Impressive title don't you think ? I always wanted to write an article with a textbook style title. What does it mean? Well, it's hard to put into words. I'll try. One would think that the mind is another mystery, waiting to be explained to us all by the mind sciences. Psychology, Psychiatry, Neurology, Behavioural studies, Cognition etc.
I'm not going to bash the mind sciences, they do a great job for the most part. What I'm going to bash, is the idea that a biological reductionist study of the brain will fully explain the mind.
With thanks to author Ben Dupre who brought to light, some of the analogies I will discuss. What is bizarre is that each of the initial chapters of this book tie in with my previous articles, which isn't that odd I know despite me reading the book after I'd written them. But on talking with Cypher, trying to encourage him to write for us, he said he was “crazy as a bat”. The next chapter I read after reading his message was called something like “how to think like a bat”. Synchronicity at work again in all it's glory.
Have a read of this interview:
Interviewer: How are you today?
Parry: OK.
Interviewer: What is your name?
Parry: My name is Frank Smith.
Interviewer: How old are you?
Parry: Twenty-eight.
Interviewer: Are you married?
Parry: No.
Interviewer: What sort of work do you do?
Parry: I work in the Post Office.
Interviewer: Why are you in the hospital?
Parry: I shouldn't be here.
Interviewer: Who brought you here?
Parry: The police.
Interviewer: What trouble did you have with the police?
Parry: Cops don't do their jobs.
Interviewer: What do they do instead?
Parry: Cops arrest the wrong people.
Interviewer: They arrest the right ones sometimes.
Parry: The law should get those Italian crooks.
Interviewer: Are you Italian?
Parry: My background is British, but I was born in this country.
Interviewer: Do you know any Italian crooks?
Parry: I try to avoid the underworld.
Interviewer: Are you afraid of the underworld?
Parry: The mafia are the worst gangsters.
Interviewer: Are you connected with the mafia?
Parry: You know, they know me.
Interviewer: How do they know you?
Parry: They spy on me.
Interviewer: Why do they?
Parry: They want to get false evidence to frame me.
Interviewer: What do they have against you?
Parry: They are out to get me.
Interviewer: What for?
Parry: I have incriminating evidence against the mafia.
As Ben asks what do we make of Parry ? Is he paranoid? Or are the mafia really out to get him?
The biggest surprise is that Parry isn't actually a person. He's a computer, with Artificial Intelligence. Those of you who visit Book of THoTH, will maybe have tried talking to “THoTHBoT” who is another example of an artificial intelligence. Although it is pretty basic, it is possible to have some interesting conversations with it. As I'm writing this I keep writing “him” instead of “it”. We enamour these programs with gender, out of a fondness I think (I hope). I can't think why else we would.
Regardless, it is believed that eventually, there will be a highly accurate “computer brain”. Somewhat akin to “Hal” in “2001 A space odyssey”. One that can “think” and behave “intelligently”. This computer brain, will be so advanced, we wouldn't be able to tell the difference between it's response and a persons.
This is the basis of the Turing test. The idea is that you sit someone in one room, and a computer in another. A volunteer then chats with both the computer, and the person. The test is passed if the volunteer cannot tell the difference between computer and human. The computer is then said to be “intelligent”.
This all presupposes that intelligence, and more importantly the mind, can be replicated with technology.
As a race, or at least in industrial countries, we tend to describe ourselves with technological metaphor. It began with Darwin, who proposed the theory of evolution.Life's development was seen as a process, it had building blocks. It encouraged “survival at the fittest”.
Unfortunately, some people took that to include sections of society. Showing how the richest become the “fittest”. They therefore fully endorsed Darwins ideas. If the richest endorse ideas, it quite often becomes the “official view”. As the industrial revolution marched on, doing whatever it could to feed the machines. Which brutally abused human labour as part of its process. It didn't matter though, it was for evolution. Better humans would result, or so the blinkered thinking went.
Science began to describe the body as you would a machine, and a pretty impressive one at that.
The Philosopher DesCartes gave us the machine metaphor, which became the origin of “Cartesian” Reductionism. And you all know what I think of reductionism. (Well you will if you read my previous articles). It wasn't until the “machine age” took off until people started to generally think in that way. Opposed to these were the “vitalists” who asserted that life cannot be defined purely by physical laws. They were largely ignored for some time, as their reasoning seemed too thin. There have been several good arguments for “vitalism” since. One being that parts can be removed from an organism, and it can still function correctly. Some organisms will regenerate the removed part. Clearly machinery doesn't work like this, and doubtful that it ever will grow new parts let alone function normally.
In many ways the Information age we're currently in, has just taken the mechanistic idea a step further. It describes mind in terms of computing, and information processing. It uses logic, it can be programmed. The list of computing related terms applied to the mind grows daily.
So why do we assume that we're limited to that which we can create. Or at least in terms of defining and understanding ourselves?
Maybe it's the idol worship of technology, that makes us want to feel like a super computer. Or maybe, there's a “need” to reduce mind down to the processes of a computer. So that it becomes fathomable. So we can have it completely at our control. If we develop a computer brain. The first task would be to get it to design a better one? Then use that better one to build a better one and so forth. So the “intelligence” would reach that beyond our own.
