Philosophy Now Forum

Volition and awareness are inextricable Andy H... Stars are unimaginably aware, and so is the earth. There is no rational way to apprehend such things though. And, no, It is not my 'believing' that allows such statements. It is experiential in ways I would need a lifetime to explain and still get o...

Well that is simply about volition in the system and whether or not volition provisions are internal or external to the system Your original quote was "Matter isn't the fundamental basis if the universe, awareness is." You then said that you were making a distinction "between aware t...

I have to try to work out how you're using the word 'aware' in this case. Would you say that the engine management system of a car is 'aware' of the engine temperature and the driver's use of the accelerator pedal? The engine isn't aware The bird is not self reflective enough to have self pity, but...

Are you making a case for or against an ontological division between living and non-living things? Between aware things and unaware. But it's not a dualism. Everything around us is composed of either aware entities of some nature or other, or else are unaware structural components of aware entities...

Computers in general, and especially early, primitive attempts at "thinking" machines (e.g., IBM's Deep Blue), are an artful representation of our minds, or more precisely our current conception of how our brains and minds function. Humans created computers in their own image, so to speak...

Bernard wrote:Matter isn't the fundamental basis if the universe, awareness is. All bets are off when that is realised.

Are you making a case for or against an ontological division between living and non-living things?

life to me is dynamics. a rock is not so much. it is basically inert a lichen is hugely dynamic. it reproduces. it survives. be that a simple [to evolution] program. eat grow reproduce. [ http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0053946/?ref_=nm_knf_i4 ] does a sponge think? any 'thing' that has self instigated...

Living things have programmed responses and un-programmed responses and the mix varies from one species to another. So far as I am aware, computers are ONLY capable of programmed responses, and they exhibit no other sign of life. I did not say that living things had only one kind of response or tha...

Show me a computer that can do other than what the programmer programs it to do. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolutionary_algorithm http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neural_network Yes, computers doing what human programmers have programmed them to do, but nothing beyond that. Nobody can tell what thes...

thedoc wrote:Show me a computer that can do other than what the programmer programs it to do.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolutionary_algorithm

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neural_network

And I'm still unsure how you're using the word 'sentient'. Strictly speaking, sentience is the ability of a mind to subjectively perceive its external environment. Now you've introduced the word 'mind', so we have a different avenue to investigate. There are many philosophical views on the subject,...

Good questions, Andy. Crystals grow, but they don't reproduce in a manner even close to the most primitive life forms, which can replicate nearly exact copies. Crystals definitely don't evolve and in that respect their growth is quite predictable. Purposeful evolution is a key characteristic of lif...

Because only living things grow, reproduce and evolve into sentient beings. Crystals grow and reproduce -- would you consider them to be 'living'? When you make the claim that living things differ from non-living things in that they "evolve into sentient beings" are you saying that non-li...

Raw matter and energy behave in accordance with definite laws and proximate causes. These laws of physics, notwithstanding random variation at the Planck scale, adequately describe how non-living entities are affected by their environment. A kilo of hydrogen fuses into helium under intense heat and...

I don't see why matter is necessary for life. That statement doesn't say anything at all if you can't say how you're using the words 'matter' and 'life', and these two words are very tricky little customers to pin down. In the common speech of bottom-level physics 'matter' takes three forms: liquid...