I’m mostly on the same page with you on this one. The world as a whole is an autopoetic system. The organism is not isolable from its environment. It’s more like a “ripple” in its environment.
As programs become more “self-programming,” they become more autopoetic, but only as “ripples” in the larger autopoetic world.
I tend to agree with you, so perhaps it’s on you to explain all your property and maternity metaphors. I’m more of the cynical atheist type, so don’t mistake me as criticizing you from the spiritual side. I was responding to themes that you introduced, suggesting they distracted from your stronger point. We basically overlap significantly on this stronger point. Your have what I consider a good anti-atomic conception of selfhood.
But you seem to resent the feedback and ignore the overlap.
It’s easy to cherry-pick outliers who beat the odds, but exceptional exceptions don’t disprove the rule. How many forgotten minds had identical potential but lacked the cultural machinery to be recognized?
Glory and “genius” walk hand in hand with the whims of the evaluator. We don’t celebrate the sacred devotion of Mayan priests harvesting hearts for the sun god, nor do we praise the absolute tactical brilliance of conquerors whose values we now despise. Values shift, and the evaluator decides who gets remembered as a genius and who gets buried as a fanatic. History tends to artificial select it’s winners through historic curation. And just like how modern dogs are not accurate representations of physical or wild dogs due to selective breeding, you’ll find that our history shares this quality in spades.
I need nothing beyond your words to establish you distinguish between “us” and our bodies. Now you refer to “we, the mind.” If you insist, despite what you say, that you don’t express dualism, then why do you make this distinction?
I know.
If if makes you feel any better, I’m especially interested in the work he did before all that.
I’m not going to shit on Ezra Pound’s literary insight for the radio broadcasts or Woody Allen’s better films for his questionable sexual exploits. Or on Frege for his anti-semitism. And so on and so on. If people come to believe that Newton buggered an unwilling stable boy, I don’t think we will abandon what he gave the species. The vague assumption ( in some, not necessarily you ) that philosophy is “super personal” and that good work can’t come from bad people is one that I don’t share. I’m told old to be looking for father figures in any of these dead great philosophers. But I’d also be ashamed to paraphrase their great moments without crediting my sources.
If you’re talking about program as metaphor for a living system, then the larger autopoietic world is the ecosystem the organism is embedded in. But if you also mean computer programs, then they don’t have a surrounding ecosystem because they are themselves nothing but built niches belonging to our human ecosystem.
It’s a fair pragmatic assessment. I try to find more universal options personally when given the opportunity.
No doubt it’s a weakness I have to react in that way whenever that man, loathsome in so many ways, is mentioned.
Your critiques rely on static snapshots rather than how systems actually function practically. I didn’t really want to get into operation mechanics, but for the sake of argument, I’ll briefly go over it.
When developers create a program, whether as a team or a single creator, and release it to the world, a unique identifier or mapping signature is provided to track that application instance across operating systems, including when its functional state is externally measured. That unique identity maps directly to the host operating system, whether PC or Mac. It isn’t a floating, abstract ghost hovering above physical reality; it is a tracked digital blueprint executing through specific physical hardware states, regardless of the platform.
When we compare a living organism’s self-maintenance to today’s static desktop computer, the comparison fails because it pits a finished evolutionary product against a technology still in its infancy. Claiming computers are strictly external artifacts ignores where systems engineering is actively heading. Computers also repair and build themselves from the inside–it just hasn’t reached the full developmental stage that biological evolution has. Saying biology is fundamentally different because it self-maintains just points out that living organisms have a four-billion-year head start; it doesn’t prove the existence of an immaterial mind.
Lastly, demonstrating that information processing requires physical matter in motion isn’t a circular trick–it is an observable physical fact. Using functional system dynamics to explain the mind isn’t assuming the brain is a computer; it demonstrates that complex, self-referential behavior emerges directly from physical patterns in motion, without needing to invent a ghost to turn the keys in the process. I hope this clears up everything.
Actually you do if you want me to answer this properly. Right now you are arguing semantics that has nothing to do with the topic.
But I think there is a deeper issue here, because the repeated invocation of the “ghost in the machine” tends to obscure rather than resolve the question.
Consider your “mapping signature”. Is the mapping signature itself physical? Obviously it has a physical instantiation — bits, voltages, magnetic states, and so forth. But what makes a particular physical configuration a mapping, a signature, or an identifier? Those are relational and semiotic properties. They depend upon what the physical state represents or what role it plays within a system of interpretation. The physical token is necessary for its instantiation, but it does not thereby exhaust its significance.
