[ExI] How the brain builds sentences, neuron by neuron

[John Clark]

On Fri, Jun 26, 2026 at 2:01 PM Ben Zaiboc via extropy-chat <
extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:

On 26/06/2026 15:46, Brent Allsop wrote:
>


* > I know this is the popular consensus - functionalism.*
>
>
> * >> I hesitate to comment on that, because I know that you have the same
> attitude to language as Humpty Dumpty in Alice in Wonderland. I don't think
> anybody has yet deciphered what you want the word 'quality' to mean, for
> example.*
>

*Hi Ben: Actually I think virtually everybody believes in functionalism
because if they did not they'd have no reason not to be solipsists, and I
have never met anybody in my life who really believed in solipsism, but
then I'm not in the habit of visiting  loony bins.   *

>
* > All I can say here is that the Brent Allsopian way of thinking is at
> odds with what observation and logical deduction tell us about how the
> world (and the human brain) works. ON and OFF are indeed abstract notions,
> but that doesn't mean they are useless. Morse code, for example, works
> extremely well. It doesn't matter whether a hole in a tape means ON or OFF,
> as long as all systems that interact with the tape are consistent, it
> works. It doesn't matter whether the codon AAC means asparagine or
> guanidine, as long as all your cells are consistent in their
> interpretation, you build all your proteins correctly. The sequence of
> nucleotides Adenine-Adenine-Cytosine has no 'quality' that relates to any
> particular amino acid, it's just an abstract code, expressed as specific
> molecules. Living cells happen to be able to interpret that code and turn
> it into something completely different, a string of particular amino
> acids. At the risk of sounding just as arrogant, I could say that YOU are
> the one thinking about things in the wrong way. There's nothing wrong with
> abstract notions, they aren't tied to material properties except by some
> convention, and they don't need to be. This is how information works. It's
> abstract, and has to be interpreted. As long as the things doing the
> interpreting agree, then they can work together and get things done, guided
> by the abstract, non-material, 'qualityless' information embodied in things
> such as holes in paper, neural spikes in nerve axons, electrical charges in
> a wire, pressure waves in air, etc.*
>

*Once more I agree with all of that.  *

*> This confusion is a bit like saying that "emails are IN FACT beaches".
> Yes, silicon is a factor in both of them (at least with our current
> technology) but it's a lot more complicated than that.*


*Damn, I wish I'd said that!  *

*John K Clark*
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