A
Aloysium
Guest
Listen to the silence, my Buddhist friend.
Can sentience be cuased by non-sentient parts? If not why not, and if so how so?
- Status
O
o_mlly
Guest
Room temperature is an accident of environment, not a property. Hydrogen and oxygen can both have the potential to be liquids at different temperatures and pressures. Look it up.
R
rossum
Guest
Seven is an odd number. Three is an odd number. Neither is an even number. 7 + 3 = 10. Ten is an even number.
Neither 3 nor 7 are even yet their sum is even.
You are arguing against the existence of emergent properties.
A chassis is not a car. A wheel is not a car. An engine is not a car. None of the individual parts of a car are in themselves a car. Put all those parts together and you have a car. A car is an emergent property that is not found in any of the individual parts.
rossum
I
IWantGod
Guest
A car is just a concept that we apply to an object for what we want to use it for. We have put objects together and made it useful for the idea of a car. The objects operates according to our needs and we call it a car. But objectively the car is just its parts and how they operate in relation to each-other, because there is no such thing as a “nature” that is a car.
But self awareness really is more than the sum of the parts by which it operates, its not just a concept. Its a real thing.
R
rossum
Guest
Exactly. Self awareness is an emergent property which is not present in the individual component parts taken separately, but only inheres in the combination of the parts.
Sight is not inherent in an eye. Sight requires an eye, a brain and an optic nerve to connect the two. All three components are required for sight; none of the three can see on its own.
rossum
O
o_mlly
Guest
Numbers do not cause other numbers. 3 and 7 as numbers are abstractions as is all mathematics. Numbers are caused by the thinking mind which may assign arbitrary qualifiers such as “even” or “odd” or “prime” or"real" or “irrational” to these mentally created entities. The thinking mind also creates rules for combining or differentiating these abstractions such as “add” or “subtract” or “square.”
A “car” is not a property but rather a “thing” and in this example is an assemblage of other things. A car, like all of its components, does not have the property of locomotion (if that is the novel property intended in this example).
I
IWantGod
Guest
But it is not simply the brain that is seeing, The brain is simply receiving or sensing information. It is “you” that is seeing and understanding through the working components by which you sense the world. Without you, the brain is just an operation of parts.
Thus, we must say, or at least acknowledge that you are more than the sum of functionality. Sentience cannot be simply a function or a or an operation. Its existence reveals a nature that is not identical in nature with the operative parts by which we know of its being.
If the thoughts that we freely think were just a process, what meaning or value can we give to freewill, obligations, or any of the ideas that we have about our humanity? These things would just be synapses firing in the brain, chemical reactions, a process. In fact you would not be giving value to anything, since it is your brain that is dictating these things and not you; you would have no freewill in any meaningful sense of the word. This is why we cannot honestly believe that you are simply the processes that operate according the physical unity of your body parts. Sometimes the the thoughts that go through our head is not in our control. Sometimes there are errors in the brain, and clearly we cannot do anything in the physical world without the brain, but in general we have freewill and therefore the intellect is not identical with the brain.
H
HelenRose
Guest
That is similar to my reasoning behind believing that God exists.
Was creation a product of self awareness, will, intelligence and desire or blind chance?
I find it hard to believe that a creation can possess qualities greater than its creator.
Blind chance does not have self-awareness.
Humans have self-awareness, will, intelligence and desire.
Are we greater than our creator?
I
IWantGod
Guest
We are not. God is absolute. We cannot run from God.
Human beings would like to think that they are the glory of the world, they are God, and what they dictate is the truth. Its not surprising therefore that atheism is so rampant in the world. The world is not a free lunch.
G
GEddie
Guest
The fact that a certain theory might require the redefinition or reassessment of cherished philosophical ideas does not disprove the theory.
Free-will is IMNAAHO overvalued. It can easily be explained as being, in very large part, a mirage.
Obligation is a construct that we use to hold an interpersonal society together. One could as easily say that the formation of such a society, and it’s preservation via obligations, is a directive of the process in our brain, because the brain “knows” (being in the business of knowing) that being in such a society maximizes the odds of living long enough to propagate one’s DNA.
ICXC NIKA
I
IWantGod
Guest
The brain does not know if its just acting out a prime directive. Lets just say that we know, but we are not doing what we know, but instead the brain is doing it. freewill is meaningless in that situation so why would the brain have any sense of it at all.
Even an illusion requires some element of truth. We can have an illusion of freewilll, but then there must really be such a thing by which we know it.
H
HelenRose
Guest
That was my conclusion. I don’t see how a creature can be greater than its creator.
