3 ms·

It's just a metaphor. Because the way it works can be viewed as inputs (sensors, environment, external chemicals) + current state ---> outputs (behavior) + new

It's just a metaphor. Because the way it works can be viewed as inputs (sensors, environment, external chemicals) + current state ---> outputs (behavior) + new state kinda like computers or robots, in a deterministic manner (except it is practically impossible to recreate the exact same inputs, or the exact same state). You don't have to take it too literally, people who read it generally understand what it means.

nathan_compton 6y ago
This is either very specific and thus not all that applicable to biological systems (that is, the current state is typically much much much more dominant a determinant of future time evolution in biological systems than in machines) or so general as to characterize literally any physical phenomenon whatsoever, and thus hardly useful to think about how biological systems work specifically. Indeed, one element emphasized by Deacon is that the notion of "current state" is ambiguous or at least non-trivial for biological systems and exists for machines only because they represent a major simplification of the relations characterized by your metaphor. Machines are in some sense constituted by an enormous, intentional, simplification of the possible dynamics of a clump of matter and its relations to the outside world. Their design is profoundly impacted by both our own cognitive limitations and the contexts in which they are manufactured and used. Biological systems simply don't have these constraints and they operate in what are often totally different ways from machines. My point is that there is considerable scientific and philosophical scholarship on this issue which casts this metaphor into doubt at least with regard to base utility.
- realharo 6y ago
  I see. Do you think a machine that physically alters its own silicon, or software that rewrites its code instead of storing data, would be closer to biological systems? Or is that part irrelevant?
  - nathan_compton 6y ago
    My personal opinion is that that would be true in more or less the same way that colder gases are more like solids.
jimbokun 6y ago
> inputs (sensors, environment, external chemicals) + current state ---> outputs (behavior) + new state It's just not a very helpful metaphor, because we are nowhere close to having a way to simulate or compute that function. So treating people as agents with goals, desires, personalities, experiences and histories and traumas, and drawing on our hard wired abilities for empathy, can be a far more useful model for actually helping and healing people than just giving them a pill.
- luckylion 6y ago
  > So treating people as agents with goals, desires, personalities, experiences and histories and traumas, and drawing on our hard wired abilities for empathy, can be a far more useful model for actually helping and healing people than just giving them a pill. But that's not a dichotomy. Nobody is saying to either disregard biochemistry and believe that God gave us free will by some magical act or just throw random pills at people. You can see people as all that and still not reject the idea that chemical imbalances can negatively influence their goals, desires and personalities, and that chemicals can also positively influence them,

nathan_compton 6y ago

This is either very specific and thus not all that applicable to biological systems (that is, the current state is typically much much much more dominant a determinant of future time evolution in biological systems than in machines) or so general as to characterize literally any physical phenomenon whatsoever, and thus hardly useful to think about how biological systems work specifically. Indeed, one element emphasized by Deacon is that the notion of "current state" is ambiguous or at least non-trivial for biological systems and exists for machines only because they represent a major simplification of the relations characterized by your metaphor. Machines are in some sense constituted by an enormous, intentional, simplification of the possible dynamics of a clump of matter and its relations to the outside world. Their design is profoundly impacted by both our own cognitive limitations and the contexts in which they are manufactured and used. Biological systems simply don't have these constraints and they operate in what are often totally different ways from machines. My point is that there is considerable scientific and philosophical scholarship on this issue which casts this metaphor into doubt at least with regard to base utility.

realharo 6y ago
I see. Do you think a machine that physically alters its own silicon, or software that rewrites its code instead of storing data, would be closer to biological systems? Or is that part irrelevant?
- nathan_compton 6y ago
  My personal opinion is that that would be true in more or less the same way that colder gases are more like solids.

jimbokun 6y ago

> inputs (sensors, environment, external chemicals) + current state ---> outputs (behavior) + new state It's just not a very helpful metaphor, because we are nowhere close to having a way to simulate or compute that function. So treating people as agents with goals, desires, personalities, experiences and histories and traumas, and drawing on our hard wired abilities for empathy, can be a far more useful model for actually helping and healing people than just giving them a pill.

luckylion 6y ago
> So treating people as agents with goals, desires, personalities, experiences and histories and traumas, and drawing on our hard wired abilities for empathy, can be a far more useful model for actually helping and healing people than just giving them a pill. But that's not a dichotomy. Nobody is saying to either disregard biochemistry and believe that God gave us free will by some magical act or just throw random pills at people. You can see people as all that and still not reject the idea that chemical imbalances can negatively influence their goals, desires and personalities, and that chemicals can also positively influence them,