Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!sdd.hp.com!uakari.primate.wisc.edu!dali.cs.montana.edu!ogicse!pdxgate!eecs!erich From: erich@eecs.cs.pdx.edu (Erich Stefan Boleyn) Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy Subject: Re: forwarded post Message-ID: <615@pdxgate.UUCP> Date: 9 Nov 90 04:12:08 GMT References: <1990Nov5.181355.24990@watdragon.waterloo.edu> <557@pdxgate.UUCP> <699@aio.jsc.nasa.gov> Sender: news@pdxgate.UUCP Lines: 83 smiller@aio.jsc.nasa.gov (Stephen Miller) writes: > thank you for your comments. i do, however, think the changes i'm >talking about ARE fundamental. But a better question might be fundamental with respect to what? I agree that we (as a social group) are changing, and that the new concepts are starting to take on forms like those never before. We could get fundamental change of the social condition but wash over how our biological basis cements certain features. > as witness, your comment "has our >emotive base slowed down our scientific understanding?" [paraphrased. >if i got it wrong, just correct me.] my point exactly is this: that we >(western man) has been trying to ignore this aspect of reality, along >with others (such as consciousness) for the last 2000 years or more. >(that is, within the physical and "rigorous" sciences.) this is because >these areas of life and reality do not fit well into empirical frames, >and because these are the HARD questions. What I really meant was that our emotive base may well be fundamentally inefficient for certain things. Look how it is causing problems for our society at the population densities that we have now? I don't think it has been entirely free of problems in the sciences, however much we chose to ignore it. I question how much could we change with this kind of fundamental structure involved (maybe several levels removed). But isn't this ignoring the (very likely) possibility that those questions could be fundamentally *bad* ones to ask? One of my points in the origonal posting on this thread was that the very *words* conciousness and intelligence can be confusing. They evolved from a social useage that was useful for dealing with humans, but I am becoming more and more convinced that they not only apply badly to the rest of the world, but may be a naive set of concepts when pursuing it generally. That's the question I'm asking. What if we do find that intentionality is a less efficient method of representation and/or question asking than some other method (to be dicsovered, maybe), can we leave enough of the intentional philosophy behind to be useful? I wonder... > we are getting close(r) to the >real tough ones now, the ones philosophy has asked since the greeks and >before. (the ones like "what are we?" "do i exist?" "what is matter >(the universe)?" and "where did i (we) come from?") our physical sciences >(and life sciences) and now mathematical-comp.sci. and so on have >progressed to the point where we are confronting these very basic >("fundamental") questions and issues. I think that the questions too represent a problem (specifically, human intentionality). This is an efficient system that we have for dealing with the universe, but we have no basis for expecting the universe to play our game when it comes to this. Science has long been a process where the first problems in a field were set aside and realized to be bad questions, or inappropriately concieved. Reading this group alone suggests the problems with using these "human-only" (or maybe mammal-only) concepts for too much more. There have been heated arguments where people were practically representing the same side, not to mention so many uses of the words "conciousness" and "intelligence" that I don't even like to use the words out of parenthesis any more (I use them like quotes from books, i.e. to refer to the whole idea of "machines" and the "mind"). > we are reaching the point where it is no longer viable... Yes, I think that a lot of us are already thinking of it in a similar way. But that's not the end of it... > thank you for agreeing with me that we are in a revolution of >thought here, now. i think it is evolution. of human consciousness! ^^^^^^^^^ I think that the *real* evolutionary step happened many thousands of years ago, by giving the potential for this kind of social evolution. I also tend to think we are approaching a kind of critical mass where *extremely* rapid chages (or even phase transitions, if you like) are going to occur. Erich "I haven't lost my mind; I know exactly where it is." / -- Erich Stefan Boleyn -- \ --=> *Mad Genius wanna-be* <=-- { Honorary Grad. Student (Math) }--> Internet E-mail: \ Portland State University / >%WARNING: INTERESTED AND EXCITABLE%<