[ExI] Let's play What If.

[John Clark]

On Nov 11, 2010, at 4:48 PM, Alan Grimes wrote:

> ideas can't think of ideas.

Absolutely untrue, ideas can be about ideas, in fact most ideas are.

> I'm a strict monist

So you think everything is one thing and you should not break a thing into manageable pieces to understand it. So you can't hope to understand anything until you understand everything. So the most likely result of this philosophy is not understanding anything. So I'm glad I'm not a strict monist.

> I can't imagine any way through which the two can be separated. All such proposals are inherently irrational

I see no irrationality in recognizing that a thing and what a thing does is not the same thing. A race car goes fast but a race car is not a goes fast, nor is a brain a mind.

> Stick a few electrodes on my skull and you'll see my EEG

And stick a few electrodes in a computer motherboard and you'll see its electrical signals.

> you can even determine my state of consciousness from it.

Don't be ridiculous. The only consciousness we can directly observe is our own, other conscious entities can only be assumed from intelligent behavior; and it matters not one bit if that behavior comes from a man or a machine.    

> If you do the same to a computer you will not be able to detect any
> differences except for the general level of computational activity,
> which has no inherent relationship to the state of the upload.

I have no idea what that means.

 John K Clark 
> 

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