Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!cornell!rochester!pt.cs.cmu.edu!cadre!geb From: geb@cadre.dsl.PITTSBURGH.EDU (Gordon E. Banks) Newsgroups: comp.ai Subject: Re: Question on Chinese Room Argument Message-ID: <2371@cadre.dsl.PITTSBURGH.EDU> Date: 3 Mar 89 14:35:41 GMT References: <4298@pt.cs.cmu.edu> <17923@iuvax.cs.indiana.edu> <232@nbires.nbi.com> Reply-To: geb@cadre.dsl.pittsburgh.edu (Gordon E. Banks) Organization: Decision Systems Lab., Univ. of Pittsburgh, PA. Lines: 54 In article <232@nbires.nbi.com> matt@nbires.UUCP (Matthew Meighan) writes: > >My own view is that subjective experience does not arise from the >brain at all, but vice versa -- that the brain, and the rest of the >physical body, is evolved by consciousness to give itself a vehicle >with which to interact with other consiousnesses. Understanding >and subjective experience do not exist in the brain at all, but in the >mind, of which the brain is just the most obvious and least-subtle part. > Of course, Lord Berkeley demonstrated long ago that all reality may be subjective and we can't know anything for certain. But once that interesting speculation is made, you can't get much further. If the brain is just part of the mind, what are the other parts? The spirit, soul or some other animus? Some other part of the body? Something that isn't part of the body? >This viewpoint is plainly not provable -- that is, I can't prove it to >YOU from MY experience. For me, it is both 'subjectively' true because >it is what I feel, and 'objectively' true because I have observed >phenomena I can't explain any other way. Exactly what were those phenomena. Perhaps others can explain them as arising from the brain. Just because you can't explain them doesn't mean they are inexplicable. Or are they also something you can not even communicate, something mystical? (If so, follow ups to talk.religion.misc). > >My real point, though, is that your view that consciousness "arises" >from the physical brain is as purely subjective as mine that it is the >other way around. It seems to me that this assertion is a leap of >faith, resembling more a religious conviction than a scientific one. > Not so. The idea that the mind comes from the brain is scientific and is substantiated by evidence that damage to the brain causes damage to the "mind". In fact, all of the cognitive processes that most people think of as being the mind can be damaged or abolished by lesions made to specific parts of the brain. Thus a properly functioning brain is necessary to consciousness and to the elements of human personality. Is it sufficient? We won't know until we create a brain and it acts conscious. Even then, you might argue that even though we created the brain, God sent a soul to animate it. So the argument could still go on, although its weight would be diminished. >one question we can answer the other) we should take the fact that >understanding does NOT emerge in computer programs as evidence that it >does NOT emerge in brains, either. > Oh, nonsense! The brain has 10^12 neurons and many more connections. None of our puny computers (mostly von Neumann to boot) or programs have come close to such an engine. About the best we could model now is a toad (see Michael Arbib's Rana Computatrix), and that requires a supercomputer to run.