change the bus.
Thought is entirely the product of the brain, it CANNOT exist elsewhere and CANNOT be transferred except in the decompiled state I mention above so thought cannot exist independent of the recognised neural infrastructure.
Kyu
I'm not with you I think.
Thoughts are broken down into a form compatible with storage ..our analogy is computer language. Re/ Decompilation is superfluous.. it's a mechanical process void of sentience. This particular passenger can shape shift, sure. You're right to add that I think. The interpreter interprets given many variables, but not precisely so as possible with actual computers.
That thought cannot be transferred in anything but the decompiled state doesn't prove that thoughts are physical. Just that they are stored as a physical representation (as in a computer) and are compiled/ decompiled either end to place them into to cognitive processor: the brain.
The bus, being the storage medium, the mode of transport, is simply storage. I paint a picture - thought of a kind is stored ready to transport to anyone looking at it.
