What's with the we? "Royal we"? Pretentious. We as in us? Presumptuous.
Ray Scanlon wrote:
> We ask for a materialistic explanation of how the brain works based on the
> neuron and the anatomy of the nervous system. We ask that the explanation
> pay attention to those aspects of the nervous system that are reflected in
> the subjective view of the brain as experienced by the soul (mind).
>> As a starting point we take the position that the soul (mind) has no causal
> powers. The soul is completely extraneous to our explanation of brain
> activity. The brain would act just as well with no soul present, but an
> explanation of brain activity that ignores the soul will not satisfy many
> people. We wish to say, "When these neurons are active, we have decided". We
> have not decided, our brain has decided but we experience the active neurons
> and say we did.
>> Our answer to the soul (mind)/body problem is that a material universe has
> no need of soul. We leave that to the philosophers, they may worry it to
> their heart's content. Our position for purposes of brain explanation is
> that there is soul (mind) but it has no part to play in a material account
> of brain action.
>> We direct our attention to the nervous system and, in particular, the
> mammalian nervous system The brain is an artifact of anatomy, the nervous
> system is the basic reality. We exempt from consideration those primitive
> neural structures that lack interneurons. At the same time we insist that
> all those neural structures that include interneurons are members of the
> club, they differ only in complexity.
>> Why such an explanation? Because it is a common complaint of
> neurophysiologists that no such overall explanation exists to serve as a
> guide.
>> Since the very beginning, since 1955, AI has been bedeviled by the mind.
> Anyone who put forward a design for an intelligent machine was asked, "Can
> it think?" They said "think" but what they meant was, "Is there something
> inside that machine that is aware?" In place of "mind" put the word "soul"
> and we will have the raw question, does the machine have a soul? This
> belongs strictly to religion. If this is what they mean, why don't they say
> so? They don't because they are afraid of appearing soft on religion.
>> At the same time the philosophers are very self conscious about their lack
> of technical knowledge. They know nothing of neuroscience, they know nothing
> of computer engineering. But they are very confident (and rightly so) of
> their ability to spin word castles in the air. So we have Turing's Test, so
> we have Searle's Chinese Room.
>> As Turing originally posed his test, it was a simple engineering answer to
> the philosophers. If you can't tell the machine from a human through a
> teletype interface you might as well agree that it has a soul (mind). But
> Turing's Test can be described with words and the philosophers have had a
> field day with it.
>> Searle said, "You can't put a soul in the machine using syntax." (His
> thought. my words) In another place he says, "A soul needs a carbon
> substrate, it rejects a silicon substrate." (Again, his thought, my words)
> Of course he didn't use the word "soul", he too is afraid of being accused
> of being soft on religion.
>> We should leave soul (mind, self, intelligence, whatever) to the theologians
> and proceed with the design of a machine that can think and decide using
> only neuromimes. As a first step we examine the brain to see how the neurons
> do these things. If we can explain the how the brain thinks, how it decides,
> we shall know how to design the machine.
>> Ray
> Those interested in how the brain works might look at
> www.wsg.net/~rscanlon/brain.html