₦airaland Forum

diridiri:
Nice attempt to intentionally misunderstand what I said.
I never said something being unproven means it's possible. I said it doesn't mean it's impossible. This is just common sense.

Its really odd to observe how you are just repeating the same thing.
You say something being unproven doesnt mean its impossible.
And I say it doesnt mean its possible either.

We can go on in this circle forever. It leads nowhere.

In light of my concession that the point that prompted your last comment was a bad point, hypothetically, assuming that such a machine existed, consciousness would be proven. If a perfect mapping between the physical structure of the brain and the subconscious was somehow proven without a shadow of a doubt, then the mapping itself would be the proof.

This - the bold - is beyond weird. Here, you are using the assumption that something becomes proved as its own proof.

DeepSight:
Well that is a pity. A shame that time travel is not as yet possible.



I dont know how better to express this: this is simply not sufficient. You could ask me if its possible that there's a teapot circling the universe and I could just as easily answer "I dont see why not."



Amigo - the methodology of further learning is still bequeathed by being programmed.

1. A pity indeed. Ah well.

2. It is sufficient. It's a direct response to a question: Is X possible. It's a confession by me that no factors come to mind that would completely dismiss it from being possible. I don't know what is not being understood here.

3. In light of all you've said, would you still say that preprogramming something to be subjective, with this new definition of programming in which the machine is not programmed to be subjective but programmed to generate for itself subjectivity is inherently objective? How?

diridiri:
2. It is sufficient. It's a direct response to a question: Is X possible. It's a confession by me that no factors come to mind that would completely dismiss it from being possible. I don't know what is not being understood here.

Are you familiar with Russell's teapot?

3. In light of all you've said, would you still say that preprogramming something to be subjective, with this new definition of programming in which the machine is not programmed to be subjective but programmed to generate for itself subjectivity is inherently objective? How?

Honestly amigo, there is little to no practical difference between the blue and the red.

DeepSight:
The nuance of an emotion differs from person to person and even from instance to instance.

"Nuance". What a word to slip in, lol.

The emotion does not differ much from person to person, DeepSight. If someone tells you they are "a woman I am in love with", happy, joy are acceptable words to describe how you might think they might feel, You'd probably wish them well in their joy and would definitely not think they were feeling sad or suicidal however nuanced emotions differ from person to person. I think.

budaatum:
The emotion does not differ much from person to person, DeepSight.

Bismillahi rahmani raheem!
This is staggering - and shows what chasms I am up against.

DeepSight:
Why did you put taste in inverted commas?

Because they don't use a tongue.

DeepSight:
Without knowing it you hit upon an important truth when you hint at the difficulty with coding such. For the complexity and nature of a living being could react in a plethora of unforeseen ways to stimuli. And this leads me to another point which I must also task Diridiri on - because a self conscious human is such a complex being that it is capable of absurdity. Is a robot capable of conscious absurdity?

A human can consciously decide to harm itself, commit suicide or take any number of self-destructive actions for reasons that may be absurd. It is also capable of altruistic actions such as sacrificing itself for another. Are robots capable of such. Mind you a robot can be programmed to self destruct, this is different from saying it could make an altruistic moral decision to sacrifice itself for another.



Come on, everything is in a causal chain.

You'll notice you've stepped away from pain into more complex matters. Sure everything is a part of a causal chain but some parts are much easier to isolate. Throwing a rock maybe part of a casual chain but you could almost replicate the throw perfectly with a machine every time.

LordReed:
Because they don't use a tongue.

It has nothing to do with you knowing that it is not taste in the same sense?

DeepSight, what is a subjective experience?

DeepSight:
It has nothing to do with you knowing that it is not taste in the same sense?

Nope. Taste is the response chemicals on your tongue induce in your brain, if certain parts of your anatomy are affected you loose that functionality as with Covid for example. Machines may not have a tongue but chemicals can still be made to elicit a response from the processing core. That is why I put taste in quote.

LordReed:
Nope. Taste is the response chemicals on your tongue induce in your brain, if certain parts of your anatomy are affected you loose that functionality as with Covid for example. Machines may not have a tongue but chemicals can still be made to elicit a response from the processing core. That is why I put taste in quote.

