Date: Sat, 17 May 2003 15:53:34 +1100
From: hbone <hbone-AT-optonline.net>
Subject: Re: the physical and the mental - continued


Steve/all,

 Thanks, Steve, for your reply.

 I didn't address the authors, isms and ists you mention.  And posting this
item to other Lists did not, for whatever reason, elicit a response to the
ideas presented.

 But I'll express opinions on the paragraphs you wrote.

>This reminds me of the fabulous philosophical joke that is in John Gray's
>text 'Straw Dogs' "...If a lion could talk, we could not understand him"
>Wittgenstein said. "It's clear that  Wittgenstein hadn't spent much time
>with Lions" Commented the conservationist John Aspinall...."
**  Lions talk -  I expect Christians, fed to to lions by Romans, understood
them.

>I read the below as suggesting that you are agreeing with Wittgenstein's
:>humanism  by placing what is by default a human consciousness at the
centre
>of your argument.
**I can't imagine a human or a human-ism (whatever that is) without
consciousness.

>- (god and the machines are merely mythically other in that they are
recognisably human).
**Yes, a machine-made artificial intelligence would, like gods and devils,
be recognisably human.

>Rather than on the other pole of the argument which places humans as just
>like other animals.
**You don't have to opt for the poles. Humans and chimpanzees are both
animals and are not "poles" apart.

>What I can't work out from the below is whether in the you are coming down
>on the humanist side of the argument or not.  Philosophers and scientists
>have tended to understand, to think the world  and consequently
>consciousness as if  prior to human existence the world did not exist.
**Some may have thought as you say.  Others may have thought differently.
For me, "worlds", and "history",  exist only in the senses and brains of
living organisims.  A human-imagined world of pre-human existence or a
lion-imagined world of pre-lion existence would have a  reality in the event
of imagining, the brain-mind of the imaginer.
The reality may exist in memory of  the imaginer during its lifetime.

**As you say, philosophers and scientists communicate a version of that
reality in words and images.  The reality of the event is lost when the
organism that experienced the event dies.  Later generations envision their
own version of the original event by contemplating surviving words, images,
or other
artifacts.

**The history of authors, isms, and ists, is the continuous reinterpretation
of
documented experiences of others, especially the experiences of   religious,
philosophic, political, scientific and artistic authors.  Basically it is
second-person narrative, but it may, in some degree incorporate first-person
experience of  the one who re-interprets..

regards,
Hugh

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

hbone wrote:

More thoughts on the subject of the physicality of mental
events, genome, and DNA.

Consciousness studies seek a
physical explanation of that phenomenon, an
explanation of the transmutation of
physical events into mental events.

Consciousness studies may be in a very
primitive stage, like biology without DNA.

Think of  the creation of "beings" by an extra-terrestrial
 intelligence.  On arrival, such beings would have
no subjective experience, yet would be "human" beings.

Gene theory describes the role of DNA in
morphology and other life processes that
produce newborn humans.  The inheritance of
physical characteristics, the "being" of a
newborn, was a Divine mystery before DNA.

I think of the "being" of a newborn as strictly
potential, a horizon of possibilities constrained
by the genes, NATURE, but doomed without
NURTURE.

To attempt a mechanical description of this
very hard problem, I suggest a thought
experiment:

(1) Assume that, at some future time, Artificial Intelligence produces
computers with emotions; they cry at birth, require loving attention to
survive and function.

(2) They have five senses, but must learn (and learn to
believe) meanings of noises (words) and the meanings of  images (light/dark
patterns) that affect their senses..

(3) Assume a project to emulate, on a computer,  the brain-function of an
educated
adult human being.

(4) In order for the AI computer to hear words as a living human hears them,
and to see images as a living  human sees them, assume capture and transfer
of memories from a flesh-and-blood person to the computer "brain/mind". For
example: Transfer of recallable memories of one human's life history.

(5) Consider the process that seems to take place in living bodies, human
and non-human.The animal body is a "black box".  There are inputs and
outputs.  Your computer and TV "produce" sounds and images mechanically.  We
don't think these machines "recognize"  them.

But humans and other animals that hear and see,  understand them in terms of
their particular senses, and their personal histories.

(6) Within the idea of extra-terrestrial intelligence (God) or
human-observed intelligence (Nature) we give names and meanings to human
experiences.  IMHO the human-observed world is the only world we know or can
know.

(7) If, in future time, the science of consciousness can "explain"
consciousness with
rigor comparable to DNA scientists' explanation of inheritance, the
narrative of its Divine
origin, and the Divine "being" of humans may eventually be forgotten.

regards,
Hugh