Text 8689, 175 rader
Skriven 2006-09-20 16:34:00 av Robert E Starr JR (9186.babylon5)
Ärende: Re: Atheists: America's m
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* * * This message was from Josh Hill to rec.arts.sf.tv.babylon5.m * * *
         * * * and has been forwarded to you by Lord Time * * *         
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On Thu, 20 Jul 2006 12:15:39 -0700, "Vorlonagent"
<nojtspam@otfresno.com> wrote:

>>>Toasters may have emotions but it'd take a technological shaman to find
>>>them.
>>
>> Not if you look at emotions analytically and ask what they are, rather
>> than approaching them from a subjective level -- I /feel/ this way,
>> I'm flesh and blood, the toaster isn't, so I have something magical
>> that the toaster doesn't.
>>
>> One way of looking at it is the Turing approach. Two teletypes, one
>> with a man behind it, one a computer. If the computer reacts the same
>> way as the man when you ask it whether it loves its daughter or insult
>> its mother, you can't distinguish them.
>>
>> When you press its lever, a toaster wants to toast bread, then pop it
>> up when it reaches a certain temperature and turn off. It's just a
>> different kind of machine.
>
>A toaster does not "want" to toast bread.  It is not aware or self-aware, 
>therefore not capable of desiring anything.  (hence the techno-shaman 
>comment)  Unless it has stood time in the castle of "Beauty and the Beast" 
>(Disney version) it can't very well converse with you either.  It is a 
>collection of mostly-metal parts that when put together execute a function 
>or small series of functions.

Question: how does this differ from us, except insasmuch as the
toaster has more metal?

>If a toaster has a heating element go out or a spring break or even a piece 
>of bread caught in it, does it experience sadness or distress?  No.  It's a 
>broken or clogged toaster.

Sadness and distress, like other emotions, are merely states that, in
an evolutionary context, promote certain behaviors. Certainly the
toaster "wants" to heat and then eject its bread. It doesn't have the
alternative strategies that would give it more sophisticated emotions
-- at least, the simple spring types don't (have no idea what they've
put in microprocessor yuppie models). If you break a spring, the
toaster as a whole will no longer want to eject the toast, but then
again, if you remove a chunk of our brains, we may no longer feel
sadness or distress.

>Next you'll be telling me your newsreader "wants" to read and post to 
>newsgroups.  Is it panting after that hot new binaries NG?  Does it feel sad 
>if you don't write enough posts through it on any given day?

I am finding it hard to respond to this without sarcasm of my own. Out
of respect for the moderators, and a hefty check, I will not.

>>>>>>>> I do agree that for most there's an intermediate step, one in which
>>>>>>>> the scientific findings are dramatized, placed in an emotional 
>>>>>>>> context
>>>>>>>> within the imagination to which you refer above.
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>That "intemediate step" goes by another name.
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>Life.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> But the same thing can be done in silicon.
>>>>>
>>>>>It can?  Prove it.
>>>>
>>>> No prediction about empirical phenomena can be proved. I am merely
>>>> following Occam here.
>>>
>>>Then you are expressing an article of faith. Occam's Razor is not wed to a
>>>factual result.  Quantum Physics is proof of that.
>>
>> I am expressing no article of faith, but rather the simplest
>> hypothesis consistent with observation. And that hypothesis is that
>> there is, on a fundamental level, nothing "special" that distinguishes
>> human thought from the thought of machines. Because there's lots of
>> observation that says that mind is the product of physical and
>> chemical processes, while there's no evidence of the contrary, no
>> observed phenomenon that requires one.
>>
>> To suppose that there is such a special quality is to violate Occam's
>> Razor by introducing an unnecessary element.
>
>Actually, you're incorrect.  The process of nerve synapsing involves random, 
>quantum phenomina. 

All processes involve random quantum phenomena. Do you worry about
whether your desk will reappear on the other side of the room? It is
entirely possible that it might.

> Synapsing on a nerve has the effect randomizing the 
>state of part of one of the molecules involved.  whicever way that state 
>goes affects how the nerve processes the synapse.  I get this from "Taking 
>the Quantum Leap" by Fred Allen Wolf.  The bit I'm referring to starts with 
>page 230 of my (paperback) edition.  Unless Wolf's molecular biology has 
>since been disproven (or I read him wrong), the human brain operates in ways 
>radically different than that of an electronic computer, which are based on 
>Turing's model of a machine that deterministically takes in the same input 
>and gives back the same output every time.  It's been a while since I read 
>Wolf's book and I skimmed it now just to be sure I had the right source.  I 
>can go over Wolf in detail if this thumbnail explanation isn't enough.

I've never read the books on QM and the brain because I thought them
almost certainly 99% nonsense. This merely confirms my suspicion.

There is no reason to suppose that quantum fluctuations implies a
mystery meat element into the functioning of the human brain. Minor
errors, perhaps, but such errors are no more fundamental to
intelligence or the trivial matter of self-awareness than gamma ray
errors are fundamental to the operation of computers.

>>>>>> Not that I want to minimize the difference. Science represents one
>>>>>> part of the psyche -- the part that forms an accurate model of the
>>>>>> world around us. It isn't generally placed within the context of
>>>>>> motivation or emotion, although it can analyze motivation, and it
>>>>>> tends towards theory rather than concrete manifestation, e.g., it
>>>>>> "lends to airy nothings a local habitation and a name," whereas
>>>>>> science is concerned with reducing a multitude of local habitations
>>>>>> into airy nothings.
>>>>>
>>>>>Science does not represent any part of our psyche.  It is a tool used by 
>>>>>a
>>>>>part of our psyche to make sense of the world.
>>>>
>>>> Sure, and being such, it represents the part of our psyche that makes
>>>> sense of the world, does it not?
>>>
>>>No.  Science represents nothing.  It is a tool.
>>>
>>>Science is a tool used by the pure-intellectual part of our psyches to 
>>>make
>>>pure-intellectual sense of the world.  Other tools exist, and other parts 
>>>of
>>>ourselves are reaching out to make sense of the world.
>>
>> Sure,  but how does that differ from what I said?
>
>You keep maintaining that Science "represents" some part of ourselves.  It 
>doesn't.

If science isn't part of us, what is about to type "E=MC^2"?

>You appear to be anthopomorphosizing both science and toasters.

I find that a bit, well, odd, coming from someone who has argued for
religion, which is essentially an attempt to anthropomorphize the
universe.

Do what I did, and drop the old-fashioned conceits with which you (and
most people today living) have been raised, e.g., that humans are
somehow set apart from things. Pretend that you're an alien from a
different universe. When you study an emotion, you are merely noting
what it is, what it does, what it accomplishes. When you see a human
being, you see a sack of chemicals.

What you will find if you do this is that there is no evidence
whatsoever that there is an ingredient x that sets people apart from
the rest of the physical universe. You are analyzing a machine.

-- 
Josh

[Truly] I say to you, [...] angel [...] power will be able to see that [...]
these to whom [...] holy generations [...]. After Jesus said this, he departed.

- The Gospel of Judas
                                                               
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