The brain is the hardware and the mind is the software.I notice the list only mentions the brain. I can see the merit of viewing the brain as a kind of computer, but I can’t see the merit of viewing the mind as part of that computer, for the reason I’ve described. That the brain responds to stimuli in “programmed” ways I don’t find contentious; but the idea that the actions we take are programmed into us by evolution I think is pseudoscientific. — AJJ
It would seem to me that any allegation of flaws would be based on biases themselves. Biases that would include ideas that the mind and body are sepearate things, or that the mind is an illusion. Evolutionary Psychology seems to reject that mind is an illusion and rejects the idea that we can explain the mind by referring to only biology while rejecting the psychology, or what it is like, of the mind.The Stanford entry you quote does go on to mention, as it had already stated at the outset, that 'there is a broad consensus among philosophers of science that evolutionary psychology is a deeply flawed enterprise.' These allegations of flaws are not necessarily expressed ardently, but they are powerful. Many of them come from people who believe that evolutionary biology provides a more secure basis for scientific progress and that evolutionary psychology bears the heavy weight of biasses that its practitioners hold. — mcdoodle
The brain is the hardware and the mind is the software.
Think about how you learn. Learning is natural selecton shaping your understanding of the world and your place in it on much shorter time scales. When you learn something, what is the learning about, if not some information in, or about, the environment that you then use to produce better-informed decisions and actions that improve fitness? In learning something new, you change the way your mind interprets sensory data until that interpretation is no longer useful and you learn something else. — Harry Hindu
That something can be accurately described by information processing theory doesn’t change the fact that, in an of itself, it isn’t actually what you’re describing it as. — AJJ
Every concept you use is derived from the mind, so it remains that step beyond when you attempt to describe it in the same way. — AJJ
How would you feel about the position that yes, it does mean that it is what you're describing it as; it just doesn't mean that it can't be other things as well? — Theologian
This argument of your own seems to me to lead to the conclusion that no concept can ever describe the mind; or at least, cannot do so fully. You may wish to comment on that. I am currently re-considering my own views on the recursion problem. — Theologian
PS If I understand you correctly, it seems to me that your argument leads to the conclusion that mind can never fully describe mind because mind, perforce, is always one step beyond, continuing to describe the describer. Is this what you are saying? — Theologian
I think that illustrates that whatever it is you’re describing is observer-relative. A calculator to an adult is device for making mathematical computations; to a child it’ll more likely be a toy. I still say that in and of itself it’s neither. — AJJ
Are you saying that literally all descriptions are observer relative?
Do you think that there is an objective reality? Do you think it is describable? — Theologian
1. I don't think the recursion problem is the fatal flaw you see it as. You see, I think you're thinking in these terms...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gZN2eoAPCwY
When really, this might be more enlightening:
https://www.slideshare.net/AsifAliRaza/recursion-37090597
The key point being, infinite recursion can be described, just so long as it has some kind of structure. — Theologian
2. Regarding your most recent claim, that final cause is what allows things to have objective reality, I think you have two quite heavy burdens of proof to meet:
2.1 Given the general skepticism with which science regards final cause, I think the onus is on you to show that anything has final cause.
2.2 Even if you believe final causes exist, why is it that final causes give things objective existence? You have provided no argument to support this claim. — Theologian
I’m not getting why describing a grammatical structure called recursion addresses the problem with describing what is always first-person subjective as if it’s an object. — AJJ
You responded:If I understand you correctly, it seems to me that your argument leads to the conclusion that mind can never fully describe mind because mind, perforce, is always one step beyond, continuing to describe the describer, and so ad infinitum. Is this what you are saying? — Theologian
Yes, I guess I must be. It seems impossible to make an object out of something that is always first-person subjective. — AJJ
needs its own thread — AJJ
.problem with describing what is always first-person subjective as if it’s an object. — AJJ
it seems to me that your argument leads to the conclusion that mind can never fully describe mind because mind, perforce, is always one step beyond, continuing to describe the describer, and so ad infinitum. Is this what you are saying? — Theologian
Yes, I guess I must be. — AJJ
So it seemed to me that you were saying that we were trapped in infinite recursion, and that this was a fatal flaw. My counter was that, as syntactic theory illustrates, infinite recursion is not a fatal flaw. It can in fact be handled quite adequately. — Theologian
First, is a mind "always first-person subjective?" If there are other minds in the world, then those minds would seem, by definition, to be second or third person. And if we have some ideas about those other minds, why should those ideas be only subjective? If, as you claim, only things with final causes have objective reality, do minds have final causes? If so, they would seem to be more amenable to objective description than other things, not less. — Theologian
Second, don't forget: a model - or a description - is never identical to the thing being modeled, and does not need to share all its properties. It only has to share enough of its properties to tell us how the thing behaves. An electron's orbit is not an equation. But it does not follow from this that an equation describing an electron's orbit is wrong. Nor that equations are fundamentally incapable of describing an electron's orbit. — Theologian
I think the the view that without a subjective perceiver, logic circuits are not logic circuits but only electrical currents is also problematic. Many philosophers would see the property of being logical as an emergent property that, well, emerges from the circuits when arranged in those structures that embody the rules of logic. In order to motivate your own theory, you need to show that they are wrong. — Theologian
Also, let's not forget: while you are now slipping back to saying that a mind cannot be a computer because a computer is only a computer when perceived as such by a mind, there are problems with that too. As I observed before, computers can, and have been defined in other ways. The mathematical model that defines a Turing machine, for example, makes no reference to the operator. But far more seriously and fundamentally, when I said that: — Theologian
Am I slipping back to that? I thought I’ve always been saying that. — AJJ
I am not saying you are wrong. I am saying you are at the level of raw assertion.Those circuits can’t embody the rules of logic unless meaning is applied to what they’re doing by a mind. A computer producing a syllogism on its screen is not applying logic unless we give the words a certain meaning. Its circuits are simply following the laws of physics. — AJJ
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