This is why I keep resisting the formulation that software simply is the physical configuration of the machine. The same software can be realised in physically quite different systems while retaining the same functional organisation. And what the software produces can then be further removed from the particular physical implementation that produced it.
But the “ghost in the machine” formulation also introduces a deeper philosophical problem. It accepts the Cartesian framing of the issue — res extensa on one side, res cogitans on the other — and then solves the problem by declaring the latter unnecessary or unreal. I would describe that as post-Cartesian physicalism: it retains the Cartesian division while eliminating one of its poles. You’re far from alone in giving voice to this kind of argument; it is very much built into our “cultural grammar”, as cognitive philosopher John Vervaeke likes to say.
Descartes had argued that there were two basic yet separate substances in the universe: Extension (the material world of things in space) and Thought (the world of mind and ideas). Subsequently, opposing camps took one or the other substance as their metaphysical foundation, treating it as the primary substance while reducing the remaining substance to derivative status. Materialists argued that only matter was ultimately real, so that thought and consciousness derived from physical entities (chemistry, brain states, etc.). Idealists countered that the mind and its ideas were ultimately real, and that the physical world derived from mind (e.g., the mind of God, Berkeley’s esse est percipi, or from ideal prototypes, etc.). Materialists gravitated toward mechanical, physical explanations for why and how things existed, while Idealists tended to look for purposes - moral as well as rational - to explain existence. Idealism meant “idea-ism,” frequently in the sense Plato’s notion of “ideas” (eidos) was understood at the time, namely ideal types that transcended the physical, sensory world and provided the form (eidos) that gave matter meaning and purpose. As materialism, buttressed by advances in materialistic science, gained wider acceptance, those inclined toward spiritual and theological aims turned increasingly toward idealism as a countermeasure ~ Dan Lusthaus
These are, I would suggest, the battlelines you’re manoeuvring within. The interesting alternative is not to choose res extensa over res cogitans, or vice versa, but to question whether that Cartesian opposition provides an adequate starting point in the first place.
Are ‘you’ aware that this is an oxymoron and self-contradiction.
If ‘it’ is ‘your body’, then by definition ‘you’ own ‘it’.
The words ‘your …[whatever]’ literally mean or refer to the ‘you’ ‘owning it’ [whatever].
Human beings do not walk around saying and claim, “Mother Nature’s body”.
What the actual Truth is, exactly, is a little bit different, but not too far away from what ‘you’ are trying to express and get across here.
Again, ‘your physical self’ means, or at least implies, that ‘that physical self or body’ is actually ‘yours’.
Also, there is absolutely nothing that is above, beyond, nor apart from Nature, Itself. So, there is nothing so-called ‘supernatural’, unless ‘you’ are meaning something that is ‘more natural’ than other things are.
Again, ‘you’ are saying and using the term ‘your body’, which literally means or implies that ‘that you’ is ‘the owner’ of ‘that body’.
Also, what do you mean by ‘seeded the origins’, exactly?
This sounds like ‘you’ have some sort of belief or view that there was an actual origin to everything, collectively?
But the fact about how, in the evolutionary cycle, cells ‘return back’ from whence they came, helps in uncovering WHAT the Universe is fundamentally made up of, exactly, and HOW the Universe works, exactly. But, in essence, every human body never goes somewhere nor came from somewhere else but what ‘it’ is made up, exactly, essentially, exists HERE in this One and only eternal Universe, always. Also, NO one is ‘borrowing’ nor ‘lending’ any thing HERE.
Again, one minute ‘you’ are saying and calling ‘the body’ ‘NOT yours’, but then next minute ‘you’ are saying and calling ‘the body’ “your ‘own’ cellular tissue”.
So, is ‘that body’ ‘your body’ or not? Obviously, referring to ‘a human body’ as ‘your body’ or ‘your own cellular tissue’ can be inferred as meaning, the ‘you’ does ‘own that body’.
What does this “finally become whole again” even mean or refer to, exactly?
And, many so-called “scientists” claim that a so-called ‘big bang’ has given ‘you’ a soul, spirit, or life, also. But, as always, what human beings claim does not necessarily align with what is actually irrefutably True and Right.
This is a bit like ‘borrow’, correct?
Great question.
