[ExI] Tolerance.

[John Clark]

On Dec 11, 2009, at 8:27 AM, Gordon Swobe wrote:

> In a nutshell, we might speculate and hope that a functional analogue of the brain will have consciousness, but until we understand why biological brains have it, we will never know if anything else has it. 

You don't know how biological brains work and yet you think human beings are conscious, or at least you do when they are not asleep or dead. You make this distinction by observing their behavior. And I think it would be useful if philosophers took a freshman course in biology because if consciousness is not a byproduct of intelligence, if it is not the feeling data has when it is being processed then there is no way evolution could have produced it and I know for a fact that it has at least once

> some philosophers have shown, for example, that we could construct a functional analogue of the brain out of beer cans and toilet paper.

So what?

> Pretty hard to imagine that contraption having anything like semantics

But it's easy to imagine 3 pounds of grey goo having semantics?

> No matter how you construct that brain-like contraption, you won't find anything inside it to explain semantics/intentionality.

As I said before in the history of the world the study of the concept of the soul has never produced one useful insight.

> On the inside it will look just like any other contraption.

In other words you will be unable to find a soul, not even if you look with an electron microscope.

> Actually Leibniz first figured this out hundreds of years ago.

The Identity of Indiscernibles supports my ideas not yours, it says that if I exchange you with an exact copy of you NOTHING has changed.

 John K Clark



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