So, as I understand it, you're basically saying that complex systems have emergent phenomena (epiphenomena) within them that could not have been apparent at the start of such a complex system? This could be called quantum randomness or 'the wave function' at play?

Sure, we also already have quantum computers working nowadays. They're not theoretically impossible to make last I heard.

you're basically saying that complex systems have emergent phenomena (epiphenomena) within them that could not have been apparent at the start of such a complex system? This could be called quantum randomness or 'the wave function' at play? — Posty McPostface

Well, that's not what I actually said. I'm not arguing for either epiphenomena or emergent phenomena. I'm arguing that there is an ontological discontinuity between mind and matter - it's basically a dualist argument.

I also said that computers are ontologically different to sentient beings, on similar grounds.

So it's not simply a matter of complexity, of adding more and more elaborations or more and more computing power. Computers can already perform calculations that no human mind could ever hope to accomplish; but what the mind does, is something fundamentally different to what computers do.

This is not to deny that neural networks and distributed AI are not going to become astonishingly powerful - they already are. Google searches have become perceptibly better in the last couple of years, the algorithms are evolving, no question. But when you 'ask google', you're not interacting with a being.

Hey I've got Siri, I use her all the time, for appointments, reminders, getting about. It's amazing how far this has come and how quickly. — Wayfarer

I notice you smuggled in this awful confession without fanfare. :)

Hey I love siri. 'Hey Siri, remind me to call New Scientist at 9:30am'.

Use it all the time.

I thought for a moment you were going to refer to the fact that I confessed to philosophical dualism. Now that's an awful confession. ;-)

There is also the question that after AI arrives, what is to prevent future AI from being created? Surely it will want to cripple the human mind in some way as to prevent later competition.

what is to prevent future AI from being created? Surely it will want to cripple the human mind in some way as to prevent later competition. — JupiterJess

Why would 'it' want anything? What would be 'good' for an artificial intelligence? What aim would it have? There's the rub.

May you, , be forever watched over by machines of loving grace.

In any case, I contend that there's a very simple example of 'something that isn't physical' that is right before your metaphorical eyes at every moment - and that's numbers. — Wayfarer

Isn't this a case for scientific or even platonic realism and not for the mind body divide that you're trying to construe?

Excellent question, thank you. I am very impressed by Platonic realism, although will admit to not having studied the subject formally. But I do accept, with Platonism generally, that there are 'real intelligibles' - that natural numbers are real in the sense of not being devised by a mind. But, they can only be grasped by a mind - ergo, 'real but not material'. But if that is true, then it's game over for materialism, and consequently, it is a very unpopular view to take. (Nevertheless, there are always some Platonists around, for instance, Godel, and (I think) Penrose, and others.)

But another aspect of my argument is that the notion of 'substance' that descended from Cartesian dualism is incoherent, because 'res cogitans' came to treated as something objective. (Husserl is the only philosopher I know who analysed this, in his Crisis of the Western Sciences 1.) But anyway, the notion of 'thinking thing' or 'thinking substance' is, I contend, unintelligible, if conceived of in objective terms; but the original intuition behind it nevertheless holds an important truth.

My argument is that the 'rational intellect' - Descartes 'res cogitans' - is what grasps meaning and relationship (ratio, rationality) but that this is never an object of cognition. It is always 'that which knows', rather than 'that which is known', and we can't get behind it or underneath it. It is to all intents a given; something which comes out in Kant's later 'copernican revolution in philosophy'.

I think, overall, Western philosophy has fallen into an error by loosing sight of this and instead presuming that 'mind' is something that can be understood as the output or consequence of the physical fact of evolution - which is the basic doctrine of evolutionary materialism. I say that in fact, 'mind' is irreducible, i.e. it can't be explained in terms of something else, whether that be neurobiology or evolutionary biology (even if they indeed cast light on various functional aspects of cognition).

I maintain that the rational mind is the source of explanation. So, we find, in practice, that reason must in some sense be prior to any of the empirical or natural sciences, in that you have to employ them, even to devise 'a natural science'; science can't even get out of bed without reason and number. But the massive confusion of our age is that it then tries to locate reason as an evolved adaption - basically it tries to explain it in Darwinian terms. I say you can't do that, because by its nature, reason is not something which is the subject of a biological explanation. I say that 'a Darwin doesn't explain an Einstein.'

So, of course, that puts me at odds with virtually all current philosophy, which to all intents assumes that reason is the product of an essentially irrational process. (This is the theme of Thomas Nagel's 2012 book, Mind and Cosmos which was predictably scorned.) But that attitude is what underwrites the idea that mind is "nothing other" than information processing - it has lost sight of the true (and inscrutable) nature of mind.

This line of argument is not at all unique to me - I think it is very close to Hubert Dreyfuss' criticisms of AI in his What Computers Can't Do. He talks of the impossibility of trying to specify the nature of irony, humour, the unconscious, acculturation, and the many other, often tacit, elements of human consciousness that we bring to bear on every judgement we make. There is a reason that humans are called 'beings'. That word has significance.

Anyway, as far as the mind-body divide - the sort of dualism I'm proposing is not a strict separation between something called matter and something called mind. I think that is very much a model, like an economic model, rather than a hypothesis, as such. I think, probably, mind and matter are two aspects of a larger unity, but plainly, what that unity is, is not something generally known to us (this is something like the dreary-sounding 'neutral monism'.)

Anyway, enough already, I've already said too much, but I hope it's grist for the mill.