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>"that there is some vital field or other presently intangible influence exclusive to biological life" There is. The ability to instantiate one specific abstra
by RashHeuristics 7y ago
>"that there is some vital field or other presently intangible influence exclusive to biological life"
There is. The ability to instantiate one specific abstract into a physical item. An abstract can for example be the idea of triangularity and the physical substrate will be the brain.
No AI running on a typical Turing machine can do that. For any idea you believe you have instantiated into the machine you can come up with an alternative interpretation of what you actually have instantiated.
This means that any physical system alone underdetermines the abstract thing it is supposed to be an instantiation of. You can for example likely find a pattern within the atoms of the wall behind you that could be said to be an instantiation of the quicksort algorithm. Or it's just a wall. The physical item itself is silent on the matter.
- codeulike 7y agoYou're talking about an ability, Iain Banks was talking about some unknown bit of physics, a field or somesuch. From what do you posit this ability to "instantiate one specific abstract into a physical item" comes from, and why do you think only wetware can do it? Reading it again, I think you might be talking about Qualia.
- RashHeuristics 7y agoThe introspective ability to hold abstract concepts in the mind is the source of the statement that humans can do so. It is what Aristotle called the intellectual soul, not qualia. Qualia is an experience and has no relation to holding abstract concepts. As I already wrote, Turing machines cannot do it for they suffer from multiple realizability, any abstract concept can be implemented in multiple physical constructs and any physical construct can be interpreted to be any number of different abstract items. I have not written that only "wetware" can do it, I have written that turing machines cannot do it and that no purely physical construct can do it (including purely newtonian/quantum wetware).
- Joker_vD 7y agoUh... but the neural networks (and Bayesian networks) do hold abstract concepts, and are implementable by Turing machines. So it appears that your assertion is wrong.
- RashHeuristics 7y agoThey do not hold concepts, they are simply physical items behaving in accord with physical principles. You as a human interpret them (wrongly) to hold concepts. You can as well interpret them to be something else. None of your interpretations change the physics and the physics have no mention of abstract concepts and can be interpreted to be any number of things. None of the interpretations make that particular interpretation a concrete implementation of it.
- codeulike 7y agoSo if we are not purely physical constructs, what are we? Are you a dualist?
- RashHeuristics 7y agohuman
- codeulike 7y agoAre you are dualist? In the sense of Descartes' Dualism?
- vidarh 7y agoThis doesn't make any sense to me whatsoever. The phrase you've quoted is talking about whether there is something supernatural in the construction of a brain that gives rise to the consciousness, e.g. a soul. The point being that if the brain is "just" bioelectrical hardware, there is very little reason to think we can not eventually reverse engineer it. But if there's a "secret black box" element to consciousness that exists outside the real of the possibility for us to examine and recreate it, then that is a separate issue. "Intelligence" is the "easy" part - there's no reason to think we can not eventually simulate reasoning to a sufficient fidelity; dealing with symbolic manipulation of abstractions is certainly not impossible. Consciousness is the big question, because we don't know what it is.
- RashHeuristics 7y agoIf the brain is just bioelectrical hardware then there is nothing worth reverse engineering, nor is there any worth to anything at all. You can simulate digestion with a turing machine all you want, but that simulation wont digest any food. Likewise you can simulate the neurons in a brain but that simulation can not be an instantiation of the concept of triangularity.
- jcelerier 7y ago> If the brain is just bioelectrical hardware then there is nothing worth reverse engineering, nor is there any worth to anything at all. may I introduce you to our local nihilist club
- AstralStorm 7y agoIf we can make a faster or parallel perfect copy that would be rather valuable - uploading, copying and "fork/join" of minds would be rather useful.
- RashHeuristics 7y agonot nihilism, materalistic eliminativism - just happens to have nihilism as a consequence.
- aeturnum 7y agoBanks is referencing the idea of "vitalism" - that living things have some special quality that nonliving things lack. It's kind of like a soul: it doesn't come from any particular ability of living things (like your example of projecting an abstract). A thinking vitalist would say that, even if a computer could do the thing you're talking about, it wouldn't be "conscious" because consciousness requires this aura that only living creatures possess.
- AstralStorm 7y agoAnd vitalism fails because alleged vital property is undefined or tautological. The most fun offshoot is philosophers moving qualia (perception-associations) out of the realm of neuroscience just enough every time there's an advancement.
- mooseburger 7y agoAny example of that?