You know, this mechanistic response truly wearies me. Because the question is one of experience - i.e: if a machine were to eat an orange (however conceivable that is) would it experience the citrus flavour associated with the orange in the way a living thing would. That is the question, not what you keep presenting which looks evasive to me. Its always easy to reel off the scientific process by which a machine could be said to have been programmed to respond to a given stimuli, and machines indeed can be so programmed. This is altogether different from having the actual experience in the way a living being does. At the end of the day it boils down to pre-programmed reaction for a machine and this has nothing whatsoever to do with experiencing a thing. What you are doing is as simple and as wrong as saying that a machine which can be programmed to react to some stimuli by saying "hooray" has therefore experienced happiness or exultation. This is a very wrong argument to make, and what baffles and tires me is that you cannot see that this is essentially what you have been doing all along the way.

And you have to be consistent all the way, I neednt keep repeating the varied spectrum of emotions available to a human to underscore the point (. . . what about guilt?). But it strikes me that this is what you did with pain when you defined it as hypersensitivity to an adverse event. This is a very strange definition of pain which does not take into account that which is understood by everybody as pain: the sensation of hurt. If you simply say hypersensitivity to an adverse event, the truth is that humans are so complex that they could experience joy or even sexual arousal at an adverse event. Nor does "hypersensitivity" say anything about being actually hurt. It simply indicates a high sensitivity which could even be pleasure. You took the word "pain" and forcefully made it "machine-compliant" describing it as something completely unrecognizable. It is of course possible to make a machine recognize an adverse event and react to it, but that is an altogether different precept from saying that it feels pain. When something so self-evidently lucid is pointed out to you guys, you say that one is being myopic, one is making baseless statements, etc and thats that. Its quite wearisome.

Perhaps I have said enough on this point of experiencing things for now and should now devote some time rather to asking you guys about the capability of machines in respect of moralization, ethics and conscience. Can a machine have a conscience. And please dont answer this question with the mechanistic falsity I have described above: by saying perhaps, that a machine can react to an error by correcting itself and then saying that this is conscience. Please don't redefine "conscience" to make it "machine-compliant" and thus render it something completely unrecognizable as you have done with "pain."

Lordreed, Diridiri - can a machine have impulses and intuition.

_{Diridiri please surprise me with something other than "I dont see why not."}

LordReed:
DeepSight, what is a subjective experience?

A subjective experience is one within the internal self-consciousness of a living being, it is the actual act or process of "living through" something such that the living being feels the nature of the happening which is impressed on the being in a live manner such that it has personal awareness of the happening as it occurs. Such an experience comes with the personal feelings, thoughts and nuances of the moment which it provokes within the being.

Consequently a subjective experience cannot be translated or transmitted to another person. Only the experiencer has the unique nuance and flavour of it. Even if you and I experience an armed robbery together, our experiences will not be the same. Neither will it be possible to give you my experience of it. I can tell you a story about how I felt, but you could never be me, the experiencer. This is why it is impossible to say that something preprogrammed is a subjective experience. Anything preprogrammed is already objectively known outside of the personal experience of the experiencer. Indeed it is known before the experiencer experiences it. This is why Diridiri should understand the absurdity of his statement about pre-programming a subjective experience. It is a contradiction in terms. He himself said somewhere that we are each caged within our subjective experience of the world and this is true. It dumbfounds me that he then fails to see the contradiction in suggesting that subjective experience can be pre-programmed. There is nothing subjective about such, ab initio.

Ergo, a machine which is programmed cannot have subjective experiences.

DeepSight:
Consequently a subjective experience cannot be translated or transmitted to another person. Only the experiencer has the unique nuance and flavour of it. Even if you and I experience an armed robbery together, our experiences will not be the same. Neither will it be possible to give you my experience of it. I can tell you a story about how I felt, but you could never be me, the experiencer. This is why it is impossible to say that something preprogrammed is a subjective experience. Anything preprogrammed is already objectively known outside of the personal experience of the experiencer. Indeed it is known before the experiencer experiences it.

