RE: We are no different than computers
May 13, 2015 at 10:17 am
(This post was last modified: May 13, 2015 at 10:28 am by The Grand Nudger.)
Try the reference list of this article. I've read a few on there, by no means all or most.
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/computational-mind/
(some of the best stuff on comp mind is actually the criticism of the position, btw!)
To your comment, I would respond that volition is not actually required in order to "break programming". However, in order to discuss it at length we'd have to have a pretty good idea of what we were referring to when it came to that programming, and how it was broken, which we don't. I'm leary of claims surrounding "special abilities", specifically in the context of this conversation, because the truth value of comp mind as a theory or explanation wouldn't..by necessity, lend any value to those claims themselves. There are things which are not under a computational systems control regardless of it's sensory data relative to the item in question.
Moving forward from that, though, nature intends nothing. Granted, if we could mess /w the factory defaults so easily, if that were an achievable trait, we'd expect it to express itself in a deleterious way. If you can stop your heart on accident (or on purpose), by brute force of demographics...more people would have...by now. Proposing that it can be slowed (say, by some computational process), but only within limits (so as to avoid explaining why people haven't been stopping their hearts intentionally or accidentally so far as we can tell...as we would expect), opens up more questions and fails to resolve the larger question to which it refers. How?
That particular connection, to me, seems tenuous. I'll leave the meditative magic in the magic box for the time being (regardless of the value of ctm).
It would be, if it could be shown to be connected, a much better explanation for how meditation works than some nonsense about life energy etc...eh? I just don't know that our cognitive apparatus is at the helm there, or even could be - even if it would be capable. I can, however, see alot of reasons why a creature with that sort of ability would nix itself before we ever got around to asking the question of how it achieved that feat.
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/computational-mind/
(some of the best stuff on comp mind is actually the criticism of the position, btw!)
To your comment, I would respond that volition is not actually required in order to "break programming". However, in order to discuss it at length we'd have to have a pretty good idea of what we were referring to when it came to that programming, and how it was broken, which we don't. I'm leary of claims surrounding "special abilities", specifically in the context of this conversation, because the truth value of comp mind as a theory or explanation wouldn't..by necessity, lend any value to those claims themselves. There are things which are not under a computational systems control regardless of it's sensory data relative to the item in question.
Moving forward from that, though, nature intends nothing. Granted, if we could mess /w the factory defaults so easily, if that were an achievable trait, we'd expect it to express itself in a deleterious way. If you can stop your heart on accident (or on purpose), by brute force of demographics...more people would have...by now. Proposing that it can be slowed (say, by some computational process), but only within limits (so as to avoid explaining why people haven't been stopping their hearts intentionally or accidentally so far as we can tell...as we would expect), opens up more questions and fails to resolve the larger question to which it refers. How?
That particular connection, to me, seems tenuous. I'll leave the meditative magic in the magic box for the time being (regardless of the value of ctm).
It would be, if it could be shown to be connected, a much better explanation for how meditation works than some nonsense about life energy etc...eh? I just don't know that our cognitive apparatus is at the helm there, or even could be - even if it would be capable. I can, however, see alot of reasons why a creature with that sort of ability would nix itself before we ever got around to asking the question of how it achieved that feat.
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