You are.

The problem is that the laws you refer to, on a fundamental level, are not deterministic. Were you to rewind the universe and allow it to play forward again, you would find radically different configurations of the atoms you refer to.The universe is chock-a-block with statistical randomness. God does play dice with the universe. Determinism is not possible in the physical universe we inhabit. I don't understand the question. If that's what they are, why wouldn't they arrive at that conclusion?

Consiousness is just a spacial occurence. It's a physical/temporal arrangement of the excitation states of a network of neurons.

Do you see how, when you read my posts, a certain arrangement of colored dots accounts for how meaning goes from my consciousness to yours?All meaning is simply the physical arrangement of things. So too, then, is the organ of meaning - our consciousness - merely a physical arrangement of things.

They're exactly the same thing. You cannot understand consciousness unless you understand language, because language and symbolic representation are the foundation of consciousness.Until you understand how marks on a page can become meaning in your mind, you won't understand how cells in your brain can become the mind itself.

Well, the marks have to mean something; there's no other conduit for the meaning to go from my mind to yours other than via the marks on the page. We've never met, and we don't have any prior agreement to interpret marks as meanings, other than the fact that we both speak the same language. But the meaning would be there even if you couldn't read english, right? I mean a Chinese dictionary doesn't stop being meaningful just because nobody in the room can read Chinese, right?The marks on the page store meaning, simply by being spacial arrangements of atoms. So too does your brain store the meaning of your mind as the spacial arrangement of neurons.

If they have no meaning, then how is it you're able to understand what I'm typing?And if you can derive meaning from something that has no inherent meaning, then why can't your mind be the same way? How do you know that your mind is real?

You don't really seem to have any answers to my questions.

Actually, never mind.This message has been edited by crashfrog, 11-17-2005 05:20 PM

"This is my grandfather's hatchet. My father replaced the handle; I replaced the head."Is it still his grandfather's axe? Identity is a static label that we apply to the dynamic system of a human being. They used to say that every seven years, every atom in your body has been replaced. I don't believe that's true, but it's undeniable that there's a flow of atoms through your body; they enter your body as food or air, are encorporated into your body's cells via chemical reactions, those cells die and are eliminated from the body. Your hairs are naturally shed. The enamel of your teeth wears down. You continually shed layers of skin. And you eat food to replace all that lost material.Saying "this is a different person than before" or "this is the same person they were before" is a highly subjective thing.

Well, most people can't do that, either. When faced with something totally new most people immediately retreat into what they already know, and attempt to apply the rules they already understand to the new situation.I think that, in discussions of AI, there's a tendancy to romanticize the power of the human mind, and ignore the fact that the vast majority of everyone's day is spent doing repeated tasks and instinctual behaviors. The vaunted powers of reason our species is continually credited with aren't actually necessary all that often.

First of all, I program in C++, VB, Java, LISP, PHP, and Perl, to name a few, I pursued about half of a BA in computer science before switching to english, and held employment for over four years as a phone and site-based technical support professional, and I'm telling you that absolutely none of your expertise about computers is relevant to cognitive science, artificial intelligence, or understanding what consciousness is.But, hey, nice try. I was almost impressed by your credentials. Almost.

A C++ programmer is telling me that Java is crap? Please. You don't even know what LISP is. Sure. Unfortunately to model a neural network of equivalent complexity to the human brain would take more computing power than is avaliable. And it's obviously not just the complexity of the physical connections; horses and whales, for instance, have brains of equivalent or larger size to humans.Clearly the organization of neurons, as well as the capacity to be exposed to human culture, is necessary for the development of consciousness. I think the phenomenon of so-called "feral children" demonstrates the importance of exposure to human culture in the formation of awareness.But there's nothing in your or my head that can't be modeled on a system of sufficient complexity; the only remaining question at that point is whether or not people like you circularly define "consciousness" in a way that specifically disallows computers to qualify.

Really? Cuz I see a whole lot of posts that you don't seem able to reply to.