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Re: Re: Matter Over Mind <-> Mind over Matter != Mind as Matter as Mind
Well argued. I keep waiting for some new generation Supercomputer to take that wild step of truly reprogramming itself, and saying, "Hi, um, can scratch my left diode for me. I can't reach it." That is, true artificial intelligence. I'm not afraid of the I, Robot phenomenon (movie version) or Terminator scenario, because the will to survive we think is innate to all living creatures is a selected property in all living creatures we experience. It would only exist in artificial life, at least initially, if we programmed it in. And we're not that stupid . . .
posted by
mousehop
on August 30, 2008 at 9:19 AM
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Re: Matter Over Mind <-> Mind over Matter != Mind as Matter as Mind
Thanks for the response. I enjoy your reactions to pseudo scientific speculation. Like I said; Toying i.e. teasing, not making arguments supposed to hold up to intense scrutiny.
I do not argue that mind exists separate from the "material" constructs either, but rather that what we consider to be "material" as opposed to "non-material" and dense matter as opposed to matter with lots of obvious space inbetween is an arbitrary conceptual construct that doesn't hold up to scrutiny as far as I'm concerned. From my point of view the formation or manifestation of all the different appearances of energy as nucleus, electron, etc up to complex combined patterns of these rudimentary patterns such as the nerve fibres with their dendrites and "action endpoints"? (I may have some of these words wrong in English since I learnt about this stuff in Afrikaans ages ago) and the chemical compounds present in the synapse and the electrical current and chemical reactions manifest as different ion concentrations etc, that carry information in the complex arrays of our nervous systems, are not fixed entities, but processes that have the appearance of "objects" in interaction. We can't really talk about these in any other way than objects and relations between them at present, but that doesn't make them solid and immutable in any way. We may yet discover information exchange outside the nervous system as defined today where we are not looking for it at present too. So I agree, lets wait for more data, but I really doubt we'll ever find anything absolutely solid (which is the kind of materialism I object to as opposed to materialism as everything that can be observable) and to find something non observable is obviously nonsense.
posted by
AardigeAfrikaner
on August 29, 2008 at 4:10 PM
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Matter Over Mind
You set the argument well, but I have to contend that this is something of a strawman argument. One need not claim of full understanding of any phenomenon to recognize its existence. Yes, we materialists believe that what you call mind is a product of patterns in matter and energy, and I believe (I don't know about others) that there is nothing else involved; i.e. that the pattern of neural connections and action potentials, combined with chemical signals between neurons, account for all thought in humans. But I don't claim to have solved the matrix of these connections, which appears to be more complex in a single brain than the sum of all electronic devices on Earth combined. Thus far, however, no one has given me any reason to believe that mind or thought can exist separate from the material construct. Therefore, I am skeptical that any such things exists. I won't concede that that makes my conception of mind "inapt". I claim, rather, that the body of evidence favors my view. After all, it was only in the 20th century that the wave properties of particles and the particle properties of light and similar waves were explained at all, though the existence of light was known from the beginning, and light had been studied for hundreds, perhaps thousands of years. Ignorance is no excuse for jumping to conclusions. I suggest we wait for data.
posted by
mousehop
on August 29, 2008 at 1:56 PM
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