RE: Mind Over Matter?
April 6, 2015 at 8:11 am
(This post was last modified: April 6, 2015 at 8:26 am by The Grand Nudger.)
@emjay
Yeah, Benny and I have had this convo a bunch. Unfortunately our positions (and our standards of explanation) differ on some pretty hard sticking points. Until I get some clarity on how information does information to information sans some structure or arrangement capable of doing so....they aren't really compatible. Essentially, until he describes how an unstructured, disjointed system interacts...or some possible means of that interaction..the similarity is only superficial - or provides some explanation of the structure of immaterial stuff that is both capable of and engaged in computation..at which point we'd know one way or another if our two positions were compatible. One certainly -could- hold to both. I think he and I approach it from different angles. He's more focused on "what the stuff" is....I'm more focused on "how the stuff"...no matter what, accomplishes the observed effect.
Mostly, my main gripe in Benny and I's convos on the subject..isn't so much that he's wrong about mind (how would I know...lol?)...as he is wrong about the problems presented by any given explanation of mind. He, like you, for example...wonders "why consciousness". It has been (and obviously Benny correct me if I'm wrong or you've made alterations) his position that consciousness is somehow a problem from the standpoint of material monism - mine is that it isn't a problem for monism any more than it would be for dualism - specifically in the context of computation. If mind is comp, then any stufff...no matter what the stuff is made of...and no matter how many different kinds of stuff there are...which is capable of acting as a computational system is in the range of "mind". All that's left, then, is to determine how robust a system is required to satisfy "mind" however we choose to set the standard (perhaps using our own..whatevs) and how we might manufacture this "mind" business out of any material one chooses (again, provided it is capable...wet paper doesn't work so well, for example). Benny would need to explain this light based information mind in a similar manner as I described the spirit resistor mind, for me to be able to have further opinions - or for me to accept that even the slightest attempt at an actual explanation has been made. :winks at Benny:
To tie it in with your response....not all data exchange is computation...so, to me, not all data exchange should be expected to yield a mind (and so I'm not surprised when things exchange vast amounts of data without presenting consciousness, or something we would recognize -as- consciousness.
Yeah, Benny and I have had this convo a bunch. Unfortunately our positions (and our standards of explanation) differ on some pretty hard sticking points. Until I get some clarity on how information does information to information sans some structure or arrangement capable of doing so....they aren't really compatible. Essentially, until he describes how an unstructured, disjointed system interacts...or some possible means of that interaction..the similarity is only superficial - or provides some explanation of the structure of immaterial stuff that is both capable of and engaged in computation..at which point we'd know one way or another if our two positions were compatible. One certainly -could- hold to both. I think he and I approach it from different angles. He's more focused on "what the stuff" is....I'm more focused on "how the stuff"...no matter what, accomplishes the observed effect.
Mostly, my main gripe in Benny and I's convos on the subject..isn't so much that he's wrong about mind (how would I know...lol?)...as he is wrong about the problems presented by any given explanation of mind. He, like you, for example...wonders "why consciousness". It has been (and obviously Benny correct me if I'm wrong or you've made alterations) his position that consciousness is somehow a problem from the standpoint of material monism - mine is that it isn't a problem for monism any more than it would be for dualism - specifically in the context of computation. If mind is comp, then any stufff...no matter what the stuff is made of...and no matter how many different kinds of stuff there are...which is capable of acting as a computational system is in the range of "mind". All that's left, then, is to determine how robust a system is required to satisfy "mind" however we choose to set the standard (perhaps using our own..whatevs) and how we might manufacture this "mind" business out of any material one chooses (again, provided it is capable...wet paper doesn't work so well, for example). Benny would need to explain this light based information mind in a similar manner as I described the spirit resistor mind, for me to be able to have further opinions - or for me to accept that even the slightest attempt at an actual explanation has been made. :winks at Benny:
To tie it in with your response....not all data exchange is computation...so, to me, not all data exchange should be expected to yield a mind (and so I'm not surprised when things exchange vast amounts of data without presenting consciousness, or something we would recognize -as- consciousness.
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