Brains are not Computers

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We tend to compare objects with what we think are similar objects.  This tendency causes us to compare the brain to a computer, but that is only because we have computers.

In past centuries, before there were computers for comparison, the brain was compared to a mechanical device with gears and rods.

As an aside, we tend to think of UFOs as space-craft because we have primitive space-craft.  We do not (yet) think of UFOs as phenomena of nature, nor do we think of them in terms of quantum entanglement devices, because the comparisons would be too remote.

Someday soon, we may think of the brain as a highly structured energy field.

The comparison of brains to computers is based on the idea that the brain is an input-output device for the human body, but that comparison falls short because the brain does not output information for a third-party user in the selfless way a computer does.

 

Cameras process light for output to film or other registers, but the user is not the camera itself.

 

If it were so, the camera would not need to be focused.  The raw data (photons) would still be the same.  Focus simply allows the human eye to process the information to the brain.

 

If the human brain, then, does not process information for any user but itself, then that is as absurd as the camera processing light only for its own internal use.

In order for the brain to output anything, it must output it to a user, a user OTHER THAN the brain itself.  The output is to consciousness.

With consciousness, the information is no longer raw data.

With consciousness, there is no longer just action and reaction.
With consciousness, there is meaning and purpose, a meaning higher than the self, a purpose greater than self-gratification.

 

The brain is not conscious, it is an instrument of consciousness.

 

The violin is not the musician.
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Psychology Today Magazine Article on Consciousness

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Philosopher Sharon Hewitt Rawlette, Ph.D, has written a very lucid article on the relationship between consciousness and the physical world we observe.  I touched on these things in The God Paradigm, but Rawlette does a far better job of explaining it, and of making it clear.  According to the philosophy (physicalism) dominating physical science these days, things in the physical world are defined by, and only by, other things in the physical world.  Physicalism avers that there is nothing else, only the physical.  That is circular reasoning.  Rawlette points out how to avoid that logical flaw in physics.

Her article is at

https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/mysteries-consciousness/201907/what-if-consciousness-comes-first 
Here are some excerpts:

= = = = =

It’s as though someone created a very elaborate spreadsheet and carefully defined how the values in every cell would be related to the values in all of the other cells. However, if no one enters a definite value for at least one of these cells, then none of the cells will have values.

In the same way, if the universe is to actually exist, its properties can’t be exclusively relational/dispositional. Something in the universe has to have some kind of quality in and of itself to give all the other relational/dispositional properties any meaning. Something has to get the ball rolling.

That something (at least in our universe) is consciousness.

= = = = =

We have been trying to reduce consciousness to physical properties when it is consciousness that is the more comprehensive category . . . .

= = = = =

Recognizing the ontological primacy of consciousness could finally open the door to the kind of research that promises answers to some of our most pressing questions: not just scientific ones, but ethical and existential ones as well.

[End excerpts]

 

 

Supernatural is not the same as Magic

Copied From

https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/metaphysical-speculations/tQlDhxbJXNE

 

Sci, this is one of the best disputations I have yet seen against physicalism.

Notice that Putnam rightly distinguishes the “magical” from the “supernatural.”  As I have noted before, “supernatural” does not have, in traditional theology, the connotations that movies, television, and the like have given it in the popular mind.  In particular, it does not have any necessary connection with belief in ghosts or other paranormal phenomena.  The “supernatural” is just that which transcends the natural order.  And if it is not governed by the laws that govern the natural order, that is not because it is less intelligible than the natural order, but because it is more intelligible, and indeed the source of the intelligibility of the natural order.  The natural order is contingent; its divine, supernatural ground is necessary.   The causal processes in terms of which we explain everyday happenings within the natural order are secondary, having only a derived efficacy; the divine, supernatural first cause is that which has its causal power inherently, in an absolutely underived way.

The Brain Chip: A Science Fiction Story

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--by Robert Arvay

 

        It was the year 2218 when the problem was discovered.  No one knew what to do about it.

        Beginning fifty years earlier, in 2168, everyone had begun being implanted with a computerized micro-chip, in their brain.  It took ten years to insert all the chips.  This included the time it took to hunt down all the hold-outs, and to enforce compliance.  After ten years, almost everyone was a “chipper,” a person who had the chip.

        The chip was deemed to be necessary.  Life had become too complicated for most people to manage.  Suicides were on the rise.  Crime had dramatically increased.  Masses of people were either uneducated, or mis-educated, because few people could agree on what was fact, and what was opinion.  Chaos threatened to destroy society.