Y
ynotzap
Guest
The power of the soul is known by it’s operation. To know is the operation of intelligence, to choose, is the operation of the will. Human beings manifest both of these powers, and they are not physical properties, even though the soul itself is "intrinsically "dependent on the physical for it’s operations in this life , because the body and the soul are co-principles.They are spiritual faculties, as the human soul is spiritual in nature, and directly infused into the human body, one soul, one body. A sentient being is one that is capable of sensing. Humans are sentient beings with rational intelligence, so they are neither animal, or spirit, but a combination of both. Do sentient beings just have senses, with no consciousness as intellectual awareness? One thing for sure, animals do not have “intellectual awareness” that is a power of the rational soul. Do sentient creatures, animals have awareness? They have sense knowledge, instinct, and they are programed by God to do the things they do, but not because they know as a result of intellectual knowledge. People tend to ascribe to the behavior of animals as some degree of rational intelligence, because what they do is intelligent, and why shouldn’t it be, they; are programmed by God. Once a dog or cat, always a dog or cat. Can non-sentient cause sentiency. If you mean God who is not sentient in His nature (except Jesus- God-man) the answer is yes, God is the Creator of all sentient beings
Y
ynotzap
Guest
In addition to the last post:
biological sensing can be replicated by means of electronics and mechanics. This is found in heat seeking missiles, cameras, alarms, etc. Today’s computers, in their sophistication, by design can seem to “know”, but they are programed by intellectual human individuals. The spiritual faculty to know, and to be aware, is the property and power of the human soul which knows itself, self-awareness. Self awareness is a power that can not be replicated by human design because it is a spiritual operation, not physical.
biological sensing can be replicated by means of electronics and mechanics. This is found in heat seeking missiles, cameras, alarms, etc. Today’s computers, in their sophistication, by design can seem to “know”, but they are programed by intellectual human individuals. The spiritual faculty to know, and to be aware, is the property and power of the human soul which knows itself, self-awareness. Self awareness is a power that can not be replicated by human design because it is a spiritual operation, not physical.
R
rossum
Guest
Yes. The brain is a part of the system, it is not the whole system.
No. Your eyes are not “you”. However, if you remove your eyes then you can no longer see. Your ‘you’ may be another part of the system, but it cannot see on its own
However, sentience does depend on the presence of smaller non-sentient operative parts. Certain organs, individual cells, molecules and atoms for example. None of them are sentient in themselves, yet their presence is necessary for sentience.
Sentience is an emergent property which is not present in all the individual components required for human sentience.
rossum
A
Aloysium
Guest
:twocents:
Performing an intellectual vivisection, we can isolate sentience as a component of the unity that is the person.
To keep the person alive and real, we must remember that our wholeness also includes action and our physical bodies.
With all these parts, our minds struggle with how they all fit.
It comes together easily, understanding the person to be primary and total, and the capacity for sentience to be infused throughout as an aspect of his spirit…
In God, we find that sentience is ultimately triune, involving a knower who is known, a known who knows and the knowledge that exists between them.
To truly know is to love. Love is wondrous and of infinite beauty and goodness.
God’s omnibenevolence is one with His omnipotence and omniscience.
All creation is brought into existence through an act of love. It’s purpose is to engage in a loving relationship with its Father.
It is transcendent sentience as a loving act of being, it is God who creates and maintains us, and those components that He brings together to form the body and mind.
Physically speaking, we incorporate the world from the moment of conception.
All our DNA, which many would consider something that is truly us, was earlier some plant or animal.
As created by God, the person in the world brings into existence his physical form, transforming what is materially other, into his body.
All this activity, albeit within the reality of all experience, all these physical processes which exist outside our sentience, are known by their Source.
Sentience, one with action within the person constitutes the human spirit.
It is the person’s sentience that directs the formation, adjustment and honing of the neural processes involved in our given capacities for perception, feeling, thought and action as we participate in the world.
Basic animal instincts, such as fear, pleasure, flight or flight responses, sexual behaviour and so on are aspects of its soul and, from a physical perspective of the unity that is the animal, are associated with complex neural processes that involve various areas of the brain andactually the entire body.
As we share organ systems with them, we also have these sorts of reactions incorporated in our rational being.
However, being rational creatures we can control what we do with how we feel and thereby decide on whom we wish to become. We were better at it in the beginning, but sin changed us.
The Beatitudes reveal that the world is upside down in terms of what it considers to be the good. So too is its understanding of science. If the world as defined by the senses and our animal needs were all there is, then the body, which is necessary for existence in the world, becomes the reality of the person. Sentience becomes merely a byproduct according to that perspective. This understanding falls apart with the irreconcilable duality that is mind-body that results from the abolition of the person.
