(May 6, 2014 at 10:21 pm)snowtracks Wrote:(May 6, 2014 at 2:20 pm)Rampant.A.I. Wrote: And yet again ignored the link completely, went on to make ridiculous claims shown false by the link.
nagel said consciousness needs to be accounted for. be free to tell us all about it. http://wilmiers777.com/2013/05/23/explai...he-cosmos/
Broken link. Some believe consciousness is merely an emergent property of highly complex systems. The best attempts at creating what passes for artificial intelligences thus far (yo) has been to stuff an algorithm with a bunch of vague plausible responses to any given question, to create the illusion of another conscious mind.
On the other end of the spectrum, we have behavioral psychology, and pop psychology like http://youarenotsosmart.com to remind us some of the property of consciousness, itself, may be illusory.
There are many other animal species at least approaching our definition of rational thought, who previously had been discounted as mere automatons.
The human capacity for what can only be described as "bullshit" is truly astounding. Many other species have been astonishingly successful with the dimmest spark of higher thought, while we as a species gloat in the internet age, where everyone is an expert, everyone's opinion is equally valid regardless of experience or credentials, and seem to take pride in the rejection of lifetimes of expertise.
There is nothing that makes us truly more rational than "lower" lifeforms, than the abject rejection of emotional ties to truth values, and the ability to simply process information and come to cogent conclusions from the available evidence.
We exist, therefore we believe we exist with some higher purpose.
We are able to recognize ourselves in a mirror, and contemplate why that makes us so special, as self-reflecting consciousness within consciousness. And still our best attempt at rational thought is to mirror the thought process of the 350 million year old cockroach. A simple biological machine that collects data and outputs rational extrapolations of said data.
And remain conscious, and have a lot of good justifications as to why our consciousness is special.