        Technology had empowered individuals to such a degree that it was all but impossible to maintain law and order.  A grade-school kid could figure out how to hack the computer systems of banks, nuclear missile silos, and even their own report cards.

        Something had to be done.  Something was done.

        The brain chip solved the problem.  Inserted into the brain early in life, even as soon as a month after being born, everyone could think alike, or at least, enough alike to forestall the radical disagreements which previously had threatened civil war.  The chip had its own microcomputer program, and it could in turn program, in a sense, the human brain of the recipient.  Human brains were then programmed to agree on the most controversial issues which previously had been tearing society apart.  Chippers obeyed the rules, and therefore, chippers could be trusted.

        Even better yet, the brain chips could all receive periodic updates from time to time via signals transmitted from satellites.  This allowed the government to revise failed social programs without the traditional bickering that had previously disrupted every major social program change in the pre-chip years.

        At first, many people had objected to the brain chip.  It was itself the most controversial technology that had ever been introduced.  At first, the chip had been surreptitiously inserted into the brains of children during doctor visits.  Parents were either not told what was happening, or else were given false information.  As word of this leaked out, dissent increased.

        After a few years, however, everyone could see that children with the chip did better in school than most other children.  They were better behaved, more obedient, and easier to raise.  After that, more and more parents clamored to have their own children implanted, and finally, adults themselves began asking for and receiving chip implants.  People with the chip earned much more than most people without it, because with it, they became much smarter than before.

        What no one was told, until there was no denying it, is that once the chip is implanted, it cannot be removed without tragic consequence to the recipient.  Painful deaths occurred whenever a chip was removed.

        For nearly fifty years, no one requested the removal of chip implants.  Everyone who had one was happy with it.  No chipper ever felt depressed, worried, or in doubt—about anything, not even about the chip itself. 

        Unlike as with drugs, the chip enabled the chipper to cope with problems, and to devise solutions, because the chip enhanced intelligence.  Everyone who had it had automatic encyclopedic knowledge of virtually every subject taught in any school.  Since the knowledge was stored, not in the brain, but in the chip, the knowledge did not occupy one’s thoughts until and unless he needed it.  Then, he could access the needed information immediately.  For example, anyone who needed to learn Swahili (or any other language) could instantly master it, and speak it with as much proficiency as any native speaker.

        But one day, the Great Problem was discovered.  It was discovered that the chip had an embedded error in it, an inherent and irreparable malfunction which would eventually, but inevitably, cause the chipper to go suddenly and incurably insane, and violently so.  The incidence of this form of insanity suddenly began to increase, and no one knew how much worse it might get.

        At first, there was general panic in the population, not only panic, but anger.  Who had designed the chip?  Why had it been put into patients without thorough testing beforehand?  Which government officials had authorized the surreptitious implants into children?  How dare they?  The possibility of rebellion loomed large.

        The panic suddenly ended when the next update was made via satellite transmissions.  Everyone suddenly assumed that the problem was only temporary, and that a fix had already been devised.  The fix would be implemented soon, very soon, even as soon as tomorrow.

        Nobody resented the fact that tomorrow after tomorrow came and went, with no solution, because after all, the problem would be fixed tomorrow.

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Metaphysical Implications of Language

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The concept of language involves a great deal of metaphysical implications.  What does its existence tell us about reality?  About ourselves?  About nature?

 

The fact that there are many languages, not just one, is a very profound fact, the significance of which should not be dismissed.  It is said that the ancient Greeks thought that theirs was the only language.  The word, “barbarian,” is said to have, in Greek, meant something like, “babbler.”  After all, the ancients may have wondered, how can there be more than one language?  Is not language absolute?  All else is just meaningless noise.

 

Not only are there many languages, they can take many forms.  Indeed, even within one language, it can take varied forms such as spoken, written, gestures, smoke-signals and so forth.

 

Language in general is defined as a means of communication, and more precisely, as a formal and structured means of communication.  It requires a sender, a meaning, and a receiver.  The sender intends to convey a particular meaning to the receiver.  The definition of language can be somewhat ambiguous, even though, as with art, we think we know what it is.

 

Language can express a particular thought, a specific emotion, an image, or ambiguities, such as, huh?

 

Before we get too far afield, let us narrow the topic to a more manageable scope. 

 

The concept of a transmitter, signal and receiver seems to be the core of language.  Take away any one of these, and there is no communication.