Now, who and what ‘you’ truly are will ALWAYS depend on exactly what is being referred to, exactly. Also, ‘you’ have added the word ‘who’ in here. So ‘now’ ‘we’ have to decipher what ‘you’ mean, exactly, when ‘you’ say ‘who’, here?
To me, the word ‘who’ refers more to ‘a person’, 'a personality, ‘a soul’, or ‘a being’, rather than a ‘lump of meat’, like ‘a human body’ is.
Now, to me, when the word ‘you’ is referring to a ‘human being’, ‘you’ are made up of a ‘human body’ that is visible, and ‘a being’ that is invisible and within ‘a human body’.
But, when the word ‘you’ is referring to a ‘person’, only, ‘a person’ is the ‘invisible thoughts within a visible human body’ (and, to a lesser extent, the invisible emotions as well), but NOT the visible body at all.
So, when ‘you’ ask, “What truly makes up who and what ‘you’ are?”, are ‘you’ asking about ‘the human being’, or ‘the person’, precisely?
If ‘a human being’, then what Truly makes up ‘who’ ‘you are’, exactly, is the ‘person’ (or the personality), which exists within a human body, and ‘what’ ‘you are’, exactly, is the ‘invisible thoughts and emotions’ within a ‘visible human body’.
Therefore, what truly makes up the ‘who ‘you’ are’ part is the invisible ‘being’ part in the term and phrase ‘human being’, which can also be known and referred to as, ‘the soul’, 'the ‘person’, or ‘the personality’. And,
What truly makes up the ‘what ‘you’ are’ part is the ‘invisible thoughts and emotions’ within a ‘visible human body’, and depending if by ‘you’ one is meaning and refering to the physial human body as well, then the ‘visible human body’ also what truly makes up ‘what ‘you’ are’, precisely and exactly.
‘This’ might appear somewhat convoluted, but as I continually inform, the more specific ‘the question’ is the more precise ‘the answer’ can and will be.
When someone says something like, “Following ‘these truths’ as they stand”, NEVER ever means that ‘they’ are True.
Out of curiosity, did these so-called “researchers” explain and write within their papers what this ‘human mind’ thing is, exactly?
If yes, then what did ‘they’ say and claim the ‘human mind’ is, exactly?
Once again, what is actually being referred to is just ‘thought and thinking’ itself.
As I have alluded to previously, people ‘try to’ examine and study the ‘brain’, thinking answers will be found there, but they MISS the actual Truth, ‘the answers’ people are ‘looking for’ are, literally, within ‘thought and thinking’ itself.
People want to study ‘the visible’ and MISS, completely, where the True power and answers lie.
Calling “your body” an oxymoron relies entirely on a semantic trick that conflates grammatical association with commercial ownership to manufacture a fake contradiction. In English, “your” denotes relationship and association not ownership.
It’s not my viewpoint and yes society does claim an origin point.
The scientific process of the big freeze during the black hole era.
If I understand you correctly this is Cartesian Dualism and a belief in the ghost in the machine.
To me it makes sense to think in terms of patterns that replicate. We naturally tend to care more about patterns that can also care. I tend to associate consciousness as “there-ness-of-the-world-for” only with meat at this point. But perhaps, at some point, I or later humans will worry about the suffering a silicon system as we might worry about the suffering of a pig. I think some people already experience computer systems as conscious.
I wouldn’t separate programs from their context of execution except in terms of the usual idealization. I mean I am cautious about this idealization. I don’t believe in “pure meaning” or “pure information.”
Our current AI is reasonably associated with us, but some of our creations may “survive” us as a species. Perhaps none of our current creations are likely to do this. I think that the more embodied AI is, the more it becomes feasible that it can carry on without us. It suffices really to connect CPUs to mechanical-electrical switches. I am not insisting on androids. Basically the systems will need to be able to act on their own infrastructure. We will “let them do this” because we want smart drones that can’t be jammed, new infantry bots that free politicians from voter resentment about human casualties, etc. Note that I see none of this as requiring the projection of consciousness on these systems. They don’t have to “want” to survive. Those patterns who happened to be already shaped to survive — likely requiring replication — will just outlast others that dissipate without replacement or re-“instantiation.” I neglect here the theme of mutation, but that’s something we could also discuss.
I hear you. I’m trying to contribute to a marginal tradition that includes pragmatism.
This is against the rules on TPF, so I’m removing the AI-generated content and closing this topic. I would have deleted the topic, but it has received 37 replies.
@Johnathanrs or whoever else is interested is free to start another discussion on the same subject.
