Date: Mon, 26 Jun 2000 19:34:59 -0400
From: "Brad McCormick, Ed.D." <bradmcc-AT-cloud9.net>
Subject: Re: [New Scientist Essay] Global Brain -- nouveau hocus pocus....


Arun-Kumar Tripathi wrote:
> 
> Greetings technology list,
> 
> [Hi, recently I have received the below essay on Global Brain philosophy
> including the issues discussed of Daniel Dennett, Heylighen (of Principia
> Cybernetica) -thought -this might interest you **Excerpts from the
> essay** "The longer I work on it, the more I become convinced that this
> will be reality very soon--much sooner than most people might think."

Let's keep things in perspective, folks: *Brains* are objects
which we look at, poke at, etc.  *We* are the perceivers, pokers,
etc. (we have, to speak that unspeakable word: CONSCIOUS).

[snip]global intelligence, or callously exploited?
> 
> The global brain's self-adapting intelligence could quickly surpass our
> ability to understand it. Or perhaps it already has. According to Daniel
> Dennett, director of the Centre for Cognitive Studies at Tufts University
> in Medford, Massachusetts, "the global communication network is already
> capable of complex behaviour that defies the efforts of human experts to
> comprehend". And what you can't understand, he adds, you can't control.
[snip]

Heck! We don't even understand the behavior of automobile
exhaust gases, which I don't think anyone has yet proposed are
a higher life form than humans, even though they may have
more impact on human life.

And, if Prof. Dennett reads this, I would like to ask him
if he has assimilated the corpus of work in transcendental
phenomenology and hermeneutics: Husserl (esp. _The Crisis
of European Sciences_), Gadamer, Husserl and Fink's
_Sixth Cartesian Meditation_, Enzo Paci's _The Function of the
Sciences and the Meaning of Man_, etc.?

Brains are objects of consciousness -- or, to be more precise:
brains are objects for consciousnesses which have been
childreared (an d schooled) under the particular circumstances
of the tradition of European philosophy and science.  I believe
that anthropologists have found cultures which believe they
have/are hearts (that does sound ironic, doesn't it?).

The Global Brain may finally expunge consciousness from
the planet earth, and then, once again, to paraphrase 
Wittgenstein: the ether will be filled with
electromagnetic waves, but all will be dark, since man's
seeing eye will have been shut irrecusably.

To hammer this point in even farther: Let's say that 
a personal Old Testament-type God (Y-w-h) exists, and Y-w-h
tells me to cut my son's throat: I can reply: "You may be
superior to me in force, but you cannot make me do what I believe
is unworthy of a conscious, ethical agent.  Here I stand,
I can do no other (although you can hack me to bits if
that's your idea of how the world should be -- You kill the
kid if you're determined to have him dead, Y-w-h... --
but why not try to rise to a higher level of *universal
cooperative and nurturing conversation", instead?  I'll
try to help you.....)

I read somewhere that "God reigns in sorrow".

"Yours in discourse [until a greater power
silences me!]...."

+\brad mccormick

-- 
   Let your light so shine before men, 
               that they may see your good works.... (Matt 5:16)

   Prove all things; hold fast that which is good. (1 Thes 5:21)

Brad McCormick, Ed.D. / bradmcc-AT-cloud9.net
914.238.0788 / 27 Poillon Rd, Chappaqua NY 10514-3403 USA
-------------------------------------------------------
<![%THINK;[XML]]> Visit my website: http://www.cloud9.net/~bradmcc/


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