Well at least that's what some consider possible. I don't.
We can surely create something that mimics our mind, but we cannot create one. Some see the mind as just a collection of processes, that input decision or thought , and output decision choice based on feeling and memory. Or something like that anyway. It's not important, because it's wrong.
I'll turn the analogy around. If we were to have a brain transplant, what would the result be? Would the new person think I've got a new body? Or more accurately a new brain?
The Turing test has inconsistencies too on many levels. The main one that springs to mind is how vague it is. It doesn't determine as part of it's test what questions are asked. I could deduce intelligence from a chat about mathematics. Could I if I chatted about something like the smell of a rose?
How about if you got a computer to decide which was a computer and which was the person? How about if you got a computer to decide, and a human to decide, then had those decisions weighed up by a computer and a human and so on, and so forth.
We are more than the sum of our parts. Consciousness cannot be defined with circular reasoning. Consciousness cannot decipher that which forms it. No matter what the method of definition, it collapses under it's own logic. It will always refer to itself in its own terminology, and not truly what is. What it is for real, as opposed to the inherently biased viewpoint.
Maybe the trick is not to define too far, but simply to experience at it's fullest. Which I fear isn't a trendy thing these days. As societies we're all too eager to embrace the safe, the comfortable. We're too eager to digest the first thoughts on many things, and settle for supposition or a cursory conclusion for the rest. Why ? Not everybody obviously, but I see that regularly enough to cause me concern. We prefer easy over challenge a lot of the time.
Which is a shame, because the challenge is the interesting way to go. It has an unpleasant element however, which must be guarded against.
Belief groups form, and they battle it out. Whether that be on the internet or in the combat zone. It certainly does mean that the challenge of our future, is not to dig ourselves into a rut following a particular path so tightly you can't take in the scenery. It's to drop prejudice toward the belief of others. I carefully use the word prejudice, because it's not a considered judgement. It's a first reaction.
Nothing wrong with considered judgement, and debate.
If you accept the anomalous, the paranormal or whatever you want to call it. Quite often you're associated with weird, eccentric, odd etc. By strict definition, anything that doesn't fit the current picture. Is odd, or weird. However there's weird things in science, and mathematics. Some of the leading figures of which, were eccentric. But that's ok, because they didn't believe in ghosts, or see UFOs , experience telepathy etc. So we write about these heroes and their ideas in the textbooks, regardless of their traits.
Oh and by the way, many of them did see UFOs, Ghosts or experience the anomalous, but lets keep quiet about that.
I keep referring to science vs the paranormal I'm aware. But it comes down to this, one side thinks the others view is incompatible with reality. Reality is defined by science, reality is altered by the anomalous. Or at least the popular view of what reality is.
So in a very round about kind of way, we return at the minds I. Your sense of truth, your belief in what you are.
There is a very good analogy in that book. It describes an imaginary experiment. This consists of raising a baby in a sealed environment that has no colour. Until such times, as an adolescent,the person has read about colour, and seen programs on the black and white TV about colour. So they embark on a quest to become the leading scientist on colour. They know everything about colour, it's wavelengths, it's position within the electromagnetic spectrum. What colours are made from other combinations. Absolutely everything.
Then they step outside of their black and white world, into the world of colour. They realise that they don't know everything. Because the colour will affect their feelings, and how will not be the same as another person. That is the tricky part, we can't put into words (or computers) some feelings. We're restricted by our use of words (symbols) to represent them. There's good reason for that. Because some things are reserved for elsewhere in the mind. The part that doesn't need symbols.
We've overfed our minds so much with convention, overstimulated it with technology to the point where we lose touch with ourselves. Because it is possible to experience far more illuminating wisdom through meditation than endlessly looking for ways to distract yourself from who you really are, where you really are, as well as why and how.
The information age, has addled our brain with more knowledge at our fingertips and available in seconds. We're relishing global communication and too right we should be.
What we should be doing though, is debating our thoughts, beliefs and decisions. Rather than use it as tools to undermine another's belief or point of view.
Sure we've moved on in leaps and bounds in our understanding, or labelling of our worlds. Sure life is better in some regards because of that increased understanding. But so many wonders await us when we tap our minds real potential. As I've said previously, the mind is much more than the brain.
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Re: Clues To The Non Physicality of The Mind's I (Score: 1) by Noah on Thursday, August 06, 2009 @ 10:41:39 CDT (User Info )
Hi Thoth - Just read the article and was struck by several points I agree with you on; particularly the parts about achieving wisdom through meditation, and the inherently flawed reductionist 'mindset' (no pun intended).
Just one thought concerning the current state of technology - the comment you made about the body being able to repair itself, and machines being unable to do so.
I would agree that as far as we are generally aware, machines are as yet unable to 'feed' on substances in their immediate environment to reconstitute themselves into a state of working order if they are damaged; however, I think (without much specific knowledge of the field at this stage, admittedly) that there are some indications of advances in that regard within the realms of Nanotechnology.
I figured I could write an article after a bit more research - if anything, to highlight the difficulties that we as a species might encounter in attempts to imbue machines with 'life' (as the term is likely to be understood by proponents of such technology - almost inevitably reductionists).
What do you think? I'll check out any previous nano-tech articles first to avoid repetition...
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