 

Both the sender and the receiver must share a language, and moreover, share everything that is involved with that language.  The sender has a thought, translates that thought into words, sends the message, which the other person receives and understands.  What had been a thought in one person’s mind, now becomes a thought in both persons’ minds.

 

The cosmos communicates.  Gravity can be considered a form of communication between two physical structures (such as earth and moon).

 

There is also a form of language involved in DNA.  It is this one which may have the most profound implications for philosophy, metaphysics and theology.

 

The comparison of DNA to a written language has been made for a long time.  It is somewhat controversial.  Even the question is in doubt, of whether DNA encodes the instructions for building an entire organism, such as the human body.  Recent research indicates that the role of DNA is much more limited than that.  It might, at most, encode only for proteins.

 

Regardless of that, it is clear that when a cell begins to divide into becoming a multicellular organism, it is following some sort of plan.  The exact nature of that plan is a mystery.  Indeed, it is one of the greatest mysteries of physics, perhaps of cosmology.  Why should a purely physical nature be able to instruct mere atoms (and molecules) to begin with a single cell, and then to make copies of itself, and then to make specialized copies of itself, and to organize all the subsequent iterations of the original cell into a coordinated system of cells that comprise one individual?

 

The principle of language, remember, incorporates a sender, a meaning, and a receiver.  If DNA is the message, the meaning—then what (or who) is the sender?  The receiver?

 

DNA, then, does not fit neatly into this model, this definition of language.  Yet, somehow, even though we cannot clearly pinpoint the sender and receiver, it becomes clear that DNA is transmitting some sort of message, a message that is understood to the degree that its instructions are followed.

 

DNA-language bears some resemblance to computer languages.

 

Computers are programmed according to languages—computer languages.  Computer languages are composed of two elements, known as ones and zeroes, or as charged and uncharged diodes.  From these ones and zeroes (known as bits), are formed multi-bit combinations known as bytes, or letters.  The bytes are combined into lines of code, or computer instructions.  When properly embedded into a computer’s electronic components, these lines of code form a sort of language, which the computer uses to carry out its functions.

 

Unlike the DNA in a cell, computers are programmed by living, conscious humans, programmers, who use the programs to carry out functions intended by the human programmers.

 

Are human cells, bodies and brains, programmed by some external force?  Is that force a blind, unknowing, uncaring nature?  Or is that force itself alive?

 

Is life an emergent phenomenon of chemistry, or is it the other way around?  Are life, consciousness and free will the motivating force, the underlying reality, of nature?

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Understanding Animals and Humans

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I went to a zoo.  I went there to study animals.  Soon, I became confused.  How could I study animals when there were so many kinds of them?  There were lions and tigers, zebras and antelopes.  There were reptiles and arachnids, apes and monkeys, and birds of every feather.

Realizing that I could never understand animals by visiting a zoo, I decided instead to study humans.  After all, I am a human, and other humans must be just like me, so what could be difficult about that?  So, I visited large cities, small towns, and rural areas.  I was sure that by doing so, I could come to understand humans.

I was wrong.

Scientifically, there is only one species of human, but otherwise, humanity is a menagerie.  There are wolves and rabbits, snakes and insects, robots and meat grinders.

True, I am exaggerating, but there is a madness to my madness.  The animals in the zoo are, at least, rational.  Lions eat antelopes, not out of cruelty, but hunger.  Antelopes run from lions, not because of cowardice, but because survival demands it.  Reptiles and arachnids do not contemplate their actions beforehand, they strike at the first opportunity.

Humans victimize other humans out of cruelty.  Cowards run from danger for the same reason they run from truth.  Predators of the human variety constantly seek their next victim, and strike at the first opportunity.

Perhaps each human has, within him, the entire animal kingdom.  Perhaps an artist is a spider, but one who can appreciate the beauty of a web, glistening in the morning dew.  Perhaps a scientist is an ape who can build better tools.  Engineers are bees who can construct ever more complex hives.  Some of us are worker-bees, laboring for our brief lifespan in service of the queen.  Criminals are insects, unfeeling.

The big difference is that in the animal kingdom, the snake is forever a snake, unable to change into a butterfly.  Humans, however, can examine their own condition, learn moral values and apply them.  That so many of them do not, portends the existence of Hell, if not a Hell of fire and brimstone, then the eternal darkness of an empty soul.

Society today is riven by strife.  Passions are aroused by politics, religion and ideology.  To excerpt William Butler Yeats, from his poem, The Second Coming:

Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
    Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
. . .
    The best lack all conviction, while the worst
    Are full of passionate intensity.

I was wrong.  I am returning to visit the zoo.

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