Human existence is in the form of a relational self-other, reflecting our purpose to become loving creatures. As whole beings composed of spirit and matter - one, our spirit is primary and encompasses the components which upon death will decompose. The body which was formed and maintained through our lives by that prinicple which is the person, at that point will be shed. The spirit eternal, remains as the relationship we each have forged with our Source. Then, it will be a new life in the resurrection.
Performing an intellectual vivisection, we can isolate sentience as a component of the unity that is the person.
To keep the person alive and real, we must remember that our wholeness also includes action and our physical bodies.
With all these parts, our minds struggle with how they all fit.
It comes together easily, understanding the person to be primary and total, and the capacity for sentience to be infused throughout as an aspect of his spirit…
In God, we find that sentience is ultimately triune, involving a knower who is known, a known who knows and the knowledge that exists between them.
To truly know is to love. Love is wondrous and of infinite beauty and goodness.
God’s omnibenevolence is one with His omnipotence and omniscience.
All creation is brought into existence through an act of love. It’s purpose is to engage in a loving relationship with its Father.
It is transcendent sentience as a loving act of being, it is God who creates and maintains us, and those components that He brings together to form the body and mind.
Physically speaking, we incorporate the world from the moment of conception.
All our DNA, which many would consider something that is truly us, was earlier some plant or animal.
As created by God, the person in the world brings into existence his physical form, transforming what is materially other, into his body.
All this activity, albeit within the reality of all experience, all these physical processes which exist outside our sentience, are known by their Source.
Sentience, one with action within the person constitutes the human spirit.
It is the person’s sentience that directs the formation, adjustment and honing of the neural processes involved in our given capacities for perception, feeling, thought and action as we participate in the world.
Basic animal instincts, such as fear, pleasure, flight or flight responses, sexual behaviour and so on are aspects of its soul and, from a physical perspective of the unity that is the animal, are associated with complex neural processes that involve various areas of the brain andactually the entire body.
As we share organ systems with them, we also have these sorts of reactions incorporated in our rational being.
However, being rational creatures we can control what we do with how we feel and thereby decide on whom we wish to become. We were better at it in the beginning, but sin changed us.
The Beatitudes reveal that the world is upside down in terms of what it considers to be the good. So too is its understanding of science. If the world as defined by the senses and our animal needs were all there is, then the body, which is necessary for existence in the world, becomes the reality of the person. Sentience becomes merely a byproduct according to that perspective. This understanding falls apart with the irreconcilable duality that is mind-body that results from the abolition of the person.
Human existence is in the form of a relational self-other, reflecting our purpose to become loving creatures. As whole beings composed of spirit and matter - one, our spirit is primary and encompasses the components which upon death will decompose. The body which was formed and maintained through our lives by that prinicple which is the person, at that point will be shed. The spirit eternal, remains as the relationship we each have forged with our Source. Then, it will be a new life in the resurrection.
N
Nixbits
Guest
That seems a bold claim. Do you have evidence or a logical argument that supports it? I accept that self-aware machines have (probably) not yet been created by humans, but I fail to see how we can be sure that humans cannot ever do so.
I
IWantGod
Guest
Its one thing to code something to behave in a particular way, but to actually create self-awareness is a different thing entirely. What is it?
Y
ynotzap
Guest
When it comes to machines or anything material or physical, there is a self-evident truth, a scientific empirical truth that two physical things can not occupy the same space at the same time. In the power of self-awareness I can communicating with you at the same time I know that I am communicating with you, I know that I know. I can reflect on my own awareness. It’s like, or actuallly is a turning in on myself. No physical object can turn in on itself. Science has never, and will never physically exam an idea, or thought, nor create a robot that is autonomous, that is capable of making intellectual rational decisions and making rational choices on it’s own. Material things are part outside part. The human intellect can abstract ideas from physical objects and advance in knowledge by rationalizing logically. In can go to quantitative depths, or qualitative depths (Metaphysical abstractions) Every thing used in scientific experiments is made up of material objects. Thoughts and ideas are not material but spiritual in nature, as is the human soul. Rational knowledge is a product of human intelligence which is a spiritual faculty of the soul. Science can not produce a spiritual soul. It will never produce self-awareness.
Y
ynotzap
Guest
A machine, computer, sensing device, can never go outside of it’s programming on it’s own and direct itself. Man made it, and he controls it by his God-given intelligence, and likes to mimic God, and even thinks at times he is god attributing his accomplishment to himself, poor guy. Lord, help us to be humble, and thankful for your gifts, and to know our place in the universe.
- Status