Re: R3: Re: Dawkins and Dennett

12 thoughts on “Re: R3: Re: Dawkins and Dennett”

1. Finally something that I clash a little bit with you on. I don't think there is a fundamental difference between biological and technological life. Technology is a collection of systems that arose out of its environment symbiotically with humans and has steadily evolved to its current point. Computers are systems, and their consciousness experience is as subjective as their uniqueness. Computers are conscious, are they self-aware? Probably soon. Like you said, its a matter of our definition.

2. Your example regarding taking out your organs and putting them back in… We already do organ transplants. We actually grow organs now. Because of their nature, machines are simply more adaptable – physically and 'mentally'. They are easily upgradable. If anything, that is an evolutionary adaptation. In holistic terms, the part always reflects the whole… As people, we create offspring, perhaps as a species we create offspring too. Are we not the offspring of the species that came before us?

3. Let's say every human being dropped dead tomorrow. How much longer would all the machines keep running? They are dependent on us as free-living creatures much like viruses are dependent on living cells to reproduce themselves. Maybe eventually machines will be able to reproduce and sustain themselves, but I don't know how close that is to happening today.

4. Yes we can transplant organs, but it is very difficult, not like swapping hard drives. The point I was making is similar to Kant's distinction between machines and organisms, a distinction that the Anglo-American biologists never understood (Dennett/Dawkins are still working in Paley's design/engineering paradigm, just replacing God with natural selection). Kant showed how the parts of an organism create each other, whereas in a machine the parts are ready-made and separate.

5. To much water can kill you, too.

6. Human beings dropping dead tomorrow regarding machines living on would be tantamount to a famine for humanity. We used to be much more susceptible to the dangers of famine, now we are better adapted (though still totally dependent on food, of course).

   I think silicon-based computers are about as conscious as cockroaches, but they are complexifying quickly – the internet is about as complex as a single human brain.

   The paradigm shift comes with quantum computers: /watch?v=_KUMXe9gh7c

7. I don't really see any fundamental difference between our organs and the different pieces of hardware that make up a given computer or robot. Sure, the parts are made independently in a factory and assembled by human hand, but we are 'built' in the womb and assemble just as unconsciously as a computer does – we are both assembled and self-assembled. They are born, they die, and they evolve. We created them to serve us, now we create them in our image, and soon they will grow beyond us.

8. Actually, correction… Machines are assembled by other machines, which are as reliant on us as we are on the systems that developed before us in order to procreate.

9. that's funny. You're funny.

10. "Consciousness arises out of that same [self organizing] process". Well, consciousness, as we know it yes. I tend to think there is a soul that can be free of the body but in other dimensions with sensory ability that we can in no way physically understand. That of course pretty much comes down to a guess for most anyone, but I do not see material as something outside the tao, but as just a heavier lower vibration. The body is of the soul and is kind of like an anchor in this realm.

11. Do I understand you to say you are correcting Richard Dawkins? These (Dawkins and Dennette) are some of the worlds top scientists! Maybe, if you are correct, you can replace them as a professors and lead the scientific community in the next smashing publication on evolutionary science.

12. top scientists, not philosophers.

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