Let me just add to this: any thing pre-programmed is also reproducible right down to its tiniest nuance. Thus with a machine, the programmer would be able to replicate the exact experience with another machine simply by downloading and uploading it. With a human experience you cannot do this. You cannot transfer a human's subjective experience to another human. It is outrightly impossible for the simple reason that they are not the same and will receive even such an "upload" differently.

DeepSight:
A subjective experience is one within the internal self-consciousness of a living being, it is the actual act or process of "living through" something such that the living being feels the nature of the happening which is impressed on the being in a live manner such that it has personal awareness of the happening as it occurs. Such an experience comes with the personal feelings, thoughts and nuances of the moment which it provokes within the being.

Consequently a subjective experience cannot be translated or transmitted to another person. Only the experiencer has the unique nuance and flavour of it. Even if you and I experience an armed robbery together, our experiences will not be the same. Neither will it be possible to give you my experience of it. I can tell you a story about how I felt, but you could never be me, the experiencer. This is why it is impossible to say that something preprogrammed is a subjective experience. Anything preprogrammed is already objectively known outside of the personal experience of the experiencer. Indeed it is known before the experiencer experiences it. This is why Diridiri should understand the absurdity of his statement about pre-programming a subjective experience. It is a contradiction in terms. He himself said somewhere that we are each caged within our subjective experience of the world and this is true. It dumbfounds me that he then fails to see the contradiction in suggesting that subjective experience can be pre-programmed. There is nothing subjective about such, ab initio.

Ergo, a machine which is programmed cannot have subjective experiences.

Then it was pointless asking us if machines can have subjective experience since your definition precludes machines. Machines are not living beings so by your definition they can't have subjective experiences yet you are asking us and get frustrated by our responses. You should stop this line of enquiry since you are not open to our POV.

LordReed:
Then it was pointless asking use if machines can have subjective experience since your definition precludes machines. Machines are not living beings so by your definition they can't have subjective experiences yet you are asking us and get frustrated by our responses. You should stop this line of enquiry since you are not open to our POV.

I cant help the fundamental reality that subjective experience is a feature of living things. And no amount of somersaults on you guys part can change that. Why should it bother you though - just as you declared machines could be conscious and have all manner of emotions, you could surely declare them therefore living!

Frankly, I think you guys are trying to hard to force the attributes of living creatures on machines.
All in a bid to deny the uniqueness of the quality of life.

DeepSight:
You know, this mechanistic response truly wearies me. Because the question is one of experience - i.e: if a machine were to eat an orange (however conceivable that is) would it experience the citrus flavour associated with the orange in the way a living thing would. That is the question, not what you keep presenting which looks evasive to me. Its always easy to reel off the scientific process by which a machine could be said to have been programmed to respond to a given stimuli, and machines indeed can be so programmed. This is altogether different from having the actual experience in the way a living being does. At the end of the day it boils down to pre-programmed reaction for a machine and this has nothing whatsoever to do with experiencing a thing. What you are doing is as simple and as wrong as saying that a machine which can be programmed to react to some stimuli by saying "hooray" has therefore experienced happiness or exultation. This is a very wrong argument to make, and what baffles and tires me is that you cannot see that this is essentially what you have been doing all along the way.

Again you are doing the very thing I complained about the last time, attributing motive to me where you have no basis to. I haven't balked at answering your questions and I have laid out my opinions consistent with my methodological materialist naturalist viewpoint. How this translates to me being evasive is downright false and not mildly annoying. If you are not happy to hear my opinion then maybe we shouldn't be having a conversation.

And you have to be consistent all the way, I neednt keep repeating the varied spectrum of emotions available to a human to underscore the point (. . . what about guilt?). But it strikes me that this is what you did with pain when you defined it as hypersensitivity to an adverse event. This is a very strange definition of pain which does not take into account that which is understood by everybody as pain: the sensation of hurt. If you simply say hypersensitivity to an adverse event, the truth is that humans are so complex that they could experience joy or even sexual arousal at an adverse event. Nor does "hypersensitivity" say anything about being actually hurt. It simply indicates a high sensitivity which could even be pleasure. You took the word "pain" and forcefully made it "machine-compliant" describing it as something completely unrecognizable. It is of course possible to make a machine recognize an adverse event and react to it, but that is an altogether different precept from saying that it feels pain. When something so self-evidently lucid is pointed out to you guys, you say that one is being myopic, one is making baseless statements, etc and thats that. Its quite wearisome.

