(April 9, 2015 at 6:02 pm)Nestor Wrote:(April 7, 2015 at 1:54 pm)Mezmo! Wrote: The point is that the results of a computation have no inherent meaning. They require interpretation.And there is something that is doing the interpreting but absent of input and output? Why is this independent interpreter nowhere reflected in the development and growth of our intellectual experience? Or are you claiming that the intellect is like like a hologram that receives ever more increasing bits of light from a higher region of being in need of no further explanation than the material compositions at hand?
I meant to direct my comment towards the physical operations performed on material systems in temporal succession. Input and output alone insufficiently accounts for the distinguishing properties of mind. A chain of efficient causes has no meaning until something outside that particular causal chain assigns value to specific physical features or events. For example, light reflected from a mountain entering a the hole of a pinhole camera produces an impression on its film that chemical processes develop into a photograph. Light is the input. The photo is the output. But the photo isn't about the mountain. Those are just two arbitrary points in the seamless causal chain, points that must be seen as significant to an outside observer.
