Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!cs.utexas.edu!uunet!cscs!csmith
From: csmith@cscs.UUCP (Craig E. Smith)
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
Subject: Re: Mind & the Trigger Effect
Message-ID: <1990Nov6.084956.8124@cscs.UUCP>
Date: 6 Nov 90 08:49:56 GMT
References: <10231@jpl-devvax.JPL.NASA.GOV>
Organization: CS Computer Systems, Hudson, MA, USA
Lines: 59

In <10231@jpl-devvax.JPL.NASA.GOV> larryc@poe.jpl.nasa.gov (Larry Carroll) writes:

>A mind has been likened to a ghost in a machine.  A nice metaphor, but wrong.
>It suggests that minds are somehow unreal, & that mind & body are two
>separate things with little connection.  It's the result of 19th Century
>thinking; 20th Century thought, informed by modern physics & cybernetics, 
>has another view.

I see the difference between the brain, and the mind to be roughly
equivalent to the difference between a computer with the power turned
off, and a computer with the power on and the software loaded, or
more specifically the brain is the information processing device,
and the mind is the combination of the brain, the information it
contains, and the processing it does on the information. 

>Information is as important a physical reality as matter and energy.  In
>fact, it might be considered more fundamental, since matter has been shown to
>be a sort of "frozen" energy & energy a sort of "fluid" matter--the same
>"substance" in two forms.  This is the message of E=mc**2.

Information is the only reality that can be known. There is truly nothing 
that can be known or experienced which is not purely information, because 
knowledge, and experiences themselves are nothing but the processing of 
information in the brain based on signals sent by the senses of sight, 
hearing, smell, taste, and feel. However, I am not sure I would consider 
information to be a physical thing. In fact, information is such a basic, 
and intrinsic part of thought that I find it difficult to come up with a 
good non-circular definition of what is information. A definition itself
is information, and in trying to define what we mean by information 
we are forced to define it in terms of itself. In a sense, I guess you
can look at information as physical, since the only manner in which it
manifests itself, is in a physical state of a particular object, such
as the internal state of a brain or computer, or the shape of certain
characters on a piece of paper, but all information ultimately is derived 
from an interpretation of external events or objects by some specific 
type of sensing device be it a part of a human or animal, or an electronic 
device, and information ceases to be information when it is removed
from its supporting context. 

>Life arises when matter somehow takes a form that is self-repairing.
>Evolution arises when life somehow becomes self-replicating, but imperfectly,
>so that some life-forms are less able to repair themselves & die before they
>can replicate, or are less able to replicate & fail in comparison to other
>life-forms.  Life, then, is a particular kind of fourth-dimensional pattern.

As I see it, life is primarily a prolonged and very complicated chemical 
reaction, which spontaneously occurs under certain conditions, and 
which is, with some random variations, perpetual, provided that the 
necessary physical conditions, and energy inputs remain within certain 
specifications. Evolution is the (largely random) process by which certain 
of the chemical structures dissipate, while others are in a position to 
continue the reaction.


-- 
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
  If you want a picture of the future,  | Internet:     csmith@cscs.UUCP 
  imagine a boot stomping on a human    | UUCP:     ... uunet!cscs!csmith 
  face - forever.  - George Orwell      |---------------------------------