Nowhere did I mention hypersensitivity, I said hypersignals they are not the same thing. If you can't be bothered to get what I wrote right what is the point of continuing with this?

Perhaps I have said enough on this point of experiencing things for now and should now devote some time rather to asking you guys about the capability of machines in respect of moralization, ethics and conscience. Can a machine have a conscience. And please dont answer this question with the mechanistic falsity I have described above: by saying perhaps, that a machine can react to an error by correcting itself and then saying that this is conscience. Please don't redefine "conscience" to make it "machine-compliant" and thus render it something completely unrecognizable as you have done with "pain."

Conscience is not something that we know how to explain or how its mechanisms function therefore I cannot relate it to a machine. However your prejudice shows very clearly and I think at this point I will no longer respond to you on this issue.

LordReed:
Again you are doing the very thing I complained about the last time, attributing motive to me where you have no basis to. I haven't balked at answering your questions and I have laid out my opinions consistent with my methodological materialist viewpoint. How this translates to me being evasive is downright false and not mildly annoying. If you are not happy to hear my opinion then maybe we shouldn't be having a conversation.

This hyper-sensitivity is becoming irksome. Now saying that I think your answer is evasive is offensive?
Please!

Nowhere did I mention hypersensitivity, I said hypersignals they are not the same thing. If you can't be bothered to get what I wrote right what is the point of continuing with this?

This in fact changes nothing in what I wrote even if you substitute the words.

Conscience is not something that we know how to explain or how its mechanisms function therefore I cannot relate it to a machine. However your prejudice shows very clearly and I think at this point I will no longer respond to you on this issue.

Right. "I cant explain myself with regard to conscience but I sense you are prejudiced so I will not respond further."
Oga, Good afternoon.

DeepSight:
This hyper-sensitivity is becoming irksome. Now saying that I think your answer is evasive is offensive?
Please!



This in fact changes nothing in what I wrote even if you substitute the words.



Right. "I cant explain myself with regard to conscience but I sense you are prejudiced so I will not respond further."
Oga, Good afternoon.

Yes it is very irksome to have to hear how I am evasive when I am answering your questions. So sir have a good day.

DeepSight:
Bismillahi rahmani raheem!
This is staggering - and shows what chasms I am up against.

Do not patronize me, deep! No one is putting you up against any "chasm".

The emotions felt for "a woman I am in love with", are pretty universal, barring outliers like people who abuse those they love.

If you are in the state of "a woman I am in love with", it would be pretty odd for you to abuse or batter her for instance, and if you did abuse or batter her most would conclude you do not know at all what love is or are not in the state of "a woman I am in love with".

Perhaps try anger. Say no one knows you feel angry, then consider all the tImes you been angry and people around you know you are angry and the degrees of it too.

budaatum:
Do not patronize me, deep! No one is putting you up against any "chasm".

The emotions felt for "a woman I am in love with", are pretty universal, barring outliers like people who abuse those they love.

If you are in the state of "a woman I am in love with", it would be pretty odd for you to abuse or batter her for instance, and if you did abuse or batter her most would conclude you do not know at all what love is or are not in the state of "a woman I am in love with".

Perhaps try anger. Say no one knows you feel angry, then consider all the tImes you been angry and people around you know you are angry and the degrees of it too.

Jesus wept!

DeepSight:
Jesus wept!

Hand him a tissue.

So let me attempt to draw up a small list of some of the rational points which I believe render it impossible / implausible / unlikely that mind arises from matter. Just a small list, of a few of the points.

