From: hampday@earthlink.net
Date: Sat Jan 08 2005 - 18:21:10 GMT
Platt --
> About artificial intelligence, Pirsig said this:
>
> "Since the MOQ states that consciousness (i.e. intellectual patterns) is
> the collection and manipulation of symbols, created in the brain, that
> stand for patterns of experience, then artificial intelligence would be
> the collection and manipulation of symbols, created in a machine, that
> stand for patterns of experience. If one agrees that experience exists at
> the inorganic level, then it is clear that computers already have
> artificial intelligence. A question arises if the term "consciousness" is
> expanded to mean "intuition" or "mystic awareness." Then computers are
> shut out by the fact that static patterns do not create Dynamic quality."
> (Note 32, Lila's Child)
Need I refer you to Hoffman's statement on the fundamental (i.e., essential)
nature of Consciousness, for which I am most grateful to you?
"...If consciousness is fundamental, then we should not be surprised that,
despite centuries of effort by the most brilliant of minds, there is as yet
no physicalist theory of consciousness, no theory that explains how mindless
matter or energy or fields could be, or cause, conscious experience. There
are, of course, many proposals for where to find such a theory-perhaps in
information, complexity, neurobiology, neural darwinism, discriminative
mechanisms, quantum effects, or functional organization. But no proposal
remotely approaches the minimal standards for a scientific theory:
quantitative precision and novel prediction. If matter is but one of the
humbler products of consciousness, then we should expect that consciousness
itself cannot be theoretically derived from matter. ...Matter, spacetime and
physical objects are among the contents of consciousness."
Hoffman's premise is irrefutable and central to my thesis. Consciousness is
not inorganic or biological: it is the intellectual Subject of the physical
world -- a totally different "essence" than the material reality it
constructs as its object. The individual awareness that we call
"experience" is not the same thing as the "detection" and sorting of
information by insentient mechanisms. There is (absolutely) no way that
cyberneticists are going to create conscious awareness from inert matter.
If the MOQ supports such a notion, it is promulgating a myth far more
deleterious to humanity than any religious dogma I'm aware of.
> Until computers are capable of the latter, I guess the MOQ position on
> "improving" the human condition through DNA manipulation and artificial
> intelligence would be, "Not to worry."
I do worry, Platt! The presumption that computers and biological
manipulation will eventually replace consciousness is a very dangerous
thought, indeed. It denigrates the sancitity of man and makes morality a
meaningless concept. Again, I find it necessary to express my
disappointment in your having been so easily suckered into New Age
scientism.
Essentially yours,
Ham
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