boneyard bill

ex-creationist writes:

And what is your point? If the point is that science just needs more time and more data in order to produce a reductive explanation, this is simply a repetition of the argument from faith that I have already dealt with two or three times already.

excreationist

It is something that could be seen in the decades to come... we could see if researchers can create AI's that are virtually indentical to ants, and mice, and cats, and dogs, etc... and that would show that progress is being made. I think human-level consciousness is just an extension on that. (The appropriate instincts would need to be programmed in, etc, too, which would take some time to perfect - probably some form of artificial evolution would be used)
BTW, there is a project to recreate a kitten - in robot form - RoboNeko. I think the project is still underway. Its behaviour is currently being developed in a virtual 3D environment but eventually it will be a physical robot. It seems that it will have about 75 million neurons. I'm not sure if it will be able to learn like a kitten does and navigate around complex environments... they want it to be able to jump and cope with free-falling though - and it uses a neural network (which are good for learning) so I guess it would learn things itself to some degree and navigate around complex environments. Maybe they want it to be just like a kitten (behaviour-wise)... not just a shadow of one, like robot pets usually are. But I just read a bit of their site so I don't know.
Anyway, we know that people have about 100 billion neurons and we take years to learn complex things like the concept of our own deaths. And many generations of mutations and natural selection refined the wiring of our brains so that they are good at learning. (Depending how neural networks are set up, they can have trouble learning patterns [converging on a solution])
Anyway, at the moment, one of the most ambitious neural net projects I know of is RoboNeko, and it is years from being complete, and it only uses up to 75 million neurons and is an attempt to recreate a kitten. I wouldn't expect AI to be at the level of human-level intelligence yet! Nature is quite efficient at things, and it wouldn't make much sense if we could do in 75 million neurons what it takes nature 100 billion neurons.
http://www.genobyte.com/cbm.html
This link is the same as the previous one... it talks about RoboNeko's brain and how they are using artificial chromosomes to artificially evolve the brain.
It is too complex for humans to design those neural configurations exactly... they are evolved through genetic algorithms instead. It is taking people long enough to develop a kitten-type brain with all its walking and survival-type behaviours. It would take even longer to work on a human one. But scientists would want to start small first. Like how the space program was very gradual - we didn't put people on the moon first - first of all we sent satellites into space - then dogs into space - then unmanned landers to the moon - then people were sent into space - then eventually to the moon...
Part of the reason we didn't sent people straight to the moon would simply be that we weren't confident enough that they'd be safe. But another reason would be that it would involve a huge amount of effort that is based on too many assumptions. (After all, hypothetically they wouldn't have even sent a satellite into orbit, etc) Doing things gradually lets you gradually test assumptions. If you do something too complex right away, you mightn't know why you failed. e.g. a person from 1800 might want to make a jumbo jet. They (or their descendents) would be more likely to succeed if they have subgoals (e.g. getting a single person airborne or trying to create an artificial bird by studying them) rather than go straight for their ultimate goal.

So I think science needing more time and data isn't an ad-hoc defense for materialism... I think it is obvious and expected.

You might call faith in science to continue to make new discoveries an "argument from faith" but there is an overwhelming trend for new discoveries to be made in every field of science - to fill in the pieces, etc. I'm just extrapolating. It is a little like assuming that the sun will rise tomorrow because it has in the past.

sodium

Do you mean the problem of how the brain is able to behave in an intelligent manner, or how sensations (qualia) can be created by matter? If you mean the former, then I don't think we have a perfect explanation, but then, we don't have a perfect explanation for a lot of complex systems. If you mean the latter, then I think it is explained, but you don't like the explanation.

sodium

No, it's just something we can deduce, like the fact that water is H2O.

If you believe that vision could refer to a general class of brain states, then what's the problem, and what do you mean by saying that it isn't a general class of brain states? Obviously it's different conceptually, but then Oedipus's wife is conceptually different from Oedipus's mother. That doesn't mean that both terms don't actually refer to the same person.

boneyard bill

Sodium:

Of course I mean the latter. As for the supposed explanation you are referring to, it isn't an explanation. It is your opinion. There is nothing in this supposed explantion that compels me, in any logical sense, to accept it.

You claim the identity, but you haven't proven the identity. Therefore it is a postute etc.

That is the logic of you claims. Show me, logically where I am wrong. I'm not just go to trade assertions with you anymore. Make a logical point.

boneyard bill

Sodium writes:

Amazing ! You have a logical proof for the identity theory. Please give it to us. Present here and now please.

sodium

Let's keep two issues separate.

1) Materialism is consistent with what we know to be true.

Of course, I claim this is true. But to do so, I don't have to prove that materialism is true, I just have to give a possible (and plausible) explanation of things like sensations in materialistic terms. Whenever I do this, you accuse me of making assertions, and demand that I prove them.

2) Materialism is the only theory that is plausible given what we know to be true.

That's my contention as well, and I've given some justification. Of course, this argument proceeds by considering other alternatives, and you haven't really explained the alternative you advocate. I don't really see much point in arguing about this, however, if you still deny proposition #1.

Philosoft

Beg pardon. What do you mean by "identity theory"? Are you talking about the somewhat misnamed Law of Identity?

boneyard bill

Sodium writes:

I don't really see much point in arguing about this, however, if you still deny proposition #1.

Of course I deny proposition one. How can materialism be consisitent with what we know to be true when it can't explain the one and only thing we know for certain to be true?

I also deny proposition two. Matter is a totally unnecessary concept. If you read my previous posts you will see where I cited John Wheeler, the physicist who pointed out that all that we know of reality can be expressed with concepts of information. We do not need the concept of matter.

boneyard bill

Philosoft writes:

I don't think you can get a handle on this discussion without reviewing at least a good portion of the previous posts. If you do that, the context should make the meaning here apparent. You also then see my many complaints about people jumping into the discussion without having grasped the context of the discussion and then wanting me to bring them up to speed.