1. The point about the origin of life. A mind is a living thing, and in the physical world we only tend to see and interact with minds which are of biological living things. A mind - as we here speak of it - is distinct from a mere mechanical processor of information. A computer can process information but we certainly dont call it a mind, and certainly not in the context of this conversation. Perhaps sufficiently advanced Artificial Intelligence may be called a mind, but even then, of a robotic kind which lacks the element of subjectivity. But lest I digress here, the point I wish to make is that the biological creatures we are used to - those which we think of as having a mind - if we are to limit ourselves to the materialist worldview, must have evolved from non living matter. Now the theory of evolution does not concern itself with first life and how it arose, and the best we have till date in the scientific world is imaginative speculation about life being triggered spontaneously in a "pre-biotic soup" of some sort. Not only has this not been observed to repeat itself, but it also has not been replicated artificially and the origin of life remains a mystery to this day. I therefore say that there is as yet no proof that life, with its unique properties (especially the property of reproduction / self replication) could have arisen spontaneously - virtually magically - from otherwise dead matter - not to speak of then evolving into minds. I therefore dispute the matter at its root, and thus draw the conclusion that since there is no proof that life itself arises from matter, we cannot begin to speak of minds arising from matter.

Please in this let me say upfront that a response such as "we do not yet know how life emerged from matter but will know in the future" cannot suffice to address this point. For that contains an implicit assumption that life did indeed emerge from matter, notwithstanding that we do not know how and have absolutely no explanation of or idea of how dead matter became living.

2. The point about the evolution of minds. In the physical world, if we are to sustain the idea that mind (and thus consciousness) arises from matter, we must first grant that matter somehow assembles itself into intricate systems which produce consciousness. The scientific model for this process of assembly into intricate systems is the theory of evolution and there is no proven evolutionary impetus for the development of consciousness in the first place. If we step back into the earliest stages of the evolution of life on Earth as presented by the theory of evolution, we cannot point to any evolutionary rationale for the development of unicellular organisms into more complicated multicellular organisms with all their attendant greater difficulties with respect to survival. Indeed unicellular organisms remain the most successful organisms on the planet till today and the simplicity of their existence in nature discloses neither the evolutionary pressure in terms of natural selection or any other cogent reason for their development into more complicated unicellular organisms. Given that this very crucial early step of the theory of evolution cannot be surmounted without glossing over the process with bare-faced assumptions, leaps of logic and flowery verbiage, I again dispute the presupposition that minds could be said to evolve from unicellular organisms when it cannot be shown that there ever existed any evolutionary pressure for such organisms to become, first - multicellular - and second - sufficiently complex to assemble such intricate and advanced systems as to allegedly generate minds.

3. The point about the hard problem of consciousness. Consciousness is a deep-seated mystery. It ranks as probably one of the most profound and mysterious factors in existence and reality itself. There is as yet no satisfactory explanation for consciousness even in the realm of science, not to speak of self-consciousness of the sentient and sapient kind. It must be presumed by the materialist that matter generates consciousness but nowhere has it ever been shown just how. What we rather have is a resort to clunky scientific jargon to gloss over the specific difficulties in showing just how the chemicals, proteins and other material substances which make up our physical constitution lead to the spark of consciousness, not to speak of self consciousness. There is no specific "consciousness system" within physical bodies that we can identify as creating consciousness, rather we are left to assume that the entire get-up, being greater than the sum of its parts, mysteriously bequeaths to itself the indecipherable element of consciousness. I conclude on this point that we know neither the origin or methodology of consciousness and therefore cannot jump to the conclusion that matter generates consciousness if we cannot show exactly how.

4. The point about the nature of experience and subjectivity. The act and process of experiencing is such that it is necessarily subjective and personal in nature and this in itself is the nature of consciousness - we are each trapped within our own consciousness, which we can neither replicate nor swap with another. If we are to hold that such subjective experiencing is solely the handiwork of combinations of dead matter, it should be possible to both replicate and swap such subjective experiencing. I therefore say that the fact that this is neither scientifically nor logically conceivable serves to show that our subjective experiencing-nature cannot be the result of combinations of dead matter alone.

5. The point about the functionality of the senses. This is a crucial point which I am surprised that everyone either seems to miss or just gloss over. All of our senses and their functionalities by their very nature, evince the delivery of service and physical perception to a resident being. They do not and cannot logically exist to serve themselves otherwise we are led into extreme existential absurdity. None of the senses exists to serve itself and the brain which interprets the signals of the senses does not exist to serve itself either especially as it is only a processor of information. It should be asked: for what is it processing all the information wired to it - or rather, for whom?

