[Wittrs] Re: The System Level Issue
- From: "SWM" <SWMirsky@xxxxxxx>
- To: wittrsamr@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Thu, 27 May 2010 23:27:07 -0000
You're all faklempt, Budd! -- SWM
--- In Wittrs@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx, "gabuddabout" <wittrsamr@...> wrote:
>
> Stuart, er, Sid Caesar, writes:
>
> "Thus I was explaining that consciousness is not being
> equated with any given computational process but with an appropriate amalgam
> of them."
>
>
> If you're going to be that simple, why don't you recognize that this way of
> putting it amounts to the same dilemma:
>
> Searle's biol. nat. is about appropriate physical processes.
>
> Your (and Dennett's) position seems to be about appropriate complexes of
> computation.
>
> Are you conflating physics with computation? That is still Searle's position
> save the bs about computation naming a natural kind.
>
> Are you speaking of computation in the form of the 'S' in the S/H system?
> Then it is too abstract. So you're not? Then...
>
> Are you suggesting that the complex computation comes in the form of nonS/H
> systems described in brute causal terms? Then this is not inconsistent with
> Searle's position either.
>
> Is information processing just an "as if" way of speaking about what brains
> are doing such that recursive decomposition exposes on/off switches at the
> "dumbest level"? Well, if there is no real information processing going on
> at this bottom line dumbest level, then this is also consistent with Searle's
> position that the brain is not biologically doing any information processing.
> We do information processing given consciousness which enhances our
> behavioral repertoir at a system level higher than the bottom up causation
> which accounts for the causes of consciousness to begin with (eventually,
> pace skeptics like, say, eliminativists!). If one wants to say that at the
> bottom level there are on/off switches which amount to information
> processing, then one may just as well say that they are interpreting the
> brain as a digital computer.
>
> Are those on/off switches to be interpreted in a nonS/H way like neurons
> being turned on/off? If so, this is consistent with Searle's position and
> not _necessarily_ a case of interpreting the brain as if a digital computer.
>
> What is learned from weak AI is how to create sophisticated programs.
>
> Conflating the sophisticated programs with sophisticated physical processes
> amounts to understanding neither the programs nor the underlying biology of
> the brain.
>
> I imagine I have been a little simple too. Thanks to Stuart for making it
> simple.
>
>
> Cheers,
> Budd
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