tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10584495.post111280692142154277..comments2024-03-27T15:34:14.749-07:00Comments on dangerous idea: On the philosophy of mind and consensusVictor Repperthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10962948073162156902noreply@blogger.comBlogger1125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10584495.post-1112855510867766612005-04-06T23:31:00.000-07:002005-04-06T23:31:00.000-07:00How DOES a physicalist Christian make sense of the...How DOES a physicalist Christian make sense of the Chalcedonian creedal affirmation that Jesus was both "fully God and fully man" at the same time in the same body? There is in effect a dualistic necessity in Christianity of having to believe in both God's "spirit" and human "flesh" dwelling in some sense together in Jesus's case, no? <BR/><BR/>Not having labeled myself as either a Christian or an atheist, I also do not choose to label myself as a dualist or a physicalist. Though rationally speaking, relying on supernatural explanations seems a bit facile, since they tell you nothing about "how things work." <BR/><BR/>The Intelligent Design movement is a case in point. They don't even hypothesize at what "levels" or by what means the supernatural designing took place. Heck, they can even claim that the Designer simply moves around natural mutagens inside the cell, like directing the paths of bullets to hit specific points on targets, i.e., nudging them here and there so that these natural mutagens may induce specific mutations at different times and places, i.e., utilizing nature's alerady present and active mutagentic chemicals and radiation waves that normally are in the cell or penetrate it from outside, but directing those mutagens a bit more precisely over time. Talk about the hiddeness of God, even God's existence relying on an unfalsifiable theory that proves nothing and gains no one any actual knowledge. <BR/><BR/>In terms of actual ideas that might provide a few interesting experiments vis a vis the physicalist/dualist exchange, I was intrigued recently by Robin Hanson's <BR/>Fourteen Wild Ideas<BR/>Five Of Which Might Be True!<BR/><BR/>1st Wild Idea: <BR/><BR/>If we keep writing down common sense datums until 2100, we can make computers as smart as people.<BR/><BR/>We learn more about brains and making smart computers, but we seem to have run out of major architectural innovations -- better ones won't make a huge difference. The big stumbling block seems to be how much "common sense" a system knows, like that things tend to fall<BR/>down when you bump them. One group has been writing these down for fifteen years with moderate success; a century more effort may be plenty. <BR/><BR/>(And an algorithm that allows a machine to learn by observations and sensations of the world could of course be the key to a machine that creates its own list of commonsense datums over time, based on experience. See the sci fi novel, Roderick by John Sladek--E.T.B.) <BR/><BR/>2nd Wild Idea: <BR/><BR/>Many times each day, your mind permanently splits into different versions that live in different worlds.<BR/><BR/>The startling prediction of the "many worlds" interpretation of<BR/>quantum mechanics is that when systems like your mind interact with small quantum systems, every possible quantum outcome actually<BR/>happens in a different "world." Quantum mechanics is our most basic<BR/>theory of physics, and surveys of prominent physicists reportedly<BR/>find majorities favoring this interpretation. (More here.)<BR/><BR/>3rd Wild Idea: <BR/><BR/>If your head is cryogenically frozen today, you will be alive in<BR/>2100.<BR/><BR/>Your mind is a pattern of activity in your brain. The ability to induce that pattern is encoded primarily in your neurons -- in which neurons are of which type, and which neurons are connected together. Freezing a brain today in liquid nitrogen destroys many things, but<BR/>seems to preserve this type/connection info. By 2100 we should be able to scan this info from a frozen brain. If we scan your brain and then build and run a computer simulation of it, someone who remembers being you would wake up and feel alive. (More here.)<BR/><BR/>4th Wild Idea: <BR/><BR/>By 2100, the vast majority of "people" will be immortal computers<BR/>running brain simulations.<BR/><BR/>Simulated brains are potentially immortal, just as all computer data<BR/>is. And the ability to cheaply simulate brains will revolutionize<BR/>labor economics; wages should fall to near the cost of making brain<BR/>simulators. The population of such "uploads" should expand very rapidly, allowing huge increases in both economic growth rates and inequality. (More here and here.)<BR/><BR/>5th Wild Idea:<BR/><BR/>There's a five percent chance I live in a "future" computer simulation as I write this.<BR/><BR/>Some uploads could have robot bodies, while others could live in simulated computer worlds. Our descendants may place some of them in historical simulations, with simulated people who do not realize that they are simulated. How sure can I be now that I do not live in a future historical simulation? The more such future simulations there will be of this era, the higher a chance I must assign to this<BR/>possibility. (More here.)<BR/><BR/>WILD IDEAS CONTINUED HERE:<BR/><BR/>http://hanson.gmu.edu/wildideas.htmlEdwardtbabinskihttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13036816926421936940noreply@blogger.com