This is a very simple question which materialists like to gloss over by saying that the totality of the body is the person and that the whole is greater than the sum of the parts. With respect, it is truly insufficient to say this when one studies the senses. Everything about their activity evinces delivery of service to a being.

Let me stop here for now. These are to be taken together with the points I made earlier in the thread about the problem of freewill as against determinism in the mind/matter conundrum: namely that if mind arises from matter, then the prior combinations of matter are responsible for all that mind does and thus, mind does not in fact have any will of its own. And how this leads to a scenario in which there can be no ground for any personal responsibility for any thoughts, words, ideas, concepts or actions whatsoever. While anyone may throw up their hands and ask - so what? - the truth is that there lies in this an intuitive perception in our experiential lives that matter alone could not and does not account for the nature of our being.

cc: Diridiri, Tamaratonye1, PastorAIO, Budaatum, Triplechoice

LordReed:
Hi DeepSight. So this thread will carry on with our discussions from other threads. I will start with the following reply to your comment. I will also subsequently add replies to your other comments.



Oh the analogy is very apt. A driverless car acts just as directed as though a human being was driving it because all its integrated systems work to provide a safe driving experience with all the same features of a human driven vehicle. The car will brake, turn, slow down, speed up, allow for car spacing from cars in front of it, follow lane markings, etc just as well as a human. It would be futile to now say that because you cannot locate the driver inside therefore it is unable to function without a driver.

Also driverless cars do have seats and steering and all the other accoutrements that a "normal" car has so the question would be how do we distinguish between a driverless car and a human driven one? Which is directly analogous to the question how do we establish that a human being is "a machine suited to house and facilitate the experience and activity of a resident "being."" rather than the machine with all its attendant functions as an integrated whole?

Haven't we discussed this before?

The mind-matter analogy with respect to autonomous vehicles is close enough to how humans and other living beings operate if you consider
1. The Software of the Vehicle as synonymous to the Soul/Mind/Spirit of living things
2. The Hardware of the vehicle as synonymous to the body tissues and organs in living beings.

The software is not tangible in any way just as the Soul/Spirit/Mind is not tangible.

Those who argue that the mind is just chemicals acting on the brain do not realize that they are saying that "the brake fluid" is responsible for slowing down of the vehicle or the steering is responsible for the turning of a vehicle without accounting for the DRIVER who causes the visible effects to take place.

HardMirror:
you err in this.... while you cannot control your own brain (directly), you quickly and promptly forget that you can do this through drugs?
You quickly forget or deliberately ignore the fact that drugs and absolutely alter reality. Which is proof that a chemical process affects what we think is the mind... therefore proving that the mind is not spiritual. Your reality is in and through you brain activities only

What truely controls an artificial intelligence robot?
Is it the electrons that flow in its central processing unit OR the software that controls how the electrons flow?

Drugs/Chemicals can induce certain perceptions and reactions to the environment BUT is that the end or the vehicle of control?

It is well known that electrical impulses control muscle movement. Can the same argument of the chemicals in the brain not also be used for electric impulses?

A software doesn't work in isolation of the hardware: the mind is the software that work on the body. The chemicals, elections, etc are just vehicles of control.

TenQ:
Haven't we discussed this before?

The mind-matter analogy with respect to autonomous vehicles is close enough to how humans and other living beings operate if you consider
1. The Software of the Vehicle as synonymous to the Soul/Mind/Spirit of living things
2. The Hardware of the vehicle as synonymous to the body tissues and organs in living beings.

The software is not tangible in any way just as the Soul/Spirit/Mind is not tangible.

Those who argue that the mind is just chemicals acting on the brain do not realize that they are saying that "the brake fluid" is responsible for slowing down of the vehicle or the steering is responsible for the turning of a vehicle without accounting for the DRIVER who causes the visible effects to take place.

We can distinguish between when an autonomous vehicle is operating and when a vehicle is being driven by a human driver. How can we do the same for the body? In otherwords how can we know who is correct between we who say the body and mind are an integrated unit operating autonomously and you who say the body is driven or ridden by a spirit/soul?

