RE: On naturalism and consciousness
September 1, 2014 at 9:55 am
(This post was last modified: September 1, 2014 at 9:58 am by bennyboy.)
(September 1, 2014 at 4:20 am)pocaracas Wrote: Like it's been said too often in this thread (and other like it) a thinking mind is probably an emergent property of many, many, many, many such "gates" working together. Instead of a direct trigger from sensory "data" to action, we have several intermediary steps which aid in the decision to act... some don't even lead to any action...This opens up a lot of questions. For example, would a boolean "on" qualify as an idea, and would a cascade following such an idea be called thinking?
As for emergence, I'd start pulling out gates one by one, and look for that critical mass at which processing could no longer be called mind. Is there really such a line, or is it purely arbitrary? My own take would be that if gates are mind, then a single gate would be the "atomic" element of mind, though it would no more resemble a human mind than a photon resembles a human brain. In other words, I wouldn't describe a human mind as being supervenient on the brain; I'd describe mental elements as being supervenient on (or equivalent to) the simplest gates, and the human mind as being super-supervenient on those elements.
