[ExI] digital simulations, descriptions and copies

Gordon Swobe gts_2000 at yahoo.com
Thu Jan 21 12:16:41 UTC 2010


--- On Wed, 1/20/10, Stathis Papaioannou <stathisp at gmail.com> wrote:

> The brain is not organised along the lines of a digital
> computer, but it is organised along the lines of an information
> processing system

The brain does much more than merely process information. Your pocket calculator processes information but I think you'll agree it does not have conscious experience. 

> you have not presented *any* theory as to what consciousness may
> be due to..

I do not pretend to have all the answers to the mysteries of the brain and I look askance at anyone in 2010 who does. I do however have some opinions about how not to explain the brain. 

> ... if not as a side-effect of information processing. 

I reject that idea as written because consciousness does not seem to me merely a "side-effect" of information processing. Clearly our conscious awareness of information processing plays a very important role in that process. And this is where the computationalist theory of mind falls on its face: it can try to explain information processing, but it cannot explain our conscious awareness of information processing, i.e., it cannot explain semantics.

> If the NCC is a particular sequence of chemical reactions, why
> should that be an "explanation"? 

If and when we come to know everything about the neural correlates of consciousness then we will know everything we can know about how the brain becomes conscious and has conscious experiences. If that does not seem satisfactory to you then you might look at the reasons why. Perhaps you hold consciously or unconsciously to the doctrine of mind/matter duality, such that you think mental phenomena must in some way exist separate from the matter of the brain. I don't hold to that view. I think mental phenomena (conscious thoughts, beliefs, desires, and so on) exist as high level processes of the physical brain. 

In my view every conscious thought or emotion has a physical correlate in the brain. In 2010 we can change our perceptions of pain with pain-killers that alter the physics of our nervous systems. I see no reason we should not expect one day to alter our beliefs and desires the same way. 

-gts


      



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