TenQ:
Those who argue that the mind is just chemicals acting on the brain do not realize that they are saying that "the brake fluid" is responsible for slowing down of the vehicle or the steering is responsible for the turning of a vehicle without accounting for the DRIVER who causes the visible effects to take place.

I very simply agree, in fact, so simply that one is accused of being simplistic.
This is why I have said earlier that such a line of thinking as they have would lead to imbuing the components of the body with intentionality.
Right down to cells and neurons. Because one would have to locate all intentionality in the concerted and coinciding actions of these.

TenQ:
A software doesn't work in isolation of the hardware: the mind is the software that work on the body. The chemicals, elections, etc are just vehicles of control.

Gbam.

DeepSight:
I very simply agree, in fact, so simply that one is accused of being simplistic.
This is why I have said earlier that such a line of thinking as they have would lead to imbuing the components of the body with intentionality.
Right down to cells and neurons. Because one would have to locate all intentionality in the concerted and coinciding actions of these.

I agree totally with you.


One other keyword that is not considered is PURPOSE!
Every living thing seem to have an underlying purpose whether it is recognised or not.

Fishes will swim dangerous terrains just to get to a place to brood and procreate.

There is just this drive to self preservation and reproduction that cannot just be attributed to chemicals flowing. Chemicals don't and can't care about anything. They just mindlessly react with other suitable chemicals if the environment is suitable.

TenQ:
I agree totally with you.


One other keyword that is not considered is PURPOSE!
Every living thing seem to have an underlying purpose whether it is recognised or not.

Fishes will swim dangerous terrains just to get to a place to brood and procreate.

There is just this drive to self preservation and reproduction that cannot just be attributed to chemicals flowing. Chemicals don't and can't care about anything. They just mindlessly react with other suitable chemicals if the environment is suitable.

You are very much on point good sir. Its amazing to listen to an evolutionary biologist such as Richard Dawkins on this subject sometimes - amazingly absurd. Mind you, he is a man I have strangely come to admire over the years, after an initial strong dislike, but when you hear him talk on this subject, he virtually attributes personality and intentionality to chemicals. The chemicals, of their own volition, in his view react to even situations that evidently require a purposeful mind to react to. And this again harks back to a question I asked early on - a chicken and egg question: which comes first - is it the mind directing the chemicals to act or the chemicals making the mind act. Or in fact, the chemicals making the mind direct the chemicals to act on the mind, to direct the chemicals (and this becomes an infinite loop, a never ending cycle, in fact, an infinite regress, to show you the absurdity.

A clear and lucid view of things should render it obvious that mere dead matter (or any combinations of mere dead matter) cannot account for the minds that we have, or for the beings that we are.

LordReed2nd:
We can distinguish between when an autonomous vehicle is operating and when a vehicle is being driven by a human driver. How can we do the same for the body?

To distinguish between whether a vehicle is autonomous or not takes being outside the internal space of the vehicle.

Can the vehicle itself know the difference between when it is software driven or driven by a person?

Don't forget that an autonomous vehicle is designed to imitate as close as possible human response to the environment.

LordReed2nd:
In otherwords how can we know who is correct between we who say the body and mind are an integrated unit operating autonomously and you who say the body is driven or ridden by a spirit/soul?

Too easy!
Logically look at the unknown from the point of view of the known.

Is it possible to have a complex AI humanoid robot that is not software driven?

If let's say it is possible, how is the basic rules of interaction with the environment set? A baby as soon as it is born instinctively know that he should breath in air and exhale out wastes. The baby seem to know that the solution to hunger is to drink milk. Baby chicks don't have to be taught to walk or peck at food.

If chemicals rule us, why is it that manytimes, we through our will override our FEAR?. If chemicals rule us, why is it that manytimes, we through our will override our PAIN?

TenQ:
Fishes will swim dangerous terrains just to get to a place to brood and procreate.

I need to isolate this excellent point: for the way scientists describe it, one would think that the genes have a mental purpose of their own which they execute with the creature as a mere tool or vessel for the independent agenda of the genes.